A CHIP and a “but”

October 9th, 2008 at 01:45pm Mike DeDoncker

It was kind of like old home week for me a couple of days ago when I covered an event at the Comprehensive Heart Improvement Project (CHIP) office.

I went through the CHIP program for the purpose of writing stories and my health — a heart scan had revealed a serious plaque burden in my arteries a few months earlier — back in 2000 and it was nice to hear the stories of reductions in risks for heart attack, diabetes and other killer diseases again.

CHIP has had great success promoting a vegan diet — I can’t tell you the number of times during the four-week course that I actually dreamed that I was eating a steak, and then there was the time I almost grabbed a concession-stand hamburger out of a guy’s hand while I was covering a Lightning game — so I was surprised and pleased when Dr. Roger Greenlaw, one of the people responsible for bringing CHIP to Rockford, sort of strayed from the program’s straight and narrow during his presentation that day.

“I don’t personally feel that a person has to be vegan to be optimally healthy,” Greenlaw said, “but what I do believe is that we have, on the one extreme, is nachos, cheese and soda as a diet and vegan at the other extreme. People have to go as far as they need to go (between the extremes) to get healthy.”

I liked this idea because, while I don’t adhere strictly to CHIP anymore, I do still try to consume a lot of fruits and vegetables almost every day and most of my favorite recipes are vegetarian — something that makes me less than popular at the Register Star’s holiday potlucks.

The idea also fits in with something we were talking about here during a healthyrockford.com story meeting — which is that, keeping in mind that it’s not a diet but a lifestyle, a person should eat for the way they feel comfortable living.

If they want to eat anything they want when they want it, that’s fine as long as they are willing to live with the consequences, whether that is something as serious as a diminished quality of life or just realizing that they won’t be relishing the onset of swimsuit season. If they want razor-clean arteries, less chance of having a heart attack than the Cubs and White Sox squaring off in a World Series and a trimmer physique, then CHIP has a proven track record along those lines.

But, wherever a person falls between Dr. Greenlaw’s diet extremes, it should be the spot where they are happy.

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