Breaking News: Southern Cooking May Be Killing African-americans, Study Finds

gimbap

Well-Known Member
:look:

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/heal...icans-study-finds-n915846?cid=sm_npd_nn_fb_ma

Southern cooking may be killing African-Americans, study finds
That down-home cooking loaded with salt, sugar and fat raises blood pressure.
by Maggie Fox / Oct.02.2018 / 11:59 AM EDT





It’s rich and delicious, that Southern diet: plenty of fried food, cheesy casseroles, and sweet, sweet tea.

But it’s deadly, especially to African-Americans. The fat, sugar and sodium that make Southern food so tempting also sends blood pressure up to killer levels.


A study out Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association shows the main reason African-Americans die younger than whites is heart disease. It finds heart disease, mostly caused by high blood pressure, accounts for fully one-third of the disparity.

And the main factor raising blood pressure? A Southern-style diet.



George Howard of the University of Alabama at Birmingham and colleagues studied just under 7,000 people who had been taking part in a larger, long-term study of diet and lifestyle. The volunteers got their first medical exams for the study between 2003 and 2007, and were examined again an average of nine years later.

Howard’s team compared blacks to whites in the study. They checked weight, blood pressure, cholesterol; asked questions about drinking alcohol, about income and about exercise habits; and checked for symptoms of stress and depression. They asked what type of foods people ate, also.


As expected, blacks had higher rates of early death than whites, and much of that was due to high blood pressure. That’s been shown often before.


What was surprising, said Howard, was that diet seemed to be a major factor associated with the death rates.

“I would have guessed obesity would have been playing a big role and factors like stress and depression would have been playing a big role,” Howard told NBC News.

“Once I saw that it was a Southern diet, it was a ‘oh yeah that makes sense’ kind of thing.” :look:



To some degree, the Southern diet represents the American diet overall — loaded with white flour, sugar, salt and meat. But this study showed big differences between blacks and whites in terms of eating the least-healthy foods.

“African-Americans eat not just more of this diet, but a lot more of this diet,” Howard said.

And blacks were also less likely to eat healthy foods that lower the risk of heart disease, including vegetables, fruits and whole grains, the study showed.




Obesity plays a role as well, but only for women, the team found. “Black men and white men have the same BMI (body mass index),” Howard said. Black women were more likely to be obese than white women, however, the study found, and for women, obesity was linked with a higher likelihood both of having high blood pressure and of dying young.


There’s been a lot of research into how diet affects the risk of high blood pressure and heart disease. The American Heart Association has guidelines on how to lower both and they’re straightforward: eat more vegetables, fruit and whole grains; exercise regularly; eat less sugar; and cut back on the fried food.

“There’s good news in this paper. The things that look like they are big contributors in the racial differences in hypertension are actually things that can be changed,” Howard said.

But, he added, healthy food can be more expensive.

And Howard has a reminder for all Americans. He described a visit he made to a deli in New York City where schmaltz was a major ingredient. “They put a pitcher of chicken fat on the table to pour on your food,” he said. “Bad eating and adding fat is not only a Southern experience.”
 

Shula

Well-Known Member
I miss Southern food. A lot. And I thought "they" decided at some point that being black and steeped in American racism also added to our high blood pressure and other illnesses? I'm in the South and don't even know many people who still eat Southern food on the regular.
 

Shula

Well-Known Member
Lies! It stress.

I've not seen a proper Southern meal in a long, long time. My Hispanic friends don't eat their native foods either. I've been wanting some and they have us for dinner and served some bland shrimp and something in these tiny portions and I be like where's the good stuff??? I have to eat super clean for my health and every once in a while I want something goodt. Nobody I know eats like that anymore. But the stress is ever present.
 

dyh080

Well-Known Member
Lies! It stress.
Stress combined with bad diet kills. I just read it this week somewhere , most likely one of my many health related books.
The author said even in countries where people eat a traditional whole food diet yet maintained their health , think rural African or Asian countries?, the people have or had stress of fighting off predators, poor living environments, manual labor, etc.).

Just a theory, but I tend to agree. Stress plus bad diet kills.
 

dyh080

Well-Known Member
Decades ago this diet perhaps was not as dangerous when combined with labor. Many did not work sitting behind a desk, didn't have prepackaged food, cut their own grass, had no washer/dryers, walked to work, and performed other manual tasks that we don't today.

Eat the way today and sit around on the phone while watching TV and you are asking for trouble.
 

guyaneseyankee

Well-Known Member
I know we've been trained to believe this, but as I research more and more on the keto lifestyle idk.
Maybe just parts of the AA diet may be harmful but what do you expect given the social circumstances; i.e stress

ETA: I too agree that good ole southern food is the bomb; but I ain't cooking like that everyday. Times a changing.
 

faithVA

Well-Known Member
I think this is just a ploy to distract us from the fact they aren't trying to come up with any beneficials ways to deal with high blood pressure in the AA community. If you walk into a doctor's office with a good diet, exercising, not overweight and with high blood pressure they just get dazed and hand you the medicine. They associate black with high blood pressure and don't give it another thought.

When you talk to them, you realize they have no clue as to why we have high blood pressure, no real strategy to improve it and I don't see any real research being done to try to find an answer.

I agree with most posters that stress is definitely a trigger. Food just exacerbates it.
 

HappilyLiberal

Well-Known Member
I've not seen a proper Southern meal in a long, long time. My Hispanic friends don't eat their native foods either. I've been wanting some and they have us for dinner and served some bland shrimp and something in these tiny portions and I be like where's the good stuff??? I have to eat super clean for my health and every once in a while I want something goodt. Nobody I know eats like that anymore. But the stress is ever present.

You ought to come down by my Mississippi relatives. They eat like that on the regular. When I was dealing with breast cancer they stopped by the house and dropped of a ton of cooked food for me and my mom--which is what Southerners do! My mom and I thanked them and after they left, all of that food went straight to the trash. They even put grease in the greens!
 

Shula

Well-Known Member
You ought to come down by my Mississippi relatives. They eat like that on the regular. When I was dealing with breast cancer they stopped by the house and dropped of a ton of cooked food for me and my mom--which is what Southerners do! My mom and I thanked them and after they left, all of that food went straight to the trash. They even put grease in the greens!

Girl! I understand and the height of respect to you and your mom for resisting. My parents are also from Miss and I've yet to find anybody who can cook Southern food like my mom. Her talent at it was even mentioned in her obituary and the whole place went AMEN! because my mom fed everybody and whew, stuck her foot in every dish. Y'all did the right thing especially while fighting serious illness.

edit: ferocious typo
 
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