Study Finds Diet is Chief Reason for Racial Difference in Blood Pressure in US

Source: nbcnews.com It’s rich and delicious, that Southern diet: plenty of fried food, cheesy casseroles, and sweet, sweet tea. But it’s deadly, especially to African-Americans. The fat, sugar and sodium that make Southern food so tempting also sends blood pressure up to killer levels. A study out Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association shows the main reason African-Americans die younger than whites is heart disease. It finds heart disease, mostly caused by high blood pressure, accounts for fully one-third of the disparity. And the main factor raising blood pressure? A Southern-style diet. George Howard of the University of Alabama at Birmingham and colleagues studied just under 7,000 people who had been taking part in a larger, long-term study of diet and lifestyle. The volunteers got their first medical exams for the study between 2003 and 2007, and