The Finnish Town That Went on a Diet
theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/04/finlan...
theatlantic.comPosted Aug 20, 2018, 3:06 PM UTC
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theatlantic.comThe North Karelia project was one that tried to get heart disease down with a more plantbased approach, along with some other factors such as smoking and activity in an entire population. And one that I haven't seen discussed here too much.
Too often, the confusionists will always cite short term research but will spit on population studies which I find much more interesting for IRL results, since that is where we all live.
http://www.who.int/chp/about/integrated_cd/index2.html
North Karelia Project
In the early 1970's Finland had the greatest CVD mortality rate in the world. The North Karelia Project was started in 1972 as a national pilot and demonstration programme for CVD prevention. Reduction in the population levels of the well established risk factors (smoking, elevated cholesterol and elevated blood pressure) was the main intermediate objective. A comprehensive community-based intervention involving health services, NGO's, industry, media and public policy was used. After the initial period (1972-77), the project experiences have been actively used for comprehensive national heart health programme. Carefully conducted evaluation involving population surveys and disease registers have shown that the population risk factor levels have greatly reduced, and consequently the age-adjusted CHD mortality rate among 30-64 year old male population has reduced, from 1970 to 1995, by 73% in North Karelia and 65% in all Finland. Very favourable changes have also been shown with cancer and all cause mortality and the general health of the population. International collaboration, especially through WHO, will test similar approaches in other parts of the world and help control this major global disease burden.
You can find out more on the Karelia Project via Google and here is an indepth PDF:
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For some reason I thought the Finnish had a healthy diet. I visited a few years ago and was surprised to find out their diet is very meat (processed too) heavy and doesn't have much vegetables. I mostly ate meat and potatoes. A lot of drinking too.
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Today I was just thinking that a country should stop all animal farming and see how that affects everything. Or it could be a town as well.
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This kind of population health research (like the Caerphilly cohort here in the UK) should really drive policy. But unfortunately it's still politically unpopular to fiscally disincentivize consumption as it's seen as big brother.
Really it's just the same as safety regulations in industry. Like three point seatbelts but for your heart/cancer/NCD
Remember the uproar in NY over taxing Big Gulps? That's what would happen, but worse, if meat were disincentivized.
I'm in pharmacy school, and we're just starting our semester. This semester we're covering cardiovascular disease states, diabetes, and kidney issues. Shocker! Weight and diet are huge predictors of your risk for developing heart disease. Age is up there too, but I wonder how much of that is due to the accumulation of damage over a lifetime rather than simply being old. I mean, they even admit that on SAD we start developing atherosclerosis from before the age of 10.
For sure. If meat the meat industry wasn't subsidised, but minimum pricing introduced alongside welfare standards to try and push towards lower volume higher quality production. Instead of this mass value BS.
If we ever get to a point where the govt would go for it, maybe they could do one of those step down things they do for everything else. Subsidize a little less/make animal products a little more expensive every year over a 5 year period. Give people a little time to figure out how to shift their diet over. And give farmers a chance to put some of their cow/pig/chicken eggs into a different basket. Obvs cold turkey would be better, but... gotta work with people.
The cold turkey policy. I like it!