Dean Ornish: The world's killer diet

With all the legitimate concerns about AIDS and avian flu --

and we'll hear about that from the

brilliant Dr. Brilliant later today --

I want to talk about the other pandemic, which is

cardiovascular disease, diabetes, hypertension --

all of which are completely preventable for at

least 95 percent of people

just by changing diet and lifestyle.

And what's happening is that there's a

globalization of illness occurring, that people

are starting to eat like us, and live like us, and

die like us. And in one generation, for example,

Asia's gone from having one of the lowest rates of

heart disease and obesity and diabetes to one

of the highest. And in Africa, cardiovascular disease

equals the HIV and AIDS deaths

in most countries.

So there's a critical window of opportunity we

have to make an important difference that can

affect the lives of literally millions of people,

and practice preventive medicine on a global

scale.

Heart and blood vessel diseases still kill more

people -- not only in this country, but also

worldwide -- than everything else combined, and yet

it's completely preventable for almost everybody.

It's not only preventable; it's actually

reversible. And for the last almost 29 years,

we've been able to show that by simply changing

diet and lifestyle, using these very high-tech,

expensive, state-of-the-art measures to prove how

powerful these very simple and low-tech and low-cost

interventions can be like -- quantitative

arteriography, before and after a year, and

cardiac PET scans.

We showed a few months ago -- we published the

first study showing you can actually stop or

reverse the progression of prostate cancer by

making changes in diet and lifestyle, and 70 percent

regression in the tumor growth, or inhibition of

the tumor growth, compared to only nine percent in the

control group.

And in the MRI and MR spectroscopy here, the

prostate tumor activity is shown in red -- you can

see it diminishing after a year.

Now there is an epidemic of obesity: two-thirds of

adults and 15 percent of kids. What's really concerning

to me is that diabetes has increased 70 percent in the

past 10 years, and this may be the first

generation in which our kids live a shorter life

span than we do. That's pitiful, and it's

preventable.

Now these are not election returns, these are the

people -- the number of the people who are obese

by state, beginning in '85, '86, '87 -- these are

from the CDC website -- '88, '89, '90, '91 -- you

get a new category -- '92, '93, '94, '95, '96,

'97, '98, '99, 2000, 2001 -- it gets worse. We're

kind of devolving. (Laughter)

Now what can we do about this? Well, you know, the

diet that we've found that can reverse heart

disease and cancer is an Asian diet.

But the people in Asia are starting to eat like we

are, which is why they're starting to get sick

like we are.

So I've been working with a lot of the big food

companies. They can make it fun and sexy and hip

and crunchy and convenient to eat healthier foods,

like -- I chair the advisory boards to McDonald's,

and PepsiCo, and ConAgra, and Safeway, and soon

Del Monte, and they're finding that it's good

business.

The salads that you see at McDonald's came from

the work -- they're going to have an Asian salad. At

Pepsi, two-thirds of their revenue growth came

from their better foods.

And so if we can do that, then we can free up

resources for buying drugs that you really do need

for treating AIDS and HIV and malaria and for

preventing avian flu. Thank you.