Veggies equal less heart attacks and fast food equals more – How to use the info….

Today's post: Tuesday, 10-21-2008

An international study called INTERHEART was published yesterday in Circulation, the journal of the American Heart Association. This 4 year study examined what heart attack patients ate and people who had not had heart attacks ate in over 25 countries from literally every part of the world. The results were in the online health news yesterday and today. (AFP did the story in which I found the most details.) The researchers were careful to include Asian and developing countries and countries around the world and not just Western countries because in Asian and developing countries the rate of heart attacks has been rising along with their consumption of Western style foods and fast foods.

Here’s what they found:

People who ate a diet high in fried foods, salty snacks, and lots of meat had a 35 percent greater risk of having a heart attack than people who ate little or none.

And, people who ate lots of leafy green vegetables, other raw and cooked vegetables, and fruits had a 30 percent lower risk of heart attack than those who ate little or no fruit and vegetables.

Since fried foods, salty snacks, and meat in fast food in the 1999 to 2003 period studied were also often high in transfats and the meat was often beef fed or overfed grains instead of grass fed beef, the heart attack increase for eating those foods was actually a bit less than I would have predicted. These foods likely delivered transfats, extra saturated fat, extra omega 6 oils, and refined grains along with the extra salt. (In addition, many of these foods were likely served in fast food places along with soft drinks which have also been shown to have heart harmful effects.)

Clearly avoiding many of these foods completely and demanding and insisting on only transfat free foods and eating only grass fed beef when you do have beef would help prevent heart attacks.

2. Using the information in the other part of the story can be a bit more challenging to do.

Eating lots of vegetables, particularly, greens and other nonstarchy vegetables, helps you avoid being or staying fat and gives you many nutrients and phytonutrients that protect your health in many ways besides preventing heart attacks. Eating some vegetables even helps prevent cancer for example as many of our regular readers already know.

But greens and other nonstarchy vegetables don’t taste as good as many fried foods and salty snacks do. Some people who have rarely enjoyed or hardly ever eaten vegetables have difficulty getting themselves to eat more vegetables.

Eating lots of greens and other nonstarchy vegetables may be as important to your health as not smoking. (This study suggests doing this is almost as heart protective as not eating fast foods such as those in the study.) But it can be quite challenging to do.

That’s why I was delighted yesterday to find an article from about 6 months ago that I somehow missed in the Total Health Breakthroughs emails I get. It was on their website at
www.TotalHealthBreakthroughs.com in the “Reader Favorites” box.

"This article appears courtesy of Early to Rise's Total Health Breakthroughs, offering alternative solutions for mind, body and soul. For a complimentary subscription,
visit http://www.totalhealthbreakthroughs.com"

Here’s the article.: (They had it under “Healthy Nutrition.”)

“Hate Vegetables? Here’s Help! 04/22/2008

by Laura B. LaValle

Remember when former president George H.W. Bush pronounced to the world that he hates broccoli? Unfortunately, many Americans are in the same boat. It turns out that if you hate vegetables you may be what is called a “super taster,” a person who can pick up more bitter flavors in their foods and drinks. Or maybe you just had too many bad experiences with vegetables as a child.

I used to be a vegetable hater. But the truth is, not eating vegetables is really bad for you and is a sure way to increase your risk of many chronic illnesses. So, don’t throw in the towel. Here are some pointers that helped me — and have helped even our most stubborn patients “eat their veggies.”

Roasting vegetables reduces the bitter flavors by adding a savory caramelized flavor. Learning to roast vegetables really renewed my own interest and got me to enjoy eating them — and not just because I should. To roast any vegetable (except those you don’t normally cook, like cucumbers) toss the cut up pieces with good oil and seasonings — sea salt ground pepper, and garlic. See full instructions below.

Cooking vegetables with meats or meat broths also reduces the bitter flavors and tends to really bring out some of their sweetness. So load up your soups or stews with lots of chopped vegetables. Or just finely chop vegetables and add them to ground meats, like meatloaf, burgers, and even chili.

Mask the taste or hide the vegetable. For instance, use some butter, salt and pepper on steamed vegetables. For raw vegetables, try the healthiest dip you can find. My yogurt-tahini dressing in the April 15 issue of THB is a great vegetable dip. You can also finely chop or puree vegetables and add them to sauces, like spaghetti sauce. Even mashed potatoes can hide cooked cauliflower and turnips. Honest you don’t even know they are there!

Use small amounts of stronger tasting vegetables in your dishes and then slowly increase your consumption. Your taste buds are similar to your sense of smell. Just as you can get used to odors that you smell all the time, your taste buds over time notice the objectionable tastes less and less. So, keep trying them and start with small tastes. For instance, if you only like iceberg head lettuce, start adding small bites of darker green lettuces into your salad. Once your taste buds don’t notice the flavor of the darker lettuces any more, increase the amount.

One final bit of encouragement. If you haven’t tried some of the stronger tasting vegetables since childhood, you need to try again. Our taste buds die off as we get older, so we don’t taste things as acutely as we used to when we were younger. In fact, you may already be enjoying other foods that you didn’t like as a child. The same can happen with vegetables. Give these tips a try — it does pay off.

Basic Grilled Vegetable Technique:

Drizzle olive oil over your vegetable of choice. Any vegetable will do, but it is particularly good with stronger flavored vegetables, like broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, and asparagus. It is also a great way to branch out with vegetables you might not have ever tried, like root vegetables and squash. Toss vegetables with the oil to lightly coat. You can add minced garlic for really good flavor.

Wrap vegetables in foil for the grill or spread on a baking sheet for the oven. Add sea salt and pepper if desired, or any other seasoning blends you like.
Roast for 10 to 15 minutes shaking or stirring every 3 minutes. Cook vegetables until lightly browned, and serve warm.

[Ed. Note: Laura B. LaValle, RD, LD is presently the director of dietetics nutrition at LaValle Metabolic Institute (formerly part of Living Longer Institute). She offers personal nutritional counseling at LMI for clients who need help with their diet in relation to illness or disease. Laura also provides educational services in the areas of health promotion, wellness, and disease prevention….]”

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This is a truly useful article.

Note that adding extra virgin olive oil to a vegetable or vegetable dish, and to some degree even butter heated just enough to melt it or served on hot vegetables to melt slightly, is good for you because it literally increases the bioavailability of many of the nutrients in the vegetables when you eat them.

So some of these methods even have health benefits too.

Here’s another idea. I’m not fond of greens and lettuces myself. But I eat some very happily for almost every weekday lunch. My wife fixes me a small sandwich with romaine or other high nutrition lettuce, mustard, onion slices, and sliced tomatoes on a whole grain rye bread that also adds a bit of flavor. Despite the lettuce, these have so much enjoyable flavor, I look forward all morning to eating mine.

So these methods DO work. Use some creativity and try some. You’re very likely to find some you like and a few you like a lot.