DUELING DIETS

Or two aspects of the same problem: over-modernized food?

BY DOUG COLLINS EDITOR

In this issue, you will see two articles related to diet and health, "The Cholesterol Myth" (cover story) and "Safer Food Choices" (in the Food and Environment Section). You'll see that both articles apparently come to opposite conclusions about what's good to eat.

The apparent disagreement regards animal fats, which tend to be high in saturated fat as well as cholesterol. In "The Cholesterol Myth," nutritionon Dr. Barry Groves explains how the vast majority of long-range research indicates that saturated fat and cholesterol are not a cause of heart disease, and are actually beneficial to health in a number of ways. In "Safer Food Choices" the Washington Toxics Coalition points out ways to minimize exposure to industrial toxins via food. One of the main suggestions is to minimize intake of animal fats because chemical toxins tend to accumulate more in fatty tissues of animals.

Fish oil is an example. This animal fat has long been recognized as extremely beneficial to the body, and modern research corroborates that. But, according to the Washington Toxics Coalition, cutting the fatty parts off of fish will help you avoid toxins.

The most troubling aspect of the opposite conclusions of the two articles is that both conclusions are completely correct. The sad fact is that because of the environmental damage we have wreaked over the past century, we have backed ourselves into a tighter and tighter dietary corner.

In a pre-industrial setting, foods such as full-fat milk and butter would undoubtedly be some of the healthiest things to eat. Now they are a concern because they have become repositories of pesticides residue. On the other hand, processed alternatives such as skim milk and margarine have proved either nutritionally inadequate or actually harmful.

One way to reconcile the two articles is that the eating of organic animal fats can possibly give you the best of both perspectives, providing necessary fats and nutrition and at the same time minimizing chemical exposure due to organic farming methods. Similarly, you can also seek the less-toxic wild fish varieties.

When reading the articles, it's good to keep in mind that the article "Safer Food Choices" only puts forth ideas for minimizing toxic exposure, and shouldn't imply that such choices will keep you healthier. The long-term health consequences of eating a diet very low in animal fats-in order to avoid toxins-could possibly be worse than the consequences of eating full-fat pesticide- tainted animal products.

Since I've been talking so much about animal fat, a note on vegetarianism and veganism is probably in order. Vegetarians can typically eat a full range of animal fats via milk products and eggs, and some vegetarians consider fish OK as well.

For vegans, sources of saturated fat include the traditional vegetable oils such as palm oil and coconut oil, which are available in health- food stores and some supermarkets. As Dr. Groves points out, some of the potentially most unhealthy inclusions in a modern "healthy" diet are the industrial vegetable oils, such as corn oil, safflower oil, soy oil, canola and margarine (none of which, by the way, were used in pre- industrial times). Because vegans and vegetarians may tend to use such oils even more frequently than others, they may be particularly interested in the relevant sections of Dr. Groves article.

Such is the dilemma of our modern diet: modernization has resulted in a plentiful and varied food supply for many-at least in the developed world-but it has also resulted in both the chemical tainting of food and the invention of unhealthy processed foods.

Modernization has reached an unhealthy extreme. A return to more localized methods of food production, and to traditional whole foods- would probably improve not only our health, but also the health and diet of many people in less developed countries, where now much of the food grown is exported overseas to rich foreign countries (like ours) rather than eaten domestically for the benefit of an undernourished populace