Diet & Health
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1993:
Unhealthy diet follows smoking as
the leading cause of preventable death i n
the U.S., according to a new study co-
authored by Dr. Mcihael McGinnis, deputy
assistant secretary in the U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services. McGinnis is
responsible for designing U.S. disease pre-
vention strategy. Preventable deaths account
for about half of the U.S. death rate. The
study appeared in the Journal of the American
Medical Association.
A study on the recovery experi-
ence of female heart attack and stroke
patients has established that women who eat
a lot of fruit and vegetables have a 33% lower
risk of heart attack and a 71% lower risk of
stroke. “A modification of diet may have a
dramatic effect on subsequent risk of heart
disease,” said study author Dr. JoAnn
Manson of the Harvard Medical School.
“The bottom line is it’s never too late.”
Overall, heart disease is the leading killer of
women, causing more than twice as many
deaths as breast cancer. Almost half of all
women eventually suffer heart disease, and
while women have a lower risk of heart dis-
ease than men up to age 65, they are twice as
likely to die of heart attacks once they begin
having them. Estrogen production helps
women under menopause to offset the effects
of consuming cholesterol, but after
menopause, cholesterol consumption
becomes especially deadly.
The General Accounting Office
revealed November 22 that it has discov-
ered critical inconsistencies in USDA nutri-
tional data for various foods, frequently
resulting from regulators accepting the nutri-
tional claims of producers and distributors
without demanding confirmation. “The report
confirms what we already believe,” said
Assistant Secretary of Agriculture Ellen Haas,
who is attempting to reform the USDA nutri-
tion service. “There is a history of neglect
and of lack of accountability in this agency.”
John Robbins documented essentially the
same thing in Diet For A New America five
years ago.
Approximately 20% of the mem-
bers of the Massachusetts SPCA are vege-
tarians, according to public affairs director
Mal McCunney. The MSPCA hasn’t served
red meat at official functions since 1987.
Russian police arrested 779 mem-
bers of the Great White Brotherhood in early
November, a Tolstoyan cult whose teachings
include vegetarianism, to prevent what they
feared would be a mass suicide on November
10, when cult cofounder Maria Devi
Khrystos said she would die and be resurrect-
ed in Kiev. Khrystos, 33, was arrested in St.
Sofia’s Cathederal, along with fellow
cofounder Yur Krigonogov and about 50 fol-
lowers. Of the 570 cult members who were
held in custody, some 300 fasted––whether in
protest of the police action or the Russian jail
diet was unclear. There was little indication
that the rumored mass suicide had ever actual-
ly been planned.
Trained on a vegetarian diet by
coaches Art and Linda Kranick, Erin Davis of
Saratoga Springs, New York, at age 14 ran
the fastest 3-kilometer time of any high school
female in the U.S. (9:43:47) and the fastest
5-k time of any 14-year-old female ever
(16:43:47). Now 15, she’s the top-ranked
female high school cross-country runner in
the nation––while logging only half the train-
ing distance, at 20 to 40 miles a week, of
most highly regarded distance runners.
