Science News Review

Your Mama Was Right!

Jul 10 at 7:07pm by Aileen

If your Mama was anything like mine, you no doubt grew up with the constant admonition that “you are what you eat.” And despite the silly position of the AMA back in the early 1980s that there was no evidence to support the idea that diet has any direct relationship with health, almost all mothers know better. Thus it’s not entirely unexpected that medical science should be learning about the many ways that diet does indeed affect health, but it is welcome to wise Moms everywhere.

First up, a paper published in the journal Science by a research team at the University of Wisconsin demonstrates that simply reducing the amount of food eaten works to blunt the effects of aging and significantly delay onset of age-relatted conditions like cancer, diabetes, heart disease and brain atrophy. The research was conducted over 20 years on Rhesus monkeys at the National Primate Research Center at UW-Madison.

Conclusion? A restricted calorie diet will help you live longer and stay healthier.

The American Dietetic Association has also released an updated position paper on vegetarian diets that concludes a well-planned meatless diet is both healthful and nutritionally adequate and can help prevent or even treat chronic conditions like diabetes, obesity, cancer and heart disease.

Vegetarian diets have long been associated with lower blood cholesterol levels, lower risk of heart disease, lower blood pressure and reduced risk of type 2 diabetes. Because such diets are low-fat and generally provide more vitamins and minerals than a meat-based diet, the ADA has concluded that a meatless diet is appropriate for all stages of the human life cycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy and for athletes.

With ever increasing evidence that fewer calories, less meat and more fruits and vegetables can lead to a longer and healthier life, the number of vegetarians or semi-vegetarians among the population is expected to increase significantly over the next decade. Perhaps the most important take-away lesson from the evidence and research is that indulging in high-calorie processed foods and fatty meats to the point where a majority of the population weighs twice what they should weigh causes a huge chunk of the medical issues people suffer in the U.S.