Welcome to the Nutrition Facts Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Michael Greger.

The coronavirus pandemic has made many of us very aware of the importance of maintaining and improving our health.

Make that your silver lining.

Because the more positive change we can make to our diet lifestyle, the better.

Today, it's part three in our four-part series on Strokes and Diet.

In our first story, we investigate the drop-in stroke risk as the Japanese diet became westernized.

Stroke was the leading cause of death in Japan, but the mortality rate sharply decreased as they moved away from their traditional diets

and started eating more like those in the West.

So maybe there was a protective effect of all the extra meat and dairy they started to eat.

After all, their animal fat and animal protein intake were going up.

At the same time, their stroke rates were going down.

Protection from stroke by eating animal foods? Surely not.

Commented.

Noted Lomolinda cardiology professor, many vegetarians like myself, have almost come to expect the data to indicate that they haven't advantage whatever the disease that's being considered.

Thus, it is disquieting to find evidence in a quite different direction for at least one subtype of stroke.

Can dietary saturated fat, like that found in meat and dairy be beneficial in the prevention of stroke risk?

There appeared to be a protective association, but only in East Asian populations.

High dietary saturated fat was found associated with a lower risk of stroke in Japanese, but not in non-Japanese.

So what was it about the traditional Japanese diet where the westernization of their diets made things better when it came to stroke risk?

Well, at the same time, their meat and dairy was going up their salt intake was going down.

The traditional Japanese diet was packed with salt.

In fact, they had some of the highest salt intakes in the world, like a dozen spoonfuls of salt a day.

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