EC Nutrition

Editorial Volume 18 Issue 3 - 2023

Diet, Geography and Destiny

Paul Clayton*

Visiting Professor, Department Preventative and Personal Medicine, Institute of Interdisciplinary Medicine, Moscow, Russia

*Corresponding Author: Paul Clayton, Visiting Professor, Department Preventative and Personal Medicine, Institute of Interdisciplinary Medicine, Moscow, Russia.
Received: March 24, 2023; Published: March 27, 2023



If you have spent time in the American South, you know that Southerners barbeque, fry or deep-fry almost anything that moves or grows. The eponymous Southern fried chicken is a staple on lunch and dinner menus. Breakfast, of course, involves bacon, preferably crispy and carcinogenic. Sugar is shovelled into most things that aren’t fried, and many that are.

It resembles the post-transitional Scottish cuisine which gave the world the deep-fried Mars bar, deep-fried pizza and for the morning-after connoisseur, deep-fried haggis. These delights (and copious cigarettes) made Glasgow the heart attack capital of the world [1]. Had I not had the good luck to be born 45 miles to the east, I would probably not have made it this far [2].

  1. Tunstall-Pedoe H., et al. “Contribution of trends in survival and coronary-event rates to changes in coronary heart disease mortality: 10-year results from 37 WHO MONICA project populations. Monitoring trends and determinants in cardiovascular disease”. Lancet9164 (1999): 1547-1557.
  2. Smith WC., et al. “Cardiovascular disease in Edinburgh and north Glasgow–a tale of two cities”. Journal of Clinical Epidemiology 7 (1990): 637-643.
  3. Healthy Life Expectancy 2017-2019. National Records of Scotland (2021).
  4. https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/files//statistics/healthy-life-expectancy/17-19/healthy-life-expectancy-17-19-report.pdf
  5. Lanska DJ and Kuller LH. “The geography of stroke mortality in the United States and the concept of a stroke belt”. Stroke 26 (1995): 1145-1149.
  6. https://stateofchildhoodobesity.org/diabetes/
  7. https://www.kidney.org/news/newsroom/nr/KD_StateHardHit
  8. https://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/usa/cause-of-death/coronary-heart-disease/by-state/
  9. https://www.titlemax.com/media/life-expectancy-united-states-4.png
  10. Herskind AM., et al. “The heritability of human longevity: a population-based study of 2,872 Danish twin pairs born 1870-1900”. Human Genetics 96 (1996): 319-323.
  11. https://www.safety.com/the-poorest-states-in-america/
  12. Levine JA. “Poverty and obesity in the U.S”. Diabetes 11 (2011): 2667-2668.
  13. Ogden CL., et al. “Prevalence of Obesity Among Adults, by Household Income and Education – United States, 2011-2014”. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 50 (2017): 1369-1373.
  14. Bentley RA., et al. “Recent origin and evolution of obesity-income correlation across the United States”. Palgrave Communications 4 (2018): 146.
  15. Salmasi L and Celidon M. “Investigating the poverty–obesity paradox in Europe”. Economics and Human Biology 26 (2017): 70-85.
  16. Fryar CD., et al. “Fast Food Consumption Among Adults in the United States, 2013–2016”. NCHS Data Brief 322 (2018).
  17. Dohle S and Hafmann W. “Toward a mechanistic understanding of the impact of food insecurity on obesity”. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 40 (2017): e116.
  18. Dittmann AG and Maner JK. “A life–history theory perspective on obesity”. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 40 (2017): e115.
  19. Smith TG. “Household–level financial uncertainty could be the primary driver of the global obesity epidemic”. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 40 (2017): e128.
  20. Liem DG and Mennella JA. “Sweet and sour preferences during childhood: role of early experiences”. Developmental Psychobiology 4 (2002): 388-395.
  21. Sullivan SA and Birch LL. “Pass the sugar, pass, the salt: Experience dictates preference”. Developmental Psychobiology 26 (1990): 546-551.
  22. https://globalnews.ca/news/4418456/cosmo-cover-tess-holiday/
  23. https://www.boredpanda.com/plus-size-women-cosmopolitan-cover-obesity-negative-people-reactions/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=organic
  24. Obesity, Race/Ethnicity, and COVID-19 (2021).
  25. Shikany JM., et al. “Mediterranean Diet Score, Dietary Patterns, and Risk of Sudden Cardiac Death in the REGARDS Study”. Journal of the American Heart Association 10 (2021): e019158.
  26. Murphy SL., et al. “Deaths: Final Data for 2018”. National Vital Statistics System 13 (2021).
  27. Shikany JM., et al. “Dietary Patterns and Mediterranean Diet Score and Hazard of Recurrent Coronary Heart Disease Events and All-Cause Mortality in the REGARDS Study”. Journal of the American Heart Association 14 (2018): e008078.
  28. Shikany JM., et al. “Southern Dietary Pattern is Associated with Hazard of Acute Coronary Heart Disease in the Reasons for Geographic and Racial Differences in Stroke (REGARDS) Study”. Circulation 9 (2015): 804-814.
  29. Agarwal P., et al. “Unhealthy foods may attenuate the beneficial relation of a Mediterranean diet to cognitive decline”. Alzheimer's and Dementia Journal 7 (2021): 1157-1165.
  30. Clayton P and Rowbotham J. “How the mid-Victorians worked, ate and died”. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 3 (2009): 1235-1253.
  31. Kaplan H., et al. “Coronary atherosclerosis in indigenous South American Tsimane: a cross-sectional cohort study”. Lancet 10080 (2017): 1730-1739.
  32. Gurven M., et al. “Mortality experience of Tsimane Amerindians of Bolivia: regional variation and temporal trends”. American Journal of Human Biology 3 (2007): 376-398.
  33. Buettner D and Skemp S. “Blue Zones: Lessons From the World’s Longest Lived”. American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine: SAGE Journals 5 (2016): 318-321.
  34. Choi Y., et al. “Plant-Centered Diet and Risk of Incident Cardiovascular Disease During Young to Middle Adulthood”. Journal of the American Heart Association 4 (2021): e020718.
  35. Papier K., et al. “Meat consumption and risk of ischemic heart disease: A systematic review and meta-analysis”. Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition 20 (2021): 1-12.
  36. Kromhout D., et al. “The inverse relation between fish consumption and 20-year mortality from coronary heart disease”. The New England Journal of Medicine 19 (1985): 1205-1209.
  37. Keli SO., et al. “Fish consumption and risk of stroke. The Zutphen Study”. Stroke 2 (1994): 328-332.
  38. Oomen CM., et al. “Fish consumption and coronary heart disease mortality in Finland, Italy, and The Netherlands”. American Journal of Epidemiology 10 (2000): 999-1006.
  39. Streppel MT., et al. “Long-term fish consumption and n-3 fatty acid intake in relation to (sudden) coronary heart disease death: the Zutphen study”. European Heart Journal 16 (2008): 2024-2030.
  40. Nicholls SJ., et al. “Effect of High-Dose Omega-3 Fatty Acids vs Corn Oil on Major Adverse Cardiovascular Events in Patients at High Cardiovascular Risk: The STRENGTH Randomized Clinical Trial”. The Journal of the American Medical Association 22 (2020): 2268-2280.
  41. Manson JE., et al. “Marine n-3 Fatty Acids and Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease and Cancer”. The New England Journal of Medicine 1 (2019): 23-32.
  42. Kalstad AA., et al. “Effects of n-3 Fatty Acid Supplements in Elderly Patients after Myocardial Infarction: A Randomized Controlled Trial”. Circulation (2020): 528-539.
  43. Zhu Y., et al. “Dietary total fat, fatty acids intake, and risk of cardiovascular disease: a dose-response meta-analysis of cohort studies”. Lipids in Health and Disease 1 (2019): 91.
  44. McBurney MI., et al. “Using an erythrocyte fatty acid fingerprint to predict risk of all-cause mortality: the Framingham Offspring Cohort”. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 16 (2021): nqab195.

Paul Clayton. "Diet, Geography and Destiny". EC Nutrition 18.3 (2023): 57-62.