Fat Controversy
© Sott.net
We all know that saturated fats are unhealthy and kill us. The government says it, the experts say it, and the medical professionals say it.

But is this really the case? Let's have a look a the actual science behind this claim.

The hypothesis, that saturated fats are unhealthy was first developed in 1955 by a researcher, Ancel Keys. In his famous - or I should rather say infamous - Seven Countries Study, he showed that the countries with the highest amount of saturated fat in their diet showed the highest rates of cardiovascular disease.

The problem with his study however was pointed out by two other researchers - Yerushalmy and Hilleboe - two years later. Keys had only picked seven countries out of a total of 22 for which these data were available. Had he used the full data set, his theory would have looked much weaker, and his study probably never published.

Beyond these data issues, there was also a huge structural limitation to the Seven Countries study: it was an epidemiological investigation. Epidemiological studies can only show an association, not causation. In other words, they simply show that the two elements occur together, but they cannot establish any causal connection.

At the same time another hypothesis was vigorously debated as well: the sugar hypothesis, which attributes weight gain and many chronic illnesses to a diet high in sugars. From the late 1950s to the early 1970s, Keys held an ongoing debate in the scientific literature with John Yudkin, a professor of physiology at Queen Elizabeth College, London University, who at the time was the main proponent of the sugar hypothesis. "Keys was very opposed to the sugar idea," said one of his co-researchers later. Keys comment simply was, that Yudkin's hypothesis was a "mountain of nonsense".

Today we know, that Yudkin was right, and the nonsense lay with Keys.

1961 was a turning point for Ancel Keys and his diet-heart hypothesis. He managed three significant coups: in the first, he got the American Heart Association behind his ideas, the most powerful heart disease group in US history; another landed him on the cover of Time magazine, the most influential magazine of its day; and the third at the National Institutes of Health, which was not only the leading scientific authority in the land but also the richest source of research funds.

From then on, the lipid-heart disease hypothesis was firmly entrenched as fact in the medical and general population. It had become a dogma. Those who dared oppose this dogma were ridiculed and ostracised by their colleagues, and many lost their jobs.

In the years to follow, a huge industry happily jumped onto the "low-fat" bandwagon, producing a myriad of cheap foods based on carbohydrates. In 1980 the USDA started issuing dietary guidelines that promoted a reduction of all fats, but notably of saturated fats - and by proxy of cholesterol as well. The world had embarked upon a giant nutritional experiment to cut out meat, dairy, and dietary fat altogether, replacing these with grains, fruits, vegetables and vegetable oils. The results? An increase in the prevalence of obesity, heart failure, stroke and ultimately heart disease.

That the Western world came to see vegetable oil as the healthiest-possible kind of fat was one of the more astonishing changes in our attitudes about diet in the twentieth century. The change in consumption itself was astronomical: the oils went from being completely unknown before 1910 to representing somewhere around 7 percent to 8 percent of all calories consumed by Americans by 1999.

But what happened to the rates of heart disease?

Contrary to Keys' theory, heart disease, diabetes and obesity simply skyrocketed, despite a continuous reduction in total fat, saturated fat and cholesterol consumed in most western countries.

So what are we to do with all that?

Countless studies have since been done that have thoroughly disproven that saturated fats cause heart disease. Notably one of the biggest and longest epidemiological studies ever undertaken - the Framingham study - failed to show any correlation between saturated fat intake and heart disease. One of the researchers involved in the study, George Mann, later said: " That went over like a wet blanket with my superiors at NIH - because it was contrary to what they wanted us to find."

Not until 1992 did a Framingham study researcher, William Castelli, publicly acknowledge this fact: "In fact, the more saturated fats one ate, [...] the lower the person's serum cholesterol [...] and the lower their weight". Another point that the Framingham study showed conclusively was, that lowering cholesterol was not helpful. In fact with each 1% drop of Cholesterol there was an 11% increase in heart disease rate and total mortality.

1993 another study, The Women's Health Initiative (WHI), enrolled 49,000 women with the expectation that the benefits of a low-fat diet would be proven once and for all. After a decade of eating more fruits, vegetables, and whole grains and cutting back on meat and fat, these women failed to lose any weight. But more importantly, they also didn't see any significant reduction in their risk for heart disease or cancer. This trial was the largest and longest ever done of the low-fat diet, and the results clearly indicated, that the diet had completely failed.

Another finding was, that men whose cholesterol had gone down were found to die at significantly higher rates from suicides, accidents, and homicides. Researchers have subsequently suggested that cholesterol depletion in the brain may lead to an impairment of the functioning of serotonin receptors. In other words: Low cholesterol causes depression.

More recent studies paint the same picture: A meta-analysis published in 2010 by Siri-Tarino in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found "that there is no significant evidence for concluding that dietary saturated fat is associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease or stroke".

Saturated fats are vital for the body and the mind, and to cut them down has been shown to lead to an increase in a range of diseases and death. Saturated fats are very energy dense and satisfy the body, thus reducing hunger and craving for carbohydrates - the real culprit behind the explosion of heart disease, diabetes, obesity and cancer in the West. A low-fat diet will inevitably be high in carbohydrates, replacing these healthy fats. Furthermore, saturated fats have been replaced by polyunsaturated and artificial trans fats like margarine, which in turn, have also been shown to be toxic to the body.

So what should we do?

A dispassionate analysis of decades of nutritional research has clearly shown us, that cutting fats out of our diet, and particularly saturated fats, is a recipe for ill health and premature death.

A healthy diet consists of a mixture of saturated fats and mono-unsaturated fats in a ratio of 1:1, comprising the majority of ingested daily calories, a modest amount of preferably animal protein, and as little carbohydrates as possible.

So let's all put down the toast and have bacon and eggs instead!