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Panel Detail:
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
10:50 AM - 12:05 PM
Nutrition and Health: Separating Fact from Fiction
Speakers:
Caldwell Esselstyn Jr.,
Preventive Cardiology Consultant, Department of General Surgery, Cleveland Clinic
Francine Kaufman,
Professor of Pediatrics, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California; Head of the Center for Diabetes, Endocrinology and Metabolism, Childrens Hospital Los Angeles
Samuel Klein,
William H. Danforth Professor of Medicine; Director, Center for Human Nutrition, Washington University School of Medicine
Dean Ornish,
Founder and President, Preventive Medicine Research Institute; Clinical Professor of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco
Harold Schmitz,
Chief Science Officer, Mars Inc.
Moderator:
Howard Soule, Senior Fellow, Milken Institute; Managing Director of Knowledge Universe Health and Wellness LLC
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Panelists, including Caldwell Esselstyn Jr. and Francine Kaufman, above, focused on ways people can improve their own health.
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Moderator Howard Soule of the Milken Institute and Knowledge Universe Health and Wellness LLC, introduced the panel of health professionals, allowing each to speak on what he or she believes to be the most important aspect of improving the health today.
Francine Kaufman of Childrens Hospital Los Angeles emphasized the need for a change in school and family environment. Obesity prevention, she said, is especially challenging in urban areas, where poverty, a lack of safe places to exercise and poor education lead to malnutrition among young people. She predicted that one in three children in the 21st century will suffer from diabetes if things do change. Educating children early in life about health benefits through phys-ed and other programs, and improving the nutrition offered in school lunches and vending machines, could make a significant difference, she stated.
Samuel Klein of the Washington University School of Medicine spoke about the benefits of weight reduction. While we have expensive procedures and medication for treating diabetes, coronary heart disease and other chronic conditions, the best way to target all cardiovascular and other obesity-related diseases is through weight loss. More specifically, he said, this weight loss must be achieved through calorie reduction and exercise, not shortcuts, such as liposuction, in order to achieve the health benefits.
Klein also spoke to the possibility that the ideal body mass index (BMI) may be much lower than previously thought. He mentioned an experimental group of middle-aged people, with normal weight, who reaped significant health benefits by lowering their BMI to around 19.
Caldwell Esselstyn Jr. of the Cleveland Clinic weighed in on the benefits of a plant-based diet. He provided the audience with a slide of chronic illnesses related to obesity in Norway during World War II. The slide showed a staggering drop in the incidence of these illnesses during the 1940s, when the Axis powers confiscated Norwegian livestock, and suggested that the drop was directly related to the decreased ingestion of meat and dairy foods. He maintained that the only thing Americans need to do in order to fight the vast majority of chronic diseases is to replace unhealthy fats (mainly found in animal products) with fruits, vegetables and whole grains.
Dean Ornish of the Preventive Medicine Research Institute also spoke about the need to change the way people think about food. Rather than turning nutrition into a guilt campaign, he said, we ought to make nutrition "fun, sexy, hip, crunchy and convenient." There is room for entrepreneurship and private interests in nutrition, he added, noting that two-thirds of Pepsi Cola's profits last year came from its healthier foods.
Finally, Harold Schmitz of Mars Inc. provided some of the company's recent nutrition research regarding chocolate. While he focused mainly on the improved blood flow that studies have shown comes from certain cocoa beans rich in phytochemicals, he also spoke to the two more general aspects of health that he believes need to change. First, he said, he would like to see nutrition science embrace the chemistry of food groups. Second, he would like to see a system that rewards the business sector for investments in nutrition as much as it reward them for pharmaceutical research. With these two aspects in place, he said, the private sector could accomplish much in the field of nutrition.
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