US population: 318,000,000
US Heart Disease mortality: 1 mil/year
Ireland: 4.5 million
Ireland Heart Disease mortality: 10k/year
Heart Disease US mortality = 0.31% of total pop.
Heart Disease Ireland mortality = 0.22% of total pop.
So from my previous posts you can recollect that I have spent a little bit of time discussing the prevalence of fatty foods in the culture as compared to our own foods the US. From what I can gather over here, foods richer in fats are more widely used here than those that are typical eaten in the US. Dishes here seem to contain more meat in the form of sausages, bacon rashers, and beef. Now this is not a definitive accurate statement as it is simply my own observation, from both the dishes served and the amount of media trash on faux diet tips including those involving low fat foods. So the others in our group have also made this observation and have jumped to wondering if people here have a higher heart disease risk than people in the US. With this in mind, I decided to look up the statistics for each country. By the statistics above, I calculated that Americans have 0.31% of the population is killed each year by various heart disease such as strokes, cardiac arrest, and sudden cardiac death. This as compared to the 0.22% of people killed by heart diseases in Ireland. Even though Ireland (and the UK) have a higher amount of fatty meat foods, the prevalence of heart disease is noticeably smaller.
US Heart Disease mortality: 1 mil/year
Ireland: 4.5 million
Ireland Heart Disease mortality: 10k/year
Heart Disease US mortality = 0.31% of total pop.
Heart Disease Ireland mortality = 0.22% of total pop.
So from my previous posts you can recollect that I have spent a little bit of time discussing the prevalence of fatty foods in the culture as compared to our own foods the US. From what I can gather over here, foods richer in fats are more widely used here than those that are typical eaten in the US. Dishes here seem to contain more meat in the form of sausages, bacon rashers, and beef. Now this is not a definitive accurate statement as it is simply my own observation, from both the dishes served and the amount of media trash on faux diet tips including those involving low fat foods. So the others in our group have also made this observation and have jumped to wondering if people here have a higher heart disease risk than people in the US. With this in mind, I decided to look up the statistics for each country. By the statistics above, I calculated that Americans have 0.31% of the population is killed each year by various heart disease such as strokes, cardiac arrest, and sudden cardiac death. This as compared to the 0.22% of people killed by heart diseases in Ireland. Even though Ireland (and the UK) have a higher amount of fatty meat foods, the prevalence of heart disease is noticeably smaller.
Considering incorporating fat in your diet doesn't make you fat, as ingesting cholesterol just dump it into your blood, we wouldn't assume that the higher fatty foods in the traditional diets here would result in significantly higher heart disease risk.
So really nothing that wouldn't be expected but it is still good to see the actual statistics lined up next to each other. Nice little research on the side. Today we arrived in Galway on a 6 hour bus ride many events to talk about, however we were given personal research assignments to blog about. So stay th