Long-Buried Studies That Found That Replacing Saturated Fat With Vegetable Oil Increased Death Risk
I have eaten low-carb since March of 2009, influenced by the work of my friend, investigative science journalist Gary Taubes, and I've been advising readers here and readers of my column to do the same. I, in fact, eat a high fat, very low-carb diet -- no bread, potatoes, and only a tiny cup of ice cream once a week for desert. No other sugar. I am 53 and I weigh only about 10 pounds more than I did as a skinny kid in high school -- effortlessly.
Tragically, the government, based on the dishonest work of researcher Ancel Keys, has been recommending precisely the diet (high-carb/low-fat) that cause the insulin secretion that puts on fat. Investigative science journalist Nina Teicholz chronicles this -- and what good science says we should eat -- in The Big Fat Surprise.
Another great resource is the work of other friends of mine, Dr. Michael Eades and Dr. Mary Dan Eades, low-carb pioneers who recommended this to their patients decades before anybody else. Mike's blog is a particularly great resource. (Two particularly helpful posts -- Starting Or Restarting A Low-Carb Diet are at the link above.)
As for the related story of the day, Sharon Begley writes at StatNews of the work of scientific detective Christopher Ramsden, who specializes in excavating lost studies and the data collected for them.
His latest excavation "unearthed raw data from a 40-year-old study, which challenges the dogma that eating vegetable fats instead of animal fats is good for the heart. The study, the largest gold-standard experiment testing that idea, found the opposite, Ramsden and his colleagues reported on Tuesday in BMJ (formerly the British Medical Journal)":
After getting the tapes translated into formats that modern computers can read, Ramsden and his colleagues discovered what had been hidden for nearly half a century: records on 9,423 study participants, ages 20 to 97, all living in state mental hospitals or a nursing home. It was the largest experiment of its kind.It was also one of the most rigorous. Participants were randomly assigned either to the group eating the then-standard diet, which was high in animal fats and margarines, or to a group in which vegetable oil and corn oil margarine replaced about half of those saturated fats. Such a randomized controlled trial is considered less likely to produce misleading results than observational studies, in which volunteers eat whatever they choose. Observational studies are weaker than randomized ones because people who eat one way, rather than another, might have characteristics that benefit their heart health.
And because the Minnesota participants were in institutions that prepared all their meals and kept records, the scientists knew exactly what they ate for up to 56 months. Many nutrition studies have foundered because people misremember, or lie about, what they ate.
Analyzing the reams of old records, Ramsden and his team found, in line with the "diet-heart hypothesis," that substituting vegetable oils lowered total blood cholesterol levels, by an average of 14 percent.
But that lowered cholesterol did not help people live longer. Instead, the lower cholesterol fell, the higher the risk of dying: 22 percent higher for every 30-point fall. Nor did the corn-oil group have less atherosclerosis or fewer heart attacks.
...In 2013, Ramsden resurrected another long-lost randomized study, the 1960s-era Sydney Diet Heart Study. Reanalyzing its unpublished data -- also stored on old nine-track computer tapes -- he found that volunteers who replaced much of the saturated fat in their diet with polyunsaturated fats high in linoleic acid had a higher risk of death from coronary heart disease.
For their new paper, Ramsden's team also reviewed and analyzed all randomized controlled trials of substituting polyunsaturated fats for saturated fats. There have been only five. Bottom line: they reduce cholesterol, but not deaths from coronary heart disease or other causes.
via @sslevine
This is one reason why I am not so keen on be ruled by science and scientists. Money from your paymaster, whether "Big Agra" or "Big Government", can easily corrupt science, leading to junk science being promoted or real science that bucks consensus being suppressed. On top of that scientists are real human beings prone to jealousy, envy, anger, and vindictiveness just like the rest of us. The delusion that a rule of science is possible is just a delusion.
Shtetl G at May 3, 2017 7:46 AM
So true -- and I think the human frailties of researchers are especially important to note.
Amy Alkon at May 3, 2017 10:38 AM
is the carb/insulin response linear? ie, will reducing carbs 50% produce 50% of the health benefits?
Everyone who advocates against carbs seems to take an all-or-nothing stance. Is this hardcore approach required by and supported by the science? Is carb moderation even worth it?
smurfy at May 3, 2017 11:16 AM
Great blog today!
I'm a long-time admirer of Mike & Mary Dan Eades - I lost 140 lbs using Protein Power over 16 years ago. Now I eat fewer than 20 carbs per day to help keep my A1c at non-diabetic levels.
Dr. Richard K. Bernstein explains well why carb moderation doesn't work in his book "Diabetes Solution." While his plan seems very strict to those unfamiliar with it, except for the fact that it's 30g of carb or under per day, many of us folks who follow him get to eat ice cream every day - rich, velvety, low carb ice cream made with heavy cream and alternative sweeteners - not just once a week.
Cheers!
Elizabeth Pfeifer at May 3, 2017 11:38 AM
"rich, velvety, low carb ice cream made with heavy cream and alternative sweeteners - not just once a week."
Sounds good, but I have a bigger issue with alternative sweeteners than with sugar. The verdict isnt totally in yet, but it isnt looking good. They seem to cause inflamation and insulin resistance.
I eat anything sweet, I start to crave more sweet stuff. It is a form of torture, I would just as soon not put myself through. I have great sympathy for alcoholics when one of these cravings strike.
You, of course can do as you like, and the gubmit should keep their nose out of it.
The grim reaper will get us all in the end, and I intend to focus on keeping my strength so I can continue to enjoy an active life up until the end.
Isab at May 3, 2017 1:12 PM
"Dr. Richard K. Bernstein explains...in his book"
So we're not going to be able to reduce this to 140 characters?
smurfy at May 3, 2017 1:52 PM
I have to eat a strictly gluten-free diet. (Not a glutard, girlfriend has celiacs and gets violently ill.)
The hardest part of the diet is not being an insufferable ass. This is why I ask about moderation. Do I have to take this to the point of being antisocial and difficult to accommodate in order to get any benefit? I'm hearing yes.
smurfy at May 3, 2017 2:15 PM
"then-standard diet, which was high in animal fats and margarines"
Don't you mean butter, margarine is veggie fats, soy bean to be exact
as an aside, I'm an organic dairy farmer, my grandparents were dairy farmer way back in the 40's, all their milk was run through a cream separator at the farm and the cream sent to the "creamery"for butter production, guess what they did with the skim, fed it to hogs, pigs fatten very well on skim milk, an pig and a human share a very similar digestive tract. In other words we have been fattened like pigs by our government recommendations
old dairy farmer at May 3, 2017 4:48 PM
"I have to take this to the point of being antisocial and difficult to accommodate in order to get any benefit? I'm hearing yes."
Eating a moderate amount of carbs is fine. If you notice the only people who rave about the benefits from an extreme reduction of carbohydrates have metabolism problems, food allergies, or psychiatric/neurological disorders.
All kinds of different diets around with a moderate amount of carbs. Lazy keto seems pretty popular.
Just skip processed sugar and eat in a manner where you feel good. Play around with food. For the most part I don't believe in restrictive diets myself but I do in habits.
Ppen at May 3, 2017 6:23 PM
"I have to take this to the point of being antisocial and difficult to accommodate in order to get any benefit? I'm hearing yes."
Eating a moderate amount of carbs is fine. If you notice the only people who rave about the benefits from an extreme reduction of carbohydrates have metabolism problems, food allergies, or psychiatric/neurological disorders.
All kinds of different diets around with a moderate amount of carbs. Lazy keto seems pretty popular.
Just skip processed sugar and eat in a manner where you feel good. Play around with food. For the most part I don't believe in restrictive diets myself but I do in habits.
Ppen at May 3, 2017 6:23 PM
I totally agree. I started small and got rid of all beverages with sugar, corn syrup or artificial sweeteners, but I am not hard core about it. I will still ocasionally have a small lemonade, or a hot chocolate that I make myself.
I dont particularly like factory bread or any other prepackaged bake goods, or candy so they arent much of a temptation. When I am out with friends I eat moderately of things that I dont keep in my house for the obvious reasons, and usually end up with a doggie bag.
I cut muself a little more slack on days in the summer when I am doing a lot of outdoor activities, and getting dehydrated. Water alone in those situations can end up giving me leg cramps. Lightly sweetened beverages like lemonade or gatorade seem to quench my thirst a lot better and stop the cramping.
But you cant spend your life in front of the TV with a bowl of carby snacks in reach without gaining weight, unless you have some metabolic or eating disorder.
Your friends and relatives dont care about your dietary restrictions.. Dont bore them with it. Just politely decline, and if pressed, claim an allergy.
Isab at May 3, 2017 7:25 PM
Ah, poor Keys. I don't know that he was in the pocket of the agricultural industry, but he did his research at my alma mater, the University of Minnesota, in one of the biggest ag states (especially back then) in the US. We're still held hostage to the corn lobby for boondoggles like ethanol.
The hi-cal, hi-carb K-Ration, which Keys developed for combat conditions, worked for its purpose since the carbs provided quick energy for stressful physical exertion. It wasn't meant to be a steady diet, but he seemed to lack rigor in his later research.
Grey Ghost at May 4, 2017 5:32 AM
"So we're not going to be able to reduce this to 140 characters? "
Here ya go -
"Eating right:
Fat 65%
Protein 30%
Net Carbohydrates 5%"
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at May 4, 2017 11:00 AM
The huge flaw in this study: it counted margarine from corn-oil as "vegetable oil". Corn oil is a liquid at room temperature. To make margarine out of it, side groups must be added to the long hydrocarbon chains, raising the melting point. But now it's a "trans-fat" compound that was never found in nature, and we now know (although it wasn't known when the study was done) that this is _much_ unhealthier than the fats our digestion evolved to handle.
Yes, this study should have been acknowledged 40 years ago. If more research had been done in this direction back then, perhaps it would have been recognized that trans-fats were bad before they were substituted for animal fats throughout the western world's food industries. Even without recognizing that, it also demonstrated that lowering cholesterol in the diet does not reduce heart attacks, which could have prevented three decades of silly cholesterol avoidance. But in nutrition, as in several other areas of "science", real science is lost when behavior change becomes the fashionable goal.
markm at May 26, 2017 12:42 PM
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