Cultures adapted to their environment and most were defined by the carbohydrates they consumed. For the Asians it was rice, for South Americans it was corn, for Europeans, bread. Your overweight friends were overweight, not because of the type of food they ate, but their caloric intake. For European descended people, meat was a luxury, until very recently.
There's all this talk about 'variety'. I grew up eating the same cereal for breakfast and the same sandwiches everyday, for years. Not saying this was a good thing, but none of the hipster food out there was popular (or even known) when I was a kid. We've become obsessed with food.
Again, four macronutrients: protein, carbs, fat, alcohol. That's it!
Humans are omnivores, not sheep. We were designed to eat all of the above, but we don't have to.
Can you reverse heart disease by being vegan? Yes you can; but by doing so you are only reversing damage already caused, which never had to happen in the first place.
If we lived right from the beginning, we wouldn't need to take drastic measures, one of which is radical modification of diet, which can come with its own set of problems.
As regards coronary plaques, you can see what they're made of very easily. They start off as 'fatty steaking' (lipids). We eat too much of the wrong foods and sit on our arses all day, our bad cholesterol goes up, our good cholesterol goes down, our triglycerides go up. Too much meat increases CRP and homocysteine. Diabetes etc.
Evil Pharma? Yes and no. Fall out of a tree 200 years ago and broke a leg; infected wound; tooth abscess; lung infection... Good night.
