Animal Writings

This article -- Research Attributes Lack Of HIV/AIDS Vaccine To Use Of Chimpanzees -- notes that all of the dozens of AIDS vaccines that worked in chimpanzees failed in humans. Both chimpanzees and human AIDS patients have suffered because of this heavy reliance on chimpanzees, which has been going on for decades. But the animal research labs have made a killing.

Labels: AIDS, animal model, disease

From the Feb, 2003 issue of Nature Reviews Drug Discovery:

Labels: animal model, disease, genes, science

The other day, my sister-in-law said, "It's so hard to tell what's good for you and what's bad for you. Every day there's a new study that contradicts the previous one."

It's not quite that random or confusing. There are some patterns that are remarkably consistent, decade after decade. After perusing through studies on the effect of diet, it becomes abundantly, undeniably clear that fruits and vegetables lower your risk for a wide range of diseases. If there was a pill as powerful as fruits and vegetables, and with as few side effects, it would be hailed as a medical miracle. It would be front page news. And prescriptions might cost a fortune. There may be no better bargain in the world than fruits and vegetables.

Three of my neighbors have been stricken with cancer in the last couple of years. One died and another has less than a year to live, according to her prognosis. In all likelihood, neither of these neighbors will reach 60. It's gut-wrenching to see these formerly vibrant people become so worn down to the point that they can't even get out of bed some mornings. It's awful to witness them losing their color and energy and gradually withering away.

Would a change in their diet—especially if started in, say, their 20s—have prevented their cancers or improved their diagnoses? It's impossible to say. But in the aggregate, diet—and consumption of fruits and vegetables in particular—seems to have a substantial and sometimes dramatic effect on overall health. You do not want to get cancer. Improve your odds by eating a variety of fruits and vegetables. It may be a matter of life and death.

I hope that this series' introduction to these wonder-foods helps you serve them in ways that are pleasing and tasty for you. Fruits and vegetables should be a joy to eat, not medicine that you have to force yourself to take. Please avail yourself of the almost limitless cooking tips and recipes on the Net so that you can discover favorite ways to prepare and consume these amazing foods and make them a major part of your diet.

On a related note, coming up soon I'll feature an interview with my friend and accomplished chef Dino, who will let you know some simple rules of thumb for using common spices and bottled sauces to add flavor to your food (we'll focus mainly on vegetables for starters).

Here are just a few of the thousands of studies that show the health benefits of eating a sufficient quantity and variety of and fruits and vegetables. This is just a tiny sliver of the available data. Studies that reinforce the importance of fruits and vegetables in the diet are so frequent and plentiful, you can practically pluck them from the air. They're everywhere.

All of the following studies are recent and medium- or large-scale.

(Note: Let me know if you want the precise information—full journal name, volume, issue, authors, and so forth—on any of these studies to enable you to look them up. In the meantime, it's much quicker to just list the journal abbreviated name and issue year.)

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The Netherlands Cohort Study tracked 62,573 women and 58,279 men, aged 55 to 69, for over six years. The more fruits and vegetables they ate, the lower their chance of lung cancer.

Of 18,000 men, those who had detectable amounts of isothiocanates, a chemical found in cruciferous vegetables such as broccoli and bok choy, had a 36 percent lower chance of developing lung cancer than those without detectable amounts of the chemical. A number of compounds in cruciferous vegetables—some perhaps not yet discovered—work in tandem, and researchers warned the public not to rely on a pill form of the chemical.

A study of 103 breast cancer patients in Australia found that those who ate the most fruits and vegetables had the best chance for survival.

A study of more than 90,000 men and more than 240,000 women showed that for every 10 grams of fiber in the daily diet there is a 14 percent reduction in coronary events (e.g., heart attacks) and a 27 percent reduction in coronary deaths. Fiber is found in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and legumes, but not animal products.

A study of 4000 men and women adults found that the those who ate the most dietary fiber had the lowest amount of concentrations of C-reactive protein (CRP) in their blood. A high CRP number is used as a predictor of future coronary events.

In a study of 1294 men with prostate cancer and 1451 men without the disease, men who ate the most fiber from vegetables in particular were 18 percent less likely to develop prostate cancer than those who ate the least.

A study of 900 men and women between the ages of 69 and 93 found, among other things, that men who ate the most fruits, vegetables, and cereral had the highest bone density. Bone health is a lot more than just calcium!

To women who are breastfeeding or pregnant, or who may be pregnant in the near future: According to research at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, when mom eats vegetables during pregnancy or if breastfeeding, baby is more likely to eat his or her vegetables. This is a profound finding, in my judgment: What you eat during this critical period could affect your child's eating habits, and thus overall health, for life.

Dad, your diet may have a major influence, too. If you say "Yum, these carrots taste great," I think that will have a far different effect than "Yuck, carrots again? Do we have to eat these?" The former will show your children that vegetables are tasty and appreciated; the latter response will teach your children to resent vegetables. Your children pick up and perpetuate your attitudes. Even better: Make the vegetables yourself and/or let the kids help. Even better still: Grow a little organic vegetable garden in the back yard and get the whole family involved. Experience shows that kids enjoy vegetables they grew themselves.

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You may want to share some of these findings with your family members and loved ones. We may not be able to prevent cancer entirely, but we may be able to prevent over half of its occurrences—that's huge. Mainstream medical groups estimate that up to 70 percent of some cancers are preventable by lifestyle changes alone. And we'll see later on that that success rate may improve even more for diabetes and heart disease. Granted, you could do everything right and still get cancer or heart disease. Sometimes people are born with a genetic abnormality or heart defect, or other insurmountable conditions. But in most cases, our most common deadly diseases are not just something that happens to you when you get older. What you eat may determine whether you are stricken with them. Please take this to heart.

Next: A few more studies on the importance of making fruits and vegetables a major part of your diet, to drive home the point.

Labels: cancer, diet, disease, fruits, vegetables

These next few posts are for meat-eaters and (to a lesser extent) cheese-eating vegetarians who don't cook much—because they don't like to or don't have time, or for other reasons.

The main theme is replacing meat in your diet but—to the fullest extent possible—not giving up your comfort foods, not changing your routine, not having to transition to a completely new cuisine. It's a big topic, so it will require multiple posts. In fact, I may write individual posts piecemeal. If I do, the end of the post will say "More to follow..." until the post is complete. Posts will end with "To be continued..." until the series is through.

Now, down the road, I heartily recommend expanding your diet to include a wide range of new tastes, including some of the world's magnificent ethnic flavors. And toward the end of this series, I'll give some tips on how to ease into that. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Why drop meat from your diet?

First, there are the health considerations. The data is in—in spades: A meat- and cheese-heavy diet is unhealthy; a vegetarian diet that focuses on fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, and a moderate amount of plant-based fats is healthy. When I say "unhealthy" I mean it can debilitate and kill you—slowly, through chronic diseases that start as early as pre-teens and develop and worsen as you age.

Granted, there are exceptions. There are some people who can eat Big Macs every day, and never eat vegetables, and their cholesterol is perfect and they're hearty and vigorous at 70. Just like there are heavy smokers who never get lung cancer or emphysema. But those are the exceptions. The problem is, you don't know in advance if you're going to be an exception. But don't bet on it.

In general, a meat-heavy diet has too much of the bad stuff and not enough of the good stuff. Probably the best-known villain in meat and dairy is saturated fat. Hundreds if not thousands of peer-reviewed clinical and epidemiological studies in mainstream scientific journals show that animal fat intake correlates with heart disease, diabetes, several cancers, and other deadly diseases. But fat isn't the only bad guy in animal products. You also have to worry about cholesterol, chemicals released during cooking, hormones and toxins that accumulate in animal tissue, and bacteria such as salmonella, campylobacter, and e coli.

The good stuff that meat and dairy pushes out include: fiber, vitamin C, folic acid, and about a million micro-nutrients that seem to fight off cancer, heart attacks, and other chronic, debilitating, deadly conditions.

Please note: You may have heard a lot about cutting back on fat in your diet. Be aware that in terms of your health, there is a difference between animal fat and plant fat. Perhaps this is best illustrated by example: In a 2003 study of nearly a hundred thousand women, Harvard researchers found that intake of animal fat, especially from red meat and high-fat dairy products, during premenopausal years had a significantly greater risk of developing breast cancer. There was no relationship between the consumption of vegetable fats and breast cancer found. (Here's the original study: Cho E, Spiegelman D, Hunter DJ, et al. Premenopausal fat intake and risk of breast cancer. J Natl Cancer Inst. 2003;95:1079-85.)

There's more where that came from.

(By the way, relatively healthy plant sources of fat include olive oil, canola oil, peanut oil, flax seeds, sesame seeds, walnuts, almonds, avocados, and coconuts. There are many more; these are just a few of the best known and most widely available ones.)

In sharp contrast to the ton of data affirming the harmful effects of meat and dairy, controlled studies (again, published in leading peer-reviewed scientific journals) show that diets free of animal products may reverse heart disease, prostate cancer, and diabetes. That's powerful. Where on the spectrum do you want to be?

One more thing. There are vegan ultramarathon, triathlon, weightlifting, and Olympic champions. Throw out misconceptions of vegetarians as weak. As a rule, they're healthy and virile.

Yes, you can mess up a vegetarian diet by eating nothing but potato chips, saltines, and frosted flakes. But with a decent balance of whole grains, legumes, fruits, vegetables, and "good fats," you will probably be much healthier than the rest of the population, and stay fit well into old age, unless you are very unlucky. Get some exercise, employ some stress-reduction techniques of your choice, be kind to others, rotate your tires, take in an occasional monster truck rally, and you'll likely have a satisfying and meaningful life.

OK, that's health.

To be continued...

Labels: comfort foods, diet, disease, fruit, grains, health, legumes, meat, vegetables