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By Jackie Alan Giuliano, Ph.D.
No time for your health today;
no health for your time tomorrow.
-- Irish Proverb
It is not human nature we should accuse but the despicable conventions that pervert it.
-- Denis Diderot
Dave Thomas, founder of the Wendy𠏋 hamburger fast food chain, died on January 8 at age 69. His death is attributed to liver cancer. He had been undergoing kidney dialysis for a year and had quadruple heart bypass surgery in 1996. My heart goes out to his wife, five children, and 16 grandchildren. By all accounts, he was a kind and generous man who spent much time and money helping orphaned and adopted kids as well as many other causes.
Dave Thomas (right) serves a meal to a Wendy's customer. (Photo courtesy
Edmonds Community
College)
But his death calls attention once again to an industry that is wreaking much harm on people all over the world and creating more environmental degradation than virtually any other business.
Not surprisingly, fast food burger companies refuse to acknowledge the impact that their diet is having on children and adults around the world. That diet is killing us.
Every 33 seconds, an American dies of heart disease. That is more than 954,000 deaths annually, more than 42 percent of all deaths every year. In fact, since 1900 the number one killer in the United States has been cardiovascular disease in every year but 1918.
Counting deaths does not reveal the true severity of the problem. Of the current U.S. population, more than 62 million people have some form of the disease.
The American Heart association, in a recently released report, said that an estimated one in five deaths from cardiovascular diseases is the result of smoking. Most of the rest come from dietary choices.
A heart attack or stroke is caused when your artery walls thicken, reducing blood flow which increases the risk of a blood clot stopping the flow of blood to your heart or your brain. That thickening or atherosclerosis, is caused by overconsumption of LDL cholesterol, making the person more prone to heart attacks and
strokes.
Meat on display (Photo courtesy Loren at
Skivvies.com)
While some cholesterol is necessary to the body, excess LDL cholesterol results in atherosclerosis. Seventy percent of the cholesterol we need is manufactured in the liver and the rest is derived from our diet. Plants do not have the capability of manufacturing cholesterol, so all oils and foods of plant origin have no cholesterol.
When too much food of animal origin is consumed, a thickening of the arteries will result.
It has been proven that a high fat diet during childhood and adolescence increases the risk of heart disease. There is no question that promoting burgers and milkshakes as frequent meals for children increases their risk of life threatening illness in later life. By ceasing the intake of animal products and improving lifestyle factors, the degenerative effects of cardiovascular disease can be reversed.
The Surgeon General of the United States recently released a report saying that obesity is of grave concern in the U.S. Yet The National Institutes of Health spends less than one percent of its annual budget on obesity research, according to the American Obesity Association.
http://www.ens-news.com/ens/jan2002/2002L-01-11g.html
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