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Mark Anthony, PhD, is an adjunct professor of nutrition science at St. Edwards University, Austin, Texas, and co-director of S/F/B Communications Group. The former lab director of The Institute for Biomedical Research at the University of Texas at Austin is also author of Gut Instinct: Diet’s Missing Link (2003), a book that presents a unique investigation of carbohydrates and the fundamental chemistry of nutrition and metabolics on maintaining health as people age. He can be reached at mjanthony4@gmail.com.
Teasing out the nutrition factors that influence heart health is challenging, because the task is complicated by the modern trend toward obesity and sedentary lifestyle
Many of the nutritional factors that reduce the risk for heart disease are essential parts of well-known dietary staples. At least, staples for some. Many such foods and ingredients are not necessarily staples in the modern Western diet.
Overweight and obesity rates might be leveling off, but as more nations become more developed, waist expansion is spreading worldwide. In fact, the global girth rate appears to be untouched by an equally epidemic and persistent obsession with diets—diets of all kinds and of all claims.
The big picture of cancer risk reduction hasn’t changed much in decades, and the dietary prescription remains, “increase the proportion of fruits and vegetables in the diet and maintain a healthy body weight.” However, attention increasingly is turning to more specific ingredients.
When it comes to determining if the latest popular diet or nutrition trend is merely a fad or a true paradigm change, processors have their work cut out for them.
A run-in with a serious disease is a powerful stimulus for change, and reducing symptoms and risk fac-tors through diet is generally a focal point of that change. Recovery has many stages, and good nutrition is critical along all of them.
Heart disease remains the leading cause of death for men and women in the U.S. coronary heart disease (CHD), the most common type, kills nearly 380,000 people annually. The health costs are staggering, coming at a cost of nearly $109 billion per year in health care services, medications and lost productivity.
