The Morning Brew: Friday, 1.9

• The Chicago health commissioner is a quack, as well as whoever wrote that article. In the first couple paragraphs it mentions lowering blood pressure and blood sugar as a reason to go vegetarian - the best way to control blood sugar levels is to cut back on sugars and starches - foods that people might eat more of by choosing a vegetarian diet. As for high blood pressure, cutting out all sugars and starches will also drop your blood pressure so quick your head will spin. The whole reason people have high blood pressure in the first place is from the excess water the body carries to compensate for eating excess carbohydrates. The author also mentions lowering cholesterol. 50% of people who die from heart attacks have normal or low cholesterol. Lowering cholesterol to prevent heart attacks is a useless goal. Now, if you want to talk about lowering triglycerides - that's probably a good idea. But vegetarian diets have been shown to RAISE triglycerides. In India, lifelong vegetarians have 7 times the heart disease as their meat-eating countrymen. Maybe the supposed health benefits of vegetarianism can better be explained by the fact that in the Western world vegetarians are a self-selecting population that are healthier than everyone else *despite* their diet. People who go to church live longer too - does that mean church prevents disease?

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