Salad Days

You may have noticed that most of my salad recipes are vegetarian, with a good many of them tipping the vegan scale. There’s a good reason for this! Consumption of saturated fat (found in meat and dairy products) is responsible for all sorts of ailments, such as heart disease, cancer, osteoporosis, etc. New research published in the Archives of Ophthalmology has added another disease to the list - “age-related” macular degeneration (AMD).

This disease is the leading cause of vision loss in Americans over 60. It involves cell death in the macula of the eye, which has a high density of cone cells and is responsible for central vision.

Scientists investigated the relationship between fat intake and the presence of intermediate AMD four to seven years later in more than 1700 women and found that some fats may benefit eye health while others may be damaging. Saturated fats showed the greatest association with AMD – 60% increased odds of AMD in women who consumed the greatest amounts. Monounsaturated fats, which are present in nuts, seeds, and avocados, were associated with a lower prevalence of the disease.

So, next time you’re contemplating what to put on your salad - bacon or walnuts...sliced egg or avocado - let your eyes be your guide to picking healthful, plant-based fats instead of animal fats.

Read the full study: Parekh N et al. Association Between Dietary Fat Intake and Age-Related Macular Degeneration in the Carotenoids in Age-Related Eye Disease Study (CAREDS). An Ancillary Study of the Women’s Health Initiative. Arch Ophthalmol. 2009;127(11):1483-1493.

Ezra Klein has a piece in today’s Washington Post about meat and climate change. He highlights the fact that many top environmental groups, including the Sierra Club and the National Resources Defense Council, basically refuse to talk about diet.

Yet diet is often the easiest way to reduce your carbon footprint:

The pity of it is that compared with cars or appliances or heating your house, eating pasta on a night when you’d otherwise have made fajitas is easy. It doesn’t require a long commute on the bus or the disposable income to trade up to a Prius. It doesn’t mean you have to scrounge for change to buy a carbon offset. In fact, it saves money. It’s healthful. And it can be done immediately. A Montanan who drives 40 miles to work might not have the option to take public transportation. But he or she can probably pull off a veggie stew. A cash-strapped family might not be able buy a new dishwasher. But it might be able to replace meatballs with mac-and-cheese. That is the whole point behind the cheery PB&J Campaign, which reminds that “you can fight global warming by having a PB&J for lunch.” Given that PB&J is delicious, it’s not the world’s most onerous commitment.

I certainly have no ambition to curb my love for bacon. I’ll just point out that eating a juicy salad instead of a hamburger just one night a week will do more for improving the planet than eating a 100% local diet (which in all practicality is nearly impossible to do).

Red meat consumption has more than doubled in the United States in the last 50 years. A few years ago, The China Study clearly demonstrated the price that consumption of red meat exacts on our health. Now, a new study of 500,000 Americans has provided even more evidence that our affinity for red meat compromises our health and limits our longevity.

Results of the decade-long study were published in the March 23 issue of The Archives of Internal Medicine. During the study, 47,976 men and 23,276 women died, and the researchers kept track of the timing and reasons for each death. Red meat consumption ranged from a low of less than an ounce a day, on average, to a high of four ounces a day, and processed meat consumption ranged from at most once a week to an average of one and a half ounces a day.

Once researchers controlled for other lifestyle choices, they found that, other things being equal, the men and women who consumed the most red and processed meat were likely to die sooner, especially from one of our two leading killers, heart disease and cancer, than people who consumed much smaller amounts of these foods. The increase in mortality risk tied to the higher levels of meat consumption ranged from about 20 percent to nearly 40 percent.

Just think – the simple decision to eat a crisp, juicy salad instead of a hamburger could increase your longevity! Sweet!