HEART DISEASE (CHD) Prevention & More

Major Dietary Protein Sources and Risk of Coronary Heart Disease (CHD). This is one 2010 update of Harvard’s Nurses Health Study, which began in 1976. Others will follow for diabetes and stroke. This study is the result of prospectively following 84 thousand women age 30 to 55 by research doctors including Drs. Bernstein and Willett all associated with the Department of Nutrition and Epidemiology at Harvard University School of Public Health, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and other departments at Harvard University.

Purpose of the study was to examine the foods that are major dietary protein sources and incident CHD.

Conclusions suggests that high red meat intake including Beef, Pork, and Lamb increases risk of CHD and that CHD risk can be reduced importantly by shifting sources of protein in the US diet. Shifting the protein source from red meat to beans resulted in the greatest reduction in CHD risk followed in order by a shift to nuts, fish, poultry, low fat dairy, high fat dairy. (see page 881 of the study)

DISCUSSION

This study of CHD along with the World Cancer Research Study (WCRF/AICR) strongly suggests the health advantage of adopting a diet focused on plant food as the primary source of protein. If widely adopted it would have a huge positive impact on health care cost and our soil and water natural resources. *It takes 26 pounds of grain to yield one pound of animal flesh. * Our land is capable of supplying food for 14 times as many people when it is used for human food crops as when it is used to feed livestock. Naturally irrigated corn, the primary grain used as animal feed has an inherently high nitrogen need and low uptake efficiency (.37). Corn production along with CAFO animal manure is the largest source of nutrient pollution in over 50% of the US land area studied by the writer and is the primary cause of water quality destruction in the Gulf of Mexico, Chesapeake Bay, and other East Coast Estuaries. In addition denuding large areas of the earth’s surface and using **shortcuts in soil management have resulted in loss of half the nations precious topsoil and soil carbon depletion.

WRITERS CONCLUSION: (The writer is not an expert in medicine or agronomy please read these reports and reach your own conclusions. All reports and studies are readily available with a curser click on our website (fixingourfood.com)

CAFO produced meat in the American diet is the likely primary promoter of Cancer and CHD the two major human killers. Also grain based CAFO production including the generated manure is killing our natural resources. By growing primarily a diversity of food crops and integrating animal production into the landscape we have adequate land to feed a growing population, well into the future. If we continue the current per capita level of CAFO based meat consumption we do not.

• “Get Healthy Now” by Gary Null

** USDA Soil Handbook pg 101 by Magdoff/van Es