Southern Comfort Food May Lead to Heart Disease
With conflicting information flying all over the place, it’s seemingly impossible to live a healthy lifestyle. Having a good health insurance policy can help you get the help you need when you need it, but it seems like around every corner, there’s a new danger to contend with. Those dangers often take the form of “toxins” and “harmful chemicals” we ingest on a day-to-day basis, but sometimes, the biggest danger is the most obvious.
A recent study indicated that southern staples like fried chicken, fat-cooked greens, and sugary sweet tea can all contribute to America’s leading cause of death in both men and women – heart disease. The study, led by James Shikany, a professor of nutritional epidemiology at the University of Alabama in Birmingham, observed patterns in the data of over 17,000 people from across the country over the course of six years. Those who regularly consumed these southern staples were found to have a 56% higher risk of heart disease, indicating that there is a connection between the two.
This southern diet was compared to the most common dieting patterns to determine if southern food was more damaging than, say, the “convenience diet” that many Americans follow. This low-hassle meal pattern consists largely of pasta, carryout, and pizza, and was used as the baseline to determine how high the risk factors really were. That’s right – someone who regularly eats southern foods could be 56% more likely than people who subsist almost entirely on fast food and microwavable foods to develop heart disease according to this study.
Shikany wanted to make it clear that this study was simply designed to determine whether or not there is a connection between southern foods and heart disease, not prove a cause-and-effect relationship between the two. Shikany stated that there are far too many variables and mechanisms at play to find a definitive cause within the confines of this study.
That doesn’t mean that there isn’t established information elsewhere that supports Shikany’s theory. The foods considered in the study were very high in saturated fats, sugars, and nitrates, three substances that have been linked to high cholesterol, obesity, diabetes, and heart disease.
Heart disease is the leading cause of death for most men and women in America. Heart disease claims approximately 610,000 American lives every year, representing 1 in every 4 deaths. More than half of those are coronary heart disease, and once every minute, someone in the US dies from a heart disease-related event such as a heart attack or stroke. Contributing factors include diabetes, obesity, and excessive alcohol consumption.
Diet and exercise have been proven time and time again to reduce your risk for everything listed above, so contact your doctor today for more information on living a healthy life, and contact Cost-U-Less Direct today for more information on choosing a California health insurance or life insurance policy that won’t let you down when you need it most. We’re standing by to answer any questions and help you along the way, so don’t hesitate to call or click today!
