According to a new study, fat from red meat and dairy products is associated with increased risk of pancreatic cancer. As part of the National Institutes of Health-AARP Diet and Health Study, researchers followed and analyzed the diets of more than 525,000 participants to determine whether there is an association between dietary fat and pancreatic cancer. This same study found no association between plant-food fat and pancreatic cancer.

Thiébaut ACM, Jia L, Silverman DT, et al. Dietary fatty acids and pancreatic cancer in the NIH-AARP Diet and Health Study. J Natl Cancer Inst. 2009;101:1001-1011.

Nothing shocking here for me, since I eat at Millennium all the time. But Time Magazine recently converted another carnivore with a review of the best vegan restaurant in San Francisco: “With charmoula (North African-style) grilled portobello mushroom, maple-glazed smoked tempeh, various rich curries and inventive salads, he has proven that he can take what die-hard carnivores sarcastically term ‘rabbit food’ and turn it into the kind of meal that lingers long in the memory.”

On the Huffington Post, Oprah-certified vegan guru Kathy Freston writes up how recent diet studies were flawed and what actually works: “The very-low-fat vegetarian diets work long-term because they focus on the consumption of fiber and complex carbohydrates, which make you feel full without a lot of empty fat calories, so adherents needn’t keep food logs, restrict food intake, or count calories–in other words, they take advantage of the nature of food.”

McDougall explains why he’s spending $750,000 to study multiple sclerosis and diet: “For me, stopping multiple sclerosis with the cost-free, side-effect-free McDougall Diet is equivalent to throwing the biggest rock I can find at the biggest picture window in town. The shatter will be heard around the world.”

A profile of McDougall Program registered dietitian Jeff Novick: “While my career with Kraft was financially successful for me, I was not happy. I was in conflict by working for a company that sold the same products that were causing most of America’s health and weight problems.”

And, of course, there are recipes! Corn Chowder and Kim Chi Noodle Soup look interesting…

In his November newsletter, Dr. McDougall imagines the conversation that would take place on his first day as Obama’s surgeon general:

McDougall: … You just finished 2 years of campaigning across America. You must have noticed the condition of people, particularly those of African decent.  About four out of five African-American women are overweight or obese. One-third of blacks in America have hypertension accompanied by stroke, heart attack, and kidney failure. Black men have the highest rate of prostate cancer in the world.  Asian Americans, often in one generation, have also become Americanized in their diet and appearance.

People must learn to get the bulk of their calories from starches. Notice I did not say every patriotic American has to become a vegetarian or vegan—I am not pushing a religion, just a single big change in eating.

Obama: You are talking about a revolution.  I have promised our nation change on a historic scale.  But, this is unprecedented.

Wow, definitely dropped the ball this month, here’s McDougall’s October newsletter roundup:

McDougall says the organic food movement is “too little, too late“: “My patients are overweight and sick because they have learned to eat, from childhood, the richest diet known to humankind—a diet of animals, oils, and sugars.  Dining for a lifetime on “organically farmed” meat, poultry, fish, cheese, milk, honey, and flour would have caused them the exact same states of poor health.  Along the same lines of thought, switching my patients to conventionally grown potatoes, rice, corn, vegetables, and fruits results in profound improvements in their health in 10-days — organic varieties of these plant foods would have not made a speck of difference.”

As for this month’s recipes, I feel like someone is taunting me this month, as two of the recipes feature eggplant as the main ingredient: Szechwan Eggplant and Baked Eggplant Casserole

Congratulations Karen and Phyllis!

Congratulations, Don!

Ezra Klein on Michael Pollan and meat subsidies: “We spend billions to subsidize ever cheaper meat. And billions more to treat the ill health that results from our meat-heavy diets. And we will pay billions, even trillions, more, to handle the environmental damage that eventually results from these policies. It’s an incredibly odd state of affairs, like paying someone to touch up your house with lead paint. But we continue doing it because people like meat and because the various industries arrayed around meat — from acutal producers of livestock to the pharmaceutical companies that create the antibiotics to the corn industry which supplies the grain — wield enormous political power.”

In an open letter in The New York Times, Michael Pollan addresses the issues the next president (Obama) will face: “You will need not simply to address food prices but to make the reform of the entire food system one of the highest priorities of your administration: unless you do, you will not be able to make significant progress on the health care crisis, energy independence or climate change. Unlike food, these are issues you did campaign on — but as you try to address them you will quickly discover that the way we currently grow, process and eat food in America goes to the heart of all three problems and will have to change if we hope to solve them.”