Unfortunately, that study cited is pretty much total garbage. Did you read the study? They tested six people. Six.
Fair enough point: six people doesn't impress me either. I will now refer to the so-called 'China Health Study'. In contrast to Bernardo's sample this was, I'm fairly sure, the largest health survey/study ever undertaken involving hundreds of thousands of people and mind boggling time and expense.
"The China Health Study". The whole thing was started in the early 1970's when the Chinese premier, Chou EnLai, was dying of cancer. He initiated a vast study correlating disease rates in China with different geographical areas, culminating in the publishing of a disease atlas of China. Later, the authors of The Study collected dietary and blood data from 65 mostly rural counties in China and correlated them with the data in the disease atlas. Then they printed the data in book form so that you can, for instance, look up myocardial infarction ( heart attack) rates, and see what foods are eaten in areas of China where people are prone to heart attacks. It is a truly epic study...'
Quoting from Jaminet's 'Perfect Health Diet' book:
Perhaps the most remarkable correlations in the China Study are those involving grains. Different areas of China eat different staple grains, so the China Study correlations give a good measure of the impact of different grains on health. The correlations were: Wheat had a +67% correlation with heart disease mortality; Rice had a -58% correlation with heart disease mortality; Other grains had a +39% correlation with heart disease mortality. Wheat was by far the most toxic food found in the China Study.
This is of course based on raw data. I understand 'correlation does not equal an association' but the figures look damning for wheat consumption. Until the experts figure out what is going on here it seems prudent to be wary of the extremely strong correlations with heart disease. The blogger Denise Minger attempts an analysis of the data and what might explain the raw data sets. http://rawfoodsos.com/2010/09/02/the-china-study-wheat-and-heart-disease-oh-my/
Of course those diseases could have nothing to do with the fact that people predisposed to them have a greater chance of survival and procreation in first world countries, right?
Nor could they have anything to do with better detection technologies? No? It has to be diet?
Have you considered that it isn't solely diet but activity level that could be the main culprit?
Look, I'm not saying that diet isn't a problem but it really isn't as bad as you make it sound. The claim most make is that "western diet" started hurting us around the 50s-60s era, once supermarkets and all that started to gain prominence. Fact is... diet was worse earlier on. As an example, my grandfather was a child during the great depression and his family was hit pretty hard. They had ten children in the family and food was so scarce for them that he usually got bread with oleo on it for a typical dinner. Not the healthiest diet, and I would definitely argue that healthy food choices are much more widespread now than they were then. And it definitely is not the majority of Americans eating what you consider the Western Diet, because if that were true then healthy food choices would not be so readily available. See, this is how the market works. If something is not in demand, production goes down.