Diet is an important factor in the cause and cure of many ills. The wrong foods can cause allergic reactions ranging from the well-known strawberry rash to death from allergic asphyxiation. The right foods can help you clear up such allergic reactions. The wrong foods can bring on overweight, sap your energy, rob you of zest and well-being. And in the degenerative diseases of the heart and blood vessels, diet is the key; it is the difference between active good health and dangerous illness. Not all doctors are agreed as to the exact role of the high-fat diet in the development of those circulatory disorders that account for more than one-half of the total deaths in this nation each year. But a careful and continuing study of the subject for more than 15 years, both in the laboratory and in my private practice, has left no doubt in my mind. It is diet that cocks the trigger of the deadly weapon now aimed at the hearts and brains of millions of Americans.
Whether that trigger is ever pulled will depend, admittedly, on a number of other things: heredity, occurrence of other diseases in the victim, certain hormones, stresses, biochemical factors, and so on. But why play Russian roulette with your heart? By eliminating certain foods from your diet, by including others in the right amounts, and by the use of nutritional supplements, you can achieve at least a 50 per cent protection against heart attack.
Now let's see what foods are good for your health and which foods are not. Unfortunately, as simple as proper dieting is, doctors have found it to be one of the most difficult measures to prescribe for their patients, and one of the most difficult to get them to follow consistently. Proper diet is the easiest and safest thing a physician can prescribe. But because eating habits are so firmly established with most patients, and because dietary therapy takes time, many follow a stop-and-go routine that offers little long-range benefit.
A healthy diet does not mean starvation or tasteless foods. Yet a corrective diet does not mean either starvation or the grim necessity of eating unpalatable foods. Moreover, a little experimenting in the kitchen will soon produce meals that, from the standpoint of taste and esthetic appeal, will be equal if not superior to, the high-fat dishes to which you are accustomed. In the following pages you will find ways and means of satisfying your appetite and of stimulating it in such a way that it can be constantly surprised and pleased. This is done by a little originality on your part plus a break with old cooking and eating habits that have grown into fixed, and often monotonous, dining patterns. Your palate will be grateful for the change. And you will experience on the low-fat diet a startling increase in vigor and vitality, a new sense of well-being.
You do not have to lose energy - good diet increases vigor. Neither does it mean a loss of energy or a sharp reduction in poundage, unless you are overweight, in which case the excess fat is melted off. In fact, if you adhere to the low-fat, low-cholesterol diet recommended in these pages, you will feel better, have more vigor, and firmer muscles than before. If you have a faulty fat metabolism, the diet may substantially prolong your life. You will find more energy. You will be able to accomplish more and enjoy better what you do accomplish. The low-fat, low-cholesterol diet is not intended for growing children and young persons under 20. The fatty acids contained in an unrestricted diet are apparently favorable to their growth and development. At the same time, there is the incontrovertible fact that hundreds of millions of children in the Orient and elsewhere develop to their normal physical growth and healthy adulthood on a low-fat diet. Apparently the reason for this is that nature has endowed them with the ability to synthesize or produce within the body itself from other foodstuffs eaten, the essential fatty acids found in high-fat diets. However, additional fats above and beyond those actually required and eaten in the diet are metabolized and discarded by children, or are absorbed without being deposited in harmful amounts on the artery walls. But after the period of growth is completed, and nature has exhausted her protective powers against fats, excess amounts are deposited in the artery walls. This tendency increases with each decade after you are 30 years of age.
Almost everyone can benefit from a low-fat diet. There are, of course, some individuals whose blood is so low in cholesterol and blood fats that dietary restrictions are not necessary. But these persons are decidedly in the minority; and such a condition can only be determined by a competent physician, who will order a laboratory measurement of serum cholesterol levels in the blood. People who are fortunate enough to possess these low-cholesterol levels (fixed around a 200 milligram value) are able to handle all fats ingested. They are usually characterized by outstanding vitality and are inclined to long lives. They rarely suffer from blood vessel diseases and heart attacks. I had such a person as a patient of mine in one of my teaching wards at the County Hospital. She was a Mexican-Indian woman whose documented age was 110 years. Despite this remarkable fact, and despite her other infirmities (which were not associated with degenerative blood vessel disease), she was quite spry.
A healthy diet does not mean starvation or tasteless foods. Yet a corrective diet does not mean either starvation or the grim necessity of eating unpalatable foods. Moreover, a little experimenting in the kitchen will soon produce meals that, from the standpoint of taste and esthetic appeal, will be equal if not superior to, the high-fat dishes to which you are accustomed. In the following pages you will find ways and means of satisfying your appetite and of stimulating it in such a way that it can be constantly surprised and pleased. This is done by a little originality on your part plus a break with old cooking and eating habits that have grown into fixed, and often monotonous, dining patterns. Your palate will be grateful for the change. And you will experience on the low-fat diet a startling increase in vigor and vitality, a new sense of well-being.
You do not have to lose energy - good diet increases vigor. Neither does it mean a loss of energy or a sharp reduction in poundage, unless you are overweight, in which case the excess fat is melted off. In fact, if you adhere to the low-fat, low-cholesterol diet recommended in these pages, you will feel better, have more vigor, and firmer muscles than before. If you have a faulty fat metabolism, the diet may substantially prolong your life. You will find more energy. You will be able to accomplish more and enjoy better what you do accomplish. The low-fat, low-cholesterol diet is not intended for growing children and young persons under 20. The fatty acids contained in an unrestricted diet are apparently favorable to their growth and development. At the same time, there is the incontrovertible fact that hundreds of millions of children in the Orient and elsewhere develop to their normal physical growth and healthy adulthood on a low-fat diet. Apparently the reason for this is that nature has endowed them with the ability to synthesize or produce within the body itself from other foodstuffs eaten, the essential fatty acids found in high-fat diets. However, additional fats above and beyond those actually required and eaten in the diet are metabolized and discarded by children, or are absorbed without being deposited in harmful amounts on the artery walls. But after the period of growth is completed, and nature has exhausted her protective powers against fats, excess amounts are deposited in the artery walls. This tendency increases with each decade after you are 30 years of age.
Almost everyone can benefit from a low-fat diet. There are, of course, some individuals whose blood is so low in cholesterol and blood fats that dietary restrictions are not necessary. But these persons are decidedly in the minority; and such a condition can only be determined by a competent physician, who will order a laboratory measurement of serum cholesterol levels in the blood. People who are fortunate enough to possess these low-cholesterol levels (fixed around a 200 milligram value) are able to handle all fats ingested. They are usually characterized by outstanding vitality and are inclined to long lives. They rarely suffer from blood vessel diseases and heart attacks. I had such a person as a patient of mine in one of my teaching wards at the County Hospital. She was a Mexican-Indian woman whose documented age was 110 years. Despite this remarkable fact, and despite her other infirmities (which were not associated with degenerative blood vessel disease), she was quite spry.
My research laboratory took samples of her blood and analyzed them with keen interest to see how much cholesterol and blood fats it would contain. In repeated tests, we found her cholesterol levels remained consistently within the range of 100 milligrams. Her other blood fats were correspondingly low. Compared with what we regard as "normal" values of blood cholesterol in the United States (150-250 milligrams), this patient's values appeared to be surprisingly low. However, the 100 milligram level discovered in the little old Mexican-Indian lady, who was born in 1840 and brought up on a diet of legumes, fruits, and Indian corn, was probably a more accurate example of what the ideal cholesterol level should be. At the opposite end of the spectrum from this vivacious centenarian are many individuals who have inherited what we of the medical profession call familial hypercholesterolemia. These words are a term referring to persons who have inherited abnormally high levels of blood cholesterol. These are the unfortunate ones throughout whose families runs the devastation of heart attacks and strokes, usually coming in the prime of life.
Such a condition is often discovered accidentally during a routine checkup by an able physician. He may note such signs as cholesterol deposits in the form of whitish plaques under the eye (called xanthalasma); or as a crescent along the periphery of the pupil in the eye (called an arcus senilis). Such indications may also be observed by the alert physician in various other parts of the body, including the elbows, arms, legs, heels, and hands. Many times the condition may reveal itself in the arteries inside the eyes, when they are checked by a competent eye doctor. Whether such danger signals exist or not, however, if you are a man over 20 or a woman over 40, a diet comprising not more than 10 to 20 per cent of fat in calories can offer some measure of protection against heart and blood vessel disease. Such a low-fat diet can, in fact, help you to enjoy the kind of over-all good health that makes life worth living. So, for your health's sake, follow the recommendations found in the rest of this chapter and avoid those foods that may destroy your health and your heart.
Such a condition is often discovered accidentally during a routine checkup by an able physician. He may note such signs as cholesterol deposits in the form of whitish plaques under the eye (called xanthalasma); or as a crescent along the periphery of the pupil in the eye (called an arcus senilis). Such indications may also be observed by the alert physician in various other parts of the body, including the elbows, arms, legs, heels, and hands. Many times the condition may reveal itself in the arteries inside the eyes, when they are checked by a competent eye doctor. Whether such danger signals exist or not, however, if you are a man over 20 or a woman over 40, a diet comprising not more than 10 to 20 per cent of fat in calories can offer some measure of protection against heart and blood vessel disease. Such a low-fat diet can, in fact, help you to enjoy the kind of over-all good health that makes life worth living. So, for your health's sake, follow the recommendations found in the rest of this chapter and avoid those foods that may destroy your health and your heart.
