sf wrote:
>
> Unless he's eating entire sticks behind my back.... I don't think he
> eats very much. It's one of those things he can point at and say
> "fat", so he decided to eliminate it.


If his health problems are genetic (from what you've said, I believe
they are), will cutting down on fats any further really improve his
health? Has his doctor told him to keep the fats in his diet down to a
certain amount?


I'm no doctor. I only know what I read in the news media so I'm sure
I've got a distorted view, but the way I understand it, making dietary
changes will help some people quite a bit in preventing heart attack.
That may even be most people.


For the others, for the ones who have never eaten a high fat diet, for
the ones who have always exercised, for the ones who have always
maintained a healthy low weight, for the people who do all that and
still have family members who have died young of heart attack, those
people are better off seeing their doctor regularly and taking the right
medicines than further tweaking their diet with butter substitutes.


For the record, I'm saying this because, while the news is good, I'm
still a little freaked by a friend's recent quadruple bypass surgery.
He's someone who has never been overweight and has seemed to eat right.
He'd been on heart medication, gotten stents put in 6 months ago, went
into the hospital for more stents, but gotten tests results showing that
he needed surgery right away. Even while in the hospital, his chest
pains and tests worried the doctors enough that they gave him emergency
surgery. They pushed it forward a few days. They didn't want to wait.


He's fine. He's at home and recovering and telecommuting and saving the
day at work (computer programming). I'm relieved and rejoicing but
still freaked that he was ever in this situation in the first place.
The man isn't yet 60 years old! Then I learned about his family
history-- both parents and several aunts and uncles have all died young
of heart disease.


--Lia