Dean Ornish

If you love cheeseburgers and television, you probably won't love Dr. Dean Ornish's new diet and exercise plan. But the Spartan lifestyle espoused by this Sausalito physician has apparently become the darling of some dieters with unhealthy hearts. Scientific proof of the value of his program as a way to unclog arteries was published earlier this year in the medical journal Lancet. And on Oct. 1, Random House published Ornish's book outlining the plan, "Dr.

1.'The Cake Mix Doctor" by Anne Byrn (Workman, $14.95). How to turn a box cake into something special. Last Week: 1 Weeks on List: 49 2.'Sugar Busters!" by H. Leighton Stewart, Morrison C. Bethea, Sam S. Andrews and Luis Al Balart (Ballantine Books, $23.95). Lose weight the New Orleans way. Last Week: 3 Weeks on List: 4 3.'Mexico One Plate at a Time" by Rick Bayless (Scribner, $35). The companion piece to the master instructor's PBS series. Last Week: 7 Weeks on List: 15 4.'

On Monday, researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health released a study that linked red meat consumption with increased risk of early death. Probably not surprisingly, the report , which was published in the Archives of Internal Medicine along with the editorial “ Holy Cow! What's Good For You Is Good For Our Planet ” from Dr. Dean Ornish (the man who helped convince Bill Clinton to go vegan ), attracted a lot of interest.  The American Meat Institute was among the first to dispute the findings.  In a statement issued Monday, the industry group criticized the Harvard study for “relying on notoriously unreliable self-reporting about what was eaten and obtuse methods to apply statistical analysis to the data.” During an interview last week with The Times, Kaiser Permanente cancer researcher Lawrence H. Kushi - who was not involved with the Harvard study but said the work produced “important results" - acknowledged that epidemiological studies of survey data aren't as rigorous as a blinded, randomized trial.