Product Description

Millions of people have been using the low-fat, low-cholesterol, high-carbohydrate diet that has been promoted for the last half-century in the mass media for prevention of heart disease and stroke. During this same period, the numbers of new cases of heart disease and stroke have not decreased as promised but increased, and type-2 diabetes and obesity, which were uncommon 50 years ago, have grown to become major epidemics.

In this book, heart disease, stroke, type-2 diabetes, obesity, and cancer are termed the modern nutritional diseases because scientific studies and biochemical facts clearly point to the modern American heart-healty diet as a major underlying cause of these diseases. This book describes the changes that have taken place in the American diet over the last 100 years and explains how these changes were accelerated after 1930 by advances in food technology. The book presents biochemical and other scientific evidence to show how these changes are implicated not only in the modern nutritional diseases but also in other growing disease problems such as Alzheimer's disease, osteoporosis, senile dementia, and depression.

This book shows how micro- and macronutrients relate to health and disease prevention. It also shows how faulty science has influenced national health policies and explains how the reader can sort truth from fiction. The final chapter outlines simple dietary and lifestyle changes that can significantly reduce the risk of the modern nutritional diseases and, at the same time, improve one's health and sense of well-being.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #626497 in Books
• Published on: 2002-07
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

About the Author
The authors are both public health scientists who, prior to retirement, had worked for many years investigating and preventing diseases in population groups. Over these years, they learned that diseases do not "just happen." Every disease has a cause and, once the cause is known, prevention is often a very reasonable and proper step.

Alice earned a BA in chemistry from the University of Texas, Austin, and a PhD in comparative biochemistry from the University of California, Davis. Her professional carreer focused on nutritional biochemistry and the toxicity of food contaminants and additives. She is the author of an earlier book, "The Dose Makes the Poison," a plain language guide to toxicology for lay people.

Fred earned a BS in chemical engineering from Stanford University and a Masters Degree in Public Health and a PhD in Environmental Health Sciences from the University of California, Berkeley. His primary professional interest was the prevention of diseases caused by toxic materials and harmful physical agents in the work environment. He is the author of a previous book, "Korea Between the Wars: A Soldier's Story," which describes his experiences as a soldier during the American occupation of South Korea in the period immediately after World War Two.

Customer Reviews

Excellent Material and Well-Referenced
An easy to read treatise on preventive medicine and how to avoid the common "diseases of civilization": heart disease, cancer, obesity, T2 diabetes, and stroke. The authors methodically clobber the belief that a high-carbohydrate, low-fat diet prevents illness and actually show that such a diet causes disease. The authors pay special attention to biochemical explanations for disease, rather than relying on epidemiological studies as these are often flawed and cannot show causative factors for disease.

I was a little disappointed that the authors referred readers to other books which, in my opinion, are mixed bags of truth and misinformation (like "The Zone" books by Barry Sears, PhD), but these are minor glitches in an otherwise excellent text.

Up-to-date, well researched, an important book
Modern Nutritional Diseases is an excellent book that nails down the current understanding of prevention of HEART DISEASE, TYPE 2 (ADULT) DIABETES, OVERWEIGHT and more. Many of these conditions are clearly caused by nutrient deficiencies. Therefore, you can prevent such decline by replacing some of the VITAMINS, MINERALS, FIBER and OMEGA-3 oils that have become scarce during the last century in our supermarkets and food stores.

This book gives an excellent summary of the science. Its chapter 2 has some rare and clear diagrams with some of the important links between disease and nutrition, and how drugs may interfere with health. This book is a valuable contribution to PREVENTION through NUTRITION as it has some of the latest scientific insights.

Slightly technical for some readers, but anyone will be able to increase his or her understanding of health, and how simple steps with small nutritional changes promise to have great payback for most of us. The book is particularly strong in explaining the role of refined flour and starches in causing OVERWEIGHT and the related new epidemic of LATER-IN-LIFE DIABETES, with an ever faster declining path to poor health and heart disease. This path is generally avoidable with some of the simple steps explained in this book.

Recommended, Eddie Vos (health-heart.org)

How to get and stay healthy.
Modern medicine can performs wondrous feats of surgery and has conquered virtually all of the infectious diseases that were the major causes of death a century ago. But we are now plagued with a host of non-infectious diseases -- including cancer, various forms of heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, and osteoporosis -- for which modern medicine can only treat symptoms but has no cure. Why? Because most of our modern diseases are caused by improper eating habits and lack of nutrition. Unfortunately, the conventional medical establishment is only beginning to recognize this fact and many doctors -- despite their excellent training in the use of pharmaceutical drugs (which kill more than 100,00 people each year with their side effects) -- are comepletely ignorant of the true causes of modern chronic diseases. Fortunately, the authors of this book have thoroughly researched the true causes of modern diseases and found that they lie in nutrient deficiency and in the current and erroneous fad of a low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet -- plus excessive consumption of junk food. Our eating habits are deteriorating our health and even killing us prematurely. But, fortunately, we have the power to change our eating habbits and reclaim our health if we are willing to do so. This book provides much of the information needed in order to do so.