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History List

Only four reported chest pain, “even though there were plenty of them over 60 years of age then.”

January 1, 1912

four reported chest pain

No cases of heart disease.

January 1, 1870

no cases heart disease

Heart Disease barely existed.

January 1, 1860

heart disease barely existed

“incorrect to describe Americans as great eaters of either [fruits or vegetables]”

Eating In America

January 1, 1981

fruit and vegetables history

Best to avoid leafy greens.

The Big Fat Surprise

January 1, 1888

avoid leafy greens

Americans in 18th/19th century ate 3-4x as much meat as today.

Trends in meat consumption in the United States

January 1, 2011

four times meat

Family of five allots 2 pounds of meat a day.

January 1, 1851

two pounds meat day

The poorest among them ate 136 pounds a year, and the wealthiest more than 200 pounds of meat.

Putting Meat on the American Table

January 1, 1909

poor 136 pounds meat

“I hold a family to be in a desperate way when the mother can see the bottom of the pork barrel,”

The Chainbearer.

January 1, 1845

bottom pork barrel

Americans ate twice as much beef as did Englishmen

January 1, 1861

Wild game was easy to access in early America.

The Culture of Food by Massimo Montanari

January 1, 1996

wild game easy access

The solution, he declared, was for Americans to return to the healthier, plant-based diet they once ate.

Dietary Goals

January 1, 1977

return plant based myth

Jane Brody wrongly states that meat has replaced plants and thus should be to blame for disease.

January 1, 1990

jane brody nyt meat

Taken together, meat consists of a few, not clearly defined cancer-promoting and a lot of cancer-protecting factors.

Meat and cancer: meat as a component of a healthy diet.

March 1, 2002

meat cancer protecting

Soft evidence pervades the other major health problem assumed to be related to red meat: cancer.

January 1, 2007

red meat cancer

Just three additional ounces of red meat a day were associated with a 12 percent greater risk of dying overall

New York Times: “Risks: More Red Meat, More Mortality.”

March 12, 2012

twelve percent risk

This study is widely cited as the bedrock evidence that a vegetarian diet is superior to one with meat.

The Seventh-day Adventist study

January 1, 1978

bedrock evidence

Frances Moore Lappé

Diet for a Small Planet

January 1, 1971

diet for a small planet

Nutrition Foundation, a Big Food organization was more powerful than the meat/dairy/eggs industry.

January 1, 1941

nutrition foundation

Ahrens : the diet-heart hypothesis “is still a hypothesis . . . I sincerely believe we should not . . . make broadscale recommendations on diets and drugs to the general public now.”

January 1, 1971

ahrens diet-heart hypothesis

Lancet editors mock diet-heart hypothesis despite the power it held.

January 1, 1974

lancet editors mock

It turned out that the men who moved to California developed heart disease (as judged by abnormal electrocardiograph tests) twice as often as those in Hawaii or Japan.

NiHonSan -- Epidemiologic studies of coronary heart disease and stroke in Japanese men living in Japan, Hawaii and California: prevalence of coronary and hypertensive heart disease and associated risk factors. (1975)

January 1, 1975

california hawaii japan

The best way to avoid a heart attack, according to the study, was to worship God

January 1, 1970

worship god avoid attack

Diet-Heart researcher Stamler concluded wrong information in Western Electric Study.

A Longitudinal Study of Coronary Heart Disease

July 1, 1963

western electric

“We were just disappointed in the way it came out,” he said.

Minnesota Coronary Survey

January 1, 1968

selective reporting

NHLBI held yet another meeting on the problem of “significantly increased” death rates from cancer and other noncardiovascular causes for people with low cholesterol.

January 1, 1990

significantly increased death rates

Cancer was more common in those with low cholesterol.

January 1, 1981

low cholesterol cancer

MRFIT’s follow-up findings delivered more bad news: at the sixteen-year follow-up to the study in 1997, the treatment group was found to have higher rates of lung cancer even though 21 percent of them had quit smoking, compared to only 6 percent of the controls.

January 1, 1997

MRFIT results published.

January 1, 1982

NIH Invests $250 Million Attempting to Show Healthfulness of Oils

January 1, 1971

250 million oils

And by 1975, Mazola was practically pushing its oil as a medical product.

Take This Ad to Your Doctor - Mazola: The Only Leading Brand That's Pure Corn Oil.

January 1, 1975

mazola medicine

Polyunsaturates are the plus in Mazola

Polyunsaturates are the plus in Mazola

January 1, 1967

polyunsaturates plus

The AHA “heart Mafia” had “supported the dogma” and hoarded research funds.

January 1, 1978

AHA spreads heart clinics across the country through new act in Congress.

October 1, 1965

AHA and NHLBI hold second heart disease conference.

November 22, 1964

second heart disease conference

AHA and NHLBI control heart disease conversation through the 50's.

March 5, 1959

heart disease conversation

NHI holds first heart disease conference with NHLBI and establishes scientific control of the field.

January 1, 1950

nhi heart disease

"Indeed the findings have been contradictory. For example, in Framingham, Mass, the more saturated fat one ate, the more cholesterol one ate, the more calories one ate, the lower the person's serum cholesterol."

Concerning the Possibility of a Nut...

July 1, 1992

contradictory findings

Framingham publishes new findings and the predictive power of total cholesterol was not nearly as strong as study leaders had originally thought.

January 1, 1991

framingham new findings

The man who started the search for cancer.

July 20, 1906

search for cancer

Richard King also finds emerging evidence of cancer in westernized native populations.

Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Arctic Ocean

January 1, 1833

Back's saying that it surprised him “to learn how much disease had spread through this part of the country”

Narrative of the Arctic Land Expedition

June 1, 1833

He had long been in the habit of saying that he blamed diet for cancer

January 1, 1920

diet for cancer

Cancer isn't worried about by those eating native diets.

January 1, 1906

cancer native diets

But at the inland trading posts, where flesh foods alone were to be had, and where they were not overcooked, neither whites nor their Indian affiliates ever had scurvy.

January 1, 1898

scurvy flesh foods

Bishop Reeve thinks Athapaskans were healthiest people in the world on native diet - would likely die from old age instead of disease, but became sickly from epidemics and Diseases of Europeanization

Cancer: Disease of Civilization?

January 1, 1869

athapaskans healthy people

Pennington describes all-the-meat-you-want diet

Obesity in Industry, the Problem and its Solution

June 1, 1949

pennington all the meat

Dutch compare human guts to those of cats and dogs for coefficient of gut differentiation and the coefficient of fermentation, as well as the large intestinal digesta transit times.

Ileal and faecal protein digestibility measurement in humans and other non-ruminants – a comparative species view

April 29, 2011

gut comparisons

Crampton studies how ingestion of vegetable oil lowers growth rates in rats.

Studies to determine the nature of the damage to the nutritive value of some vegetable oils from heat polymerization. I. The relation of autoxidation to decrease in the nutritional value of heated linseed oil.

January 6, 1951

crampton growth rates

Pennington publishes another paper about using fat for obesity.

Use of Fat in Weight Reducing Diet

January 1, 1951

pennington fat obesity

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