Source: Canadian Press
ONTARIO, CANADA, March 15, 2003: Indo-Canadians are being warned that their traditional cooking, heavy on clarified butter and whole-milk yogurt, is bad for their hearts. The issue has become something of a crusade for Edmonton Hindu priest Acharya Shiv Shankar Diwivedi. He’s been seeing too many people in their 40s and 50s suffering heart attacks, and has made heart-healthy living a major theme when talking with temple devotees. “The south Asian community is not doing much exercise and they’re following the tradition of heavy and rich food,” Diwivedi says. Many resist change because the food is what their forefathers ate, he says. However, in India life was less stressful and much more vigorous physically, he reminds them. The cause has been picked up by south Asian physicians and other health professionals, who have organized a day-long conference today on heart disease specifically for Indo-Canadians. “Indo-Canadians have a higher than average risk of heart attack,” says Dr. Sunil Desai, a pediatric oncologist. “And while the rich diet and lack of exercise are part of the problem, there may also be a genetic predisposition among Indo-Canadians to heart disease. What we call normal cholesterol for the white population may not apply to the Indian population,” he says. Neelam Makhani, a dietitian with Caritas hospitals, says that while many Indo-Canadians are vegetarian, their cooking involves a lot of deep frying in clarified butter (and other oils). The other problem, she says, is that south Asians use homogenized milk to make yogurt, one of their staple foods.