“Malnutrition is the number one cause of death in our society today.”

 

“Malnutrition is the number one cause of death in our society today.”      (From an article by T. Colin Campbell)

Malnutrition, including the dietary patterns that produce obesity and chronic disease, such as heart disease and diabetes, and is the number one cause of death in the world today.  It kills literally millions of adults and children worldwide every year.  The costs to both affluent individuals and governments struggling to meet their economic projections, continues to grow, despite being largely ignored by healthcare policy institutions, the media, and the public.

The word malnutrition is most often used to describe diets that are deficient in calories or essential nutrients and associated with starvation and extreme poverty.  The word malnutrition literally means “poor” nutrition.  It needs to be applied equally to dietary patterns of excess that produce obesity, and diet-related diseases like heart disease and type II diabetes.

More than1.9 billion adults worldwide are now overweight or obese.  This is four times as many people then those who are undernourished (462 million).  This gap is growing most pronouncedly in high-income countries, but now even the low and middle income countries are experiencing rising rates of obesity and overweight.^[1]

To a greater or lesser extent, malnutrition plays a role in virtually all of these causes of death. For example, up to 90 percent of heart disease deaths,^[3] 70 percent of cancer deaths,^[4] and 50 percent of stroke deaths^[4] could be prevented by the informed use of nutrition. Likewise, it is widely accepted in the medical community that most type II diabetes could be prevented by better nutrition.

A vegan diet provides all the protein, vitamins, and other nutrients needed for optimal health without the fat, cholesterol and empty calories of the meat and dairy based diet.  GO VEGAN!