Transcript for TED - Dean Ornish - The World Now Eats (and Dies) Like Americans

Once a year...

1000 remarkable people gather in Monterey, California

to exchange something of incalculable value

Their Ideas

What happens there has never been shared

...until now

With all the legitimate concerns about AIDS

and avian flu, and we'll hear about that from the brilliant doctor later today,

I want to talk about the other pandemic, which is cardiovascular disease,

diabetes, hypertension, all of which are completely preventable for at least 95% of people

just by changing diet and lifestyle.

And what's happening is that there's a globalization of illness occurring, the people are starting to eat like us

and live like us, and die like us. And in one generation, for example, Asia's gone from having one of the lowest rates

of heart disease and obesity and diabetes to one of the highest. And in Africa, cardiovascular disease equals the HIV

and AIDS deaths in most countries. So, there's a critical window of opportunity we have to make an important difference

that can affect the lives of literally millions of people and practice preventative medicine on a global scale.

Heart and blood vessel diseases still kill more people, not only in this country but also worldwide, than everything else

combined, and yet it's completely preventable for almost everybody. It's not only preventable, it's actually reversible,

and for the last almost 29 years we've been able to show that by simply changing diet and lifestyle, using these very

high-tech, expensive, state-of-the-art measures to prove how powerful these very simple and low-tech and low-cost

interventions can be, like quantitative arteriography before and after a year, and cardiac PET scans.

We showed a few months ago, we published the first study showing you can actually stop or reverse the progression of

prostate cancer by making changes in diet and lifestyle. And 70% of regression in the tumor growth, or inhibition of the

tumor growth compared to only 9% in the control group. In the MRI and the MR spectroscopy here the prostate tumor

activity is shown in red, you can see it diminishing after a year. Now, there is an epidemic of obesity, two-thirds of adults

and 15% of kids. What's really concerning to me is that diabetes has increased 70% in the past 10 years, and this may be

the first generation in which our kids live a shorter lifespan than we do. That's pitiful, and that's preventable.

Now, these are not election returns, these are the number of people who are obese by state,

beginning in 1985, '86, '87--these are from the CDC (Center for Disease Control) website-- '88, '89, '90, '91 (you get a

new category), '92, '93, '94, '95, '96, '97, '98, '99, 2000, 2001, it gets worse, we're kind of devolving.

["Evolution of Man"]

Now, what can we do about this? Well, the diet that we found that can reverse heart diseases and cancer is an Asian diet.

But the people in Asia are starting to eat like we are, which is why they're starting to get sick like we are.

So I've been working with a lot of big food companies. They can make it fun and sexy and hip and crunchy

and convenient to eat healthier foods. I chair the advisory boards at McDonald's, and PepsiCo, and ConAgra, and Safeway,

and soon Del Monte, and they're finding that it's good business. The salads that you see at McDonald's came from their work,

They're going to have an Asian salad. At Pepsi, two thirds of their revenue growth came from their better foods.

And so, if we can do that, then we can free up resources for buying drugs that you really do need

for treating AIDS and HIV and malaria, and for preventing avian flu. Thank you.