Traditions Can Change

A friend recently told me he was Norwegian and Norwegians have a tradition of eating fish. As many of you know, a diet that includes regular consumption of animal fat and animal protein promotes heart disease and cancer, our country’s two leading killers. Yet my friend was calling on the traditions of his ancestors, several generations removed, as a justification for what he was now eating. I understand. Our food traditions can be deep seated and exert a strong pull on our daily behaviors. But should some eating traditions be changed and can we change them even if we want to?

One example of success comes from another Nordic country, Finland. After World War II, the consumption of animal products in that country rose. By the 1960s, the most eastern province in the country, North Karelia, was in trouble. They ate large amounts of meat, fish, and dairy products and they ate very little vegetables and even fewer fruits. As a result, they had the highest cholesterol readings in the world; they had very high blood pressure; and they had the highest death rate due to heart disease in the world.

In the 1970s, they embarked on a multi-pronged approach to change their traditions. Medical staff met with individuals and sponsor groups in North Karelia to encourage them to eat differently. They wrote and published hundreds of articles, and sponsored competitions among villages to see who could lower their cholesterol more. They encouraged people to eat less fat, restrict eggs, and to eat more whole grains, vegetables, roots, berries, and fruits.

The plan started to work and so they expanded it to all of Finland. To lessen the financial impact to dairy farmers, they encouraged farmers to transition their cattle grazing land to growing berries, one of the few fruits that grow easily in Finland. This program became known as the dairy-to-berry program. Soon the health statistics for all of Finland were joining those of North Karelia in a downward trend. See Figure 1 below.

It took a lot of time and a lot of hard work by many, but the results are stunning. North Karelia experienced an 84% decrease in cardiac mortality with all of Finland close behind with an 82% reduction. I’d say these Nordic people proved that they could, to a large extent, overcome their tradition of eating poorly. And because of the cause-and-effect relationship between a largely animal diet and death, the Finns were at the same time overcoming their tradition of suffering needless illness and death.

As stunning as these results are, better results are possible. Caldwell Esselstyn and other researchers showed that with a low-fat whole food plant-based diet (without fish), cardiac disease can be reduced by 99%. This country’s leading killer virtually disappears if we eat properly. See Figure 2.

Yes, traditions can be strong. But working hard to overcome them can succeed. How about if you help to establish a new tradition in your family - a tradition of eating a low-fat whole plant diet and as a result leading a much healthier and longer life? That is a tradition your family can be proud of.

John Tanner 8-18-19

Figure 1: Cardiac mortality rate in Finland and its most eastern province, North Karelia. (From Glob Cardiol Sci Pract. 2018 Jun 30; 2018(2): 13.)

Figure 2: A comparison of the effectiveness of treatments for heart disease. (From https://www.nusci.org/heart-disease-treatment-drugs-vs-diet)