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.
Eating is harmful to your health. End global eating now!!!
we think gravy cures cancer. and we really don’t care who disagrees.
TRANSLATION: All things Southern are bad. Only people from the East and Left coasts are good.
LOL! My kids quote that bit every time I make biscuits.
Time for cement.
They’re probably happier as a whole, though.
No refined Sugar. No Grains. No processed foods. Eat everything else.
That leaves grass and rocks—LOL!
I loves me some fried chicked but the stomach no likey the grease anymore. With the high BP to contend with its not very healthy either on the cardiovascular system. What it bees.
Time for me to listen to Bobby Bare’s “Food Blues” again. LOL
Being Christian Messianic, my idea of kosher is considerably less stringent than yours... But pork (very sadly, still a great temptation) and shellfish are off the menu.... But Torah doesn't say anything about deep-fried Snickers and sweet tea... And I will say that I doubt that sweet tea is any where near as bad for folks as soda pop is.
Leave our damn food and culture alone.
I don’t think you need to be undereducated or black to eat those foods. You just need to know what flavor is. Southern Food is Comfort Food, and Comfort Food is hard on the waste-line and the heart, but it sure does taste good.
Plus tea leaves contain anti-oxidants which “they” say may actually be good for you.
Spot on. Let's do a bit of further analysis here.
The population of the southern states is heavily black. Thus blacks are bad people by their very nature. Maybe we should abort them all to keep their numbers down.
Perhaps this is not exactly how the NYT reasons but the effect of the policies they advocate are such that one would be hard pressed to tell the difference.
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