The French and Mediterranean dietary customs of:
-- eating more fresh fruits and vegetables than Americans and eating them raw or only lightly cooked,
-- eating less red meat and eating red meat that is leaner than American meat,
-- consuming dairy products in the form of cheese and yoghurt rather than whole milk, and
-- eating more grain-based products,
probably account for some of their reduced heart attack rates despite their deadly addiction to tobacco. Many medical experts speculate that if cigarette smoking were eliminated, people in southern France and other Mediterranean countries might have only one-third as many heart attacks as Americans (instead of one-half our rate) and that their cancer rate would plummet.
Eating less red meat and eating leaner cuts is a fairly quick way to reduce saturated fat and cholesterol in your diet. Don't give up red meat entirely but limit portions to a three- or four-ounce serving once or twice a week at the most.
The dairy connection is trickier. In epidemiological studies, heart attack rates tend to be very high where the consumption of dairy products is high. But when the data are examined to look at the connection between cheese and heart disease -- there isn't one!
Most cheese is extremely high in saturated fat and cholesterol but it doesn't seem to be as available to the body as the fat and cholesterol in whole milk and cream. Dr. Serge Renaud, director of the Lyon unit of INSERM, says research indicates that the cheese fermentation process causes the calcium in milk to bind with the fat and cholesterol. The result is that they are excreted rather than absorbed. While the mechanism is disputed by some nutritionists, the "non-relationship" between cheese consumption and cardiovascular disease still exists.
The French eat about 40 pounds of cheese per person each year; Americans eat about 20 pounds. They eat more fresh cheese and less manufactured and processed techno-cheese products such as Velveeta, Cheez Whiz and American cheese (perhaps that last item is a good metaphor for what's gone wrong in our diet as a whole).
Because healthy diets strive to cut down on fats of all sorts, select cheeses with lower fat content such as goat cheese, feta, ricotta and mozzarella. Eat less high-fat cheeses like cheddar and brie.
When so many people look to pills and techno-foods for good health, the best advice seems to be what we've really known all along. The old-fashioned admonitions to eat your vegetables and have an apple a day to keep the doctor away may be the best medicine.
Despite decades of resistance from some researchers and important government agencies like the Food and Drug Administration and the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), medical research continues to find that the vitamins, minerals, fiber and trace elements in fruits and vegetables play an important role in protecting you from heart disease and cancer.
Just as today's official government policy belittles the cardio-protective role of moderate alcohol consumption, the "experts" in government have long dismissed the notion that vitamins play a vital role in disease prevention. And just as study after study continues to confirm alcohol's cardio-protective effect, mounting scientific evidence of the role foods play in disease prevention is forcing the scientific establishment to slowly reconsider its positions.
Recent research indicates that vitamins may play an important biochemical role in preventing everything from heart disease to cancer and birth defects. That body of research is no longer being ignored or dismissed as pseudo-science.
"The field [vitamin research] is undergoing a paradigm shift," said Catherine Woteki, director of the food and nutrition board at the NAS in an interview with Time magazine. "Paradigm shift" is government-speak for "we're changing our minds and we may
have been wrong."
Woteki is co-author of an NAS book which defines (without citing any medical or scientific basis) a "heavy drinker" as anyone who consumes more than one drink per day. Perhaps the NAS will, one day, recognize that the body of scientific evidence on moderate drinking can no longer be ignored and that they will need to shift paradigms again.
Paradigms aside, much of today's controversy rages over whether or not people can get all the vitamins and minerals they need from food or whether supplements are needed for maximum health benefits.
The answer seems to be that both a healthy diet and additional supplements have their own benefits and should be combined. Whole fruits and vegetables contain vitamins and minerals plus both soluble and insoluble fiber as well as many trace elements and compounds. Science may take decades to identify and then determine their individual roles in health.
On the other hand, considerable scientific research during the past five years indicates a useful role in vitamin and mineral supplements. The wisest course may be to eat as healthy as possible and take supplements for added benefits or to bridge days when eating healthy is not possible. The "health nuts" and "crackpots" once dismissed by the NAS and other establishment organizations may have gotten a jump on good health after all.
The genesis of both cancer and heart disease may lie in a category of chemical compounds called oxidants. These are produced by the body's metabolism and also are ingested as part of pollution and tobacco smoke and produced by X rays and other radiation, ozone and sunlight. These oxidants are also known as free radicals (an organic chemistry term that has nothing to do with a street riot in Berkeley). They attack and oxidize your body's tissues, cell membranes and even the DNA that's at the core of your genetic legacy. They may help cause atherosclerosis by attacking the lining of arteries.
Certain vitamins -- most notably E, C and A -- are anti-oxidants which help neutralize free radicals before they can do all their damage. Significantly, much of the research has found protective effects at much higher levels than those officially recommended by the federal government and the scientific establishment. For example, the FDA recommends 30 milligrams of Vitamin E each day, but two recent university studies found that men who daily consumed supplements containing 800 milligrams had only half the heart attacks as men who did not.
Bruce Ames, a biochemist at University of California at Berkeley, reports that daily doses of at least 250 of Vitamin C are necessary to prevent oxidative damage to sperm. Ames told New Scientist magazine that, "the U.S. recommended daily allowance (RDA) of 60 milligrams per day is too low." Likewise, the U.S. government has no official RDA for beta-carotene despite indications that large doses have been shown to protect against cancer and heart disease.
Of course, high doses of some vitamins can be hazardous. You should restrain the American penchant for believing that if some is good, a lot is better. This is sometimes, but not always, true.
Why would you want to?
Neither wine nor food should be viewed as medicine. They are sources of pleasure which, when used properly, also benefit your health and enrich your life.
Scientists believe that many food components have a cooperative effect which may enhance health benefits that are absent in isolated compounds. This means that it is possible that other, as yet undiscovered or unconfirmed, organic compounds in food may enhance the way that vitamins, minerals and other known beneficial compounds actually work their magic.
We do know that fruits and vegetables contain both soluble and insoluble fiber which play important roles in health. Insoluble fiber provides bulk to speed digesting food through your system. Science believes this increased speed may prevent potential carcinogens from having enough time to cause cancers of the colon and other parts of the gastrointestinal tract.
Insoluble fiber (found in oat bran, beans, the pectin in fruits and many other sources) plays a different role which is still somewhat controversial. One study indicates this form of fiber helps reduce blood fat and cholesterol by simply replacing less- healthy foods. Other studies suggest that soluble fiber compounds actually bind with fat and cholesterol in the digestive tract and prevent them from being absorbed.
Does it really matter to your body how insoluble fiber works so long as eating it enhances your health?
Many studies have indicated that people who eat large amounts of garlic have lower rates of cancer and heart disease. The journal of the American Cancer Institute reported in 1992 on 1,600 people studied in China. Those who ate the most garlic (and related foods like onions, shallots, leeks and chives) had 60 percent fewer cases of stomach cancer than those who ate less.
The catch here is the amount you have to eat: 53 pounds per year, about a pound a week. That doesn't seem to bother the average Frenchman or Italian whose recipes so often begin with, "saute the onion and garlic in olive oil..."
A garlic supplement pill, Kwai, is now available.
While supplements may be good insurance, you'll probably find more enjoyment and just as much health in a bowl of pasta primavera (vegetables) with olive oil and garlic, perhaps preceded by an appetizer of baked garlic spread on fresh bread with a thin layer of goat cheese -- all washed down with a glass of wine. Now, that's health food!