The Chest Cracker Diet and Why the Heart Disease and High Cholesterol Epidemic Makes Perfect Sense to Me

Heart disease is one of the leading killers of Americans and I can see why.

  

Much attention has been placed on prevention of cardiovascular disease in this country and on identifying and controlling risk factors for it. Among the many known cardiovascular risk factors cholesterol is important both for it’s powerful impact on the development of heart disease and in it’s capacity to be modified by medical and lifestyle interventions.   Based on the American diet the cholesterol and heart disease epidemic we are experiencing makes perfect sense.

 

 

About one million Americans die each year from heart disease.  A persons cholesterol level is important to the development of heart disease because of cholesterol's ability to strongly contribute to the process of developing plaques in blood vessels. The presence of these plaques increases the chance that someone will experience heart disease.  A major culprit in this process lies in something that is probably in the kitchen and on the plate every day of almost every person who is reading this: Meat.  

Scientists search for the solution to heart disease and high cholesterol in laboratories with pills and physicians crack open about 250,000 chests each year to try to fix the hearts of Americans who have developed severe heart disease. All the while the cholesterol epidemic rages on as currently it is estimated that over 50 million Americans have high cholesterol.

But the cholesterol epidemic we are experiencing now is no mystery and the most powerful solution is not pills or surgery. A close look at what and how most Americans eat reveals that the cholesterol epidemic is a logical consequence of our cultural beliefs around nutrition and especially eating meat.

 

 

The bottom line is that Americans eat far too much meat per year and it is literally killing us. Every year the typical American eats an artery clogging 260 lbs. of meat per year (that breaks down to about 12 ounces of meat per day) which is the world's highest rate. According to the United Nations that is about 1.5 times the industrial world average, three times the East Asian average, and 40 times the average in Bangladesh .

 

Meat is a problem because ALL meat is high in cholesterol, including white meats like chicken and turkey. I want to repeat that because it is a MAJOR misconception among most Americans: White meats like Chicken, turkey, pork and even fish are all loaded with artery clogging cholesterol and have a comparable amount of cholesterol to red meat. White meats usually (but not always) have less dietary fat and that is why they are considered healthier than red meats but it has nothing to do with cholesterol.

 

How meat contributes to our cholesterol problem is two fold. It is part of our culture to eat meat with every meal. Most Americans don’t feel like they are having a “real” meal if it doesn’t involve meat. Therefore most Americans eat meat several times a day with every meal. Secondly the typical American portion of meat is insanely large. Even a pro-meat nutritionist would advise only a 3.5 ounce portion of meat with a meal (about the size of a deck of cards), but the typical American portion of meat at home or in a restaurant in usually around 12 ounces per meal or 3-4 times what is recomended in a serving.

 

It is important to note that some cholesterol is an essential part of a healthy diet. The ADA advises most Americans to have between 200-300 mg of cholesterol per day to maintain normal bodily function. But the typical American diet dwarfs that amount.

 

Just do the math. A 3 ounce serving of any meat has around 70mg of cholesterol depending on the cut. If, as the U.N reported, the average American person eats 12 ounces of meat per day than that person will have nearly met their daily requirement for cholesterol just from meat alone in a typical day. Now add on all the other cholesterol from other non meat foods comprising a full diet of 3 or 4 meals and 3 snacks each and every day over the course of decades of life and it is quite logical why over 50 million Americans have high cholesterol and our nation is suffering a cholesterol epidemic.

 

Doctors have good medicines that can help combat high cholesterol, but this is like using a band aid to cover a major wound. The real problem is in the dietary traditions of Americans. Americans choose to eat too much too often and that is why we struggle to control cholesterol levels.   American need to change the way they think about food.    

The typical American meat heavy diet should be called “The Chest Cracker’s Diet” because it leads to hundreds of thousands of chests getting cracked open every year among unfortunate, genetically predisposed individuals who develop severe heart disease. Meat eating is often categorized as being manly in the popular media but trust me there is nothing strong or masculine about heart disease or Coronary Artery Bypass Grafting.  Occasionally eating meat is probably alright (I would say one small 4 ounce portion every2-3 days) but as long as Americans insist on following the myth that massive slabs of any kind of meat must be a part of every meal than we will continue to suffer from a cholesterol epidemic and experience alarming death rates from premature heart disease.