How legit is this graph of heart disease and cancer vs unrefined plant foods?

Question

Unrefined Plant Food Consumption vs. The Killer Diseases

I insist that our low consumption of unrefined plant foods is largely responsible for our dismal mortality statistics. Most of us perish prematurely as a result of our dietary folly.

Populations with low death rates from the major killer diseases—populations that almost never have overweight members—consume more than 75 percent of their calories from unrefined plant substances. This is at least ten times more than what the average American consumes.

I'm skeptical that they only included 12 out of the ~196 countries that exist (and "Korea" does not have a "North" or "South" in front of it).

Answer 1

The graph is incorrect.

I will just look at Hungary vs. Greece for now, but other counties' data are available at the same source.

                            Hungary.........Greece

 Coronary Heart Disease.....30.29%..........26.17%

 Lung Cancers................7.84%...........6.81%

 Colon-Rectum Cancers........4.70%...........2.67%

 Breast Cancer...............1.94%...........2.26%  

 Pancreas Cancer.............1.68%...........1.72%  

 Stomach Cancer..............1.51%...........1.40%  

 Oral Cancer.................1.38%...........0.38%  

 Prostate Cancer.............1.13%...........1.93%  

 Bladder Cancer..............0.88%...........1.18%  

 Leukemia....................0.87%...........1.56%  

 Lymphomas...................0.82%...........0.87%  

 Liver Cancer................0.72%...........1.48%  

 Ovary Cancer................0.64%...........0.61% 

 Oesophagus Cancer...........0.55%...........0.22%  

 Skin Cancers................0.53%...........0.40% 

 Cervical Cancer.............0.49%...........0.22%  

 Other Neoplasms.............0.42%...........0.01%  

 **Total**..................55.57%..........49.87%

Answer 2

Heart Disease

There are multiple peer reviewed studies that point the link between meat-eating and heart disease, as well as meat consumption causing people to die earlier.

• Risk of hospitalization or death from ischemic heart disease among British vegetarians and nonvegetarians: results from the EPIC-Oxford cohort study

This was an experiment that followed up 44,561 UK men and women for around 11 years, and concluded:

Consuming a vegetarian diet was associated with lower IHD [ischemic heart disease] risk, a finding that is probably mediated by differences in non-HDL cholesterol, and systolic blood pressure.

• Nut consumption, vegetarian diets, ischemic heart disease risk, and all-cause mortality: evidence from epidemiologic studies

This review looked at nut consumption:

nut consumption seems to protect against ischemic heart disease (IHD). Frequency and quantity of nut consumption have been documented to be higher in vegetarian than in nonvegetarian populations. [...] Importantly, nuts have similar associations in both vegetarians and nonvegetarians.

Cancer

The thing about unrefined (raw) plant foods and cancer is rates for some types of cancer are lowered by eating your veggies, while other types of cancer don't seem as influenced by diet.

But overall, yes.

• Cardiovascular Disease Mortality and Cancer Incidence in Vegetarians: A Meta-Analysis and Systematic Review

Our results suggest that vegetarians have a significantly lower ischemic heart disease mortality (29%) and overall cancer incidence (18%) than nonvegetarians.

Note however, they also say:

In conclusion, the overall cancer incidence and mortality from ischemic heart disease were significantly lower, but there were no associations of a vegetarian diet with all-cause mortality and mortality from circulatory and cerebrovascular diseases

• Vegan Health have summaries of studies looking at cancer rates.

• American Cancer Org's summary of Vegetarianism

This looks at some studies, and discusses the strength of the evidence and the criticism of it - particularly warning of confounding factors.

General Mortality

• US News article about a study

The study, published in the European journal BMC Medicine, comes on the heels of a 2012 Harvard University study that found people who ate just 1.5 ounces of red meat daily were more likely to die early deaths than people who ate less than that. The latest study, which chronicled more than 500,000 people from 10 European countries, found those who ate the most processed meats (including ham, bacon, sausages, and ready-to-eat packaged meats) were most likely to die prematurely.

The Vegan Health: Disease Rates page cites many meta-analyses looking at both mortality rates and heart disease rates of vegetarians compared to omnivores.

Answer 3

I have been unable to find too much clear and believable data... this site looks thorough but not entirely trustworthy, though if you trust it you can easily see that the cancer and heart disease numbers in this graph are completely made up. You can find more formal-looking sources, for example, for the USA and for Thailand, which agree with the previous conclusion.

Anyway, the whole claim is ridiculous. The phrase "Most of us perish prematurely" is meaningless; when exactly is the correct time to die? Is death by suicide, car accident, diabetes or Alzheimer's any less premature than death from leukemia?

And speaking of premature death, the life expectancy in Hungary is significantly higher than in Laos... although the rest of the countries in the graph don't show much correlation.