Our Diet Is Killing Us

At least one of every six deaths in the United States—upwards of 340,000 each year—is linked to a poor diet and sedentary lifestyle.1 The average American is about as likely to die
from a disease related to diet and physical inactivity as from smoking tobacco—and far likelier to die from diet and inactivity than from an automobile accident, homicide, or infectious disease such as pneumonia. Among nonsmokers, the combination of diet and physical inactivity is the single largest cause of death.

The specific diet-related diseases that fell so many of us include heart disease, certain cancers, stroke, and diabetes. Those and other chronic diseases (so called because they develop and progress over many years) are caused in part by diets too poor in healthy plant-based foods and too rich in unhealthy animal-based foods.

• The saturated fat and cholesterol in beef, pork, dairy foods, poultry, and eggs cause about 63,000 fatal heart attacks annually. 
• Less than a quarter of all adults eat the recommended number of daily servings of fruits and vegetables—foods that reduce the risk of heart disease and cancer. 
• Vegetarians enjoy lower levels of blood cholesterol, less obesity, less hypertension, and fewer other problems than people whose diet includes meat.