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Diet and Coronary Heart Disease in the Seven Countries Study

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Prevention of Coronary Heart Disease: Diet, Lifestyle and Risk Factors in the Seven Countries Study

Part of the book series: Developments in Cardiovascular Medicine ((DICM,volume 243))

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Abstract

During the first part of the past century, research on diet and coronary heart disease focused on cholesterol. The original diet—heart hypothesis related cholesterol in the diet to cholesterol in blood and cholesterol in the atherosclerotic plaque. This hypothesis was based on dietary experiments in rabbits, carried out at the beginning of the 20thcentury by Ignatowski and Anitskow in Leningrad, and by cross-cultural comparisons made by the Dutch physician, De Langen (1). He compared the diet, plasma cholesterol concentrations, and the frequency of coronary heart disease among the natives of the island of Java and Dutch immigrants (2). Compared with the largely vegetarian and rice-eating Javanese, the Dutch consumed a Western diet. The blood cholesterol concentrations were twice as high in the Dutch as in the Javanese. Western “metabolic diseases” such as diabetes, gallstones, nephritis, and CHD were almost non-existent among the Javanese.

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Authors
  1. Daan Kromhout
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  2. Bennie Bloemberg
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Director Nutrition and Consumer Safety Division, National Institute of Public Health and the Environment, P.O. Box 1, Bilthoven, 3720 BA, The Netherlands

    Daan Kromhout (Professor) (Professor)

  2. Association for Cardiac Research Cardioricerca, Via Adda 87, Rome, 00198, Italy

    Alessandro Menotti (Professor) (Professor)

  3. Division of Epidemiology, School of Public Health University of Minnesota, 1300 South Second Street, Minneapolis, MN, 55454-1015, USA

    Henry Blackburn (Mayo Professor Emeritus) (Mayo Professor Emeritus)

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Kromhout, D., Bloemberg, B. (2002). Diet and Coronary Heart Disease in the Seven Countries Study. In: Kromhout, D., Menotti, A., Blackburn, H. (eds) Prevention of Coronary Heart Disease: Diet, Lifestyle and Risk Factors in the Seven Countries Study. Developments in Cardiovascular Medicine, vol 243. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-1117-5_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-1117-5_5

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