Jeffrey Bland, PhD presents the second part of a series 'What Should I Eat?'. He discusses a recent Lancet publication reporting findings from the 1990–2013 Global Burden of Disease Study, highlighting that low consumption of nuts and seeds (and of unrefined, vegetable-rich diets more generally) is associated with higher risk of non-communicable chronic diseases. He frames this as evidence favoring minimally processed, plant-rich (Mediterranean-like) diets.
Chapters
What should I Eat? Part 2 this is a series that I'd like to continue discussing because I think it's on all of our minds, what is the right diet? What should we be eating? How do we promote optimal health? And I think the question is easy to say, but the answer is complex. So in the second of this series, I'd like to discuss a recent paper that was just published from the Lancet that I think is very illustrative relative to the answer of the question what should I eat question mark. This is part of the Christopher Murray work that you've heard us speak about, the Global Burden of Disease project that is quantifying the nature of disease around the world and looking specifically at the quality of life years lost as it pertains to morbidity. And in this most recent 2013 data set, which was analyzed and published just this last week in the Lancet, there is an update about these non communicable diseases and how they relate to different risk factors, which constitutes more than 50% of the definable cause of premature death and or morbidity. So with that in mind, what did they find in the data related to diet? And what they found was, lo and behold, what stood up and maybe surprisingly so, was nuts and seeds. Individuals who consumed diets that were low in nuts and seeds had a much higher risk of disorders that were associated with premature non communicable diseases. Now what does that really mean? They go on to point out in this article, and by the way, this is under the title the editorial how we Can Reduce the Global Burden of Disease question mark. And this is following on to the paper that I mentioned, which has the longer title, Global, Global, Regional and National Comparative risk data of 79 behavioral, environmental and Occupational and Metabolic Risk of Clusters of risk in 188 countries. The 1990-2013 Systematic Analysis of the Global Burden of Disease Study 2013. Now that's a mouthful. But what they found in this study relative to diet was that individuals, cultures, even down to communities where the people ate less nuts and seeds, had a much higher relative risk and prevalence of these non communicable chronic diseases. Now they go on to point out it's not just nuts and seeds that's a marker really for dietary persuasion. People who eat less vegetable products, less unrefined things, less Mediterranean. In fact, they even cite the study done in Spain we've heard about in previous discussions in the New England Journal of Medicine that looked at the effect of the Mediterranean diet on cardiovascular disease. So they're basically saying that this is a marker how much a culture or an individual consumes nuts and seeds in their diet for other dietary variables that then equate with increased risk to disease. And what it really is a marker for is unprocessed vegetable rich diets, minimum in refined products and certainly lower in refined sugars, lower in refined fats, and modest in animal product. So this is another part of the overarching answer to this question, what should I eat? It keeps coming through that staying close to the ground, staying minimally processed. Looking at the vegetable kingdom as a rich array of phytochemicals and fibers and low glycemic contributions to our endocrine system are really a very good way of approaching the reduction of risk of major diseases.
