The Dakota Diet: Health Secrets from the Great Plains

By Kevin Weiland

Readers will rediscover the benefits of healthy fats and enjoy hearty American foods, while losing weight and improving heqlth.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Turner Publishing Company
• Release date: May 1, 2007
• ISBN: 9781591205395

Kevin Weiland

Internal medicine physician with a practice in Rapid City, South Dakota

Book preview

Foreword

by Stephen T. Sinatra, M.D.

W

hen Dr. Weiland requested that I write a Foreword to this book, I was quite intrigued by both his topic and his title, The Dakota Diet. As a bit of a Civil War buff, I must confess that the state of Dakota conjures up images of open plains and grazing buffalo for me—life the way it used to be. I was equally impressed that the content is consistent with the health advice I dole out to subscribers of my newsletter, Heart, Health and Nutrition. Dr. Weiland describes how to follow a healthy, noninflammatory, non–insulin provoking eating plan, which means selecting health-promoting foods including buffalo, nuts, fruits, vegetables, legumes, flaxseeds, healthy fish, and more.

If you choose to follow the advice in this book, you’ll slash your risk of having to deal with health concerns like diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, and cancer. And while I may not endorse a couple of details—like the use of canola oil, artificial sweeteners, and statin drugs to drop cholesterol in folks without heart disease—I am in whole-hearted agreement with Dr. Weiland’s food and dietary recommendations. The most important feature that sets this diet book apart from all others is its recognition of the importance of selecting grass-fed buffalo (also known as bison) as a primary meat choice.

One of the reasons a seasoned cardiologist like me chooses and recommends grass-fed buffalo is that it’s part of a healthy eating plan to avoid problems like heart disease. Grass-fed bison also contains up to 500% more conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) than beef fed on conventional grain diets, and the advantages of CLA are numerous. CLA perks include lowering LDL (bad) cholesterol levels in the blood, normalizing blood glucose, inducing a decrease in body fat, and enhancing immune system function. CLA also helps thwart allergies and asthma. Buffalo is very lean and has only a fraction of the fat that you’ll find in beef, pork, or even chicken. And bison grazing on a purely grass diet produce a lean beef that’s essentially 95% fat free. Not only is their meat lower in calories, it’s also higher in iron and essential fatty acids than conventional beef.

And the best part of eating 100% grass-fed bison is that you won’t be getting a product that’s been developed according to guidelines set up by the U.S. beef industry. Most of the meat we eat is no longer in the natural form our forefathers put on the table. We eat meats from animals fed a grain diet. The trouble is that cattle aren’t designed to eat grains just because that’s what is convenient to farmers. They were meant to be grazing in green fields, like their ancestors. All that grass, and all that walking to find it, meant lean meat for our survival in generations past.

Another problem is that in order to harvest more grain to feed those animals, non-organic farmers often rely on fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides. In addition to the quality of the feed, the beef industry has created super cattle, animals pumped up with antibiotics and hormones so they produce more milk and tip the scales in the marketplace. This point was unhappily brought home to me recently as I lectured to an audience local to my home in Connecticut. I asked if there were any dairy farmers in the audience. One woman raised her hand. When I asked her whether or not she gave hormones to her cattle, her response was that she was not allowed to say. Not allowed to say? Scary, isn’t it?

So, the meat products on our dinner tables hardly resemble the grass-fed meat of decades ago. And while absolute fat content is an issue, it’s what is in that fat that’s the real problem. Pesticides, herbicides, hormones, and antibiotics concentrate themselves in fatty tissues—the same fat that’s on that steak you love to splurge on! Consuming grain-fed commercial beef means that a significant toxic load is dumped into your body. Your safest bet is to consume buffalo or bison.

In an ideal world, we would all eat only free-range beef and chicken or fresh-caught fish from non-polluted waters, like wild Alaskan salmon (never farm-raised fish, like salmon, as their flesh is pinkened with dye pellets and their waters are often contaminated). We’d eliminate, or at least avoid, produce that’s been exposed to fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides. We would look for the word organic on our food selections as much is possible. However, living up to this ideal is difficult, if not impossible, in our fast-paced world.

So, I truly appreciate the contribution that Dr. Weiland has made in developing the Dakota Diet. He proposes that we all select diets rich in omega-3 essential fatty acids and the vital phytonutrients found in other equally health-promoting foods. The Dakota Diet is based on solid scientific principles, and this book offers a comprehensive bibliography.

On a personal note, eating food the way nature intended it to be is not just important for your own health, it’s also key to supporting our environment and animal welfare as well. That also means eating fruits, vegetables, grains, and meats in season, and being mindful of how they are brought to your home. Remember, the old adage you are what you eat. When you make the decision to eat Dakota style, you’ll also be supporting our agrarian society and farmers who want to do the right thing. Supporting our farmland and our environment can make you feel more connected with your food while taking an important step in your quest for optimum health.

—Stephen T. Sinatra, M.D., F.A.C.C., C.N.S.

Author of Reverse Heart Disease Now (Wiley, 2007) and The Sinatra Solution (Basic Health, 2007)

Foreword

by Tom Daschle

One of the great myths of America is that we have the best health care system in the world. We do have some extraordinary clinics and hospitals and many health providers who are among the world’s best. But for the majority of Americans who are not fortunate enough to access one of these facilities, the story is vastly different. For them, because of increasingly serious problems in our system relating to cost, access and quality, their circumstances are much different. As a result, today the United States ranks 35th in life expectancy in the world and only 41st in infant mortality. When it comes to our nation’s health care system, in reality we have what some have called islands of excellence in a sea of mediocrity.

To make matters worse, we now pay $6,700 annually per capita in premiums, taxes and out-of-pocket expenses. That is at least 40% more than the next most expensive country. Our national health costs will soon exceed $2 trillion, comprising nearly 20% of our entire economy. And the costs continue to rise exponentially. In just the last five years, costs have risen by nearly 100%.

In spite of these costs, or more accurately, in part because of them, 47 million Americans have no health insurance. Over a half million people are added to the roles of the uninsured in our country every year. As they become ill and need care, they oftentimes forgo treatment or attempt to access our system in its most expensive form, the emergency room.

No one is immune from the problems of our broken health care system. Even if one has health insurance and can afford to pay the exorbitant costs today, the American system can even be dangerous. An estimated 300 million mistakes are made every year and over 100,000 deaths occur as a result of those mistakes or because many have little or no access to health care.

Perhaps the biggest reason for medical errors is the health care system’s reliance on an administrative system that is largely paper driven. That is particularly ironic, given the health industry’s increasing reliance on technology.

The United States badly needs comprehensive health care reform. It is my hope that we will soon see the day when a new system can be created.

One of the most important characteristics of any good health care system is a recognition and implementation of wellness promotion, prevention and effective primary care. It is already emphasized in most industrialized as well as developing countries in the world. It is the most cost effective health care available today, just as it has been for centuries.

But unfortunately, over my lifetime, the American health care system has moved away from the most basic and cost effective forms of health care delivery. As a result, some experts now call obesity in America a pandemic. Statistically, my grandchildren’s generation may have an even shorter life expectancy than that of my generation in part because of this growing health crisis.

Any new health care delivery system must go back to the basics. Those include good nutrition, regular exercise, and appropriate immunization. It should be a part of the curriculum of every school and the schedule of every adult.

In his terrific new book, The Dakota Diet, Dr. Weiland shares something that many Native Americans have known for centuries. A natural diet that emphasizes exercise, and the importance of lean meat like buffalo, fish, whole fruits and vegetables is the right thing to do, not only for one’s health, but also for our environment.

Unfortunately, it may be many more years before our country adopts a new health care system. But a new health care discipline can begin right now. By adopting his recommendations for diet and a healthier lifestyle, every American can beat the national statistics and expect to live a longer and healthier life. That will affect not only your life, be the lives of others, too.

Follow Dr. Weiland’s guidance in the pages of this book and you will feel better in more ways than one.

Tom Daschle

Former Representative and Senator from South Dakota (1979–2005), and author of Like No Other Time: The 107th Congress and the Two Years That Changed America Forever (Random House, 2003)

CHAPTER 1

The American State of Unhealth

A

s an internal medicine physician, I specialize in the health care of adults. Like a pediatrician with children, I focus on adults. I have made a career of treating health problems that certainly include diabetes and heart disease. But I am lucky to be practicing medicine in this modern age when we can foresee, detect, and prevent disease before it overcomes the patient.

Like many internists, preventive medicine is a major part of my practice. My journey to disease prevention actually began long before I started medical school. What I witnessed while growing up in a small town in South Dakota helped shape me into the physician I am today. My parents were hardworking owners and operators of a funeral home and ambulance service on the eastern side of the state. Back then, the local funeral homes typically provided the ambulance service since the hearse could easily transport the sick or injured to the hospital.

Not only did my father run the ambulance service, he was also one of the first emergency medical technicians (EMT) trained in the state. As an EMT, he had the necessary training in basic life support, but it was his experiences as a medic in World War II that gave him the confidence to care for the sick and injured. He was on call for our little community 24 hours a day, seven days a week, at a time when beepers and cell phones were pure science fiction. My mother served as his answering service and dispatcher. She alone had the responsibility of tracking down my father in the event someone needed his help. Needless to say, the Weiland Ambulance Service was an integral part of the community.

Riding in the back of a hearse converted to an ambulance was quite an experience, especially for a 16-year-old boy. My job was to make the patient as comfortable as possible during the ride to the hospital. Just for the record, there is no comparing the smooth ride of a Cadillac hearse with today’s ambulances built on the frames of one-ton trucks.

To this day, I vividly remember helping my father transport one patient out of a muddy corn field. It was late in the harvest season, and the farmer had been working frantically to get the last of his crops out before the first snow. When we arrived on the scene, he was sitting in an enclosed combine with his fist clenched tightly to his chest as he struggled to breathe. His skin was pale and clammy, and his eyes had a blank stare of death. He was in his mid-fifties and extremely overweight, and it took several of us to get him on a stretcher and into the back of the ambulance. In the emergency room, the doctor began to perform a new procedure for the time, known as CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation). After several laborious hours, the doctor pronounced the farmer dead. The autopsy determined the cause of death was a heart attack (myocardial infarction) and found that several arteries were blocked in his heart. The report also noted that the gentleman had diabetes and high blood pressure.

THE IMPORTANCE OF PREVENTIVE MEDICINE

The world has changed since those days, especially in field of medicine. Instead of teenagers, we now have paramedics with special training in the pre-hospital care of the sick and injured and ambulances are like rolling emergency rooms.

Not only has technology improved the standard of care for the sick and injured before they get to the hospital, it has also saved countless lives as a result of advances in the care of an acute coronary syndrome such as a heart attack. Hospitals today are staffed with individuals trained to administer lifesaving medications upon a patient’s arrival. Many hospitals have cardiologists on call, who can open up a coronary artery and spare a patient’s heart from further damage.

The price tag for this type of care obviously has changed as well. While an ambulance trip in the 1970s cost $2, the same trip today could cost anywhere from $200 to $2,000. Emergency treatment for heart disease in the hospital can cost well over $20,000 for a single event—a tremendous expense for our society.

What remains unchanged are the risk factors that lead to heart disease in the first place. Just like the overweight farmer I cared for long ago, obesity in combination with a sedentary lifestyle has resulted in as many as 50 million Americans at risk for premature heart disease and death. The medical cost in treating diseases related to obesity has exceeded the cost of treating all of the diseases related to smoking.

To make an analogy, let’s assume our government budgets $100 billion to clean up the Mississippi River. They decide that 90% of those dollars are to be spent cleaning the pollution out of the river down in New Orleans, when it would make more sense to focus those dollars on preventing the river from being polluted upstream. This is true for health care as well. Unfortunately, we spend nearly $2 trillion on health care in this country, with nearly 90% of this amount being spent to treat disease near the end of life. Very little is earmarked for prevention. The pollution that goes into the river (or the body) will manifest itself in disease unless we do more to educate ourselves and prevent this from happening.

I have dedicated my career to the prevention of disease and to educating my patients to practice a preventative approach, therefore saving them the expense and emotional toll of treating a disease. I have seen firsthand the diseases caused by our overindulgence in food as well as our sedentary culture. My hope is that in reading The Dakota Diet, you will gain a better understanding of what foods are important to eat and which ones to avoid. The goal is to prevent diseases associated with obesity, such as diabetes and high cholesterol. I see the effects of prevention working every day in my patient’s lives as well as my own. I hope this book will have a positive impact on your health as well as your family’s health.

THE PRICE OF EXCESS WEIGHT

Our current state of unhealth is costing us, in dollars and in ill health.

• The number of workdays lost due to illnesses attributable to excessive weight amounts to 53.6 million days per year. Employers lose an additional $4 billion annually in lost productivity. (Shape Up America!, March 1999)

• The health-care costs of treating seriously overweight adults in the U.S. in 1999 were estimated at $238 billion. (American Obesity Association, 1999)

• Over $100 billion is spent on medical expenses and loss of income due to weight conditions in the U.S. each year. This figure does not include the $47.6 billion spent per year to shed excess weight. (National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, Clinical Guidelines on Identification, Evaluation and Treatment of Overweight and Obesity in Adults, 1998)

• More than $51.6 billion is spent each year on health-care costs related to the cardiovascular complications of weight problems. (Shape Up America!, March 1999)

Health Implications

Excess weight is also a contributing factor in a number of serious illnesses.

• Being overweight is associated with heart disease, cancer, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and diabetes, which are conditions that lead to disability and death in the United States. (Guidance for Treatment of Adult Obesity, Shape Up America!, American Obesity Association, 1999, pp. 16–23)

• Conditions related to being seriously overweight contribute to 300,000 deaths every year, and are second only to smoking as a cause of preventable death. ( Journal of the American Medical Association 1996; 276: 1907–1915)

• One-third of all cases of high blood pressure are associated with weight problems, and seriously overweight individuals are 50% more