Good Thursday Morning!
1. Question – Why is the death rate so low in
Roseto? Virtually no one under 55 had died of a heart
attack or showed any signs of heart disease. For men over
65, the death rate from heart disease in Roseto was
roughly half that of the United States as a whole. The
death rate from all causes in Roseto, in fact, was 30 to
35 % lower than expected.
2. Thought – Wolf brought in a friend of his, a
sociologist from Oklahoma named John Bruhn, to help him.
“I hired medical students and sociology grad
students as interviewers, and in Roseto we went house to
house and talked to every person aged 21 and over,”
Bruhn remembers. This happened more than 50 years ago, but
Bruhn still had a sense of amazement in his voice as he
described what they found. “There was no suicide, no
alcoholism, no drug addiction, and very little crime. They
didn’t have anyone on welfare. Then we looked at
peptic ulcers. They didn’t have any of those either.
These people were dying of old age. That’s
it.”
Wolf’s first thought was that the Rosetans must have
held on to some dietary practices from the Old World that
left them healthier than other Americans. But he quickly
realized that wasn’t true. The Rosetans were cooking
with lard instead of the much healthier olive oil they had
used back in Italy. Pizza in Italy was a thin crust with
salt, oil, and perhaps some tomatoes, anchovies, or
onions. Pizza in Pennsylvania was bread dough plus
sausage, pepperoni, salami, ham, and sometimes eggs.
Sweets such as biscotti and taralli used to be reserved
for Christmas and Easter; in Roseto they were eaten year
around. When Wolf had dieticians analyze the typical
Rosetan’s eating habits, they found that a whopping
41% of their calories came from fat. Nor was this a town
where people got up at dawn to do yoga and run a brisk 6
miles. The Pennsylvanian Rosetans smoked heavily and many
were struggling with obesity.
If diet and exercise didn’t explain the findings,
then what about genetics? The Rosetans were a close-knit
group from the same region of Italy, and Wolf’s next
thought was to wonder whether they were of a particularly
hardy stock that protected them from disease. So he
tracked down relatives of the Rosetans who were living in
other parts of the United States to see if they shared the
same remarkable good health as their cousins in
Pennsylvania. They didn’t.
He then looked at the region where the Rosetans lived. Was
it possible that there was something about living in the
foothills of eastern Pennsylvania that was good for their
health? The two closest towns to Roseto were Bangor, which
was just down the hill, and Nazareth, a few miles away.
These were both about the size of Roseto, and both were
populated with the same kind of hardworking European
immigrants. Wolf combed through both towns’ medical
records. For men over 65, the death rates from heart
disease in Nazareth and Bangor were three time that of
Roseto. Another dead end.
What Wolf began to realize was that the secret of Roseto
wasn’t diet or exercise or genes or location.
It had to be……….. (Outliers by
Malcom Gladwell)
CONTINUED TOMORROW!
”These old people were dying of old age.
That’s it.” (John Bruhn)