... we come to the experience of isolated populations that go from eating their traditional diets to incorporating the kinds of food that we eat daily in modern Westernized societies. ... and it's invariably accompanied by a disease transition as well -- the appearance of a collection of chronic diseases that are now know as Western disease for just this reason. These diseases include obesity, diabetes, heart disease, hypertension and stroke, cancer, Alzheimer's disease and other dimentias, cavities, peridontal disease, appendicitis, ulcers, diverticulitis, gallstones, hemorroids, varicose veins, and constipation. These diseases and conditions are common in societies that eat Western diets and live modern lifestyles, and they're uncommon, if not noexistent, in societies that don't. And when those traditional societies take up Western diets and lifestyles ... these diseases appear shortly after.
This association of chronic diseases with modern diets and lifestyle was first noted in the mid-nineteenth century...
In Japan, [breast cancer] is relatively rare... But when Japanese women emigrate to the United States, it takes only two generations ... to experience the same breast-cancer rates as any other local ethnic group.
Colon cancer is ten times more likely in rural connecticut than in Nigeria. Alzheimer's disease is far more common among Japanese Americans than among Japanese living in Japan; its twice as common among African Americans as among rural africans. Pick a disease from the list of Western diseases, and a pair of locations -- one urban, say, and one rural, or one Westernized and one not -- compare people in the same age group, and the disease will be more common in the urban and Westernized locations and less common outside them.
Mainstream nutritionists and public-health authorities have responded to these obsevations by ... If we stay away from meat, they tell us, avoid processed foods and sugars, eat less or at least not too much, eat mostly plants and more fruit, and exercise, we'll prevent these diseases and live longer.
The problem with this approach is the basic assumption that everything about the Western diet is bad ...
It is useful (as it is when any crime is committed) to narrow down the list of suspects. ... among the non-Westernized populations that have been well studied, quite a few were exclusively meat-eaters, or meat and fisheaters, and so ate no fruits or vegetables at all -- Inuits... [and] the Maasi --suffered little or no cancer (or heart disease, diabetes, or obesity). ... the idea that meat eating caused cancer, and that isolated populations were protected against it by eating mostly plants was raised. It was dismissed for the same reason it should be dismissed now; it failed to explain why cancer was prevalent among vegetatrian societies -- the Hindus in India, for instance...
