BMJ: The PURE Study debunks the sat fat/heart disease hypothesis


The PURE study: Eating fat is associated with lower cardiovascular disease

From BMJ 9 Sept 17
PURE is a five continent observational study in relation to cardiovascular disease in mortality in almost 150 thousand people. It found that high carbohydrate intake was associated with a higher risk of total mortality whereas total fat and individual types of fat were related to a lower total mortality.
Total fat and types of fat were not associated with cardiovascular disease, myocardial infarction, or cardiovascular disease mortality, and the more saturated fat people ate the less strokes they had.
Like all observational studies correlation does not necessarily imply causation. The main message however is a series of negatives. There does not seem to be a connection between carbohydrate intake and cardiovascular disease, the association is with all- cause mortality. Perhaps high carbohydrate diets are simply a marker for poverty?
In contrast eating more fat, including saturated fat was associated with lower cardiovascular disease, meaning that we can abandon the saturated fat-cardiovascular disease hypothesis with some certainty.
So, what does “healthy food” look like?
A higher intake of fruit, vegetables and legumes was associated with a lower risk of non-cardiovascular and total mortality at three to four servings a day.
Great, says the author of this piece, Richard Lehman. His dream meal is cannelli beans and tuna salad with lots of olive oil, rib eye steak in butter, a salad, fruit, cheese and strawberries and cream.


4 thoughts on “BMJ: The PURE Study debunks the sat fat/heart disease hypothesis”

  1. Oh, hadn’t you heard? The BMJ is “no longer a source of credible medical information”.according to some dieticians and other defenders of medical orthodoxy.

    Liked by 1 person

  2. I hadn’t heard. The BMJ refused to publish the 12 reasons why low carb diets were better for diabetes paper citing too many competing papers( but really I think they were too frightened of being unpopular to do it). I would say they started to change their tune around the publication of Nina Teicholz’s paper and have at least held steady since then.


    1. Precisely! Fiona Godlee at least has some appreciation for science and correspondingly less for dogma, which makes the journal a danger to the dogmatists.

      I didn’t hear that about the paper, but I guess they can’t be rocking too many boats at the same time.

      Incidentally everyone knocking PURE should look behind them

      very similar conclusions reached a year ago


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