DIET IS THE 2ND HIGHEST RISK FACTOR FOR EARLY DEATH AFTER SMOKING

from The Guardian.

Poor diet is a factor in one in five deaths around the world, according to the most comprehensive study ever carried out on the subject.

It's the 20% that I found stunning.  I mean I realize that a poor diet, like a fast-food diet, will wreak havoc on our hormones, nerves, muscles, digestion, stamina, and cognition.  But what constitutes a bad diet?  And can a good diet not only eliminate that one in five deaths but can it reverse it, say, to increase one's lifespan by 20%?  

As to what a bad diet is, the Guardian has an answer:

Millions of people are eating the wrong sorts of food for good health. 

Uh-oh.  How many of us have doubted whether that whole grain bagel with cream cheese was not good for us?  I know I did.  I avoid bread like the plague.  It has a sticky effect on my muscles.  

Eating a diet that is low in whole grains, fruit, nuts and seeds and fish oils and high in salt raises the risk of an early death, according to the huge and ongoing study Global Burden of Disease.

The study, based at the Institute of Health Metrics andEvaluation at the University of Washington, compiles data from every country in the world and makes informed estimates where there are gaps. Five papers on life expectancy and the causes and risk factors of death and ill health have been published by the Lancet medical journal.

What were the findings?

It finds that people are living longer. Life expectancy in 2016 worldwide was 75.3 years for women and 69.8 for men. Japan has the highest life expectancy at 84 years and the Central African Republic has the lowest at just over 50. In the UK, life expectancy for a man born in 2016 is 79, and for a woman 82.9.

I am sure that there are many factors for the differences, but certainly iron management [here, here, and here] is one reason why women tend to outlive men.  

This was stunning--

Diet is the second highest risk factor for early death after smoking. 

But there are other deadly conditions that are related to eating the wrong foods.  I know that it's not good to eat meat with grains or refined carbohydrates.  Your body actually really, really needs the enzymes in vegetables to help you digest that meat.  And I would not advise the ketogenic diet where you eat a high-fat, adequate meat all the time.  I am sure that coconut oil is good for you.  How much and how often is another thing, regardless if these are "ancient foods."

Other high risks are high blood glucose which can lead to diabetes, high blood pressure, high body mass index (BMI) which is a measure of obesity, and high total cholesterol. All of these can be related to eating the wrong foods, although there are also other causes. 

The good doctor agrees with me. 

“This is really large,” Dr Christopher Murray, IHME’s director, told the Guardian. “It is amongst the really big problems in the world. It is a cluster that is getting worse.” While obesity gets attention, he was not sure policymakers were as focused on the area of diet and health as they needed to be.

So Dr. Murray wants less attention given to obesity and more to specific foods eaten for specific conditions or purposes, like energy, weight loss, etc.?  If that is the case, then why not read Dr. Barry Sears books on the Zone Diet?

“That constellation is a really, really big challenge for health and health systems,” he said.

Okay.  No argument there with that extremely general statement. 

The problem is often seen as the spread of western diets, taking over from traditional foods in the developing world. But it is not that simple, says Murray. “Take fruit. It has lots of health benefits but only very wealthy people eat a lot of fruit, with some exceptions.”

Sugary drinks are harmful to health but eating a lot of red meat, the study finds, is not as big a risk to health as failing to eat whole grains. “We need to look really carefully at what are the healthy compounds in diets that provide protection,” he said.  

Well, like most of these health articles they don't really commit to much in the general press, and if they do the claims are often so general so as to not mean much.  In fact, from a psychological standpoint, the ambiguity in the articles themselves misleads people away from precision eating for precise healthy goals and toward binge or junk eating.  Note what Dr. Murray just said, "Sugary drinks are harmful to health but eating a lot of red meat, the study finds, is not as big a risk to health as failing to eat whole grains."  The article started out by saying  

Eating a diet that is low in whole grains, fruit, nuts and seeds and fish oils and high in salt raises the risk of an early death, according to the huge and ongoing study Global Burden of Disease.

And now Dr. Murray, the IHME’s director, calls for people to eat "whole grains."  Phenomenal.  Phenomenally bad.  Is this typical of The Guardian to gas its readers? 

Prof John Newton, director of health improvement at Public Health  England, said the studies show how quickly diet and obesity-related disease is spreading around the world. “I don’t think people realize how quickly the focus is shifting towards non-communicable disease [such as cancer, heart disease and stroke] and diseases that come with development, in particular related to poor diet. The numbers are quite shocking in my view,” he said.

That sounds like a sales pitch for sustainability.

The UK tracks childhood obesity through the school measurement program and has brought in measures to try to tackle it. “But no country in the world has been able to solve the problem and it is a concern that we really need to think about tackling globally,” he said.

No one has "tackled it" because food, like so many personal decision a person makes in his daily life is, well, personal.  

Today, 72% of deaths are from non-communicable diseases for which obesity and diet are among the risk factors, with ischemic heart disease as the leading cause worldwide of early deaths, including in the UK. Lung cancer, stroke, lung disease (chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder) and Alzheimer’s are the other main causes in the UK.

So what?  That paragraph reads like something dated in 1982.  There is some news of optimism here:

The success story is children under five. In 2016, for the first time in modern history, fewer than 5 million children under five died in one year – a significant fall compared with 1990, when 11 million died. Increased education for women, less poverty, having fewer children, vaccinations, anti-malaria bed-nets, improved water and sanitation are among the changes in low-income countries that have brought the death rate down, thanks to development aid. 

See, the last part of that paragraph, particularly the part about development aid, sounded to me a lot like a pitch for sustainability.  

People are living longer but spending more years in ill health. 

Maybe because they've not managed the accumulation of heavy minerals, like iron and calcium, well. 

Obesity is one of the major reasons. More than a billion people worldwide are living with mental health and substance misuse disorders. Depression  features in the top 10 causes of ill health in all but four countries.

“Our findings indicate people are living longer and, over the past decade, we identified substantial progress in driving down death rates from some of the world’s most pernicious diseases and conditions, such as under age-five mortality and malaria,” said Murray “Yet, despite this progress, we are facing a triad of trouble holding back many nations and communities – obesity, conflict, and mental illness, including substance use disorders.”

By adding a reference to "conflict," it has become clearer that this article is less about health than it is about a call for more Development Aid or Farm Aid or Aid by any other name from the UK or the US.  And as Dr. Murray calls for more aid, he does not heed the cautionary tale on aid from experts on the ground.  Aid does not work, one, to develop those countries.  See here.  

And if development is stymied because of the aid, then how is aid going to reduce obesity?  On US Aid, see Michael S. Rozeff

If the U.S. government props up client states with aid, floods their markets with American agricultural goods, underwrites military purchases, introduces Keynesian economic practices, and provides disaster aid, this is supposed to make the people wealthier and reduce political strife. If the country becomes more indebted to the IMF and World Bank, building unprofitable signature projects, this is supposed to raise living standards, making people content and happy. And all of that improvement, which actually doesn’t happen, is supposed to make Americans more secure and prosperous, a very far-fetched theory.

Intra-domestic wealth transfers in the U.S. likewise have done more harm than good, producing greater dependency, worse education, more red tape, and higher debt while undercutting private capital growth that might have involved job creation. Why are we not to expect that foreign wealth transfers are likewise doing more harm than good?

USAID was enacted under the theory that reducing poverty would reduce the appeal of communism. That theory was wrong even when communism was viewed as a threat to America. It’s completely out of date now.

This is why for me any discussion about the insertion or the insinuation of foreign is fraught with suspicion.  What measurable good comes from it and to whom is that good accountable?

In the UK, the concern is particularly about the increase in ill-health that prevents people from working or having a fulfilling life, said Newton.  

Okay, this is just startling.  Since when did pundits or bureaucrats or politicians ever worry about its citizens from, and let me quote, "having a fulfilling life"?  Really?  Laughable.

A man in the UK born in 2016 can expect only 69 years in good health and a woman 71 years.

Same for the U.S.  So what?

“This is yet another reminder that while we’re living longer, much of that extra time is spent in ill-health. It underlines the importance of preventing the conditions that keep people out of work and put their long term health in jeopardy, like musculoskeletal problems, poor hearing and mental ill health. Our priority is to help people, including during the crucial early years of life and in middle age, to give them the best chance of a long and healthy later life,” he said.  

"Our priority is to help people"?  Really?  Which people?  Those cronies connected to Aid and Development programs or former Prime Minister, Tony Blair?   

Other books by Dambisa Moyo.