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Popular Belief That Saturated Fat Clogs Up Arteries Is a Myth, Experts Say (independent.ie)
schwit1 quotes a report from Irish Independent: The authors, led by Dr Aseem Malhotra, from Lister Hospital, Stevenage, wrote: "Despite popular belief among doctors and the public, the conceptual model of dietary saturated fat clogging a pipe is just plain wrong." Dr Malhotra and colleagues Professor Rita Redberg, from the University of California at San Francisco, and Pascal Meier from University Hospital Geneva in Switzerland and University College London, cited a "landmark" review of evidence that appeared to exonerate saturated fat. They said relative levels of "good" cholesterol, or high density lipoprotein (HDL), were a better predictor of heart disease risk than levels of low density lipoprotein (LDL), also known as "bad" cholesterol. High consumption of foods rich in saturated fat such as butter, cakes and fatty meat has been shown to increase blood levels of LDL. The experts wrote: "It is time to shift the public health message in the prevention and treatment of coronary artery disease away from measuring serum lipids (blood fats) and reducing dietary saturated fat. "Coronary artery disease is a chronic inflammatory disease and it can be reduced effectively by walking 22 minutes a day and eating real food." They pointed out that in clinical trials widening narrow arteries with stents -- stainless steel mesh devices -- failed to reduce the risk of heart attacks.
That will tell you the desired results without even looking.
slashdot: A failed experiment.
It's no wonder we're seeing more and more average people question, if not stand against, science. From their perspective, it just isn't reliable any longer.
It doesn't matter if we're talking about nutrition or climate change. Time and time again average people have been told one thing based on scientific research, but then a short while later they're told that something totally contradictory to the first thing is now correct.
Science as a whole has a serious boy-who-cried-wolf problem. As scientists we need to be far more careful about the claims we're making, so that people continue to take us seriously.
We can't do what climate science did in the 1960s and 1970s, and predict imminent doom-and-gloom scenarios for the 1980s that don't come to pass, and haven't come to pass even 30 years after that.
We can't say today that some food or substance is unhealthy and we should avoid eating it, but then a few years from now say it's healthy, and in fact we need to eat more of it.
While we shouldn't be afraid to chance our conclusions as we do more research and continue to expand our knowledge, we also can't continue to make claims that fall apart so quickly. We need to be far more sure about the claims we make publicly.
Each time we contradict ourselves we only serve to make our research, our methods, our philosophy, and our entire field look like a joke. We have to stop being wrong so often if we want to be taken seriously.
... or at least a religion. In no other field can I find so much contradictory information and research. On the one hand you have Dr. Barnard saying fat is of the devil and on the other hand you have Dr. Eades saying it is perfectly fine. We used to fry foods in lard and tallow (saturated fats). Then the dietary scientists said that was going to kill us so we had to switch to non-saturated fats. Then the dietary scientists said that the trans fats that they recommended were worse than the saturated fats.
In the 80s and 90s the fat phobic nutritionists and diet gurus said that any kind of fat more than 10% of your total intake of calories was bad for you and they had "medical studies" to back it up. They said it was fat that made us fat. They came on TV and scared moms and the food industry started removing fat from their products. Now, the fat content of many foods is much less. But guess what? We are fatter than ever. They replaced the fat with sugar and other carbohydrates and said that the science showed that was ok because it is not carbohydrates that make us fat, but it is fat. Again, we are fatter than ever. Who is thinner than Americans? Well, practically everyone except Mexicans and Samoans. Who is thinner? Well, the French are. What do they eat? A lot more fat in their diets than us. Asians are thinner too and they supposedly eat a lot of rice which is a lot of carbs.
Hi fat is killing us--we have studies proving...
No it's high carbs that are killing us--we have studies proving... ...
No it's
Stop drinking that sugary soda, it's bad for your health. Drink a diet soda instead...oh, it will give you alzheimers...
Stop drinking coffee, the caffeine is bad for you--we have studies. Instead, drink coffee for your health because it contains lots of flavonoids--we have studies.
If you're a guy...maybe we should figure out the diets of guys like Mick Jagger and Anthony Quinn who fathered kids past the age of 70. For Jagger, maybe it's all the cocaine and other drugs... got to say that it's depressing being 52 and the plumbing not working like it used to.
Their claim largely hinges on a “landmark” 2015 review and meta-analysis of observational studies.
Translation - claim relies on cherry picking bad data sets to push narrative. Sure, I wish it was true. However, this study is not trustworthy.
I'll give you the secret: Foreskin means you don't need lube. Anybody with a foreskin can simply hold it in place and compare, but a person without it can't make that comparison. There is a huge difference in functionality.
This is why historically when circumcision was done by adult males it was a big act of religious devotion. You're giving up a major part of the hedonistic pleasures of life. This is also why it is done to children; in hopes they will grow to be more pious.
The belief is diets high in fat contribute to coronary artery disease, not necessarily because fat floats in the blood stream and sticks to your arteries.
Evidence suggests there are actually a lot of mechanisms at work there. Hypertension causes arteries to harden, salt may exacerbate this. Genetics are an underrated contributor. A cardiologist had explained to me some people are just more genetically predisposed for atheroma than others as he was cathing the coronaries of a former fighter pilot, now airliner pilot, in excellent health who ultimately needed coronary artery bypass grafting. This pilot had excellent HDL and LDL levels, no history of high blood pressure, just chest pain. His father had a heart attack before the age of 55: premature coronary artery disease.
Biggest problem is the high mortality of post MI patients even with stents. We don't want to talk about it, but it is almost a dirty secret about stents and MI that kills a lot of people. Why would we? It would make having an MI sound like a death sentence despite medical advances. They can die for a myriad of reasons: heart failure or in-stent re-stenosis. Post-MI sudden death can be due to ventricular arrhythmia that has NOTHING to do with the stent, but because of surviving, yet sick, cells in an area of MI scar.
My point? It is still not fully understood. We have a lot of indicators in evidence that do a good job, but more work has to be done.
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
Nutrition information and guidelines are bad due to the LACK of scientific rigor in the supporting studies.
The lack of rigor isn't due to some vast conspiracy - it's just really hard to perform controlled experiments on large groups of people with regard to diet and lifestyle.
Does anyone here want to volunteer to be locked in a room for a few years while a group of researchers strictly controls what you eat, when you exercise, and how often you sleep?
Worse still, does anyone want to volunteer to be the control group that gets little to none of those things?
I'm afraid correlation studies are the best we can do here.
THIS is why science is important. The whole "eat less" or "eat less fat" or "exercise more" or "" needs to stop. There is actual science behind our bodies and how they work, but so many people are just looking for the quick answer. Empty your cup, forget what you know, and look at what the science tells you. That include doctors as well, they need to get back to science and rely less on what they were taught in medical school 50 years ago.
My father just had two stents put into one artery - it was 99 percent blocked and 50 percent blocked in another area. He is in his 70s, and has always been in pretty good health. I asked him to find out what his cholesterol levels were from the tests, and they were exactly what I expected - they were great. Just as they had been his whole life.
For four years now I have been following a paleo/primal diet. I have never felt better! I lost some weight and haven't even had to think about it since. That wasn't my goal, as I was about 173 at the time, I am right at 160 now, and have dipped to 155. I have learned so much about cholesterol, fat, and diet even though I thought I knew a lot before. I've read books by Mark Sisson, Gary Taubes, and some others, as well as articles/talks by Dr. Peter Attia. Attia had some really in-depth blog posts on cholesterol that were very enlightening, and his vimeo video on the limits of scientific evidence is really great. The other thing to be aware of around artery "hardening" is with oxidation. It's not really cholesterol clogging your arteries, it's is more like your arterial walls thickening, oxidizing and lesioning, and your body repairing them. So not clogging, more like spackling. :)
My diet has essentially been no calorie restrictions at all, but no grains (included corn) or grain based products (including oils, and beer), extremely low sugar, low carb, no legumes or legume products (soybean/peanuts), and high saturated fat. The only thing in my bloodwork that didn't improve drastically was my cholesterol. It is still high. However, what I've learned is that isn't a bad thing! My father has always had low cholesterol, and my mother's is high. After his near miss this year, my mother got a battery of tests too - she has no significant blockages, with her cholesterol nearing and sometimes over 300! They've tried to put her on meds, but they make her ill.
A couple of years ago I tracked what I ate for a week. Daily I was 2258 calories, 54 grams carbs (18 were sugars), and 186 grams of fat.
I have wanted to write down all of my experiences with this over the last few years. I know that this is all heresay and circumstantial, but to ME it's relevant and real. Here are some of the benefits I had:
- no nagging joint pain (less inflammation)
- skin was better (same)
- no bloating or tired feeling after eating - EVER
- no craving for sweets or that "blood sugar" high
- my teeth are better - I still brush and floss, but my semi-annual cleaning takes about 10 minutes.
- better lung capacity
-- there is a story here that I still find hard to believe. At the time I started this, we had a swimming pool (I lived in AZ). Every year when I first got in the pool in the spring, I would attempt to swim down and back under water. I could usually do it, but sometimes not. I started this diet in November, and when it got to May/June it was time to go swimming again. I went down, and back... and wasn't even wanting for air, so I went DOWN again. So 50% better than I had ever done before. And when I came up, I wasn't gasping either. I was baffled, and still am quite frankly. I think it has to do with less inflammation, and that my body overall is just more efficient because it's fighting less and less against what grains/carbs do you our bodies.
It's really about health. I had to break my body's physical addiction to the blood sugar roller coaster. Once that was done (about 3 weeks) it's effortless, and I am healthier for it. I am in my upper 40s, and have a 32" waist. I didn't consider myself unhealthy before, but I can feel a difference and it's all better.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.