"The Scientific Consensus on a Healthy Diet"
About a decade ago, the American Heart Association expressed concern
that their “2020 target of improving cardiovascular health by 20 percent
by 2020 [would] not be reached if current trends continue[d].”
By 2006, most people were already not smoking,
and had nearly achieved their goal for exercise.
But when it came to healthy diet score, only about 1 percent
got a 4 or 5 out of their 0 to 5 diet quality score,
and that’s with so-called “ideal” criteria of like drinking
less than four and a half cups of soda a week.
In the last decade they saw a bump up to like 1 percent
of Americans even reaching those kinds of basic criteria.
But given their aggressive goal of improving that by 20 percent
by 2020, they hoped to turn that 1 percent into about 1.2 percent!
Okay, so how’d we do? Let’s look at the 2019 update,
and it looks like we’ve slipped down to as low as one in a thousand—
you can’t even see the green anymore.
And American teens got a big fat zero.
No wonder, perhaps, that “for all mortality-based metrics, the U.S.
rank declined … 27th or 28th among 34 [industrialized] countries.”
“Citizens living in countries with a substantially lower [GDP]
and health expenditure[s] per capita . . . have lower
mortality rates than those in the United States.”
Slovenia beat us by three countries, coming in at 24th
in life expectancy to our 27th. And more recently we seem to have
slipped to 43rd, even though we spend trillions
on health care—more than anyone else.
What’s the leading risk factor for death in the United States?
What we eat. The standard American diet is just to die for—literally.
Those trillions in health care spending aren’t addressing the root cause.
Look at some of these beautiful lung cancer death curves.
It took decades to finally turn the corner,
but it’s so nice to finally see those drops.
When are we going to see the same with diet?
“Approximately 80 percent of chronic disease and premature death
could be prevented by not smoking, being physically active,
and adhering to a healthful dietary pattern.”
But what exactly is meant by “healthy diet”?
Unfortunately, what we hear about nutrition in the media
is often inconsistent and confusing.
“There[’s a] pressure within today's competitive
journalism market for sensationalism.
There may even be a disincentive to present the facts in … context…”
to sell more magazines. And this paper was written back in 1997
before the lure of clickbait headlines.
In fact, about three-quarters of a century ago it was noted
that unfortunately, “the subject of nutrition seems to have
a special appeal to the credulous, the social zealot
and, in the commercial field, the unscrupulous,” a combination
“calculated to strike despair in the hearts
of the sober, objective scientist.”
“The most important [health care] problem [we face may be]
our poor lifestyle choices based on misinformation.”
It’s like the climate change deniers; “healthy … dietary advice
[is] overshadowed by critics, diet books, [industry interests],
and misguided information in the media.”
Maybe what we need is like an IPCC (Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change) of nutrition.
These days “[n]o single expert, regardless of academic stature
or reputation, has the prominence to overcome the obstacles
created by confusing media messages and [effectively] deliver
the fundamental principles of healthy living … to the public.”
However, what if there was “a global coalition consisting
of a variety of nutrition experts, who collectively represent
the views held by the majority of scientists,
physicians, and health practitioners…”?
It could “serve as the guiding resource of sound nutrition information
for improved health and prevention of disease.”
Boom! “The True Health Initiative was conceived
for that very purpose.” A nonprofit coalition of hundreds of experts
from dozens of countries agreeing to a consensus statement
on the fundamentals of healthy living.
Check out https://www.truehealthinitiative.org/.
Spoiler alert—the healthiest diet is one generally comprised
mostly of minimally processed plants.