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Diagnosis: Gluttony and Sloth
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According
to Castelli, Americans have been "brainwashed to eat meat." |
"If
Americans adopted a vegetarian diet, the whole thing would
disappear," Castelli says of the heart disease epidemic.
He
has been threatened by McDonald's lawyers and repeatedly slammed
by the meat and dairy industries, but Castelli refuses to
back down. Americans have been "brainwashed to eat meat,"
he says, and it's killing us. Not only do half of all Americans
die of heart disease, 80% of Americans will die with heart
disease in their body. Once again, Castelli looks at the research,
studies that go all the way back to 1904.
"Americans
are the kings of sloth and gluttony. We engineered all
the physical activity right out of our lives."
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A
German scientist hypothesized that arterial plaques built
up when fats collected near damaged places in arterial linings.
This has turned out to be almost exactly the case, but in
1904, it was still just a hypothesis. In an attempt to prove
it, the scientist tried to provoke artery problems in rabbits
by feeding them different diets. Though his attempts failed,
the biologist could not help but become attached to the cute
lab animals. He fed them his table scraps, which included
meat. What happened?
"They
all keeled over and died," says Castelli.
It
took more years of research to determine it was the cholesterol,
not the protein, in meat that damaged arteries- a well-established
fact by now. Still, the average Big Mac has 19 grams of fat,
more than a third as much as a person needs each day.
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Due to their healthy diets, "people in China and India
can't get this disease," says Castelli |
Castelli
sites a Japanese study in which researchers found artery elasticity
decreased immediately in people who ate a fatty meal. Not
so for people who ate a low-fat, high-protein meal of salmon.
It's
not just the fat in the Big Mac that will get you. Castelli
also worries about the calories and salt. The obesity epidemic
in the country is responsible for a diabetes epidemic as people
literally outgrow the capacity of their pancreas. Salt and
hypertension, of course, go hand-in-hand. Part of Castelli's
new mission is to change people's habits before it's too late.
He's
seen dramatic results. Castelli tells the story of one of
his patients, a 47-year old heart attack victim. With his
heart disease, obesity and borderline diabetes, the man could
hardly walk into Castelli's clinic.
"It
only took two months of a healthy lifestyle to reverse the
disease," says Castelli. "His cardiologist called me up and
said, 'What did you do?'"
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Photos:
Katsumi Yako/AI Project
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