From: tiff@oahu.cs.ucla.edu (Tiffany Frazier)
Subject: France Re: Review of Two Vegan Books
Organization: UCLA, Computer Science Department
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Date: Thu, 23 Jul 92 16:31:13 GMT

chandy@marais.inria.fr (Chandra SHEKHAR) writes:

[trimmed text]
: 
: The two books are:
: (1) Vegan nutrition pure and simple, by Michael Klaper
: (2) 12 days to dynamic health, by John McDougall
: 
: Some general remarks first. 
: 
: Both books are cheap, useful, and definitely worth
: buying. Having said that ...
: 
: Both books, especially the
: second, are rather disappointing in that they adopt
: the standard pro-veg. tactic. This tactic
: is to pretend that there are only two kinds of people
: in the world, (a) fat, unhealthy, hamburger-eating Americans
: in search of their nth coronary and (b) slim, healthy,
: happy, Chinese peasants who eat nothing but rice and
: vegetables. Based on this, they conclude that a veg.
: diet is the way to health and happiness. I am as strong
: a believer in veg(itari)anism as any, but I think we
: only undercut our own case by this kind of biased
: approach. There are people(s) in the world who eat
: *lots* of meat and other animal products, and are
: still healthy. It is especially noticeable here in
: France, where veg-ism is practically non-existent, yet
: the majority of the people are trim, healthy and active.

It is amusing how it seems that half of america is trying
to figure out how the French can exercise less, smoke and
drink more, have a basically American diet (e.g. in terms of fat %)
and be so much healthier.   Lots of people are trying to
find some secret ingredient in wine that "counteracts" staturated
fat and cholesterol (e.g. there was a 60 minutes thing on
this a while back).  The Berkeley Wellness Letter has addressed
this a couple of times... first time around they confirmed that
drinking alcohol (esp. wine) can be helpful - if you have a high
fat diet, are sedentary, etc.. but the second time around (2 months
ago) they concluded that the real reason the French are "healthier"
is because they haven't had such a high-fat diet for as long as
Americans.  The average french diet only reached 39% fat in the 80s
- compared to the 50s for America.
Thus the Wellness Letter concludes that in a few more years
the French should be just as unhealthy as "we" are - if the
lifestyle persists.  Just thought people might find this interesting...

Personally I have a hard time labelling McDougall as anything anywhere
near extremist.  I'm really "tired" of watching all my relatives and
my husband's relatives and just about everyone late 40s to 50s and
up battling things raging from "simple" weight troubles and high
cholesterol (usually combined with ulcers or somesuch) to quadruple
bypasses that prolong life a couple years while doctors just tell
them to "trim their meat a little more" and take $100 worth of pills
every month.  There has to be a better way!  Unfortunately, suggesting
McDougall/Klaper type stuff just gets one comments like "that's nonsense",
"cheese is good for you", and all the usual things.  The USDA and ADA
have been the source of nutrition education in the US for a long long
time - and it's not likely to change anytime soon.

--
tiff@cs.ucla.edu
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Newsgroups: rec.food.veg