YOU CAN ESCAPE THIS HEART TRAP ARE YOUR DAILY MEALS CHOKING YOUR LIFELINE BLOCKING THE VITAL ARTERIES THAT FEED YOUR HEART?

NO SENSIBLE HOUSEWIFE pours grease from a frying pan into her kitchen sink day after day. She knows only too well that sooner or later, the fat will harden and stop up the drainpipe, causing mess, trouble and plumbers' bills.

Learn right now that the same thing can happen in the blood vessels that feed your heart. Scales of hard fat can plug these blood vessels, causing a coronary (heart) attack.

This, to our way of thinking, can be called . . . THE GREASE TRAP DISEASE!

When you eat foods containing a high percentage of any kind of fat, your blood becomes loaded with infinitesimally small fat droplets. Blood, as you know, is a watery medium; and in the blood, as elsewhere, water and fat don't mix.

Nature has devised certain special ways to get the fat droplets out of the blood, and some types of fat, called soft fat, travel in and out of the blood stream quite readily and easily. On the other hand, equally tiny drops of hard fat have to be bound with cholesterol to be transported out of the blood.

This hard fat causes the blood-cholesterol level to rise and some of the cholesterol tends to linger in the blood. Sooner or later, if you continue to have high blood-cholesterol levels, a particle of cholesterol and hard fat may cling to the inside of the blood vessel wall. In time, the speck of cholesterol and fat causes an irritation, which, in turn, makes changes in the affected area.

The waxy-like cholesterol and fat particles collect in the sore spot, and together the two form “scales.” From then on, the plaque, as doctors call it, tends to grow bigger and bigger.

Obviously, the space through which the blood once flowed freely gradually becomes narrower and narrower. Eventually, the blood flow may become entirely stopped up, much like the inside of a water pipe that has become clogged with rust or the calcareous material found in hard water.

In a human being, a piece of fat plaque may slough off and plug the artery involved. If this should happen in the blood vessels that nourish the heart, it is called a coronary thrombosis.

Although the coronary blood vessels can be stopped in several different ways as a result of being narrowed by plaques, each winds up with what we commonly call a coronary heart attack.

There is a world of scientific evidence to prove that you may entirely prevent, or markedly hold down, the formation of plaques by balancing your intake of hard and soft fats.

This means cutting down on the amount of hard fats you eat, and eating some soft fats to replace them. The “whys and wherefores” of this epoch-making discovery is the reason for this book.

Thank goodness, there is also every reason to believe that the same simple precautions can also help you to absorb and cleanse your blood vessels of those existing fat plaques which haven't already become calcified or sclerosed. In short, if you are now a prime candidate for a serious coronary attack, you can get yourself out of danger.

Let us assure you now, at the beginning that you won't have to become a diet crank to guard your heart and brain against fatty degenerative disease. You won't have to measure out grams of food or become a nutrition expert.

HEART SAVER EATING, as we call it, is not difficult to apply. Your meals will still please your palate, satisfy your appetite, and give you a full share of the joy of eating.

But we'll have to start with a few gloomy-sounding facts and figures to show you why it is so vitally important to use judgment in choosing the foods you eat. Bear with us while we take a quick look into the more-or-less recent developments in the new medical understanding of coronary and apoplectic attacks.

Comparatively few people know the difference between hard and soft fats—or for that matter the facts about the coronary story.  Much of the fat we eat is hidden in our foods. We get it in frankfurters and ice cream, our marbled steaks and tender meats.

We add it to our foods when we fry in butter, margarine, or the solid cooking fats. We load up on it when we butter our vegetables, or douse our potatoes with gravy. We take in a lot of hard fat in the cheese we eat, our hors d'oeuvres, and our television snacks.

Doctors and nutritionists figure that not more than 25 to 30 percent of the calories we eat (depending upon body weight) should come from fats of all kinds. Ideally according to our personal view, slightly more than one-half of the fat we eat should be of the soft kind, which means those derived from vegetable sources.

Unfortunately, most people, on the average, get from 39 to 50 percent of our calories from fat—and 85 percent of this amount is hard fat derived mainly from animal and commercial sources! Without doubt, this reckless and irrational pattern of eating has given us the highest death rate from coronary disease in the entire wide world.

People on diet not only keep their fat intake below the safe 25-percent calorie level; but what is more important, they get most of their fat from olive oil, a relatively soft fat, which is kind to the arteries and could wash plaques away. Their coronary death rate is one-fourth of a chance for severe heart attack.

Of course, this is thinking in a public health sense, where averages and statistics are the guiding lights.  As individual, you don’t have to think of the fats we eat in such specific amounts. But, we do have to acquaint ourselves with the fat-facts about foods.

We have to vary our meat eating in better fashion; eating beef and lamb less often, chicken and other fowl more frequently, and much more fish. We have to learn to switch to skim milk, or at least make it half skim and half whole milk.

We must cut away the fats from the meats we eat; butter our bread less abundantly. We should learn to drink black coffee. All frying should be done with soft-fat vegetable oils; never the white, hard, hydrogenated shortenings which have become so popular in the past twenty years.

In fact, the soft oils should be used for all cooking and baking purposes—especially in the preparation of sauces and gravies. It will mean a revolution in the kitchen for many housewives—but save millions of husbands' lives. The woman who brags, “I always cook with butter,” is helping to make her family more likely to fall prey to coronary attack.

As we shall discover later, there are a hundred-and-one ways to trim our hard-fat intake to a safe amount, or replace them with soft fats which will help to protect us from “The Grease Trap Disease”.

FATS HAVE THEIR ROLE

One of the several reasons why the housewife uses fat in the kitchen is the fact that fats have an extraordinary capacity for absorbing flavours. Anyone who has fried onions or fish in fats needs no laboratory demonstration of this fact. We put this principle to work when we rub a piece of lamb with garlic butter.

It's the main reason why we like a film of butter on carrots or peas. The fat, absorbing delicate flavours, intensifies them and spreads them out for the taste buds. Fat makes rough or hard-to-swallow foods more lubricous, in everyday language, smoother and more slippery.  All these aims are worthy enough to be continued—but only with soft fats.

A lot of people on the average consume at least three tablespoons of added hard fat per person per day. This includes the butter the housewife adds to spinach, the solid cooking fat used to make cakes, cookies and dressings, and the fats used to fry foods. The whole milk and cream added to recipes helps significantly to raise this total.

Consider a housewife who plans her menus and cooks her food in typical Western/Eastern fashion for a family of five. Statistically, she buys and uses three tablespoons of hard kitchen fat per person in her family, per day.

That's fifteen tablespoons for the family daily, 105 tablespoons a week. Since two tablespoons of fat weigh one ounce, the housewife is serving over fifty-two ounces, almost 3½ pounds, of cooking fat per week.

What a tremendous heart saving job she could do for herself and her family if she'd just think twice before adding hard fat to foods, and if she would switch to recipes and cooking techniques calling for soft fats only.

HOW TO KEEP THE ODDS IN YOUR FAVOR THIS NEW FOOD   KNOWLEDGE   CAN   MEAN   MORE YEARS, BETTER YEARS, FOR YOU.

FOR CENTURIES, doctors have well known that the blood vessels of the body harden, particularly in old age. In 1833, Dr. J. G. Lobstein, a noted French pathologist, coined the name arteriosclerosis for hardening of the arteries.

The word, like so many medical terms, was taken from the Greek; arteria—from which our word artery is derived, and skleros—meaning hard. Dr. Lobstein described a particular type, characterized by extensive chalk-like deposits of calcium, but the name was applied indiscriminately to all different kinds of “hardening” of the blood vessel walls.

In 1847, an American, Dr. J. Vogel, noted deposits of fat and cholesterol in the many sections of hard arteries he had examined under the microscope. Nine years later, the great pathologist, Rudolph Virchow, proved that such fatty deposits were the distinguishing feature of the by far most common type of arterial hardening. He used the term atherosis (Greek for mush-like) to describe the cheesy character of the artery changes.

In 1904, F. Marchand wrote a new classic description of the fatty type of arterial degeneration, and selected the name ATHERO¬SCLEROSIS to define it. (It is often described in medical literature by the initials AHD.)

It is important for you to thoroughly appreciate that atherosclerosis is different from the classical hardening of the arteries which may develop in old age. Atherosclerosis, the fatty type, which we described as “The Grease Trap Disease,” may be acquired very early in life.

It is not at all rare in teenagers, and has even been seen in babies a year-or-two-old. Post-mortem examinations of hundreds of young men, aged 20 to 30, have shown extensive fatty deposits in the coronary arteries.

It has been estimated that today, seven out of ten  men worldwide have developed much more than a token amount of atherosclerosis before the age of twenty-five. Their coronary arteries are already narrowed with developing plaques.

This is the inevitable result of the kind of eating we delight in eating too many rich and oily foods, and our present way of baby feeding. Very few mothers breast feed their babies today.

They substitute formulas which have as their base, hard cow's-milk. Certain Department of Agriculture bulletins (as will be noted later) even recommend feeding young children from six to eight glasses of whole per day.

We spend the biggest part of our food dollars for the hard-fat foods, and children, especially, are urged to eat them. Hydrogenated peanut butter, hamburgers, frankfurters, chocolate malts, and ice cream are all favourites with our young folks.

Each one of these foods is rich in hard fats; particularly frankfurters and hamburgers. Beef, bacon, and other meat drippings are carefully treasured in the home for use as cooking fat.

It is here that we lay the groundwork for the Hodiak-Garfield-Power type of tragedies. Sudden death at 35 or 40! This is indeed the “lost generation” as far as coronary disease is concerned.

In each decade after age thirty, the percentage of AHD deaths grows greater and greater. It doubles, triples, and quadruples as we grow older, until more than three-quarters of all deaths around the world past 75 years old are caused by coronary or apoplectic attacks.

Let us repeat. Atherosclerosis is the underlying blood vessel disease which brings on the vast majority (90 percent) of the millions coronary attacks hitting people worldwide every year. And these estimates are conservative!

Marchand's clear account of this fear-fully common type of arterial disease stirred up a great new interest in study and research which might lead science to better understand it. Almost at once, some workers wondered how and why drops of fat burrowed into the artery walls, and why the spot always contained a great deal of cholesterol.

Cholesterol is a fat-like, pearly substance which crystallizes into a needle-like form. It dissolves only in fat, and so in foods is associated with certain types of fat, particularly animal fats. The cholesterol found in the human body is manufactured by various body tissues from the fats found in foods.

Was there any link between diet and the fatty blood vessel changes?

Very early studies about cholesterol were conducted and more research done at the present Medical Research Centres. It was in 1908, A. Ignatowski, working on this problem at the Medical Academy in St. Petersburg, Russia, in a few weeks, produced fatty deposits in the arteries of rabbits by feeding them a diet consisting exclusively of meat, milk, or eggs.

Of course, it wasn't known at the time just which dietary factor produced the disease, but proteins were suspected. In 1910, Stukkeu, also working with rabbits in St. Petersburg, demonstrated quite convincingly that the damage was not caused by the proteins, but that foods containing both fat and cholesterol did work such harm.

He was positive that cholesterol in foods was the offending factor, and quite a few investigators enthusiastically agreed with him. This belief was gradually strengthened through the years until it was widely accepted. Eventually, it was shown that only the cholesterol that actually gets into the blood stream can cause AHD, and the dietetic road to coronary prevention was charted and cleared.

Yes thank goodness, to this wonderful scientist, now you can control the cholesterol levels of your blood, and act to prevent atherosclerosis. This knowledge is the greatest contribution that nutrition science has yet made to saving human life.

Meanwhile, to return to the earlier studies, there was no doubt that feeding rabbits an excess of milk, meat, and eggs could quickly cause atherosclerosis, and the big question that had to be decided was . . . could the same rule apply to human beings?

Most contemporary scientists felt it could not. Although they agreed that such foods might cause the blood vessel harm in a rabbit, they doubted that the same thing would hold for human beings, or other animals, for that matter. They argued that a rabbit lives mainly on vegetables, and doesn't normally eat fat- and cholesterol-containing foods.

Research on the subject lagged somewhat for the next thirty years. Then came a landmark! In 1942, Drs. Dauber and Katz produced experimental atherosclerosis in chickens; which eat both vegetable and animal foods.

Chickens were chosen because, of all animals, these fowls often develop an atherosis closely resembling the human type. In quick succession the disease was produced in dogs, ducks, geese, guinea pigs, hamsters, and monkeys, always, of course, with a diet rich in hard fats.

Scientists can't very well try such experiments on human beings because they would have to prove the study by sacrificing the subject and performing a post-mortem examination. However, the fact was one hundred-percent proven as far as some animals were concerned.

In the early 1950's, several investigators found that feeding animals an excess of certain fats which were entirely free of cholesterol could quickly cause the artery changes. Newspapers played up the new discoveries with headlines: “CHOLESTEROL FOUND NOT GUILTY! CHOLESTEROL NOT TO BLAME!” Of course, such articles couldn't tell the whole story because all the details weren't known.

But, to put it mildly, many people faith-fully following a low-cholesterol diet were upset and confused.

Was cholesterol really innocent?

Was their dieting to no avail?

These questions were answered by studying the behaviour of fat in the blood. When you eat any kind of fat, it is picked up by the blood stream immediately after digestion. When you eat a very fatty meal, your blood is literally suffused with infinitesimally small fat droplets called chylomicrons.

The fatter you eat, the more “greasy” your blood will be. In fact, if you eat a very, very fatty meal, your blood plasma actually becomes murky or cloudy. It is no easy problem to get this fat out of the blood and into the various parts of the body where it belongs. Immensely complicated chemical transactions of various kinds take place. There is one very important fact that you need remember.

Much of the fat in your blood is changed into special molecules called lipoproteins, which means a combination of fat, protein, and cholesterol. The cholesterol is needed to dissolve the fat and make it transportable in the blood, which is water medium.

Your liver is the factory which manufactures lipoproteins, and it automatically supplies all the cholesterol needed. It is here that we find the crux of the atherosis question.

When certain of the components in hard fats are made into lipoproteins, large amounts of cholesterol are needed. Later, when these particular lipoproteins are broken down so that the fat they carry can be freed for use, the cholesterol is left in the blood.

A good deal of it may be cleared out, but some of it sticks around to give the eater a high blood-cholesterol level, which in turn can lead to the formation of plaques—and eventually, coronary disease.

Of course, we have oversimplified a very involved chemical process—but these very pertinent facts remain:

1.            Certain components of hard fats are transformed into a special kind of lipoprotein by your liver.

2.            A part of the cholesterol which is used for this purpose may be left in your blood stream when the lipoprotein is broken down for body use.

Therefore, when you eat hard fats, cholesterol appears in your blood. The more hard fats you eat, the higher your blood-cholesterol level goes.

It even gets down to such points as—the harder the fat, the more cholesterol needed. So, you can act to control your cholesterol levels according to the amount and type of hard fats you eat.

The blood chemistry of soft fats is quite different. There is no need to go into the fine details, but the important thing is that the soft fats don't raise your blood cholesterol. In fact, soft fats contain certain factors which tend to lower the blood-cholesterol levels, and are sometimes used for this purpose in medical practice.

To summarize: It is only the cholesterol which gets into your blood that can cause plaques or fatty blood vessel deposits. The cholesterol you get in foods does not enter your blood stream. It is screened out by the process of digestion.

The cholesterol made in other parts of your body serves good and useful purposes. Some of it is turned into life-giving hormones; some makes compounds necessary to life. Only the cholesterol which gets into your blood stream, because of hard fats, does coronary damage.

It is up to you to keep your blood cholesterol down to a reasonable level, and it is the purpose of this article to tell you how to do it. While it is true that, from a coronary view, you don't need to concern yourself about the cholesterol you get in foods; you will wish to know that a given food contains cholesterol, for it serves as a guide to tell you that there is also hard fat present. The two go together. The presence of cholesterol is an indicator that warns you there is hard fat in a specific food!

The further we travel along life's road, the more we can benefit by heart saver eating and living. Whether you are young or old, this is the greatest health service you can render yourself. Don't wantonly plug your coronary arteries with hard fat.

We call atherosclerosis the “long word for a short life.” When you set out to eat less hard fats, you are taking steps to prevent it in all its forms. Whenever you are tempted to overindulge—think of “The Grease Trap Disease!” Don't dig your grave with your teeth!

PAYING RESPECT TO A PROPHET WITH HONOR

Sir William Osier (1849-1919) was, without doubt, the most beloved and respected physician of modern times. Handsome, cultured, and by many considered the all time wisest of clinicians, his basic grasp of the coronary problem has only begun to be recognized and appreciated today.

In 1896, Dr. Osier emphasized, as had others before him, that coronary was a man's disease. Only one woman was numbered among the 40 coronary patients he reported upon at that time.

Later, as his experience broadened, he wrote what we realize only too well today: “The greatest incidence of the disease (coronary) occurs among men who eat, drink, and smoke to excess . . . Perhaps this is the nemesis through which nature exacts retributive justice for the transgression of her laws.”

Dr. William Dock, writing in the Journal of the American Medical Association (5-9-59) recalls that as early as 1907, Dr. Osier counselled his students: “In the treatment of many cases of coronary disease Diet is the central point.”

Dr. Osier's reference to “breaking Nature's laws” most certainly applies to the laws of right eating. Your blood stream is geared to take care of a certain quantity of hard fat. When you consistently burden this fluid with an overload of cholesterol and hard fat—deposits will form.

Just as an excess of silt and mud can build a sand bar on a river bed, so your blood vessels can be occluded by cholesterol and fat. The process can begin in the first year of life, and you may have to pay the penalty before you reach forty.

A TEST THAT MAY SAVE YOUR LIFE NOW YOU CAN READILY LEARN WHETHER YOUR DIET IS HEADING YOU FOR TROUBLE

CHOLESTEROL has interested doctors since 1785, when it was found to be the main constituent of gall stones. We have already traced the history of its association with coronary disease since Vogel discovered this waxy-like material was a principle ingredient of blood vessel plaques.

Today, as you must have gathered by now, up-to-date doctors use the cholesterol test to determine your probable susceptibility to a coronary attack.

Blood-cholesterol readings are expressed in milligrams, and range from a low of 40 to a high of 1000 or more. A high cholesterol reading may lead your doctor to believe that your coronary arteries are narrowed by deposits of hard fat.

At present, cholesterol tests are the surest way of enabling your doctor to help you prevent or control the mistakes which may lead to a coronary attack. He can check how efficiently your heart saver eating is helping you, and whether you need a stricter diet. He can also decide whether or not you need more exercise, or more relief from tension.

The average man should take a cholesterol test at least once every six months. Don't let your doctor keep you in the dark about the results. You have a right, and a duty to yourself to know what they are.

Tens of thousands of cholesterol tests, performed on people between the ages of 40 and 60, show that average cholesterol levels will range from 200 to 300. People in all other countries of the world (except Finland) have much lower averages. By the same token, their death rates from coronary disease are much lower than ours.

Coronary disease is comparatively rare among rural Guatemalans. Their cholesterol levels average less than 175. The Eskimos are particularly exempt from coronary disease. Sever-al series of tests indicate that their blood-cholesterol levels average around 140, due presumably to the fact that they eat many fish-fats, which are highly unsaturated.

Don't be misled by the notion that the terms average and normal, as used in this country, means that everything is all right. You often hear it said that it is normal for people to have cholesterol readings over 200. That is normal only in the sense that it's average in certain country, where we expect more than 2500 individuals per day to suffer a coronary attack.

 It is not normal in the sense of what is right and safe in terms of coronary prevention. Don't feel safe with a 250 cholesterol level because “everybody else” around you has high readings. “Everybody else” includes your fellow human who are being stricken by coronary attacks at the rate of a million a year.

Personally, I would not feel safe from a possible coronary attack if the cholesterol readings averaged 200, or over. It is firmly (and this is entirely a personal opinion), that it is safest and best for an individual to keep his blood-cholesterol reading at 175 to 190. Work to this end, no matter what your age may be, with diet and exercise, plus avoiding mental and emotional stress.

At what age should a person have his first cholesterol test?

In the Specialist opinion, so far as males are concerned, the younger the better. Ordinarily, newborn infants have cholesterol levels approximately half the readings of an adult aged twenty; but large variations are found, depending upon the amount and kind of fat in the infant's formula.

By the time the average infant reaches two months, the cholesterol readings are not much different from that of a grownup’s. This is to be expected, because so few mothers nurse their babies, or guard their own cholesterol levels.

One day, prenatal feeding will include cholesterol precautions, because the embryo, nestled in the womb, is fed from the mother’s blood. Also, our babies' formulas will no longer be super-charged with hard cow's milk. We will fight the threat of coronary disease where it first begins—in the womb, in the cradle, and in the critical time during which the infant develops.

In the last few years, more than several instances of advanced coronary disease have been discovered upon post-mortem examination of infant’s one- or two-years-old. Cholesterol levels running well over 250 have regularly been found in teenagers—which are not surprising, considering the amount of hot dogs, ice cream, and hamburgers they eat, and the quantity of whole milk they drink.

It is logical to presume that if cholesterol tests were made routine for children and young male adults, and readings of 200 weren't considered safe, we could forestall a considerable number, and perhaps most, of our early coronary deaths.

All this, of course, would be predicated upon more sensible feeding, from birth up. If young men who have high blood-cholesterol levels would adopt a better choice of foods, exercise more, and avoid continued mental tension, we could win a major battle right now.

To emphasize the important point: You are not living a true heart saver way of life unless you keep your cholesterol readings below 200. Take advantage of the vital in-formation a cholesterol test gives you, until better checks and counterchecks come along.

FIND THE TROUBLEMAKER IN YOUR MEAL HERE ARE THE KITCHEN HEROES AND VILLAINS THAT CAN MEAN LIFE OR DEATH IN THE DRAMA OF HEART DISEASE.

EACH FOOD HAS its own particular kind of fat, which is always just as individual as the food itself, not only in taste and appearance, but in chemical composition. Each of these fat types plays a role in the unfolding of our great tragic drama: atherosclerosis.

The bulk of any fat is composed of three different kinds of fatty acids. It is these that you must know about, because one of the three is the big troublemaker that causes the blood-cholesterol level to rise.

Chemists class the fatty acids in the following three different groups:

a.            Saturated fatty acids, which we will call SATTS, or “hard”

b.            Mono-unsaturated   fatty   acids, which we will call MONOS.

c.             Poly-unsaturated fatty acids, which we will call POLYS, or “soft”

Fix those simple and convenient names in your mind—SATTS and MONOS and POLYS. Bacon fat differs chemically from the fat in peanuts by its ratio of the three different fatty acid classes, as shown by the following percentages:

Bacon;

Satts - 44       

Monos - 45 

Polys - 11

Peanuts              

Satts - 20

Monos - 52   

Polys - 28

Bacon fat is called a “hard” fat because the percentage of SATTS (44) is greater than the POLYS (11). Peanut fat is called a “soft” fat because the percentage of POLYS (28) is greater than the SATTS (20).

This is the way that chemists classify food fats into “hard” and “soft” fat types:

Whenever the percentage of SATTS in a fat is appreciably greater than the POLYS, the fat is called a “hard” fat. By the same token, a “soft” fat is one in which the POLYS predominate. The MONOS are considered neutral.

Your doctor views the fatty acids in a clinical sense because he knows that:

A /Saturated   fatty   acids   (SATTS) make the blood cholesterol rise.

B /Mono-unsaturated    fatty   acids (MONOS) neither raise nor lower the blood-cholesterol level.

C /Poly-unsaturated fatty acids (POLYS) tend to lower the blood-cholesterol level.

For heart saver eating, of course, we rate food fats by the same measure; and try to balance our fat intake so that the POLYS predominate in the diet, keeping our blood cholesterol at a safe level.

In the year 1952 there were only sure of two things:

1)      That the cholesterol in foods was not, in it-self, the cause of atherosclerosis;

2)      That the animal fats were in some way implicated. We didn't know the SATT-MONO-POLY story then. So, we could only make one recommendation for heart saver eating; viz., radically reduce the total fat intake.

This did help to lower blood-cholesterol levels, but the diet called for considerable will power, and it wasn't very pleasant to follow. How different with the heart saver diet of today! It can be much more varied, far tastier, and so much easier to carry out. Also, today you can take advantage of the most welcome fact that the soft-fat POLYS definitely help to lower the blood-cholesterol levels.

Please! Please! Be sure to acquaint your-self with the fatty-acid composition table included in this chapter. Get a good working knowledge of the SATTS and POLYS. It is good to know that pork is safer to eat than beef, while chicken is the safest meat of all.

You can feel happy about the fact that you are dodging a lot of SATTS when you cut away the fat from a piece of beef; or if instead of beef, you eat veal, which has so much less total fat.

Please understand that the term “hard fat” refers only to the chemical composition and to the relative percentage of SATTS and POLYS present. Melting a “hard fat” makes it soft physically, but it does not change the chemical composition. A melted “hard fat” is still “hard!”

Study the SATT and POLY line-up of all the oils listed. Actually buy and try several of the high-POLY type. See which best suits your taste. Then, learn to use it in cooking and recipe making. The more POLYS you can get into a recipe, the better it will be for your cholesterol levels. This will also enable you to have a greater quantity of hard-fat foods in your daily menus, and make your heart-saver eating more enjoyable.

Note particularly that milk fats are very rich in SATTS, and low in POLYS, Naturally, this includes the fat in ice cream, butter, and cheese made from whole milk, for these are all milk fats, one as hard as the other, and not at all good for your blood-cholesterol levels.

Get up to date on the margarine story, too. People who still maintain that margarine is safer than butter are one hundred percent mistaken, and behind the times. Margarine, which is an artificially hardened fat, is significantly harder than butter, and not quite so safe to eat.

A few years ago, when most authorities believed that cholesterol in foods was the coronary culprit, many people were advised to switch from butter to margarine because margarine contains no cholesterol whatever. However, as you now know, it is the SATTS that you have to look out for—and there are less SATTS in butter.

The fat in oleomargarine contains more SATTS (and thus is harder than the fat in butter) because it has been artificially saturated by the commercial process of hydrogenation. The same story holds for any and all of the white, solid shortenings, sold under various trade names. They are all made of fats which were once soft, but through this same process of hydrogenation, have been saturated and made hard. Peanut butter, when hydrogenated (and almost all better quality ones are) also falls into the same category.

When soft oil is made solid by hydrogenation, a big percentage of the POLYS present are turned into SATTS. Some of the MONos are also converted to SATTS in the same manner. And so, what was once a cholesterol-lowering fat becomes cholesterogenic: a word which means “sends the cholesterol up.”

Most of the soybean and cottonseed oils produced in this country are made into margarine and solid cooking fats. Natural soy-bean and cottonseed oils bring your cholesterol down. When hydrogenated, these same oils send it up! Note the difference in SATT percentages brought about by hydrogenation:

Satts -  Monos -  Polys

Soybean oil, before hydrogenation – 13 = 28 = 58

Soybean oil, after hydrogenation, and made into margarine – 52 = 2 = 27

Cottonseed oil, as you buy it – 27 = 22 = 51

Cottonseed oil, hydrogenated and made into solid shortening – 60 = 10 = 21

In each case, genuine soft oil is trans-formed by commercial processing into a very hard fat which, in its new form, is cholesterol-raising. This is perhaps one of the great nutritional tragedies of our time.

Hydrogenation has distinct commercial advantages. A cheap, soft oil can be factory-hardened and made to look and act like butter, which is far more expensive to produce. The factory prospers, and the housewife saves money. Hydrogenated shortenings are not only easier to work with, but stay fresh for a longer time than soft fat which, in its original state, tends to grow rancid.

A big percentage of our modern recipes call for the use of a hydrogenated fat because the recipes are more foolproof. It is easier for a housewife to obtain better results because the physical characteristics of a hydrogenated fat are apt to be more stable, particularly at the melting point.

When you can make a better cook of the average housewife, and save her money at the same time, you gain a tremendous competitive advantage.

The makers of hydrogenated fats are very heavy advertisers in women's and household magazines. The writers for these same publications also tend to push the use of hydrogenated fats. This may not necessary be for the express purpose of helping the advertisers, but simply because, in truth, the hydrogenated fats actually are simpler and more convenient for the housewife to use.

At any rate, for these and various other reasons, the use of hydrogenated fats in this country has grown by tremendous leaps and bounds some estimates place our average daily consumption at three ounces (90 grams) per person. We are literally loading ourselves with SATTS in our daily eating. Is it, therefore, any wonder that our coronary death rates are so high?

You can, in fact, trace a chart which indicates that in the United States the rise of coronary death rates has climbed in almost direct proportion to the use of hydrogenated fats.

Of course, this might not be a fair way to put it, because we consume more milk and dairy products, too. However, there is one thing we must again emphasize. If you, the homemaker, would henceforth use the soft, unsaturated oils as much as possible, in your cooking, baking, and recipe making, you would win a major battle in the fight to keep your blood-cholesterol level low!

HYDROGENATION

Hydrogenation is the process of artificially hardening soft oil by heating it to 200 degrees in the presence of a catalyst such as nickel. Hydrogen is then passed over it. The hydrogen molecules combine with certain free atoms in the unsaturated acids present, completely saturating, or hardening them.

For example, the abundant unsaturated fatty acids in cotton-seed oil can be made to pick up hydrogen. The oil becomes hardened or solidified, resembling lard.

This type of cooking fat made from different oils has become most popular in American kitchens, because, among other things, it doesn't spoil easily or pick up doors. It is often more satisfactory to use.

FATTY ACID COMPOSITION TABLE

Carefully check the percentage of SATTS, MONOS, and POLYS in the following list of foods. The higher the percentage of SATTS in a fat, the more cholesterogenic (cholesterol-raising) it will be. You'll see at once why the fat in beef is so apt to raise the cholesterol level, and why chicken is the best of the heart saver meats. You'll see why cheese, ounce for ounce, is far more cholesterogenic than eggs.

Keep this Table as a reference in planning your heart saver eating, and remember, please, that all figures given are only averages. The fatty acid composition of any class of food varies slightly according to circumstance—how the animal was fed, where the cereal or vegetable was grown. Thus, a corn-fed hog may yield a lower percentage of SATTS, and a higher percentage of POLYS than a hog fed on city slops. We need only to concern ourselves with averages to safely balance our diet

Satts     Monos      Polys

Animal Fats                                      

Beef - 53 = 41 = 6

Lamb – 42 = 53 = 5

Lard – 39 = 48 = 13

Mutton – 52 = 42 = 6

Pork – 44 = 45 = 11

Suet – 56 = 40 = 4

Veal – 41 = 56 = 3

Satts     Monos      Polys

Variety Meat Fats                                            

Beef Heart – 44 = 44 = 12

Beef Liver – 40 = 20 = 40

Lamb Liver – 49 = 26 = 25

Pork Liver – 35 = 21 = 44

Satts     Monos      Polys

Poultry Fats                                       

Chicken – 25 = 51 = 24

Duck – 29 = 49 - 22

Goose – 26 = 51 = 23

Pigeon (squab) – 24 = 52 = 24

Rabbit – 39 = 45 = 16

Turkey – 27 = 50 = 23

Satts     Monos      Polys

Fish Fats                                             

Fresh Water – 24 = 00 = 76

Salt Water – 21 = 00 = 79

Shell Fish - Practically Fat     Free

Satts     Monos      Polys

Dairy Product Fats                                          

Butter – 59 = 38 = 3

Cheese – 58 = 39 = 3

Cream – 59 = 38 = 3

Eggs (hens) – 37 = 52 = 11

Ice Cream – 59 = 38 = 3

Milk (cow's) – 60 = 36 = 4

Satts    Monos    Polys

Vegetable Fats                                

Chocolate – 54 = 43 = 3

Cocoa – 51 = 46 = 3

Coconut – 94 = 5 = 1

Satts     Monos      Polys

Grain and Cereal Fats

Corn – 15 = 35 = 50

Oats – 11 = 58 = 31

Rice – 18 = 47 = 35

Rye – 22 = 60 = 18

Wheat – 15 = 26 = 59

Satts     Monos      Polys

Salad and Cooking Oils

Corn – 15 = 28 = 57

Cottonseed – 27 = 22 = 51

Linseed – 10 = 54 = 36

Olive – 10 = 75 = 15

Peanut – 20 = 52 = 28

Safflower – 11 = 10 = 79

Sesame – 12 = 42 = 46

Soybean – 13 = 29 = 58

Sunflower – 9 = 16 = 75

Satts     Monos      Polys

Nut Fats                                              

Almonds – 7 = 75 = 18

Brazil – 16 = 56 = 28

Peanut – 20 = 52 = 28

Pecans – 5 = 77 = 18

Walnuts – 5 = 32 = 63

Satts     Monos      Polys

Miscellaneous Fats

Satts     Monos      Polys

Home fats – 45 = 49 = 6

Margarine – 63 = 31= 6

Shortenings – 25 = 66 = 9

In principle then, certain oils are made soft by the presence of the POLYS, which have the happy faculty of washing cholesterol out of the blood.

The higher the percentage of POLYS, the more effective the particular soft fat will be in acting to reduce the blood-cholesterol levels.

There is also good reason to believe that a high-POLY diet can go even further; and help to clear already existing deposits of fat and cholesterol from the blood vessel walls.

One thing, however, is certain. We know enough about the blood-cholesterol story to pinpoint the basic principles of heart saver eating.

a.            It is entirely possible to live safely on a diet which includes hard fats (SATTS), providing that soft fats (POLYS) are eaten in slightly greater proportions.

b.            This principle seems to work in a mathematical ratio, so when you eat more POLYS than SATTS, your diet can be called anti-cholesterogenic.

Whenever you eat foods containing hard fats, eat some soft fats in the same meal by way of salad dressings, gravies, or sauces. For every ounce of hard fat that you eat, try to offset it with one ounce of the more highly unsaturated fats. (See Table)

Do not, under any circumstances, eat too much fat—even the softest kind! There is always the calorie count to concern you, and the several body disorders that can result from an over-indulgence in fat of any kind—gall bladder trouble and skin afflictions, to mention only two. Your diet should always be balanced for health.

It has been calculated that for real well being, the calories derived from all fats should not exceed 25 percent of all the calories you consume.

Sometimes, in actual clinical practice, doctors find that they are unable to appreciably reduce the cholesterol levels of certain patients by juggling the POLYS and SATTS. They can only achieve satisfactory results by reducing the total intake of fats.

This happens because certain people are so geared that it is difficult for their body metabolism to clear the blood of an excess of any kind of fat. In such cases, the doctor has to keep the patient on a very strict diet— low in both hard and soft fats.

Because the fatty acids (both hard and soft) of animal and vegetable fats alike occur mainly in “triglyceride” form; a diet restricting all kinds of fat is called a “low triglyceride” diet.

Forget the term “triglyceride” for a moment. By any name, there is a definite coronary and apoplectic threat when too much fat of any kind gets into the blood. (Recall that the blood becomes “milky” with fat droplets when you eat a fat-laden meal.)

Not all the fat in the blood is made into lipoproteins. The free fat which circulates in chylomicron form is hard to get rid of, sometimes lingering in the blood for many hours after a meal. This hazard increases as people grow older—and the ability of the blood to clear itself of fat is always delayed in individuals with atherosclerosis.

The presence of a lot of fat in the blood causes it to become sticky and slow moving. The blood cells develop a tendency to clump and, as shown by tests, clot more readily. Both apoplexy and coronary attacks are often precipitated by small clots completely stopping up arteries already narrowed by fatty deposits.

So, as you can see, there are several very good reasons for balancing the diet as far as total fat intake (triglycerides) is concerned.

Some of the “crash” and formula reducing diets are vicious in this respect. They literally swamp the blood with fats. Many of the old-time therapeutic diets, high in fats, had the same dangerous defect. Ulcer diets are an example—rich in cream and whole milk.

It is not unusual to find cholesterol levels of well over 300 among patients living on a typical, old-fashioned ulcer diet. Several of the standard diabetes diets depended mostly upon fat for calories—and the patients died of coronary disease.

The diets which offended in this respect are rapidly being revised, but this newer knowledge may be a long time getting into print. Meanwhile, be guided by these maxims: Have your cholesterol levels checked frequently when you are on any rich diet! Never follow any fat-rich diet for an extended length of time!

Last, but not least: The coronary rule, like all others, has its exceptions. At least one individual in this country has been eating a diet very rich in hard fats for many years, and hasn't yet had a coronary attack. Valdimar Steffanson, the famed explorer, has made a career out of his unique ability to thrive on proteins and fats.

Those who still won't admit that a high-fat diet can cause coronary disease are making great capital of the Steffanson feat. He does eat a lot of meat and fat, and he has lived to a ripe old age. We've heard tell that, for several years now, his cholesterol readings have been well above the 400 level.

Lucky man! For apparently he is endowed with a built-in immunity to cholesterol disease. But, let's not take this one man's good fortune as a guide to our way of living.

Steffanson gets by with his high-cholesterol living—the overwhelming majority of Americans won't. There are the ten million coronary cripples now living in the United States to prove that Steffanson is only one great exception.

At least one million people will have a coronary attack globally in the year ahead, and they too will prove the same point. Undoubtedly, some men will still continue to hope that they have the Steffanson talent. On the day they suffer a coronary attack, they will discover—too late—that they are cast in the same mould as the rest of us.

The Steffanson saga proves only that there are exceptions to every rule. To gamble that you, too, are so physiologically geared, is betting your life at fantastic odds. The chances against your winning are at least ten million-to-one.

If any of you are going to fret about your chances of developing a coronary heart attack, here are some comforting facts which will count on the credit side of your coronary ledger. Being lean and lanky or at least long boned helps! Short, stocky, square-built individuals seem to be definitely more prone to develop coronary disease.

Tall or normally built individuals have better chances of escaping coronary disease or, at worst; they are more likely to develop it at a much later age.

There has been a lot of study done in this field but of course more facts and determinations are needed. It comes under the heading of Anthropometry: the science of measuring the human skeleton and various body parts, and relating them to health and disease. Researchers are gathering these and various other biological facts and correlating them with blood chemistry studies to the point that today a doctor can expertly single out the prime candidate for coronary disease.

He can say with authority to some patients, “You are a marked (coronary prone) man!”

There can be little doubt that hereditary factors, too, weigh heavily for or against your coronary fate. If you are from a family where coronary disease has often taken a toll, it definitely counts against you.

If this has happened on both sides of your family line, the doctor calls another coronary “strike.” A “bad” heredity means that you must be doubly careful of your satt and poly intake, and just that much more conscientious about getting adequate exercise, avoiding tension, and generally leading a prudent heart saver life.

Now, let's go on to clinch the evidence that an excess of hard fat in the diet can cause coronary disease.

STARTLING PROOF YOU CANT IGNORE RID YOURSELF   OF   ANY DOUBT, AND   TAKE   HEART FROM THIS POSITIVE EVIDENCE.

I N THE SPRING of 1958,a team of Harvard medical scientists furnished the final, incontrovertible proof that a surplus of cholesterol in the blood stream can, and does, cause coronary disease.

The scientists took little bits of blood vessel wall tissue, and kept them alive in a culture medium (which, in a real sense, means an artificial blood). They then began to add tiny drops of cholesterol to the feeding mixture—which, let us remind you again, corresponds to blood.

In four or five days, fat deposits formed in the blood vessel cells. By check-testing, they soon found that the size of the fat deposit in the blood vessel wall was directly proportional to the amount of cholesterol added. If the blood vessel cells were allowed to remain in the cholesterol-fed medium, the fat deposits soon increased to such size that the blood vessel cells finally withered and died.

Mind you, the doctors actually watched cholesterol produce blood vessel disease, but the experiments went much further. They found that satt-rich stearic acid, which occurs in certain animal fats, aided and abetted the formation of fatty deposits and caused them to increase rapidly and markedly in size.

Then the researchers did an even more astonishing thing. They added linolenic acid, a rich, primary source of polys, to the culture medium, and cholesterol as before; but the fat deposits didn't form! Thus, they proved experimentally, with live human tissue, that the linolenic-acid polys could offset and counteract the effects of cholesterol, and keep it from forming deposits in the blood vessel walls.

The team continued the experiment. Was the action of the linolenic-acid polys more than protective and preventive? Would the polys actually decrease the size of the deposits which had been laid down in blood vessel cells? This is what they found.

Once a deposit of fat had been formed, the more linolenic acid added to the culture medium, the more the size of the deposit decreased. This can also be interpreted in another sense; viz., the more polys in a fat, the better it will work in preventing “The Grease Trap Disease,” and diminishing the size of fat deposits already formed.

However, don't take this to mean that you can simply swallow linolenic acid, or any other rich source of polys, and magically cure yourself of coronary disease.

Your fat intake still has to be “balanced.” Remember that an excess of any kind of fat droplets in the blood stream can also cause trouble; and remember, too, that the blood becomes sticky and sludgy, and clots more readily, when you eat too much of any kind of fat. So, keep your total fat intake down.

Remember this, also: These experiments were done only with initial fat deposits, newly formed in the blood vessel cells. There had been no chance for the deposit to become “set,” or for secondary changes to occur.

Usually certain length of time after humans develop a plaque, scar tissue forms in the blood vessel wall at the site of the spot. Later, the spot may be encrusted with calcium as a further protection.

In short, several changes eventually take place in the blood vessel walls which probably wouldn't be affected by linolenic acid, or abundant polys from any source. Obviously, however, fat plaques which haven't yet been “fixed” with calcium and fibre can at least be partially absorbed and cleaned out—when polys predominate in your diet.

Linolenic acid is an integral part of many fats, but much more abundant in some cereal and vegetable oils, than in others—especially corn, cottonseed, and soy bean oils. Several nut oils are made soft, and rich in polys, by the presence of linolenic acid; and by the same token all hard fats, whether they occur in meat, milk, or cheese, are very low in their content of linolenic acid.

So much for the nutritional, chemical, and physical reasons why a diet high in the satts found in hard fats can cause coronary disease. Call them scientific reasons, if you wish. But, in actual practice, what happens to men, to women, or to nations of people the world over on a low-fat poly-rich diet?

One of the most striking features of population studies is the consistent ratio between frequency of atherosclerosis and the percentage and amount of hard fat eaten.

The inhabitants of Costa Rica scarcely ever show signs of atherosclerosis on post-mortem examination. They live on a diet which is very low in fat, practically all of it soft fish-fat, a rich source of polys.

The inhabitants of Okinawa are also extraordinarily free of this type of degenerative disease. Their diet, too, is low in fat; and again mostly soft fish-fats, loaded with polys.

The ailment is extremely rare among the Chinese, who live mainly on rice and eat very little fat, mostly soft sesame oil, abundantly endowed with polys. Ditto for Ceylon. The Japanese eat far less hard fats than we do; consuming mainly soft fish-fats. Their coronary death rate for men, aged 55 to 59, is one-fifth of ours.

The Bantus of South Africa eat one-tenth the amount of hard fat that we do, and their coronary death rate is one-tenth of ours. Population studies in Hawaii and Iraq also confirm the satt-hard-fat, poly-soft-fat, low-fat story.

Perhaps the most telling studies have been those which show a startling difference in coronary death rates among people of the same nation, who are eating larger amounts of hard animal-fat than are their friends and neighbours. Prosperity and income has much to do with this.

Rich Spaniards, living in Madrid, have high coronary death rates; poor Spaniards, also living in Madrid, seldom die of the disease.  And so do we find corresponding differences in the rich and poor of Guatemala. The Japanese who live in Hawaii and Southern California have higher coronary death rates than those who live in Japan.

The Italians who live in the United States have much higher coronary death rates than those in Naples or Rome.

When people have more money, they buy more meat, milk, and eggs. When emigrants leave their native lands to live in the United States, their coronary death rate climbs in a few years to equal that of average Americans. There can be only one reason—they eat as we do.

We are not the only nation in the world to serve as a horrible example. There are one or two smaller groups that qualify. The Kirghiz plainsmen of Asia, for example, live mainly on meat and milk, rich in the hard fats, and they are notably subject to death very early in life from apoplexy, coronary disease, and other forms of AHD.

The most convincing evidence that modern principles of heart saver eating are sound and right may be found in a wealth of data gathered by the World Health Organization and the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations. Studies made in twenty nations of dietary habits and coronary death rates of men aged 55 to 59 show facts and figures that should lead even the sceptic to try for a balanced poly-satt intake.

The data shows hard-fat consuming nations lead the coronary death parades—the United States, Canada, Finland, and Australia. Portugal vies with Japan and Ceylon for honours as a coronary-free country—with a dietary ratio of hard to soft fat high on the safe side. The Portuguese eat upto30 percent more polys than satts, thanks to a love of olive oil and fish.

In Norway, too, fish swing the balance. Statistically, the Norwegians eat a bigger proportion of polys than satts. Their coronary rate is one-third of ours.

Frenchmen do an amazing job of escaping fatal coronary attacks. Their death rate is roughly one-sixth of ours—eating only two-thirds the fat we do. The difference, it appears, is in the fact that with their meals they prefer wine to whole milk!

West Germans, with a coronary death rate approximately one-fourth of ours, have a fat-intake balance superior to ours—the polys almost offsetting the satts. They differ from us by preferring beer to milk as a meal beverage.

We realize that an unthinking few may charge us with making a case for the use of alcohol. Such is not our purpose or intent. We want only to help save you—and your loved ones—from the terror of coronary disease. We must wage war against an excessive intake of hard fats—regardless of the food or its component nutritional virtues.

Milk would be an ideal beverage were it less laden with the satt-rich fats ordered by state and federal laws—which could be and should be amended. We will take a major public health step against coronary disease when we lower the legal butter fat content of whole milk as sold and delivered.

Never in public-health history has there been such worldwide statistical proof of a medical fact; namely, that there is a direct relation between the amount of hard-fat satts eaten and the rate of coronary disease.

Such a mountain of evidence exists that no thinking individual can disregard it. There can be —and should be—such an endeavour as heart saver eating!

You will find “authorities” who loudly proclaim that the fat facts haven't been proven. At best, they are sadly and hopelessly mistaken, or badly misinformed. At the worst, you may find that they have an axe to grind; and you can usually ask your-self—which side is their bread “buttered” on?

The business of producing and selling hard fats runs into several billions of dollars a year. It is not in the nature of profitable business to give up without a fight!

ATHEROSCLEROSIS IN ARTIFICIAL ARTERIES

Surgeons have developed an amazing technique whereby atherosclerotic patches in certain arteries can be removed and replaced with plastic materials.

It was hoped that such artificial blood vessels might help to solve the coronary problem. However, detailed research showed that high-fat, high-cholesterol diets caused patches to form in the plastic blood vessels, just as they did in the real thing.

DIFFERENCES IN FINLAND

Three tremendously important, recent diet studies made in coronary-plagued Finland help to explain why Finlanders living in the eastern part of the country have higher cholesterol levels and a correspondingly higher coronary death rate than those who live in the western part of the country.

Western Finns ate slightly less of the hard fats and proportionately more of the soft fats than those who lived in the east. West Finns ate more foods containing Vitamin E, more foods containing Vitamin C. They were much less subject to the type of goitre caused by an iodine lack.

A HEART LESSON FROM ISRAEL

When Lord Balfour and England paved the way for what is now Israel, the immigrants came mainly from the countries of Europe, the Middle East, and the United States. A scant few thousand came from the ancient land of Yemen, and were gradually absorbed.

By this, we mean they abandoned their old ways of living. They were led away from the simple life they had been living, no different in essence from that of the Biblical Jews.

In Yemen, their diet consisted largely of bread and vegetables of various kinds. They ate meat rarely, scarcely ever drank milk. Only one of their dishes called for butter. They had never heard of margarine or hydrogenated fats.

After a few years in Israel, they began to eat as their compatriots did. It had been a well-known medical legend that coronary disease was practically unknown in Yemen.  This was later substantiated by intensive local research, while concurrent studies indicated that the Jewish people living in Europe were particularly susceptible to the ravages of coronary attack.

Some four or five years ago, events took place in Yemen which led to a tremendous exodus of Jews. Yemenites flocked to Israel by the thousands—men and women of simple habits, not yet initiated into modern eating, and pace of living. Here was an unparalleled opportunity for doctors to study people who had lived on about one-tenth as much hard fat as we customarily eat.

A large-scale investigation was undertaken, with controlled scientific techniques. Two classes of Yemenites were compared. A group which had lived in Israel less than five years was checked against an equal number which had been there for more than twenty.

The first group, not yet weaned away from their old way of eating, had very low blood-cholesterol levels. The readings in the second group were relatively high.

The coronary death rate of Yemenites who had lived in Israel more than twenty years proved to be six times that of the five-year group. Every bit of medical evidence went to show that the tremendous difference in the coronary picture was definitely linked to foods.

The only difference in the status of the two groups was the length of time they had lived in Israel. Their heredity was exactly the same. Their body builds were equal and, while they dwelt in Israel, they lived under the same stresses and strains.

Their work, their joys, their sorrows, by and large, was practically the same. The only demonstrable difference which could be found in their existence was in the food they ate.

The Yemenites who had lived in Israel longer ate less bread and vegetables; more meats and richer dishes. Statistically, they ate from five to ten times more total fat than they did before they came to Israel.

They learned to enjoy “civilized” menus and foods such as whole milk for everyday use, corned beef, and sour cream. They changed their diet to the American-European pattern, and their coronary death rate dutifully followed suit.

ONE MEAL ALONE CAN BE A KILLER THEY USED TO CALL IT “ACUTE INDIGESTION" BUT “HEART ATTACK” IS THE RIGHT TERM FOR IT. AND ONE SIMPLE MISTAKE IN EATING CAN BRING IT ON.

THIS IS THE SAGA of angina pectoris, an excruciating heart pain which spells heart attack, and which can be caused by a single fatty meal.

Angina pectoris is not a disease in itself —only the name given to the pain which results when the blood supply is shut off to some part of the heart. Thus, a true angina pain signifies that one of the coronary arteries is not supplying the heart with enough blood.

This, of course, is a coronary attack —in the true sense of the word! Remember this truth, without fail, for many men and women have experienced a mild angina attack, and written it off as unimportant.

Angina pectoris is always of consequence, because at present it is the most positive evidence that the coronary arteries have narrowed to a dangerous degree.

Remember, too, that while it has been clearly described in textbooks of pathology for the past hundred years, coronary disease still can't be positively diagnosed until an actual attack has occurred.

In 1912, Dr. Herrick, of Chicago, wrote a masterful description of the symptoms which characterized a coronary attack. Thereafter, an attack itself was occasionally recognized, but not nearly as often as it should have been.

The fact that a coronary artery is filling up with fat cannot as yet be detected by any physical sign. It can only be suspected when the blood-cholesterol levels are consistently high.

This again highlights the fact that a true angina attack is the most positive proof that the coronary arteries are narrowed.

In the early 1920's, the electrocardiograph apparatus was brought to this country. From that time on, a doctor could tell for sure if a patient had suffered a coronary attack. Also, thereafter, it was clearly recognized that angina pectoris is always a sign of coronary disease.

At any rate, in 1930, coronary disease was given a separate category in the official causes of death. Since 1940, it has been agreed that all deaths listed as angina pectoris must rightfully be ascribed to coronary disease—another mystery solved by knowledge.

It is equally certain that probably 100 percent of the deaths once ascribed to “acute indigestion” were the result of a coronary attack. Mary Tudor, Queen of England, died suddenly while hearing Mass— after a rich, heavy dinner. Ivan the Terrible, who sat quietly playing checkers after a heavy meal—suddenly uttered a stifled cry and fell back, dead.

The doctor called it “acute indigestion.” We now know that the great religious leader died as the result of a coronary attack.

Even as late as the final days of William Jennings Bryan, who died at the conclusion of the Scopes trial, July 21, 1925 (after gorging himself on sandwiches), many newspapers carried the headlines, “BRYANT DIES OF ACUTE INDIGESTION.”

Now, here again is something you should never forget for one moment!

It has been positively shown by several dramatic experiments, that one fatty meal can cause a coronary attack!

The first of these “proofs” was published four years ago. Page 1008 of the July 23, 1955 issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association, featured an article by Drs. Peter T. Kuo and Claude R. Joyner, Jr., of Philadelphia, under the title:

ANGINA PECTORIS INDUCED BY FAT INDIGESTION IN PATIENTS WITH CORONARY ARTERY DISEASE

The text which followed described a carefully controlled scientific experiment in which the investigators actually produced angina pectoris in six human beings, solely by feeding them one meal rich in fats.

The doctors presented undeniable proof that an increase in the amount of blood-fat can clog up the coronary arteries and produce a coronary attack in a person who already has “The Grease Trap Disease.”

The Kuo-Joyner subjects had a doctor at their side. You with plaques, or a history of angina or a diagnosed coronary attack, are not likely to be so lucky. You may unsuspectingly eat a meal rich in hard fats, wend your way to the theatre, or lounge contentedly in front of your television set.

Then— with lightning suddenness—you may feel the vise-like constriction in your chest. The high level of fat in your blood has closed your narrowed coronary arteries and caused another coronary attack!

In the light of the fact that almost every American man past the age of fifty probably has a distinct narrowing of the coronary arteries, due to the deposit of fat and cholesterol, how can any middle-aged man take the fatty-meal risk?

Consider the millions of overweight men living a sedentary life, suffering from high blood pressure, and burdened with a high blood-cholesterol level. These individuals have a tremendously increased coronary susceptibility—fourteen times greater—as compared to average American men; especially when they are working under tension and pressure.

How can they blithely eat even one fat-rich meal with no thought of the risk they take?

But they do—particularly at so-called businessmen's lunches. There can be no doubt that it is individuals such as these who account for a big percentage of the 2500 coronary attacks which strike down that many Americans every single day.

We could well include “Eat a light lunch” as a cardinal rule in coronary prevention. That certainly goes for dinner, because we do have proof-positive that one fatty meal can produce a coronary attack.

MUST MEN DIG THEIR OWN GRAVES?

SMART BUSINESS MEN AREN'T ALWAYS AS SMART AS THEIR WIDOWS CAN TELL YOU.

T HE TERRIFYING CORONARY death rate among young American husbands under forty has been characterized by Dr. Henry L. Russek, of the United States Public Health Service, with the well turned phrase, “The Gray Flannel Coffin.” Dr. Russek highlighted the plight of the ambitious young business man trying to “keep up with the Jonses.”

He carefully pointed out that they should watch their fat intake; but he dwelled on pressures by which they are met in trying to succeed. Without doubt, the coronary menace seems to be spearheaded by one directive: TARGET: MEN!

Today, statistically, women have an average life span of almost 73 years; men only 67. This ever-widening gulf in the life spans of the sexes puzzled scientists greatly until 1956, when they focused their attention on the coronary death figures.

Here is the shocking picture. Up to age 40, twenty-four times as many men as women suffer from coronary attacks. From 40 to 50, five times as many men are hit by coronary attacks. From 50 to 60, it is still two-to-one, but from then on it begins to even out.

This is entirely different from what it used to be, but heart saver eating and good heart care might bring back this one phase of the “good old days,” when widow-making didn't proceed with a headlong rush.

As far as our public health records go, it seems that, at least for the last hundred years, American women have always lived longer than their men. Statistics on the length of life before the year 1870 are very sparse and fragmentary, but some figures assembled in 1850 indicate that even at that time, the average life span of American women was two years longer than that of American men.

It is to this much better ratio of longevity that we confidently aim to return. There can be no doubt that women are biologically stronger than men. In all the animal and insect worlds, the female outlives the male.

But let's take the records of the last hundred years, and grant that women, biologically, have a two-year edge. They are that much harder than men. But the six-year lead they are enjoying now just shouldn't be!

The more you examine all of our mortality figures, the more you will be forced to agree that if by some measure we could help men to escape the ravages of coronary disease in the same degree that women do, we could hope to lengthen the average male life span by as much as four years.

We would surely decrease the frightful rate of widow-making that goes on in the United States. Today we are literally and actually mass-producing widows, and the rate has been creeping up every year.

To put it in terms of individual experience, if you were alive in 1900, and attended ten funerals where one of the spouses in a marriage died, you would have consoled a widow on six of such occasions.

In 1955, your condolences would have been extended to seven widows. By 1960, public health figures tragically indicate that out of every ten spouse funerals, the widows will number eight, the widowers two.

You cannot draw statistics down to the exact terms of what might happen to an individual, but if you're a housewife who wants to keep her husband alive longer than his insurance chances indicate, you should at once put him on the way to heart saver eating.

Better still; see if you can get him to the doctor's office for a cholesterol test. The chances are that your husband's cholesterol reading will be much higher than it should be. The up-to-date doctor will do the lecturing for you, and order your husband to eat fewer fats.

Dr. Paul Dudley White, along with other heart specialists, has given us some thought-provoking figures:  If your husband has a high cholesterol level, along with high blood pressure, his chances of suffering a coronary attack are three times greater than they would be if “cholesterol” and blood pressure are normal.

If your husband is overweight, the likelihood of his being hit by a coronary attack is multiplied two-and-a-half times.

If a man has all three of the above handicaps, his coronary risk is fourteen times greater than normal. Think of that in the light of these three facts:

1.            No man has to be overweight. He can rid himself of pounds with exercIse and diet.

2.            No man has to have a high cholesterol level. Heart saver eating, exercise, the avoidance of mental and emotional stress can bring it down.

3.            High blood pressure can almost always be lowered with the new wonder drugs which have been developed. Comparatively few cases of certain refractory types resist present day medication and these soon may be brought under control.

The average, run-of-the-mill cases of high blood pressure may be checked by even more simple measures, such as a low-sodium diet and better living habits; mainly mental and emotional control.

If SPOUSES, by some magic, could get husband, aged thirty, to see his doctor once a year for a medical check-up and a cholesterol test, she would at once strike widow-making a telling blow. If she, here and now, put heart saver eating and cooking into effect in her home, she would go a long, long way toward protecting her husband from coronary attack.

Statistics serve a very good purpose if they can shock us into taking preventive steps. According to mortality figures compiled by Dr. Norman Jolliffe, we can estimate that of the 40 million husbands now living, up to 21 million will die of heart and artery disease.

The latest statistics would indicate clearly that three-quarters of all deaths from heart disease are caused by coronary changes. Thus, it can be calculated that at least 16 million of the deaths among husbands, in the days ahead, will be caused by the various results of atherosclerosis.

Men are the special targets for coronary disease, because women are physiologically favoured in the matter of handling hard fats during their menstrual years. In theory, this is due to the action of certain female hormones which help to regulate the cholesterol chemistry of the blood.

From fourteen until the early forties, women enjoy a measure of immunity to coronary disease, perhaps as an aid or concession to child-bearing. This privilege is lost, however, after menopause. From then on, women are as susceptible as men.

As a matter of fact, there is statistical evidence that women are beginning to lose some of this specially privileged standing. Since 1940, female death rates from coronary disease have been creeping up, as compared to men.

Some point out that more women are working, and running into the tensions associated with business. Others stress the fact that many women are less active physically, with dozens of labour-saving gadgets to do their housework, and automobiles to take them off their feet. Increased smoking by women has been implicated. No doubt all these factors play a part.

There is only one thing we can be sure of. Women, like men, are enjoying the fruits of the national prosperity that has been ours since the beginning of World War I. Too many women have been eating hard fats in ever-increasing amounts.

Even if we credit them with a better ability to handle hard fats, they too have to suffer when they abuse the privilege. Female coronary and apoplexy death rates are going to continue to go up—and up—and up—until women get their cholesterol levels checked, and at the first sign of trouble, adopt heart saver eating.

We have always been convinced that a good part of the so-called “coronary immunity” enjoyed by women was not due to hormones alone. Since the days of Irene Castle (1916), women have been reducing-minded.

Millions of women counted calories, and ate to keep their figures. More mil-lions still do, which means that they eat less satts. And so, through the Twenties, Thirties, and Forties, the fair sex was bound to be less subject to atherosclerosis than were their men.

They have always held an advantage over males in this respect, because they automatically cut down on hard-fat calories when they eat to stay slim and trim. But of course, not all women are careful in this regard, so our American addiction to hard-fat foods is taking an increasing toll of wives and mothers over forty.

Our private guess is that “habits” may be more important than hormones when we get the final answers to why men are more susceptible to coronary disease.

Overindulgence in alcohol and smoking indirectly play a part in producing high blood-cholesterol levels. At present, men are more reckless in this respect, but we lack sufficient facts to judge the cost of such dissipation in coronary terms.

WOMAN'S RISK IS GROWING

There is a considerable amount of evidence to indicate that since 1940, American women are beginning to be more prone to coronary disease, even before they have reached the menopause. The death rate in the 30-to-45-year group is creeping closer to that of men.

The exact reasons are not known. The best guess is that lack of sufficient exercise is a factor. Increasing mental and emotional stress may also be of significance, as well as increased smoking.  It has been estimated that 20 million women are now in our work force. When women entered man's domain of the workaday world, they took on some of his stress factors, too.

ALL THIS-AND TENSION, TOO MENTAL AND EMOTIONAL STRESS ALONE MAY NOT CAUSE HEART ATTACKS―BUT WHEN TEAMED WITH WRONG EATING, THEY CAN TRIGGER THE FINAL BLOW.

THERE IS NOT one shred of scientific evidence to prove that tension and emotional stress alone can cause a coronary heart attack. If your coronary arteries were clear of plaques, you could probably live under the worst kind of duress and tension— and your doctor could still guarantee that you wouldn't suffer a coronary attack.

Unfortunately, however, Americans don't fall into that class. We keep busy walling-up our arteries with cholesterol and fat. So, we have to concern ourselves with tension; as a contributing cause—the trigger that sets off a coronary attack.

When some prominent person is killed by a coronary attack, newspaper writers often explain the tragedy by intimating that the deceased was an unfortunate victim of tension and overwork. Almost everyone sincerely believes that tension is a primary cause of coronary disease.

But even if a reporter knew the truth, could he boldly state that Senator So-and-so had been eating too much meat, cheese, and ice cream, or drinking too much milk?

Could he report that the Senator spent too much time sitting on his Senate seat, and didn't get enough exercise?

It will be many a long day before you read a newspaper article like that. People, generally, don't have the right perspective on the tension side of the coronary story for several good reasons. If you go only by what you read in the newspapers, or hear on radio and TV, you would have to come to the conclusion that coronary disease hits mainly those who are making their mark in the world.

The Tom Smiths and John Joneses don't make the headlines when they have a coronary attack. The big politicians, the tycoons, and the socialites do.

Despite all this, you can be absolutely sure that probably not more than two out of every hundred of Americans who suffered an attack yesterday, or any day, were rich or prominent, or anything other than the everyday run of citizen. The overwhelming majority of coronary victims are not working any harder, or living under any more tension, than any average citizen of the World.

Let's not take it for granted that we are the only people in the world who live under tension. The lowliest member of any aboriginal tribe has his tensions and problems— his share of fear and worry. There are endless tribal taboos and the possible wrath of many gods, the enmity of a neighbouring tribe, or problems of food, shelter, and storms. Wherever there is life, there is tension.

Certainly the people of Germany, Norway, Finland, or any of the strife-torn countries were under great emotional stress during two World Wars. Why, if tension is a primary factor in producing coronary disease, should their coronary death rates have been reduced so dramatically when they were forced, by circumstances, to live on a diet that was low in fats?

In Madrid, or Naples, or Guatemala City, the death rates from coronary disease are very much higher among the people who “have money.” In fact, every “economic” survey ever made has shown that the well-to-do in any city or nation are more subject to coronary disease than the poor!

Are we to assume that strain and tension are exclusive crosses of all well-to-do, while the poor bear no such burden?

Ridiculous! The rich can buy richer foods. It's just as simple as that!

Is the Italian any less excitable than the average American? Why, then, do the Italians have only one-fourth of our coronary death rate?

Are the white-collar workers of Japan—much more than their American counterparts—so free from worry and tension, or the problems that make up everyday life?

Is that the reason their coronary death rate is less than one-fourth of ours?

For years now, almost everyone who survived a coronary attack has been told to “take it easy.” It is a convenient and ready rule for the doctor to lie down; but the victim and his family are apt to read in meanings which just aren't there. The victim's wife confides, “John has been doing too much . . . working too hard.

That's why he had a coronary attack.” The truth is, of course, that John could not have been stricken if his coronary arteries had not been partially filled with cholesterol and fat. Whatever part the tension played was secondary to that fact!

Yet, the tension excuse is always going to be with us, as long as human nature exists. By citing it, every coronary patient can regard himself as a martyr. The demons of tensions and overwork struck him down. He was just a good Joe, working day and night for his family, his service-club projects, and his church.

The coronary hit him because he gave too much of himself. Trying to send his two kids through school. Trying to be a good citizen and still make ends meet.  Isn't it much more comforting to blame tension, than to admit that we paid no attention to common food-facts, or that we didn't have the will power to avoid eating too much hard fat?

Let's put tension in its rightful place—as a contributor that triggers a coronary attack when the coronary blood vessels have already been narrowed to the danger point by plaques.

Some three years ago, we had the first acceptable experimental evidence that mental and emotional stresses can and do raise the amount of cholesterol in the blood. The following year, more proof came from Col. Marshall E. Groover, Air Force heart specialist.

He found that Air Force executives who were keeping their blood cholesterol at safe levels with exercise and diet, showed a definite rise in the fat and cholesterol content of the blood when they worked under stress and tension.

Early in 1958, studies made at the College of Medical Evangelists indicated that there was a significant increase in blood cholesterol among healthy male medical students during the week they wrote their examinations. The average age of these young men was twenty-five. One individual's cholesterol level almost doubled during his two-day examination period.

Later in the year, research workers at the New York College of Medicine confirmed this aspect of the stress story in a different way. They studied a large group of young men, aged 25 to 40, who already had diagnosable hardening and narrowing of the coronary arteries.

They found that over 90 percent had been working intensely for long hours, over varying periods before they experienced the attack. One-fourth of the patients held two jobs, and another 46 percent worked at least sixty hours a week. So tension can temporarily raise the cholesterol level of the blood, and become a menace in certain cases.

We know for sure that practically every American male over forty has noticeable narrowing of the coronary blood vessels due to deposits of fat and cholesterol in the artery walls. Some men may have a 30- or 40-per¬cent coronary narrowing; in others, the occlusion may range to 70 or 80 percent.

There can be no doubt that you who have advanced coronary disease are sitting on a primed powder keg. Any significant increase in the amount of fat or cholesterol in your blood may choke up your diseased artery and precipitate a coronary attack. You can't afford the risk of increasing your cholesterol level by any cause whatsoever.

The fact that mental stress can mobilize fat and cholesterol in the blood means that relief from tension is a must!

Colonel Groover shifted Air Force personnel who showed the cholesterol-rise of mental stress into less-exacting jobs. The blood picture improved rapidly when the men were relieved of onerous responsibility, or given work under a less-exacting boss. But, this is not always possible in civilian life, where a man can't readily shift to another job, at a salary adequate to meet his family's needs.

It is simple enough for a doctor to instruct us to “take things easier,” but very few of us have the opportunity to do so, let alone the will power or the temperament to carry it out. Therefore, some coronary susceptible can have no choice but to submit them to supervised medication.  Doctors can prescribe one or another of the new drugs to help calm you down, slow you up, and ease your mental and emotional tension.

It is being done successfully as a routine measure in the treatment of high blood pressure. It can also be done on a comparative scale for you who have already had a coronary attack and who are still exposed to mental stress and strain.

There is also some glimmer of hope that we may soon know the actual body mechanism through which mental stress pumps fat and cholesterol into the blood stream. Several research teams have presented convincing proof that the adrenal glands may be involved. It is, of course, well known that emotional stress causes the adrenal glands to discharge a powerful hormone into the blood.

Apparently, among the many reactions produced, cholesterol is mobilized in the blood, probably by way of the liver. This is a good thing to know. Scientists can now follow through, and perhaps come up with a drug which will block, or hold down this effect.

Meanwhile—don't blame tension alone for causing coronary disease. No doubt; tension, plus a high hard-fat diet adds to the attack hazard, when a coronary blood vessel is narrowed with plaques. The danger may even be doubled. But the primary cause of a coronary attack is always the fat plaques. So look to what goes on your knife and fork!

STRESS STUDY

In Milan, Italy, two groups of rats were fed an identical high-fat diet.  One group was subjected to environmental stress, occasioned by flashing blinding lights into the cages, causing loud noises during selected intervals, and “annoying” the test group in general.

After five weeks, both control and test groups were sacrificed. There was far more evidence of atherosclerotic changes in the stress group.

THE TRUTH ABOUT EXERCISE AND YOUR HEART NOW THEY SAY IT CAN BE GOOD FOR YOU IF YOU DON'T SPOIL IT ALL WITH FATTY MEALS.

THE AVERAGE PERSON believes that coronary attacks may be caused by work and exercise—that the man who is recuperating from an attack must avoid even moderate physical effort. In truth, however, exercise helps to lower blood-cholesterol and discourage plaque formation.

A topflight panel of international heart specialists recently coined a new name for the flabby heart degeneration so often found in American men. They called it “loafer's heart.” It is the kind of heart that courts a coronary attack, and is of great concern to up-to-date doctors.

We can rightfully call “loafer's heart” a weak heart, because it has been made soft and flabby by sedentary living and lack of exercise. When the coronary blood vessels have been narrowed by plaques, a “loafer’s heart” is outstandingly susceptible to angina attacks.

This is the kind of heart that struggles to beat in the breast of the average American business and professional man, or the clerk, the office worker, and the man who sits all day at a factory machine. All are equally prone to develop a “loafer's heart.” It is the mark of any man who, regardless of circumstances, is chronically inactive.

You will find it in the man who sits down to ride to his sit-down work, then sits down to ride home. It is frequent in the man who sits at his desk the whole day through, and sits in his easy chair the minute he gets home. As he sits and sits—above his head a silent Sword of Damocles hangs straining at its slender strands. Upon its deadly blade, fat-etched—two words: “Coronary Attack.”

In recent years, several investigators have proved beyond doubt that even moderate physical work causes the fat and cholesterol levels in the blood to fall. Equally important, physical activity may help to keep the blood cholesterol from rising, particularly after a meal.

In essence, exercise actually does what many highly vaunted drugs can't do—helps to keep cholesterol from causing artery trouble, by keeping it out of the blood stream. By the same token, lack of activity and exercise may keep fat droplets circulating in the blood stream and send the cholesterol up.

These facts should not lead you older men to overindulge in strenuous exercise—reasoning that “it's good for the coronary blood vessels.” Violent exercise is never “good” for anyone over fifty. Nor should these exercise facts serve as an excuse for eating more than reasonable amounts of fat.

However, regular and moderate exercise is most important to a way of life that will prevent coronary trouble. Let the exercise be such as walking, dancing, swimming— or some activity that you will be happy to carry on. Make it a chore that's fun. Don't spend too much of your life in front of a television set. Make physical activity of some kind a daily must.

One of the worst habits a man can fall in-to be to come home, eat a big dinner, then immediately head for an easy chair. The tired business man, who insists on taking a nap after dinner, may be laying himself wide open for a coronary attack. It's much better for him to take a walk right after eating, to help keep his cholesterol down.

We realize that this is a new idea. Ever since written medical history began, man-kind has been instructed to rest after eating a meal, and each ancient school of medicine had a different reason for this rule.

Hippocrates believed that food was made fit for the body to use by the action of heat in the stomach—a sort of “cooking” process which must be allowed to go on until the stomach cooled after a meal. Hence, his followers believed that it was best to rest after a meal. Many advised a short nap.

Arnold of Villanova (1235-1318) set the pace for the digestion beliefs of the Renaissance, some of which have trickled down to us.

Arnold wrote: “Let the individual take moderate exercise before eating, and rest entirely after it, until the food has left the stomach. Then he should ride horses, or gently ride a mule.” That last rule should hold right after eating, in the light of what we know today.

The whole idea of getting-up-and-around after a meal applies doubly and trebly as you grow older. There is no doubt whatsoever that your system becomes less able to handle fats when you pass the forties.

If a given meal causes the blood-fat levels to rise to a certain point in four hours when you are thirty-five, it may cause an equal elevation in only two or three hours by the time you hit fifty. In addition, the blood-cholesterol rise continues for an hour-or-two more, and recedes much more slowly.

That's one of the reasons why doctors agree that you should eat fewer calories, particularly fats of any kind, as you grow older. “Yes, Grandpa and Grandma, the get-up-and-around-after-eating rule applies most definitely to you.99

Finally—ladies—if it is at all possible, talk your husband into taking a job entailing more physical activity, if such a choice can be made. There cannot be much doubt that men engaged in active physical work have a much better chance of escaping coronary disease than those in sit-down, or sedentary occupations.

A London study proved quite conclusively that bus drivers, for example, are much more subject to coronary disease than conductors—who move around a lot. Several big, broad-scale studies, made in Great Britain, confirm this general rule. In one study, 8800 autopsies indicated that almost all bodies examined showed evidence of coronary narrowing.

But the narrowing was considerably less in men who were physically active in their work, than among those who had sit-down jobs. It was also noted that advanced coronary disease occurred twice as frequently among men engaged in light work, as compared to those who were doing heavy work.

Scars of actual coronary attacks were three times more common among men who did light work, than men who did heavy work.

To summarize this study: The coronary arteries of sedentary workers showed lesions and evidence of “The Grease Trap Disease” comparable to the arteries of “active” workers who were twelve years older.

When the men who were physically active did have an attack, it was apt to be less severe. Men in active work tended to develop coronary disease later in life. It took longer for their arteries to fill up. Unfortunately, however, we can't accept these studies entirely at face value and apply them to Americans, because corresponding dietary studies were not made at the same time.

Class distinctions are quite marked in England. The clerk doesn't eat the same kind of diet as the coal miner, or the truck driver. In these British studies, exercise may not have been the sole determining factor that controlled the formation of coronary artery plaques.

However exercise and activity play their part in cholesterol control. There can be no doubt about that. Rest assured that when the hard fat intake is equal, among men and women anywhere in the world, the active person is less likely to develop a high blood-cholesterol level—and coronary attack.

Since chickens, as has been noted, are susceptible to types of coronary artery disease similar to those occurring in humans, they are often used as subjects in coronary research projects. On a diet rich in hard fats and cholesterol, their blood-cholesterol levels tend to climb in a degree proportionate to the amount of such foods consumed.

Armed with this fact, investigators fed a group of chickens an identical cholesterogenic (cholesterol-raising) diet. Half of the group was kept idle; the other half was subjected to controlled exercise.

The idle chickens showed a blood-cholesterol rise correspondent with their hard-fat diet. The exercised fowl showed only negligible gains—demonstrating that exercise does tend to lower cholesterol levels which might otherwise show an abnormal dietary rise.

Like many reactions in scientific research, we know the result, and under which conditions that result can be expected—but cannot explain the “why or how” of it. Scientific literature is specked with such words as “theorize” or “may.” Even simple phenomena must frequently find definition in these vague terms—hinting but not confirming.

In an attempt to bring the laws of cholesterol behaviour into sharper focus, two French investigators noted that exercise causes a fleeting initial rise in human blood-cholesterol levels, which soon gives way to a lowering trend and a subsequent reading definitely below that of pre-exercise levels.

They theorized that cholesterol-lowering effects of exercise may be achieved by stimulation of various internal secretory glands, such as thyroid and adrenal, with accompanying increases of perspiration and respiration.

We must note that the cholesterol-lower effect of exercise has certain boundaries. Late studies indicate that the effect of exercise upon blood cholesterol might properly be called “normalizing” rather than “lowering.”

This change in terminology is suggested by the recent work of a group whose findings showed that while exercise tends to lower blood-cholesterol levels which are above “normal,” it does not appear to lower so-called “normal” levels. This simply means if your cholesterol level is high, exercise may help lower it. If your level is “normal” or safe, exercise will help keep it that way.

Finally, many doctors advise coronary patients to exercise every day, because they hope the patient will build up an entirely new coronary circulation.

Animal experiments have demonstrated that when the coronary arteries, which encircle the heart and nourish it, are clogged with fat, exercise and activity can stimulate growth of new branches. Some investigators believe that in human beings, as well, an adequate new coronary circulation may be established when moderate exercise is regularly maintained.

Many human post-mortem examinations have shown that it is possible to grow a new network of heart blood-supply vessels when the old ones have been mostly occluded and damaged. Therefore, in cases where a coronary attack has already occurred, it is hoped that controlled moderate exercise will stimulate this renewal process.

NIGHT ATTACK

There is much evidence to indicate that blood with a high fat turbidity, that is to say an elevated fat content, tends to clot more readily. This evidence helps explain why many coronary victims are stricken in their sleep.

As a rule, the hours of nighttimes sleep occur from four to five hours after the evening meal—in the United States the heaviest of the day—coinciding with the peak of a post-meal rise in blood-fat. If the meal was rich in fats, the ensuing sticky surge of fat-laden blood might be too much for already partially choked coronary arteries.

One set of statistics has it that more than 50 percent of coronary attacks occur during sleep. Only 2 percent occur during violent exercises.

There has been no breakdown indicating the number of people who have suffered an emotional shock or fright just prior to an attack, but at least we know that violent physical exertion is not often the trigger that sets off a coronary attack.

A DRAMATIC EXAMPLE OF DIET AND CORONARY DISEASE (iN THE EARLY YEARS ALREADY BEEN CONDUCTED STUDIES)

In 1946, several investigators, and teams of scientists, decided to clinch the evidence that dietary fat could cause atherosclerosis in human beings.

Dr. Lester M. Morrison, of Los Angeles, California, was among the earliest of these. He decided to conduct a study on human subjects which would prove, over a significant period of time, that the progress of coronary disease could be favourably influenced by lowering the fat content of the diet.*

Dr. Morrison selected 100 patients who had survived a coronary attack. He divided them into two groups of fifty. The first, called a control group, would eat as they ordinarily did, following a typical American diet; the second group would live on a low-fat diet, with fats reasonably restricted, and the cholesterol intake held down as well.

After eight years, he submitted the present report. Of the fifty patients in the control group, eating typical American meals, only twelve were living. This makes a survival rate of 24 percent, almost exactly corresponding to the survival rate which most doctors expect in any group of coronary patients—as shown by many surveys made through the years.

Of the patients who had followed the low-fat diet, a total of twenty-eight survived. This meant a survival rate of 56 percent, more than double that of the control patients—a 100-percent improvement! It should be noted also that only nine of the patients in the second group had actually died of heart or blood vessel disease.* Journal of the American Medical Association, December 10, 1955.

A LESSON FROM RABBITS

Rabbits were put on a hard-fat, high-cholesterol diet calculated to produce atherosclerosis, and divided into two equal groups.  One group was exercised for five minutes, twice a day, on an electric treadmill.

After 90 days, both groups were sacrificed and examined for atherosclerosis. The amount of atherosclerosis present in the exercised group was described as being considerably less than that found in the animals who took it easy.

FROM THE CRADLE-WHERE?

In a better future the fight against coronary disease will begin in the womb. We know that some babies have high cholesterol levels at birth, while in others the readings are low. Why shouldn't we give a newborn the right cholesterol start?

We should also be concerned with blood-cholesterol in the first year of life, for the seeds of coronary disease may be planted before a baby walks. Proof exists that breast-fed babies have lower blood-cholesterol levels than those on cow's milk formulas.

Human milk fat is softer than animal, higher in polys and lower in satts, and breast milk fat of nursing mothers can be made even softer by a “pregnancy diet” of heart saver menus. In areas where babies are weaned from the breast at a late age, the incidence of coronary disease in the older population is low.

European pathologists have long described what they call “suckling’s cholesterosis,” a condition marked by abnormal deposits of cholesterol in some parts of the infant body, which soon disappears when the infants are weaned from milk. Studies of infants in the United States have confirmed this fact!

A great coronary battle can be won in childhood. Many studies show that there can be a decided difference in the dietary habits of American teenage boys and girls —as many parents well know.

It is a medical fact that fatty infiltration of coronary blood vessels is least likely in girls from 10 to 20. Boys of equal age levels are twice as prone. Studies of teenage eating habits show that many girls may diet. They are calorie conscious and want to reduce or keep from “getting fat.”

Not so, with teenage boys, who overindulge in ice cream, hot dogs, and other rich, hard-fat foods—and their parents encourage them! “He's just a growing boy.” This may really mean that he is growing fat deposits in his coronary arteries that will later strike him down!

Nutritionists feel that teenage girls don't drink enough milk. There is no such complaint about teenage boys, who are apt to drink milk galore.  Now that we know more about hard fats in milk, we can wonder who really makes the big dietary mistake—teenage lads or lassies?

In our estimation, the boys drink too much fat-rich whole milk—as their tragic coronary history shows.

We may be tagged as visionaries for suggesting that one day we will have cholesterol control in foetal life, infancy, childhood and teenage years—but it will be. It will begin among an intelligent few, and be ordered by wise obstetricians and paediatricians.

The old “saw” of a pregnant woman “eating for two” will include anti-cholesterol provisions. Scientific prenatal and baby feeding has scored decisive victories against infant's and children's diseases, and the lengthening American life span has been gained mainly by saving the young. We now must learn that atherosclerosis can be stopped short during the early years of life.

The door is not closed to us who have reached maturity or the senior years, but we must work harder to undo damage already done. Never forget that fat damage to your blood vessels may be reversed. Start lowering your blood-cholesterol levels now. Act to cleanse your life lines of fat deposits and beginning plaques!

SKINNY OUTSIDE-FAT INSIDE IT'S NOT THE FAT ON YOUR FRAME, BUT IN YOUR BLOOD STREAM, WHICH TELLS THE STORY. SO DON'T THINK YOU'RE SAFE, JUST BECAUSE YOU'RE THIN.

“TODAY'S SNACK—TOMORROW'S PLAQUE,” reads a sign hanging in the office of Dr. Norman Jolliffe, who, although the author of Reduce and Stay Reduced, was one of the first of our great nutritionists to emphasize the fact that being overweight is not in itself the basic cause of atherosclerosis.

We need a constant reminder of this simple truth, because too many of you who are slim and trim blandly assume that you don't have to concern yourself about eating fat. You eat ice cream, chocolate candy, and drink whole milk to your heart's content. You don't add inches to your waistline, so you naturally figure that, as far as you are concerned, calories don't count.

The extra calories may not turn into a double chin—but the hard fats, which in many cases supply those extra calories, can still make plaques. Your cholesterol chemistry is not one bit different from that of your overweight friends. Therefore, because it is entirely a matter of number, the great majority of coronary attacks hit among slim or normal-weight people.

As this is being written, the population of the United States is estimated at 176 million. Surveys indicate that 36 million Americans are definitely overweight, 10 million are underweight, and 130 million can be considered as “just about right.”

There can be no doubt that overweight men and women are much more likely to develop coronary disease, and are stricken by coronary attacks at an earlier age.

This is mostly due to the fact that stout people tend to indulge themselves, and eat more fats than the slim or trim individual, whose appetite is not so big. It all returns to the fundamental question: What percentage of hard fats do you eat?

Every estimate of per capita food consumption in this country tells us that, on the average, all Americans—stout or slim—eat too big a percentage of hard fats.  Any and all of you who are making this mistake in eating are embarked upon the road to coronary disease—regardless of the state of your body weight.

However, it is agreed that overweight people are likely to eat more fat-calories than their normal-weight friends, so they do suffer a higher proportion of coronary attacks. Because of excessive eating, they are apt to be hit by coronary disease at an earlier age.

One set of figures from the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company indicates that the death rate due to atherosclerosis (including high blood pressure) among their policy holders was 42 percent higher for fat men, aged`25 to 74. The statistics were even worse for women in the same age group, indicating a 75-percent excess mortality for those who were overweight.

Many of you have the unwelcome faculty for turning most of your excess calorie consumption into fat, which is stored in various parts of your body. However, these calories are not necessarily derived from hard fats.

They will include many from eating excess amounts of sugar and starch, as well as those you get from soft fats. So, theoretically, it is possible to be quite stout, and still relatively free from the coronary menace.

It happens among the Eskimos and Italians, who may consume a lot of excess calories without eating too much hard fat. This is another reason why Dr. Jolliffe and his confreres can state with truth that being overweight, all by itself, is not the basic cause of coronary disease.

But, one fact still remains. Stout people are greatly outnumbered. So far as totals go; here is our own personal estimate of a probable ratio of total people that coronary attack according to body weight:

Number per 1,000,000        Percent     

Victims will be:                 

Normal weight = 280,000 = 28

Underweight = 60,000 = 6

Overweight = 660,000 = 66

The Army Institute of Pathology presented figures that strongly bolstered the “weight” facts. During World War II, W. M. Yeater and his co-workers studied 866 cases of coronary diseases in soldiers under the age of forty; 450 of the conclusions were reached as a result of actual post-mortem examinations.

When the body weight of soldiers dead of coronary disease was compared 297 soldiers of equal age killed in military action during the same period, it was found that, on the average, the men weighed about the same.

Dr. Ancel Keys points out that in 1949, the mortality from all types of heart disease, per 1,000 men aged 45 to 54 was as follows: United States 4.23; England 1.87; Italy 1.37. Thus more than twice as many Americans, aged 45 to 54, died of heart disease as English or Italians.

Yet, on the average, Englishmen and Italians weigh only seven or eight percent less than Americans. Obviously, this relatively minor degree of overweight among Americans can hardly account for the fifty-percent excess in atherosclerotic disease. The fact that we eat such a bigger percentage of hard fat, most definitely can, and does.

If you are skinny—or just right—don't let that fact keep you from heart saver living and eating.  The satts you eat will still push up your blood-cholesterol levels, and the cholesterol can build plaques. Your coronary arteries can fill as readily as those of the fat man.

When, as you watch your favourite television show, you are tempted to nibble on hard-fat titbits, remember the sign in Dr. Jolliffe's office: “Today's Snack: Tomorrow's Plaque.” The proof of this pudding is in the nearest laboratory. Go to your doctor tomorrow—let him make a cholesterol test.

DON'T JUGGLE YOUR WEIGHT

Frequently when a person gains weight rapidly, the blood-fat and cholesterol levels rise sharply, due to some special metabolic factors. There is experimental evidence that plaques may form more readily during such particular times. This, in turn, has led some experts to caution overweight people not to go on and off reducing diets—to take weight off and put it back on in ever continuing cycles. They say: Reduce and Stay Reduced to protect your blood vessels from such damage.

ANOTHER TELEVISION EVIL

The amount of hard fat that the typical people munches and consumes while watching television often adds up into really significant totals. Most potato chips are “cooked” in hard fat. Crunchy cheese bits often total 31 percent fat. Crisp, crackling, toasted bacon rinds run as high as 87 percent fat.

KEEP IT OFF

Don't let anything we may say make you complacent about being even a few pounds overweight. The day you cut excess calories from your eating, is the day any abnormal elevation in your blood-cholesterol level will begin to drop.

If the person stays reduced and keeps his calorie intake down, the cholesterol level tends to stay down. Many physicians quickly prescribe a reducing regime for the overweight with high cholesterol readings. Doctors may insist on this measure even if the patient is only moderately overweight.

They consider healthful reducing the best cholesterol-lowering treatment. Five pounds off may make an appreciable difference in blood-cholesterol levels—when the five pounds are kept off.

Recent studies have led some investigators to qualify the cholesterol-lowering effects of exercise. They tend to believe that exercise can only lower cholesterol to the degree that it normalizes body weight.

This is subject to debate, but you can be assured that one of the most effective ways to lower your cholesterol level is to shed excess fat. If you keep new body fat from accumulating, you have made a permanent gain in cholesterol control.

Be sure that you appreciate the difference between “body weight” and fat! Body weight can mean the plain water which comprises about fifty percent of your body tissue.  You can sit in a steam room and sweat out two pounds of perspiration—to be regained as soon as you drink two pounds of fluids.

But a sound reducing diet will actually use up body fat. By sound, we mean a balanced reducing diet which not only cuts fat calories from your eating, but also sugar and starch calories.  Some freak reducing diets, recently in vogue, are actually cholesterogenic. They take off a few pounds of weight, but send the cholesterol levels up. This applies to some of the popular steak diets, as well as those featuring hard boiled eggs.

Most steak (high protein) diets are dehydrating. They drive water from the body cells, with accompanying weight losses.  But drying out the body cells isn't burning up body fat. You can dehydrate a plump grape into a raisin, or a plum into a prune. The weight of the fruit is reduced by shrivelling only.

You can't stay on a dehydrating diet for any length of time and retain your health. Also, as soon as you return to regularly balanced meals, your body tissue regains its normal water content, and you put the lost weight right back.

Some “Fried Food” diets in use are the most vicious of all. They are called ketogenic, which means that they produce body acidosis. They're not new. They were once used to temporarily keep epileptics from having attacks.

While sometimes successful in his respect, the acidosis they produced created such dangerous side effects that this form of treatment was discarded. Ketogenic diets have now been revived for reducing, but the dangerous side effects remain.

Neither steak nor fried food diets can lower blood-cholesterol levels. For cholesterol control, they are almost diametrically counter to heart saver eating. So, when you shed weight as a heart saver measure, be sure that your diet is one which trims hard fats as well as starch and sugar calories, from your eating. As a major anti-cholesterol measure, take off excess body fat—and keep it off.

SUICIDE AT THE DINNER TABLE WHAT YOU CAN LEARN FROM THE FOOD CUSTOMS OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE.

WITHOUT DOUBT Americans, as a people, eat too much hard fat. However, some of us eat more than others. Income is usually the biggest single determining factor: a fat pay check or income means more steaks and chops on the table.

Next in importance comes nationality or racial background. Favourite dishes of old-country origin are apt to persist in the family home. You will often find lasagna in the Italian-American home, or sauerbraten when the family stems from parents who lived on the Rhine.

Tradition clings to the dining room table; and the traditional Jewish board fairly groans under the weight of fine, rich delicacies—many of them so loaded with the hardest of fats, that it's not surprising to find American Jews at the head of the coronary list.

For these reasons, Americans of Jewish origin are the worst offenders when it comes to eating excessive amounts of hard fats.

Let's look at only a few of the time-honoured dishes that issue from the Jewish kitchen. No doubt, many of the young Jewish homemakers of today will think we are out of line to cite them. Some never serve such dishes in their home—have no idea of how to prepare them. But, that's not the point.

A nation, or people, conditioned to eating rich foods, will carry the tradition with them. The young Jewish man who has never tasted “stuffed derma” will, nevertheless, be likely to go for 2-inch-thick steaks. He loves fatty corned beef. Foot-high chocolate sodas. Gobs and gobs of whole milk.

Satts have no nationality. They lurk in any fat-rich dish, and so we use the following Jewish recipes only as examples of a pattern of eating. Fat-rich eating that is so apt to create appetites which cling to the family: mother to daughter, father to son—and generations yet to come.

PRUNE AND POTATO TZIMMES features brisket of beef, notoriously one of the fattest meats. It also includes, with the other ingredients, two tablespoons of hot, melted shortening—preferably (we hope) chicken fat.

STUFFED DERMA is a toothsome titbit, indeed. Essentially, it is a filling for beef casings, and very fatty in its own right because of the suet used in its preparation. But, to add insult to coronary injury, stuffed derma is usually served at a meal which includes duck or goose, both of which are high in fat—making the blood of the eater slow moving and sluggish, and bound to coagulate more quickly.

GRATED POTATO KUGELS are made with potatoes, onion, and egg yolk, plus flour and four tablespoons of shortening. The batter is baked in a greased baking pan. A grand gallery of fat.

MIT NESHOMES, translated literally, means “dumpling with a soul.” Knaidlach are dumplings, all right, made with traditional matzo meal, but the “soul” is provided by two table-spoons of hot fat, one egg yolk, and a dash of salt added to each two table-spoons of matzo meal. A mass-meeting of satts.

MARROW KNAIDLACH is super-raisers of the blood-cholesterol level, for combined with egg yolk and the matzo meal, are one tablespoon of beef marrow. Beef marrow contains even more hard fat than butter.

We are all prone to develop a fondness for Mom's cooking, but woe to our coronary arteries if mother cooks too many dishes such as these.

There are several sound ethnic studies which prove that Jewish Americans are far more subject to AHD, than Americans as a whole. One carefully controlled survey has found that, compared to Americans of Italian origin (who are more apt to eat soft fats), twice as many Jewish men have high blood-cholesterol values.

There is also undeniable statistical evidence that the Jewish people, men and women (after forty) alike, are more frequent victims of coronary attacks and death. In short, it appears that too many of these good people are committing a coronary form of hari-kari—with their knives and forks.

Today's Americans are entitled statistically to an average life span of some 71 years. Whatever the death rate difference may be between men and women in the total population, rest assured that Jewish men fare worst of all. If this is caused by wholly correctable mistakes in eating, couldn't we call it race suicide in fact?

However, in passing, there is one bright spot. Traditionally, Orthodox Jews do not eat meat and drink milk at the same meal. Thus, to their great fortune, as far as coronary is concerned, the chief dietary sources of hard fats are not eaten together.

However, one can overindulge in dairy foods at one meal, and meats at another. Income permitting, this perhaps happens too often, even in the Orthodox Jewish home.  Let's not put the entire fault on eating alone. We know that men engaged in physical types of work are less liable to coronary disease, than the doctor or advertising executive in his grey flannel suit.

Jewish men are more likely to engage in sedentary business occupations and the professions. So, along with their dietary mistakes, they have an added hurdle to overcome in escaping coronary disease.

THE TRUTH IS FATHER TO THE WISH

Heart attacks caused by fat deposits in the coronary arteries are doing a superb job of liquidating citizens of the capitalist countries—particularly the United States. This truth is reason enough for the following “party line” statement.

Professor I. Gurevitch, writing in a Soviet medical journal, characterizes all forms of heart saver eating as a capitalistic plot—“advantageous to the ruling classes, who are at present engaged in lowering the living standard of the masses, in lowering their wages and in raising the price of food and particularly of fat. The masses in capitalist countries suffer from a shortage and not from an excess of fat.”

THIRTY DAYS TO NEW PLEASURE IN SAFE EATING THE BEST WAY TO BREAK A BAD HABIT IS TO FORM A GOOD ONE—LIKE THIS.

SINCE YOU NOW KNOW that you positively should cut down on the hard fats in your eating; you should also face the fact that, in essence, it means a new way of life. If you don't enjoy heart saver eating, you will never keep it up.

You who have the weight problem are in the same boat. You have to learn to like low-calorie eating, or you cannot stay “reduced.” If you're trying to keep your figure, or get it back, you're faced with a lifetime of sensible eating, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. The same is true if you set out now to protect your heart.

There is only one way to go about any kind of keep-fit eating. Get away from negative thinking. Don't make your heart saver eating an”I can't eat this” proposition. Make your attitude a positive one. Make it a game, if you will, in which you set out to fight satts in every possible way.

You can trim swarms of them from your meat-eating by cutting away visible fats. Then, when you do eat hard-fat foods, plan deliberately to knock out more of the satts with your anti-coronary shock troops—the polys. Use every ally that you can find!

Today, it is possible to buy margarines that are made from poly-rich oils; although these margarines are a little more expensive, and usually found only in drugstores. You can be sure that soon many other products with such qualities will be developed and, as the knowledge of their benefits becomes more widely known, will be distributed on a more general basis.

As nearly as we can determine, the majority of prepared mayonnaise brands now on the market are made with a goodly percentage of poly-rich oil. You can often use mayonnaise as a spread for bread, when preparing a sandwich.

Don't use butter on steaks or potatoes, when fat-free gravy or seasoned soft oil will give you the lubrication you want. Never use butter for sautéing, basting, or frying. Again, use vegetable oils instead.

Above all things: Don't be penny-wise and health-pound-foolish. Don't save the bacon fat and meat fat drippings that accumulate from your cooking! All the money you save by using these “kitchen fats” will not begin to take care of the funeral costs or doctor's bills that can result from one coronary attack.

Call our basic positive approach psychology, if you will; but, one fundamental heart-saving fact remains. You're going to be a very unhappy person, and fail in your endeavour, if you make any new way of eating solely a matter of self-denial. That attitude adds up to a daily punishment that will cause you to give up and forget.

You can't keep your weight down or guard your heart by following a rigid diet for a couple of weeks, and then slipping right back to your old ways of eating. On the other hand, doing it the right way isn't nearly as “terrible” as you may think.

Be-cause we have been doing it for fourteen years, we can assure you that the heart saver way of eating is good eating—tasty, pleasant, and fun to follow. It may take some time and some doing for you to prove that fact, but your patience will be rewarded.

Always remember, too, that as far as heart saver eating is concerned, there are some three hundred foods you can eat with perfect safety, and enjoy to your heart's content. Go down the food list in the Appendix and single out those marked as “Soft Fat” foods, and then put a mark after every food that you like.

Most of you are going to be pleasantly surprised at the variety of foods you do like. Write them down in a master list, and from them make the dishes that you use to take the place of hard-fat foods.

Sure, there are a few of you who are strict meat-and-potato eaters, or very “set” in your eating tastes. You may check the entire list of foods you can eat, and find only relatively few that you really like. Limiting yourself to these won't make for a balanced diet—or give you enough variety to make an enjoy way of life. You who fall into this class can't change Nature's laws of eating, so you will have to change yourselves.

How do you go about changing you? There is only one way to do it—train your-self to like a lot of new foods, or old foods prepared in a heart saver way. Don't decide in advance that you won't like veal cutlets, breaded and fried in corn oil. Try them. You will be very pleasantly surprised. It's only a matter of learning and cultivating new tastes, and not nearly as difficult as you may think.

You weren't born with a taste for any particular food, not even your mother's milk. However, you did develop hunger pangs shortly after birth. Instinctively you groped for mother's breast, or a substitute bottle.

You learned to like milk from the day you were born. Then, if you were weaned in modern scientific fashion, you gradually built up a taste for orange juice, strained beef, and vegetables, as well as bland cereals. Every one of these tastes was acquired.

If mothers would start feeding their one-year-olds skim milk or half-and-half, the toddlers would soon cultivate a taste for it and prefer it to the rich taste of whole milk. The important thing is that you'll never lose the faculty for acquiring new tastes as long as you live.

The trouble is that most of you never consciously set out to develop a taste for a new food, or a familiar food prepared in a different way, yet undoubtedly you did it often without thinking. You cultivated a taste when you learned to smoke.

Rare is the individual who took his first puff of tobacco and liked it right off. Most of you became dizzy, or tummy-sick at your first try, but, you attempted it again and again until you learned to like it. The same story is true for beer and whiskey.

If you'll look into your past, you'll probably find that you had to deliberately cultivate a taste for many foods— olives, for example, or the pungent cheeses.

Men and women have learned to cultivate a taste for the strangest foods; ranging from snails to broiled locusts. The gamut of foods that the peoples of the world can eat and enjoy is almost limitless in its extremes. So don't say that you can't learn to enjoy a new way of eating. You can—and you will!

The same principle applies to cultivating a taste for a well liked food prepared in a different way. Many of you who acquired a taste for coffee prepared with sugar and cream will vow that you couldn't possibly drink it black.

Don't be so sure. Thousands of dieters, who once felt as you do, have learned to prefer black coffee. Don't decide after the first time, that you don't like eggs fried in vegetable oil instead of butter. Try them often, and then make your decision.

Many of us have prejudices about certain foods, usually based on emotions. You don't like tripe because it's made from a cow's stomach. Yet, you adore pepper pot soup, which has tripe as its base. Does this make sense?

Most people will often find that a food you swear you can't stand is a food you've never tasted. The mere mention of kidneys causes some people to shudder, but often the individual who has tried broiled lamb kidneys, taste-fully seasoned, will swear that they are a delicacy indeed. You have to be venturesome to learn to like a new way of eating.

There are no figures we know of, to indicate how long it may take an individual to acquire a taste for an untried or neglected food. Yet, we have seen people, who swore they couldn't stand the stuff, cultivate a taste for Roquefort cheese after a third or fourth helping.

We watched one obdurate young woman become a devotee of snails after trying them only twice. We're not trying to argue that you can force yourself to eat a food you have revulsion to. But we are trying to convince you that you might have a lot to gain by sampling, once or twice, some food you haven't eaten.

At least take the trouble to try different recipes for the same food. You may find one that you like. The more different and healthful foods you learn to like, the more enjoyable your life will be. We belabour this point of “cultivating a taste” for new foods because the foods you eat are your diet.

In our thirty years of experience with reducers, we came to the conclusion that the average stout person, who finally gets to en-joy keep-slim eating, accepts it fully in about three months. Suddenly, they wake up to the fact that they like it, and often as not, they will insist, “I can't stand the kind of meals I used to eat.”

Our more limited experience with heart-saver eating indicates an acceptance time averaging about thirty days. The difference, of course, is because anti-coronary eating allows you much more variety in your choice of foods. Compared to keep-slim eating, it is not nearly so strict.

Salads are going to afford you a wonderful escape in heart saver eating. They are good for you because they are tremendously rich in the vitamin-mineral factors.

Best of all, you can use salads to tastefully get a whole raft of polys—to offset the satts you eat in a given meal. You have the opportunity to use the right kind of mayonnaise or poly-rich oil dressings—which will actually keep cholesterol down.

The hors d'oeuvres you run into at a cocktail party are generally prepared with a lot of hard fat. Cheese delights are a favourite; cute little frankfurters, tiny meat balls—and a score or more of satt-rich tempters that you had best avoid.

Pick olives or, better still, learn to choose fish hors d'oeuvres of one kind or another, particularly shrimp dipped in cocktail sauce. Sardines are rich in polys —or smoked oysters, or tuna. These are all usually packed in oil. Chilled raw celery, carrot sticks, cucumber wedges, or slices of tomato, slightly salted and liberally sprinkled with lemon juice, are all heart saver hors d'oeuvres deluxe.

Once you have tried them when you are really hungry, your mouth begins to water at the very sight of these delicacies on the table.

As far as heart saver proteins for your main dishes are concerned, you'll find some twenty varieties of fish that are practically fat-free. Whatever fat they do contain is highly unsaturated—filled with a very efficient type of “marine” poly.

Fish, as you will learn more fully, is a superb heart saver food. You can make it even more so, by serving it with some mayonnaise-base dressing. If you are counting calories, in addition to everything else, you can try the lemon-and-salt technique on broiled or boiled low-fat fish.

Maybe you won't be wild about it the first time you try it, but the second and third time, you'll find it very good eating.

Lobster is a fine heart saver food, because it, too, is practically fat-free. The proteins of lobster are made up of A-l, top-grade essential amino. But you'll have to learn to like your lobster without drawn butter. Try it with mayonnaise or oil.

The lemon juice idea works out well with lobster, but if you have to have some kind of dressing with it, tries the hot cocktail sauces. The idea of using them with hot lobster may not appeal to you at first, but once you try it, you'll find it's very good.

You can prepare tartar sauce with a fat-free, mayonnaise-type boiled dressing, or a mayonnaise rich in unsaturated factors. Any standard fish sauce can be made with vegetable oils, but it sometimes requires a bit of kitchen experimentation. Believe us; it's a hundred times worthwhile.

This all adds up to one bottom-line fact: Heart saver eating is good eating. Be assured that, if you will really try to acquire new tastes, you can look forward to many new adventures in good eating, and still fully protect your heart.

CHOCOLATE

The fat in chocolate should be rated as a hard fat, although not nearly so saturated as coconut fat, or the fats of milk or meats or cheese. With an average Iodine Index of 35, it can't be called soft or considered safe.

Chocolate (bitter) on the average can be counted on to contain better than 50 percent fat. Cocoa is partially defatted chocolate, and probably averages about 28 percent.  Go easy on chocolate and cocoa, except perhaps as flavouring. A double chocolate soda or malted milk doesn't fit in with heart saver eating.

SPAGHETTI

Spaghetti can be a heart saver dish— though not so kind to reducers. Cooked spaghetti by itself is practically fat free. A sauce made with olive oil, or any other liquid oil, can serve to offset the hard fat found in the meat balls and cheese.

NUTS

The percentage of unsaturated in nuts has not often been calculated. However, the so-called iodine number is an excellent index of softness of the fat. A softness rating, based on this index, of some common nuts follows. Those with the highest iodine number are best.

Iodine Nut          Rating   Index

Black Walnut = 1 = 170

White Walnut = 2 = 129

Peanuts = 3 = 118

Beechnuts = 4 = 110

Hickory = 5 = 108

Pecan = 6 = 106

Almonds = 7 = 100

Brazil = 8 = 99

Pistachios = 9 = 86

Hazelnuts = 10 = 85

Cashews = 11 = 80

FAT HARDNESS SCALE

Meat fats vary in degree of hardness, according to species. Here is a list detailing the average degree of softness based on the percentage of unsaturated fats found in the meat. Those at the top of the list are “hardest.”

Veal Fat = 3.4

Beef Fat = 3.5

Pork Fat = 3.8

Lamb Fat = 4.0

Mutton Fat = 4.5

Duck Fat = 4.8

Goose Fat = 5.5

Turkey Fat = 6.0

Rabbit Fat = 6.5

SUMMER EATING HABITS CONTRARY TO ALL REASONS OF NUTRITIONAL NECESSITY, THE AVERAGE PERSON OFTEN CONSUMES MORE HARD-FAT FOODS DURING HOT WEATHER THAN HE DOES IN THE WINTER MONTHS.

The American pattern of hot weather eating was not born of a nutritionist's chart. Our summer meals developed mainly from an effort to reduce the amount of time a homemaker had to spend in a hot kitchen.

The cool of autumn and the cold of winter make the warm kitchen a comfortable place to work, but in hot weather it's always a gruelling ordeal. In sheer self-defence, the housewife of bygone days planned summer meals that had as their main goal: less time spent in the kitchen. Because we learned to like such meals, the summer diet mistakes continue.

Food can be fried quickly, so small wonder that meats and many other foods were more apt to be fried in summer than they were in winter.

Sausages and preserved meats—which could be prepared in cooler weather—were marked for summer eating. Sausages, particularly, are notoriously rich in fat. Cured ham was also a special favourite.

All these convenient arrangements suited the family, too. Hot dishes may not be tempting on a hot summer day. Appetites are not inclined to be sharp. Cold cuts and cold dishes are apt to be more inviting. But cold foods, at least those that “stick to the ribs,” may be heavy with fat. Cold, lean beef isn't nearly as tasty as beef marbled generously with fat. Neither is lamb, ham, or even pork.

Becaus