Heart disease has a large genetic component. Break it out by ancestry rather than region, which is after all rather meaningless in a widely varied population such as the United States. Then, I’d imagine a different picture would emerge. Some groups are just predisposed to certain diseases due to ancestry. Find the group that is overrepresented in the southeastern United States in comparison to the rest of the country, and you’ll find the group genetically predisposed to heart disease. I grew up with an extended family that fried just about every meat and put gravy on anything that wasn’t green or red. Not a fat person among them. No heart attacks, either. Fairly long-lived.
Bingo! Genetics are the big drivers/controllers of our health and life span. Too many doctors take that history, then ignore it and rx the poisonous statins to those of us with zero genetic history of early heart attacks. Most of our genetic gene pool never ate a high carb low fat diet unless they were really poor.
“Heart disease has a large genetic component. Break it out by ancestry rather than region, which is after all rather meaningless in a widely varied population such as the United States. Then, I’d imagine a different picture would emerge. Some groups are just predisposed to certain diseases due to ancestry. Find the group that is overrepresented in the southeastern United States in comparison to the rest of the country, and you’ll find the group genetically predisposed to heart disease. I grew up with an extended family that fried just about every meat and put gravy on anything that wasn’t green or red. Not a fat person among them. No heart attacks, either. Fairly long-lived.”