The first U.S. dietary guidelines published in 1977 by the Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs recommended a decrease in the consumption of fatty foods like meat, milk, and eggs. Under extreme pressure from the food industry — namely meat, dairy and sugar — Congress moved the guidelines to the direction of the Agriculture Committee which, as The New [...]

Those over the age of 40 may be making a negative impact on the future of the U.S. economy with the way they eat, live and keep track of their health. On the Critical List?: A MetLife Report on the Health Status of the 40+ Population, from the MetLife Mature Market Institute and co-authored by the Center for Healthy Aging, [...]

The National Association of Chronic Disease Directors, today released its top legislative public health priorities for 2014. These priorities range from efforts to promote health to efforts that prevent diseases like Diabetes and Heart Disease. “These priorities are not merely suggestions but critical necessities for the health of our nation,” said NACDD Legislative Committee Chairman, David Hoffman. Diabetes for example, [...]

The most insistent political question of the past four years has been: How can more Americans get access to medical care? The federal response was the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Better known as “Obamacare,” it is a complex mix of insurance changes and tax credits. When the act takes effect on January 1, 2014, it will provide access [...]

The debate on how to reduce health care costs that are out of control seems more polarized than ever. Many Republicans are recommending that Medicare be privatized or even abolished since Medicare, Medicaid, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program accounted for 21% of the federal budget in 2011, or $769 billion, and even more in 2012. Many Democrats are advocating [...]

In his new book, “Salt Sugar Fat,” Pulitzer Prize winning investigative reporter Michael Moss takes readers on a tour of the $1 trillion processed food industry, and the sights aren’t pretty. The average American eats 33 pounds of cheese and 70 pounds of sugar a year, and health experts say those trends triggered the obesity epidemic that has left millions [...]

At the global forum in Davos, Arianna spoke with Mark Hyman, MD, about the U.S. epidemic of chronic disease and what inspired him to develop “functional medicine.” Hyman, who is a medical editor at The Huffington Post, explained his thinking around how to define illness changed when he developed chronic fatigue syndrome. “I began to realize our paradigm of medicine [...]

In this five minute news segment on NBC affiliate KOBI-TV (Medford, Oregon), Dr. Philip Paden discusses the importance of a whole-foods, vegan diet to prevent and reverse chronic diseases. More information: www.ForksOverKnives.com | www.tcolincampbell.org | www.heartattackproof.com

The foreign meat molecule Neu5Gc builds up in human cancerous tumors and atherosclerotic plaques and may play an inflammatory role in the progression of both these diseases. See The Inflammatory Meat Molecule Neu5Gc for background and Friday’s video-of-the-day How Tumors Use Meat to Grow: Xeno-Autoantibodies for the role it might play in cancer growth. Inflammation (also caused by exogenous endotoxins) is [...]

By Dr. Michael Greger Plant-based diets may help rheumatoid arthritis by decreasing exposure to an  inflammatory “Trojan horse” compound found in animal products called Neu5Gc. In my post How Tumors Use Meat to Grow I talked about the role  Neu5Gc may play in stimulating breast cancer growth, but what about inflammation  in our joints? For those of you who have [...]