Did you know you are wealthy? Look at it this way: there are around 7 billion people in the world, with an estimated 925 million hungry people— and I don’t mean hungry because they are in between meals and forgot their snack at home. I mean that 13% or almost 1 in 7 people in the world have very little access to food, sanitation, or health care. They are malnourished and dying of infectious diseases. So, from that perspective you and I are wealthy; not only do we have access to clean water, state of the art medicine, and food.
Our affluence also comes through in our food choices: bacon, sausages, meat, cheese, milk, chicken. These and many other rich foods can be easily accessed by most Americans on any given day of the week. And that is before they stuff their faces with potato chips or cookies at night.
What is wrong with that? These foods, the rich in saturated fats, cholesterol, animal proteins, and empty sugar calories, but devoid of health promoting nutrients, invariably resulting in diseases of affluence: type2 diabetes, obesity, heart attacks, strokes, cancers, cognitive dysfunctions, arthritis, and osteoporosis. These diseases of the Standard American Diet (SAD) are crippling us at younger and younger ages, and wiping our rich butts off this planet.
And if you think you are too young to care, think again.
Early signs of the epidemic of diseases of affluence could be found at the end of the Korean War when autopsies of dead American soldiers revealed that 77% had signs of cardiovascular disease, some with seriously clogged arteries as high as 90% clogged with arterial plaque. Keep in mind these were fit and active twenty-year-olds. The year was 1985, long before fast food restaurants and processed foods dominated the American diet and bacon-triple-cheese-burgers were invited!
For decades now, heart disease has been the number killer of Americans, followed close behind by various types of cancer. But type-2 diabetes (aka adult onset diabetes) is now very common in children and teenagers, another disease that is making a strong showing, as are other diet-related diseases, disease of affluence. As diabetes increases in younger Americans, so do the many health complications like high blood pressure, high cholesterol, strokes, blindness, kidney failures, cancers, and others become more prevalent.
Is there anything we can do to protect ourselves?
Yes! These diseases of affluence are caused by a poor dietary lifestyle, and therefore they can be prevented with lifestyle changes. Studies found that diets high in animal protein, dairy, refined carbohydrates (processed foods, white bread and pasta) and dietary fats (from meats, fried foods, rich dairy products) transform your body into the perfect environment for these afflictions.

Conversely, a plant based diet, rich in whole and unprocessed foods (fruits, vegetables, whole grains like brown rich) create an environment that arrests and even reverses these diseases. Professor Colin Campbell, a leading scientist in nutrition and cancer and author of the famed China Study, affirms that animal fat and protein are the most prominent disease-causing substances that we consume; reducing or completely eliminating their intake is the best way to protect your health. Genes play a very small role in the most prevalent cancers (stomach, colon, breast, prostate), no more than 2 or 3 percent according to the leading scientists in the field.
Our industrialized diet and urbanized lifestyle has proven to be detrimental for human health. To reduce your risk from falling victim to the leading killers of Americans, you should began altering your eating habits with the eventual goal of bringing your blood cholesterol level between 90 -150 mg/d L (which is the normal range among vegans, who eat no animal products). Prof. Campbell and other leading scientists have found that cholesterol levels over 150 are associated with heart disease and even certain cancers. Exercising regularly helps, but can’t make up for a poor diet loaded with saturated and other fats, animal proteins (which promote cancer), nutritionally empty calories from sugary, salty and processed foods. It’s not too late to move away from the diseases of affluence toward the eating habits of the truly healthy – a diet based on plant foods and whole grains. As the old American saying goes, “Health is Wealth”.