Tina,
Thanks for posting this. What you posted about diet contributing to heart attacks is so true at least among the upper middle class Indians living in India. These are the studies conducted by a group i know in Bangalore, not sure if these studies are all published yet. These hstudies identified changes in dietary habits coupled with life style changes of Indians between the ages of 35-50 being tightly correlated with increase in heart diseases. This age group is the present upper middle class of India who have gotten used to junk food, exactly the way you described here.

e" kinds of food were made universally available that had formerly been only occasional treats, if available at all: sugar, processed white flour, and refined vegetable oils and margarine. "All of these have been linked with heart attacks.



In addition, this group is sedentary (no time walk to work or the grocery store or to exercise and heavily dependent on cars), stressed (high stress hormones, heat shock proteins in the blood) and their body is in chronic inflammatory state (Pro-inflammatory cytokines, especially il-6 in the circulation) when compared to their parents or compared to less fortunate (not so sure of that!) ones in terms of financial status.

It is a beautiful study of how India's technological advances as well as economic growth and associated changes in the life style are affecting the health of the present generation. I bet Similar factors are at play here in USA too. Seems like a lot of disorders finally come down to what you eat!

Thanks
Girija