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Replacing Butter With Vegetable Oils Doesn't Decrease Risk of Heart Disease, Says Study (medicalxpress.com)
An anonymous reader writes: A research team led by scientists at the UNC School of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health has unearthed more evidence that casts doubt on the traditional "heart healthy" practice of replacing butter and other saturated fats with corn oil and other vegetable oils high in linoleic acid. The findings, reported today in the British Medical Journal, suggest that using vegetable oils high in linoleic acid might be worse than using butter when it comes to preventing heart disease, though more research needs to be done on that front. This latest evidence comes from an analysis of previously unpublished data of a large controlled trial conducted in Minnesota nearly 50 years ago, as well as a broader analysis of published data from all similar trials of this dietary intervention. The analyses show that interventions using linoleic acid-rich oils failed to reduce heart disease and overall mortality even though the intervention reduced cholesterol levels. In the Minnesota study, participants who had greater reduction in serum cholesterol had higher rather than lower risk of death. Two things to note about the study: 75% of the participants left in less than a year (perhaps not uncommon, the study doesn't explain why these people left); the vegetable oils mentioned in the article are not necessarily the most commonly used (which are oils made of olive, sunflower, coconut, and palm).
Most of the dietary advice we have been fed (pun intended) in the last 50 years or so is not based on any real science.
I could go into details, but I am not the expert. Listen to people much smarter than me. Watch this video as a primer: https://vimeo.com/45485034
Then go read Good Calories Bad Calories, and The Primal Blueprint.
Personally, I have been grain and grain product free for 3 years by following the principles put in the above (and some other) resources. No low-fat BS, no whole-grain BS. No fad diets. I won't preach, just do a little research on your own. Once the physical addiction to carbs/sugar was broken, my body doesn't want them anymore. I'm in my 40s, and I only wish I could have done this earlier in my life.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
But, but, but... It must've at some point... The benevolent and omniscient government officials kept telling us, that butter is evil. They could not ban it outright for the adults, insisting on their silly "liberties" and "freedoms, but they did ban it for children. As recently as in 2013!
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I don't think that diet and fitness are a science fail. They are a pseudo-science fail.
These disciplines (if even that word is applicable) have been systematically promulgated without the benefit of real science. Now that real scientific methods are being used, the assumptions that were used to derive the advice people were given are (in many cases) proving to be false.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
It reminds me of that scene from "Sleeper" where Woody Allen wakes up 200 years in the future and asks for granola for breakfast, and they wonder why he didn't request "healthy" food like deep fat, and cream pies. That was supposed to be a joke, but actually reflects reality. The high carb diet that we were all told was healthy, turns out to have been an oops.
...Plus I don't actually use enough of butter for it's "evilness" to be a problem.
You know, that whole "moderation" thing...
The whole moderation is a myth. I use lots of butter, and olive oil, and coconut oil. Don't believe the BS about saturated fat being bad for you. Don't believe the BS about cholesterol. 80-90% of the cholesterol in your blood is produced by your body, not consumed. It *can* be influenced by what you eat, but in the way that you eat garbage that puts your hormones (insulin and others) on a roller coaster. There is no definitive link between saturated fat and blood cholesterol and heart disease. 50% of people who have heart attacks have "normal" cholesterol levels. Just let that one sink in. And I know there are stats about everything, but that is a big one.
When I started eating this way I weighed 175 lbs. Within 2 months I had dropped 15, and it has stayed off for 3 years - effortlessly - by eating a high-fat, low-carb diet of the best foods I can get. No grains, no grain products, very little to no sugar. It's not hard. I am in fantastic health.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Do you even understand what profitable means? If you can take 10 cents of grains and sell it for 4 or 5 dollars that is a large profit. There is no processing to be done to an apple, you can't promote it through advertising so you are limited by how much markup.. there is nothing to differentiate your apple from someone elses and if you charge too much than customers will go somewhere else.
love is just extroverted narcissism
Yes it can, because of continued and ever more public screw-ups, retractions, corrections and outright omnishamblic end products of "science" in areas like bio/ffod-sciences.
And is Joe Q Public supposed to take our word for that? And should he?
The reality is that Feynman's warning about cargo-cult science went entirely unheeded for 40 years, and, surprise surprise, the general public is now on average far more skeptical (and in some cases hostile towards) science than they were in Feynman's heyday of practical post-war worship of scientific progress. That public admiration for science -- in part -- paid for a man on the moon, but nowadays it's hard to get the public to pay for sounding rockets without coming up with some excuse about potential commericalisations.
And who's fault is it? Ultimately, scientists are to blame for not keeping up standards among everyone calling themselves a scientist. Science has instead been turned into a take-all-comers mas Powerpoint talk and the public has responded accordingly. Scientists are held to the same esteem as other suited bullshitters in politics, finance, and other professional sectors.
We could have prevented this.
This sort of thing is what one should expect when you start breaking down categories.
Initially fats were all one category. "Apparently fats are bad - stop eating so much fat." Okay.
Then different categories of fats were studied. "Apparently saturated fats are bad, other fats not as bad." Okay.
Then different types of those were studied. "Apparently monounsaturated fats are pretty good, but when polyunsaturated are concerned, most people get too much omega-6 and not enough omega-3 - and that can be as bad as too much saturated" Okay, this is getting complicated....
Then it keeps going: "Well, when you compare gamma lineolic acid to arachidonic acid...." Stop!
It's not that the earlier data was wrong. It was just categorically too broad. Even knowing statistics about individual chemicals isn't (ideally) enough, because the effects can vary depending on who eats it and how they eat. For example, potatoes: it's a little known fact that letting many types of starches cool (rice, potatoes, pasta) converts readily digestible starches into resistant starches, significantly reducing their caloric content and glycemic load. Or that eating iron-rich foods in many small servings over the course of a day yields significantly more iron absorption than eating the same amount all at once in a single serving. Etc. It's relatively straightforward to gather health data for foods, but often very hard to turn that into "universal recommendations".
"Well, then fire it up and show me what this..." (sigh)
50% of people who have heart attacks have "normal" cholesterol levels. Just let that one sink in. And I know there are stats about everything, but that is a big one.
I don't actually know enough about the context here to evaluate that claim, but more importantly -- your statistic is insufficient to conclude anything.
A statement like "50% of people who have heart attacks have 'normal' cholesterol levels" is absolutely useless for evaluating the potential link between heart attacks and cholesterol without a sense of incidence of "high cholesterol" and "heart attacks" within the population.
Just for a quick statistical primer, imagine the following scenario:
1000 people
100 people have high cholesterol
100 people have heart attacks
Let's take your claim: 50% of people who had heart attacks had normal cholesterol. Knowing the above stats, that implies:
(1) 50% of heart attacks were people with high cholesterol.
(2) Thus, chances of having a heart attack with high cholesterol = 50/100 = 50%.
(3) Chances of having a heart attack without high cholesterol = 50/900 = 5.55%.
Overall, those with high cholesterol have about 9 times greater chance of having a heart attack. High cholesterol appears to be a VERY STRONG PREDICTOR of heart attacks.
(We could go even more extreme and imagine there were 200 people with heart attacks, in which case 100% of people with high cholesterol had heart attacks... even though your "50%" stat is still true. In that case, I think I'd be really concerned if someone had high cholesterol.)
Alternatively, consider a different scenario:
1000 people
400 people have high cholesterol
10 people have heart attacks
Again, using your assumption that 50% of heart attacks are in people with normal cholesterol, that means:
(1) Chances of having a heart attack with high cholesterol = 5/300 = 1.25%.
(2) Chances of having a heart attack with normal cholesterol = 5/600 = 0.83%.
In this case, things are much more equal -- high cholesterol has higher risk, but less than 50% higher.
In this case, heart attacks are much more rare, and high cholesterol might be a factor, but it seems there are a lot of other things to look at.
Bottom line -- your statistic is meaningless without context. Citing a rate of incidence for a subgroup tells you nothing about whether that subgroup is significant or not... you'd need more stats to evaluate your claim. Depending on the larger population stats, your "50%" statistic might even be incredibly strong evidence that high cholesterol is the best factor we have to predict heart attacks... which I think is the opposite point that you wanted us to have "sink in." (I don't think this latter hypothesis is true, merely that your stat is quite ambiguous.)
But those are stupid things to say. Yes, everything you eat is made of chemicals (I hope that's what you meant) but we are capable of introducing them in quantities and concentrations which are harmful.
That doesn't come anywhere close to what I'm talking about. I'm specifically talking about people who advocate not eating something with any ingredient that a third grader can't pronounce. THAT is what they identify as "chemicals". Take for example acetic acid, or ascorbic acid, which are colloquially called vinegar and vitamin c, respectively. Other names like phenylalinine and lisine are vital to your health, yet I can guarantee you that a member of a food religion will be afraid to eat anything containing anything that I just mentioned.
And even selective breeding can produce unsafe results; GMO can produce results that selective breeding can't, and therefore it is at least as unsafe.
Without realizing it, you just made an argument against non-GMO plants. With GMO, you know exactly what you're getting, thanks to the knowledge gained from proteomics. With natural reproduction however, there are invariably going to be hundreds or even thousands of mutations that are entirely unknown.
People should be upset when you say those things, because you're wasting their time.
I'm wasting THEIR time? They're the ones who give me this shit when they notice I've got a chronic condition. Tell THEM to not proselytize their religion. That's like a Jehovah Witness knocking on your door, giving you their pitch, and complaining that you're wasting their time when you tell them that you don't see it their way. Seriously it's really boneheaded of you to say that.
The food you eat probably does at minimum exacerbate your condition, especially if you're this defensive about it; you probably know better.
Absolutely false. IgA nephropathy causes loss of nephrons due to inflammation, which eventually progresses into fibrosis. I'm actually one of the ones who has had a complete halt in albuminuria, which is VERY RARE for somebody who has already progressed to stage 4. You probably don't have any idea what that means, but basically this: My disease is no longer in a progressive state, meaning that I can last this way for a very long time. And yet, what I eat is exacerbating it? I'm curious what you base this statement on, because it sounds like a big pile of ideological horse shit.
You can go ask any board certified Nephrologist by the way, they'll confirm what I just told you. In fact, the advice they'll give will go completely against what anybody of the food religion will tell you, because they'll advise somebody in my condition to stay away from food like spinach, tomatoes, potatoes, prunes, any kind of lentils, beans, or nuts, any kind of melon, bananas, oranges, pumpkins, and squash.
If you don't already know why its best to avoid these things before you searched for it on google, then please refrain from giving people dietary advice when you obviously don't know shit about the disease, thank you.