The SAD Diet

I’m sure by now you all know that the SAD diet stands for the “Standard American Diet”, and it truly is a sad one. According to the OECD, which compares the U.S. with other developed nations...

• 72% of American adults are overweight or obese (3 out of 4!)

• 40% are considered obese (nearly half!)

• 1 out of 10 adults are severely obese

• Heart disease remains our #1 killer, cancer is #2

• Stroke and diabetes remain among our leading causes of death

• Our rate of preventable death is roughly 50% higher than the OECD average

• And our life expectancy is 2.7 years shorter than the OECD average

Think about that last one for a second.

We’re one of the richest countries on Earth with some of the best hospitals, doctors, drugs, surgical procedures, and medical technology in the entire world …

And yet Americans are dying years earlier than people in many other comparable countries.

You might be wondering, “What in the world is WRONG with us?”
But maybe we should be asking: “What are we doing differently?”

And one very obvious place to start looking is what’s on our plates.

What comes to mind when I say American food?

• Hamburgers?

• French fries?

• Pizza?

• Tacos?

• Fried chicken?

• What about tofu?

“Oh heck no!”, people will say, “that’s not American food! That’s Asian food! "

Exactly.

Tofu has been eaten throughout much of Asia for centuries. So have other traditional soy foods like tempeh, miso, natto, edamame, and soy milk.

And here’s the interesting part:

Some of the populations that have traditionally eaten these foods also happen to have some of the longest life expectancies in the world.

Take Japan.

The average life expectancy in Japan is about 84 years.
Here in the United States? About 78 years.

That’s almost a six-year difference.

Now, am I saying tofu is responsible for those extra six years? Of course not.

The Japanese diet is different from ours in all kinds of ways. Their lifestyles are different. Their health-care system is different. Their portion sizes are different. There are dozens of factors involved.

But I am saying that just maybe we’re afraid of the wrong foods. Think about some of the things we’ve been taught to worry about.

• Tofu? It has estrogen!

• Potatoes? Too many carbs!

• Fruit? Too much sugar!

• Beans? Lectins!

• Rice? It’ll spike your blood sugar!

Meanwhile, somehow a bacon cheeseburger with a large order of fries and a 32-ounce Coke became perfectly normal “American food.”

Isn’t that interesting?

Maybe instead of asking whether tofu has too much estrogen, or whether a potato has too many carbs, we ought to take a closer look at the foods that make up the Standard American Diet.

Because THAT might tell us a whole lot more about why our health statistics look the way they do.

• We’ve somehow reached a point where we’re afraid of the potato — but not the potato chip.

• We’re afraid of the sugar in an apple — but not the sugar in a 32-ounce Coke.

• And we’re afraid of tofu — while a bacon cheeseburger seems perfectly normal.

Maybe the problem isn’t that healthy eating has become too complicated.

Maybe we’ve just forgotten what real food looks like?