As a layman I’m bamboozled hearing both sides of the saturated fat debate. It does seem that, broadly speaking, he was. So I ask, what doe the evidence say?
Thanks
I think the problem was trying to blame everything on a single thing. He was right from the point that saturated fat raises cholesterol, the problem was he ended up pushing people to a low fat diet and people ended up in a high carb diet which is also bad.
I think he was wrong in oversimplifying the problem. In the end eating meat is not bad, it’s actually good for you so long as you’re eating meat in moderation.
But his research was flawed and even though his research was leaning to showed carbs where not so good either, he prefered to srub those conclusions.
The same thing happens with carbs. We need to focus on eating a balanced diet rather than demonising something and going towards the other extreme.
Except for processed foods, those are the devil itself as far as nutrition goes and people should avoid them completely.
The controlled feeding trials generally failed to show harm:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27071971
>The intervention group had significant reduction in serum cholesterol compared with controls…no mortality benefit for the intervention group…
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23386268
>Replacement of dietary saturated fats…with omega 6 linoleic acid…The intervention group (n=221) had higher rates of death than controls (n=237)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2571009
>2033 men…were allocated to receive or not to receive advice on…a reduction in fat intake and an increase in the ratio of polyunsaturated to saturated fat…The advice on fat was not associated with any difference in mortality…
Morris, J. N. “Controlled trial of soyabean oil in myocardial infarction.” Lancet 2 (1968): 693-700.
>…a diet containing 85 g soya bean oil and low in saturated fats…The number of deaths from coronary heart disease was 25 in each group. There was no significant difference between the groups. Relapse was not related to initial cholesterol level, change in cholesterol level or to diet.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140673671910865
>However, total mortality was similar in the two groups: 178 controls v. 174 experimentals, demonstrating an excess of non-atherosclerotic deaths in the experimental group. This was accounted for by a greater incidence of fatal carcinomas in the experimental group.
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/12cd/73d7b49373d85ed4832d0b02241c9e018e54.pdf
>…in the fully participating experimental group, three died of coronary heart disease, one died of other causes…in the inactive experimental group…five died of coronary heart disease…in the control group, all were still alive at the end of the observation period…
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14288105
>It is concluded that under the circumstances of this trial corn oil cannot be recommended in the treatment of ischaemic heart disease.
https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1161/01.CIR.42.5.943
>This seems to indicate that under the experimental conditions employed the degree of unsaturation of the diets did not significantly influence serum lipids or cardiovascular disease mortality.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27543472
>Coconut oil even though rich in saturated fatty acids in comparison to sunflower oil when used as cooking oil media over a period of 2 years did not change the lipid-related cardiovascular risk factors and events in those receiving standard medical care.
It’s all very confusing because people are always looking at individual nutrients and saying, “is this good or is this bad” and that’s not how nutrition works.
Here’s what I think is a perfect example: Dairy. Dairy is loaded with saturated fat. But dairy has now pretty much been established as hearth healthy or, on a bad day, heart neutral.
If you eat a bunch of saturated fat in isolation (or in the context of a number of foods), yes, it will increase your risk for coronary disease.
But cheese isn’t a big blob of saturated fat. It’s got vitamins and minerals and other things.
So why doesn’t cheese give you heart disease? Not completely sure, but it’s a good bet the high vitamin K2 content (which is really good for protecting the heart) is part of it (and also why full-fat is better than low-fat as low-fat dairy tends to remove 80-90% of the vitamin K)
People (in America, in particular, it seems) obsess too much about individual nutrients. There’s no secret to a healthy diet. We’ve been told since we were kids and nobody wants to do it. Eat lots of vegetables (different veggies, not just one or two), don’t eat a lot of red meat, eat whole grains.
If that’s the foundation of your diet, then you have room to add the unhealthy items here and there without worrying about their effect on your health.
This is just my personal opinion, but I feel pretty confident in saying that lots of vegetables is the foundation of a healthy diet.
The evidence doesn’t say anything conclusive because the public was told to stop eating fat well before anything could be proven. So you have a large uncontrolled experiment that is still going that makes it nearly impossible to compare results of a study to the population at large, since the population has been told to reduce their fat intake as well.
That said there is evidence that high fat diets can be fine. The Inuit and some pastoral cultures such as the Masai eat very high fat diets, but they also eat nearly every piece of the animal. Blood included so the nutrition is very different than the cuts if meat in the western diet. There are also very high carb diets that seem to be healthy. Our problems are most likely from industrial foods.
Keys cherry picked data to fit his hypothesis in his ‘7 country study’. Eisenhower probably had his heart attack because he smoked like a chimney, drank an abnormal amounts of coffee and didn’t get enough sleep… not because he had red meat, butter and bacon.
Most, if not all of the studies surrounding LDL/SF and heart disease are epidemiology based, meaning they only show correlations, not causations. It could very well be that eating high fat foods with carbs/processed foods increases the risk of heart disease (as high glucose in the blood damages LDL reuptake receptors and oxidizes LDL particles). In addition to inflammation damaging the glycocalyx of the endothelium wall.
It is peculiar that heart disease went up as soon as we were told to reduce fat in our diets.
He cherry picked (in other words faked data), how can he be right?
Of course he was not. Humans were eating saturated fat for thousands of years with very little heart disease.
And then there came engineered vegetable oils, processed carbs, high fructose corn syrup, that humans were NOT eating.
Countries that are still low on dose do not have as much problems as USA or similar nations.
Yes if you eat too much-saturated fat then that’s correlated with CVD. The issue is that a lot of these studies are done on people who are already at risk CVD or the controls don’t control properly for healthy humans who eat a lot of saturated fat. The raw science though does make sense. Saturated fat raises blood cholesterol which is correlated as well. i do think it’s been demonized to a certain extent. You can eat a decent amount of saturated fat in your life and be ok. It’s when you’re eating 4 ribeyes a day or something crazy like the carnivore guys is when you may have a problem. At the end of the day, all of this stuff is individual basis stuff. Go to your doctor, get blood work, and eat a whole food diet. If your diet is otherwise clean and you’re active I do not know if the amount of saturated fat you eat would have any significant risk of CVD. It’s not something I would chance either. It’s pretty easy to sub out fatty beef and pork for lean chicken, fish, lean beef, etc.
Ancel’s research hasn’t been overturned by any subsequential population studies. 50 years on, that’s half a century, no population that has been studied has yielded the opposite result where saturated fat consumption reduces heart disease.
I’ve always been under the impression that there’s some things that you should have a limited intake of and others you should actively try to incorporate into your diet regularly
Specifically limit trans saturated fats and refined sugar. Moderate your intake of saturated fat and simple carbohydrates other than refined sugar. Complex carbohydrates, fibre, and lean proteins are encouraged.
Then if you eat a variety of foods and don’t overeat you should be fine right? Is there something I’m missing?