Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Bite Your Tongue / Good advice / News Pay More Attention to the Midwest, Is the Lesson
Posted by Nicki Wood on Tue, Jul 14, 2009 at 10:10 AM
Seems like a 1969 Farm Journal predicted the outcome of 40 years of research and endless cultural feuding. The magazine came from a distant family reunion in the Midwest earlier this summer. Reunion of my distant family: It was once owned by the brother-in-law of my grandmother's sister. Along with the story "Lamb Weights Still Climbing," and an item about a family who raises 1,000 head of cattle is the article "Do Animal Fats Really Cause Heart Attacks?"
Faced with a film produced by the American Heart Association that urged viewers to leave whole milk, butter, cheese, fatty meats and eggs behind and choose vegetable fats instead, Farm Journal posited that perhaps high cholesterol levels are the symptom of heart attacks, not the cause.
OK, well, that turned out not to be true. But the article did cite several studies that didn't find much link between high-fat foods and heart disease. And it did point to studies that inactivity, junk food, smoking and stress seem to be the culprits, illuminated by drawings like this one, apparently of P.J.Tobia at his desk.
And although it took 40 years of research to work it out, and a marketing firm to come up with the name, it seems like The French Paradox--how a fat-eating, smoking, drinking nation has less heart disease--may first have been reported by a magazine in the Midwest.
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