Posted on 08/15/2015 1:21:38 PM PDT by Impala64ssa
If your dinner plate often includes fried chicken, gravy-smothered liver, buttered rolls and sweet tea — your heart may not find it so tasty. Eating a Southern-style diet is associated with an increased risk of heart disease, according to research in Circulation, an American Heart Association journal.
In a large-scale study that explored the relationship between dietary patterns and heart disease risk, researchers found that people who regularly ate traditional Southern fare — which they characterized as fried foods, fatty foods, eggs, processed meats, such as bacon and ham, organ meats like liver, and sugary drinks — were at a higher risk for suffering a heart attack or heart-related death during the next 5.8 years. Previous research also links the Southern diet with increased stroke risk.
The study is one of the first to include a regionally and socioeconomically diverse population. Researchers compared the dietary habits of more than 17,000 white and African-American adults in different regions of the United States. After adjusting for a combination of demographic and lifestyle factors, along with energy intake, they found:
People who most often ate foods conforming to the Southern dietary pattern had a 56 percent higher risk of heart disease compared to those who ate it less frequently. The highest consumers of the Southern diet tended to be male, African-American, those who had not graduated from high school or were residents of southern states (North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas and Louisiana.) No other dietary pattern was associated with the risk of heart disease. "Regardless of your gender, race, or where you live, if you frequently eat a Southern-style diet you should be aware of your risk of heart disease and try to make some gradual changes to your diet," said James M. Shikany, Dr.P.H. lead researcher and a nutritional epidemiologist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham's Division of Preventive Medicine. "Try cutting down the number of times you eat fried foods or processed meats from every day to three days a week as a start, and try substituting baked or grilled chicken or vegetable-based foods."
Researchers used data from participants in the Reasons for Geographic and Racial Differences in Stroke (REGARDS) study of white and African-American men and women aged 45 or older enrolled from 2003 to 2007. Participants were screened by telephone and then given an in-home physical exam and food questionnaire that asked how often and how much, on average, they consumed the foods during the previous year.
Researchers grouped the types of foods the participants regularly ate into five dietary patterns: the "convenience" pattern was comprised mostly of pasta dishes, Mexican food, Chinese food, mixed dishes and pizza; the "plant-based" pattern which was mostly vegetables, fruits, cereal, beans, yogurt, poultry and fish; the "sweets" pattern which consisted of added sugars, desserts, chocolate, candy and sweetened breakfast foods; the "alcohol/salads" was characterized by beer, wine, liquor, green leafy vegetables, tomatoes and salad dressings, and the "Southern" pattern, which was an eating pattern that the researchers observed to a greater extent in the Southeastern United States, included added fats, fried food, eggs and egg dishes, organ meats, processed meats and sugar-sweetened beverages.
Every six months, the participants were interviewed via telephone about their general health status and hospitalizations for nearly six years. For this study, the researchers only included participants who had no known heart disease at the beginning of the study.
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MDs know absolutely nothing about nutrition.
Nutritionists and toxicologists are where to go for food advice.
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I can’t view it. I’m on dial up service :>{
Crisco will disable your brain long before you die.
Your brain needs animal fats to function.
I don’t like sweet tea either. I drink “field tea”. Just tea no sugar or anything else.
I’m a Southerner (SC and NC) and I’m careful about not over-imbibing . . but Southern food is just too good to pass up entirely.
I eat pretty much what I want breakfast and late lunch/early dinner . . but nothing after 4:00 but a glass of skim milk.
Keep a big pitcher of Sweet Tea in my fridge during summer and winter. Rocking chairs and sweet tea are way too Southern to give up.
I weigh about 10 pounds more than I did my Freshman year of High School, so Southern food can be enjoyed within reason and with lots of exercise.
The South has the best fried chicken and pulled pork . . in the world.
sorry, not buying it. Whole grains have supported the human race for millennia.
I grew up on good old southern food:
fried chicken
fried fresh water bass
hushpuppies
biscuits every night
mashed potatoes & gravy
tomatoes and okra
coconut cake
pecan pie
cornbread (not sweet)
coconut pie
cornbread dressing
pork chops
etc., etc., etc.
Yum. I’ll never tire of southern food. I’m pretty darn healthy, which confounds my doctor. Just lucky, I guess.
I’m pretty sure that Karo syryp on my hotcakes caused my diabetes.
Thanks to my Uncle Lew from Virginia.
Oh and fried egg and mayonaise sandwiches. I loved when he would cook for us kids.
BS
The first man ate lamb, and so have his descendants.
(for 6 millennia)
id add avoid trans fats - the partially’hydrogented vegetable oils. use animal fats.
you have seen the documentary “fat head”.
Yes, because anecdotes are proof. Surely, you aren’t that stupid.
...don’t let your wife read that post...
so no one ever ate bread? sorry, Humans have been thriving on grains for tens of thousands of years.
:-). I’ve had it, it’s good, but I can’t imagine eating it more than once or twice a year. My productivity would plummet if that was a recurring breakfast.
The question to be asked is whether life would even be worth living WITHOUT eating those kinds of foods.
They must be, I had 5 aunts, all were Southern raised, Southern cooks, all lived into their late 80’s or 90’s.
I’ve modified my diet a little, with the fat and other high cal foods, but still eat as they ate in MODERATION and smaller portions. I’m pushing 70. Worse health condition is a bad back, the doctors deem UNFIX ABLE. Now be a good old lady and take this nasty pill for Osteoarthritis so I can then give you a pill to fix your ruined stomach the OA pills destroyed, Oh, that pill to fix your stomach will destroy your bones. Then I have a OP pill to fix that, BTW all of them are FLAGGED by the FDA. Foreto with the highest flag the Black Box for Bone Cancer.
I am more likely to die from the SIDE EFFECT RIDDLE PILLS the doctor keeps plugging and pushing on me. After all the medical profession is the third leading cause of death in the USA. Good thing, they have to write scripts as we are Medicare/Tricare Life and DOD MANDATED to get our daily meds from a Military base or Express Scripts so no call ins, that I then can shred your paper scripts.
No one ate the bread that you “grains” proponents preach.
Bread was used as a “sop,” not a major part of a meal.
It is impossible to consume significant amounts of any seed without impeding your digestion, and thereby your immune system.
I can go along with your unsupported claims or my 6+decades of personal experience. I choose me.
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