Southern Diet Sends Stroke Risk Soaring: Study

Chicken-fried steak. Deep-fried gizzards. Candy-sweet tea.

Consider these delicacies, and it's easy to see how the Deep South garnered its unfortunate distinction as the "Stroke Belt."

Now, researchers have drawn the strongest link yet between these kinds of foods and risk of stroke.

University of Alabama researchers found that people who regularly ate foods traditionally found in the southern diet had a whopping 41 percent increased risk of stroke -- and in African-Americans, it was 63 percent higher risk.

The researchers presented these results Thursday at the annual International Stroke Conference in Hawaii.

"Diet is an understudied risk factor for stroke," said lead study author Suzanne Judd, PhD, of the University of Alabama. "What was surprising about what we found was that when eating certain foods in the southern diet -- fried foods, organ meats, gizzards, sweet tea -- even when you account for other factors such as smoking, obesity, and physical activity, people still experienced a 30 percent increase in stroke risk."

The researchers looked at more than 20,000 black and white study participants who were over 45 years old as part of the study, termed the Reasons for Geographic and Racial Differences in Stroke -- or REGARDS for short. They asked subjects to detail their weekly diet habits, focusing on 56 different types of food.

The subjects then underwent a complete medical evaluation, including a physical exam and blood tests. They were followed over a period of nearly five years at regular six-month intervals, during which researchers tallied the number of strokes these people experienced.

What they found was that foods common in the southern-style diet, such as deep fried foods, processed meats, and sugary beverages, significantly increased stroke risk.

"We've known that diets high in saturated fats and deep fried foods and low in fruits and vegetables are tied to greater health risks," said Keith Ayoob, director of the nutrition Clinic at Rose F. Kennedy Center, who was not involved with the study.

The good news, however, is that the Southern diet is not all bad -- and some staples of Deep South cuisine may even cut stroke risk.

"There are other foods in the Southern-style diet which are good," study author Judd said. "Collard greens, for example. Just having a little more whole grains, fruits and vegetables, and lean protein sources -- chicken without the skin, fish that isn't fried -- gives you an across-the-board 20 percent reduction in stroke risk."

Ayoob said no matter the cuisine, the advice remains the same.

"What would I tell my patients? Eat plenty of fruits and vegetables, whole grains and low fat dairy, because those are things people are missing from their diets," he said. "People are not getting in trouble for what they're eating, they're getting in trouble for what they're not eating."

REGARDS is funded by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS).

 

Shoppers Care More About Local Food Than Organic

When it comes to food labels, "local" is a much more important consideration than "organic," according to A.T. Kearney's "Buying into the Local Food Movement" study. The study results show that consumers embrace local-food options because they believe it helps local economies (66 percent), delivers a broader and better assortment of products (60 percent) and provides healthier alternatives (45 percent). Almost 30 percent of grocery shoppers say they would consider purchasing food elsewhere if their preferred store does not carry local foods. Trust is a major issue with consumers when purchasing local food. When asked about the trustworthiness of different formats to deliver local food, farmers markets and farm stores rank first, followed by natural food markets, local food markets, national supermarkets and big box retailers. Online retailers were ranked last. To overcome the trust gap, national supermarkets and big-box retailers need to excel in assortment and presentation.

Vitamin C supplements tied to men's kidney stones

Men who take vitamin C supplements are at higher-than-average risk of developing kidney stones, a new study from Sweden suggests.

The findings don't prove the vitamin itself triggers stones to form. But researchers said that because there are no clear benefits tied to taking high-dose vitamin C, people who have had stones in the past might want to think before taking extra supplements.

"I don't think I would hold this up and say, ‘You shouldn't take vitamin C, and here's the evidence,'" said Dr. Brian Matlaga, a urologist who studies kidney stones at Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore.

But, "When you talk to patients, a lot of times you'll find patients are taking non-prescribed medications, like vitamin supplements… and there may not be great evidence that there's an actual health benefit associated with these," he told Reuters Health.

The new finding "suggests that stone formers who take regular vitamin C may actually place themselves at increased risk," said Matlaga, who wasn't involved in the study.

Researchers led by Laura Thomas of the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm used data from a large study of middle-aged and elderly Swedish men who answered a series of questions on their diet and lifestyle, then were tracked for an average of 11 years.

The current analysis included 907 of those men who said they took regular vitamin C tablets and more than 22,000 who didn't use any nutritional supplements.

Of the vitamin C users, 3.4 percent developed kidney stones for the first time during the study, compared to 1.8 percent of non-supplement users. Men who took vitamin C supplements at least once a day had the highest risk of kidney stones, researchers reported Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine.

"It has long been suspected that high doses of vitamin C may increase the risk of kidney stones as some of the vitamin C absorbed by the body is excreted in urine as oxalate - one of the key components of kidney stones," Thomas told Reuters Health by email.

Stones are made up of tiny crystals, which can be formed by calcium combining with oxalate. They usually pass on their own, but can cause severe pain in the process. Larger stones occasionally require surgery.

Men are more likely to form stones than women.

The findings don't mean people shouldn't get plenty of vitamin C through fruits and vegetables, researchers said. The antioxidant is important for bone and muscle health - and severe deficiency can cause scurvy.

"Vitamin C is an important part of a healthy diet," Thomas said. "Any effect of vitamin C on kidney stone risk is likely to depend both on the dose and on the combination of nutrients with which it is ingested."

Swedish supplements, like those the study participants would have taken, typically contain about 1,000 milligrams (mg) of vitamin C per tablet, she noted. Most vitamin C supplements sold in the U.S. contain either 500 or 1,000 mg.

The U.S. Institute of Medicine recommends 90 mg per day for men - the amount in a small glass of orange juice or a cup of broccoli - and 75 mg for most women.

Matlaga said more research is needed to determine for certain whether reasonable doses of vitamin C may increase the risk of kidney stones. For now, he said people who haven't had kidney stones before shouldn't worry about any related risks tied to the vitamin.

 

Vegetarians Have Lower Heart Disease Risk, Study Finds

Going meatless gives vegetarians a 32 percent lower heart disease risk than non-vegetarians, a British study found, offering further proof that eating meat can be hazardous to health.

The study, published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, involved 44,561 people enrolled in the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC)-Oxford Study, which began in England and Scotland in 1993. Researchers sought to compare a range of diets and their impact on overall health, and 34 percent of all participants were vegetarians.

“It’s a very good study,” said Dr. William Abraham, who directs the division of cardiovascular medicine at Ohio State University, noting the large proportion of vegetarians. “It’s further evidence that vegetarian diets are associated with a lesser risk of developing ischemic heart disease or coronary artery disease.”

He and Dr. Peter McCullough, a cardiologist at St. John Providence Health System in Michigan, agreed it’s not about what’s in the vegetarian diet that makes it so heart healthy – it’s about what the vegetarian diet leaves out: saturated fat and sodium.

“Saturated fat is the single greatest dietary factor in the production of cholesterol,” McCollough said, adding that people assume dietary cholesterol increases cholesterol levels though it’s not true. “Sodium intake is the single greatest dietary determinant of blood pleasure.”

Both high blood pressure and high cholesterol are known risk factors for ischemic heart disease because they constrict the blood vessels and cut off blood supply to the heart.

Abraham said he occasionally prescribes a vegetarian diet to patients who have already had heart attacks – but this study might persuade him to prescribe them preventively to patients with heart disease risk factors such as diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol.

McCollough, on the other hand, has never prescribed a vegetarian diet and said limiting sodium and saturated fats can be done by picking the right meats, controlling portion sizes and avoiding what he calls the three s-es: sugars, starches and saturated fats. He said the healthiest protein to eat is fish and the least healthy is beef. Behind fish, beans and nuts are the best way to get protein, he said.

Vegetarianism isn’t always the answer because even vegetarians can eat too many sugars, one of the three-s categories, he said. For example, he added, vegetarians eat more cheese than non-vegetarians and, although it has some protein, about 60 percent of cheese is saturated fat.

Other studies have examined how daily servings of red meat can lead to early death and how processed meat can lead to heart disease and diabetes.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports 2 million heart attacks and stroke a year in the United States, and about 800,000 deaths from heart disease.