The ‘Southern diet’ of deep-fried meats, sweet bread and soda is the main reason why African-Americans have a higher risk of high blood pressure than whites, a new study concludes.
Eating large amounts of fried foods, meats, eggs and sugar makes black Americans twice as likely to suffer hypertension than their white peers.
The lead authors of the study, published today in the Journals of the American Medical Association, described the food culture of the south as the ‘perfect storm of a diet’, ramping up blood sugar and bad cholesterol levels.
They admit they were surprised that the diet was a clearer driving factor than stress or depression, since fatty food is popular across all communities.
But a crucial difference is that white neighborhoods have greater access to fresh food as an alternative, while restaurants serving this so-called ‘American comfort food’ are more common in predominantly black neighborhoods.
The team is now calling upon lawmakers to implement policy changes – such as reducing the amount of salt in fast-food options – that might help drive down the staggering rates of high blood pressure.
Eating large amounts of fried foods, processed meats, eggs and sugar-sweetened beverages puts blacks at a 1.5 to two times higher risk for hypertension (file image of a plate of fries and corn dogs, a sausage on a stick covered in layer of cornmeal batter and deep fried)
The Southern diet consists of well-known dishes such as fried chicken and waffles, grits, buttermilk biscuits, cornbread, sweet tea, mashed potatoes and a variety of pies.
A mix of Scottish, Irish, African, Native American and Caribbean influences, the food grew from a culture of family get-togethers, passing large servings of indulgent, warming dishes around the table.
But some neighborhoods have little access to anything else.
A 2010 study by the Food Trust found that predominantly black zip codes have approximately half the number of chain supermarkets compared to predominantly white zip codes.
And a 2014 study by the Harvard School of Public Health found that the average distance to fast food was 3.56 miles closer in areas with the highest quartile percentage of black residents compared to the lowest.
Those figures correlate with the consistent findings that African Americans have much poorer heart health, putting them at higher risk than any race for heart disease, the number one killer in the country, and in the world.
Lead author Dr George Howard, a professor of biostatistics at the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Public Health, told Daily Mail Online he was surprised by the findings, and had believe stress or depression would be larger contributing factor.
But their findings unequivocally showed food to be the culprit.
Blood pressure is recorded with two numbers. The higher number, or systolic pressure, is the force that blood is being pumped by your heart around your body.
The lower number, or diastolic pressure, is how much pressure is the arteries in between heart beats. Both are measured in millimeters of mercury (mmHg).
High blood pressure, also known as hypertension, is when the force of the blood flowing through your blood vessels is always high.
It is known as a ‘silent killer’ because most Americans with the condition do not know they have it.
Not treating high blood pressure puts you at a greater risk of heart attack, stroke, sepsis, metabolic syndrome and heart failure.
For the study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the team looked at 6,900 black and white adults who did not have hypertension when they were recruited between 2003 and 2007.
They then examined 12 clinical and social factors when they followed up with the participants between 2013 and 2016.
Among these factors were: having an income of $35,000 or less, waist circumference, heavy alcohol use, lack of exercise, having a high ratio of sodium to potassium in their diet, and a high Southern diet score.
The score ranged from -4.5 to 8.2, with a higher score meaning a greater adherence to this diet.
Researchers found that 32.4 percent of those who fell in the 25th percentile of the score had hypertension and 36.1 percent who fell in the 75th percentile had hypertension.
Additionally, the diet accounted for 51.6 percent of the higher risk of incidental hypertension among black men and 29.2 percent among black women.
The Southern diet was described as being full of fried foods, organ meats, eggs and egg dishes, high-fat dairy foods, sugar-sweetened beverages and bread.
‘When I first started out, I would have guessed [the greatest factor was] stress or depression,’ Dr George Howard, a professor of biostatistics at the UAB School of Public Health, told Daily Mail Online.
‘But one of the joys of being a scientist is being wrong.
‘My colleague and co-author Suzanne calls it the “perfect storm of a diet”. It’s high in salt, bad fried components and the absence of vegetables. It’s all the bad stuff and none of the good stuff.’
Dr Howard said that there is a major difference when it comes to access to healthy foods in black communities compared to white communities.
‘[Fast food] is cheaper; it’s a very inexpensive diet,’ Dr Howard said, adding that Africans-Americans eat ‘not just more but a lot more’ of a Southern diet compared to their white counterparts.
From calculating the data, he estimated that there was a 60 percent difference in how much of a Southern diet blacks were eating compared to whites.
Dr Howard said there are a number of policy changes that can be made to reverse this course from reducing the amount of salt in restaurants to more education on hypertension and its risks.
‘We’re really optimistic about this because this can be changed,’ he said.
‘Suppose the difference was genetic. You can’t change, how can you change genes? But we can change this.’