Tag: whole food plant based diet

• Effect of Single High Fat Meal on Blood Flow

  MARS Center for Cocoa Health Science is based at University of California – Davis Campus (which is near Sacramento). Ronald Krauss, one of the authors of Astrup’s 2019 paper WHO draft guidelines on dietary saturated and trans fatty acids: time for a new approach?  is based at University of California – San Francisco campus.

  MARS has contributed $40 million to fund the institute.

  Between 2000 and 2021, the MARS institute has produced 157 articles extolling the benefits of chocolate and cocoa.

  “Everyone knows” that chocolate is really healthy and good for you based on research such as this.

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  24 March 2021

• Harvard Study Shows Plant Protein Consumption Reduces Mortality

  There are thousands of medical and scientific papers in peer-reviewed journals showing that a whole-food, plant-based (WFPB) diets are optimal for our health and are also the best for the environment and for the animals we share the earth with.

  A number of these studies are documented on this website.

  There are many more studies purporting that eggs, dairy, chocolate and even red meat are healthy and even essential for health.

  When a comparison is made between two or more groups of people, showing that healthy WFPB are detrimental, be mindful of the nature of the comparison group.

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  9 March 2021

• Lessons from The China Study

  Colin Campbell was a nutritional biochemist at Cornell University. In the 1960s, he was involved in nutritional programs in the Philippines to help families provide for their critically undernourished children. Peanuts were one of their preferred sources of protein. It is a legume— great for improving the soil, easy to grow, and is nutritious and tasty.

  At the same time, children younger than 10, were dying at alarming rates from liver cancer. Normally liver cancer is an adult disease— and the children dying from the disease were from the most affluent suburbs in Manila. These are the families that could afford the best housing and the best food.

  Whilst in the Philippines, he read a paper in an obscure medical journal. Rats were fed aflatoxin— one of the deadliest carcinogens known. One group of rats was given a diet of 20% protein —and they all died of liver cancer. The second group was given a diet of 5% protein— and they all lived. 100% deaths compared to zero deaths. They were all fed aflatoxin— but only those rats that had a high protein diet died.

  A 20% diet of wheat protein, gluten, or pea protein did not result in liver cancer deaths whereas casein, which comprises of 80% of the protein found in cow’s milk, and albumin, which is found in egg white, did result in liver cancer deaths. Plant-based diets are often considered to be lysine deficient. However, adding the amino acid lysine to the wheat protein to match the level found in casein also resulted in cancer deaths.

  Significantly, peanuts and corn in the Philippines were often contaminated by aflatoxin— and the wealthy ate Western-style diets, one rich in protein.

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  1 March 2021

• The French Paradox – The Myths

  “Everyone knows” about the French Paradox – that is, the French consume lots of saturated fat in the form of meat, butter, cheese and eggs and yet have a low risk of heart disease. This proves that the health advice regarding the role of fats and saturated fats in causing heart disease is wrong.

  The French Paradox has only been with us for a short period of time but it quickly resonated with the general population – we no longer need to be concerned about the amount of meat, butter, cheese and eggs that we consume.

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  1 October 2020

• PREDIMED Trial – Mediterranean Diet with Olive Oil or Nuts

  The PREDIMED trial assigned 7447 participants ranging from 55 to 80 years of age who were at high cardiovascular risk, but with no cardiovascular disease at enrollment, to one of three diets: a “Mediterranean Diet” supplemented with extra-virgin olive oil; a “Mediterranean Diet” supplemented with mixed nut; or a control diet with advice to reduce dietary fat.

  The “Mediterranean Diet” was the participants normal diet.

  50% of the participants that did not have metabolic syndrome at the start of the trial, were afflicted at the end of the trial, irrespective of which of the 3 groups the particpants were assigned.

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  29 August 2020

• Japanese Diet, Cuisine and Health

  Japan is at the top of the list for life expectancy and health. There are strong regional variations although the diet in recent decades has become more westernised and the variations in diet are becoming less distinct throughout Japan.

  A wide variety of dipping sauces accompany most meals. Udon is a thick wheat flour noodle and yakisoba is a buckwheat noodle. Soba is the Japanese name for buckwheat.

  Despite the increase in dairy, egg and meat consumption in recent decades, Japan (according to the National Health and Nutrition Surveys) still consumes a predominately plant-based diet.

  Hookaido had the lowest percentage of plant-based foods at 74.5% in 1980 and 82.2% in 2012. In 1980, Kanto II had the highest percentage at 78.2% with Hokuriku topping the list in 2012 with 84.5%.

  Australia and the US consume approximately 30% of their diet from plant-based sources.

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  18 August 2020

• Lyon Diet Heart Study

  The Lyon Diet-Heart Study was a

  “randomized, single-blind secondary prevention trial aimed at testing whether a Mediterranean-type diet, compared with a prudent Western-type diet, may reduce recurrence after a first myocardial infarction.”

  The study consisted of 605 patients who had recovered from a myocardial infarction at a hospital in southern France. The experimental group emphasised “more bread, more root vegetables and green vegetables, more fish, less meat (beef, lamb and pork to be replaced with poultry), no day without fruit, and butter and cream to be replaced with margarine” which was high in alpha-linolenic acid (an omega-3 fatty acid).

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  23 June 2020

• Autoimmune Diseases, Biomimicry and Type 1 Diabetes

  Autoimmune diseases are a group of sinister diseases where the immune system attacks the body that it has evolved to protect. One mechanism that explains auto-immune conditions is molecular biomimicry. When intruders invade our bodies, the immune system creates antibodies that mark these intruders (antigens) as a foreign foe. The immune system is then able to destroy the intruders.

  During digestion, proteins from animal-based foods are broken down into their component amino acids. Some proteins may be absorbed from the intestine without being fully broken down into their amino acid components. Small chains of amino acids are called peptides. These peptides may be treated as a foreign invader by our immune system.

  A chain of 17 amimo acids in cow's milk is treated a foreign body by our immune system. This same 17 amino acids occur on the surface of the pancreas that produces insulin resulting in the immune system destroying the inuslin-producing capacity of the pancreas, causing Type 1 Diabetes.

  If a child does not consume cow's milk it is impossible to develop Type 1 diabetes.

  Rheumatoid Arthritis and Hashimoto's Disease, which results in an under-active thyroid, are also a result of the immune system destroying parts of the body that that it ishould be protecting.

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  29 May 2020

• Ancel Keys and the Mediterranean Diet

  In 1951, Keys was working at Oxford when the Food and Agriculture Organization asked him to chair their first conference on nutrition in Rome. Keys stated, “The conferees talked only about nutritional deficiencies”.

  When he asked about the new epidemic of coronary heart disease, Gino Bergami, Professor of Physiology at the University of Naples, said , “Coronary heart disease was no problem in Naples”.

  In 1952, Keys and his wife Margaret visited Naples. Margaret measured serum cholesterol concentrations and found them to be very low except among members of the Rotary Club. Heart attacks were rare except amongst the rich whose diet included daily servings of meat. He obtained similar results in studies in Madrid.

  Ancel Keys and colleagues posed the hypothesis that differences among populations in the frequency of heart attacks and stroke would occur as a result of physical characteristics and lifestyle and diet. Surveys were carried out between 1958 - 1970 in populations of men aged 40-59, in sixteen areas of seven countries. Follow-up surveys were continued until the 1990s. Most of the areas were stable and rural and had wide contrasts in habitual diet.

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  23 May 2020

• Seventh-day Adventists and Health

  A strong commitment to health has been a part of Seventh Adventist’s tradition since in founding in the 1840s.

  Within the Californian Seventh-day Adventist community, as the diet becomes more vegetarian, so do the health outcomes.

  Californian Seventh-day Adventists are much healthier than the average American.

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  31 December 2019