Word: diets
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...N.F.L. games by political correctness: "The Eagles, an endangered species, will of course cover the spread against those pillaging, earth-destroying Cowboys." Or when he (infrequently) admits to a gaffe and as punishment spanks himself and squalls like a colicky baby. Or when he sucks on a bottle of diet iced tea and snorts like a happy hog at the trough...
Perils of living in poverty also take their toll. The sharing of contaminated needles among drug users speeds the spread of AIDS. Alcoholism, stress and poor diet help fuel increases in cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer and liver failure. A study in Washington found that 50% of black men living in public housing suffer from hypertension, in contrast to 20% of all black men in the city. And 25% of the projects' women suffer from diabetes, against 7% in Washington as a whole...
...greater for blacks than it is for whites. Almost half of black women and one-third of black men are severely overweight, vs. one-fourth of white men and women. In addition, the salt in soul food can aggravate high blood pressure. "We have to teach people that diet is important," says Dr. Harold Freeman, a surgeon at Harlem Hospital. "As the saying goes, if you can control your mouth, you can control your life...
Genetics. In a study of 50 black and 219 white physicians, who presumably have access to care and can make improvements in their diet, researchers found a marked difference in the ability to handle cholesterol. Compared with their white colleagues, the black physicians exhibited higher blood levels of a type of lipoprotein believed to aggravate blockage of coronary arteries. Other research found that elderly black men are twice as likely to develop tuberculosis as white men living under the same socioeconomic conditions. Perhaps, scientists speculated, genetic differences affected the body's ability to knock out the bacteria...
More controversial has been the search for a hereditary factor underlying hypertension. Stress and diet are known to affect high blood pressure. Racism may also play a role. But "there is so much excess hypertension in blacks that it's inconceivable to me that these factors alone are the ones that balance the equation upward," says Dr. Elijah Saunders, a cardiologist at the University of Maryland Medical System. Some researchers have even suggested that African Americans have inherited a greater sensitivity to salt. But any explanation along genetic lines will have to account for the fact that modern- day Africans...