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Medicine Science

Popular Belief That Saturated Fat Clogs Up Arteries Is a Myth, Experts Say (independent.ie) 273

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.
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Popular Belief That Saturated Fat Clogs Up Arteries Is a Myth, Experts Say

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  • Good (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Eat all the Doritos and don't go outside and post about Linux

    then you will be healthy

  • by FrankHaynes ( 467244 ) on Wednesday April 26, 2017 @10:32PM (#54310617)

    That will tell you the desired results without even looking.

    • by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 26, 2017 @10:41PM (#54310657)

      That will tell you the desired results without even looking.

      It's all backed by the sinister agenda of Big "Walk a half an hour a day and don't eat garbage".

      • by lucm ( 889690 ) on Wednesday April 26, 2017 @11:00PM (#54310711)

        They do have an agenda. Big "Walk a half an hour a day and don't eat garbage" wants people to have a longer and healthier life so senior citizens can be milked longer by bingo halls and casinos. This lobby is in a perpetual fight against another lobby, Big "Eat sugar and die in your mid 60s" who want to accelerate the settlement of reverse mortgages.

        • You're a funny guy. Hope your karma can handle it. I was leaning more towards +1 Insightful, myself.

    • by skirmish666 ( 1287122 ) on Wednesday April 26, 2017 @10:53PM (#54310685)
      FTA

      "This editorial is not founded on good evidence. There is no such thing as 'real food' - the authors don't define what it is so it's meaningless."

      • FTA

        "This editorial is not founded on good evidence. There is no such thing as 'real food' - the authors don't define what it is so it's meaningless."

        I always have difficulty in understanding what "real food" is as well. Most of the time it seems to exclude food that is inexpensive, requires little preparation and tastes good while at other times it seems to exclude foods that are simply too easy to eat. Much of the time it dosent translate into a rational discussion about a balanced intake of protein, carbs and fats and moderation of salt.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by cayenne8 ( 626475 )

          I always have difficulty in understanding what "real food" is as well. Most of the time it seems to exclude food that is inexpensive, requires little preparation and tastes good while at other times it seems to exclude foods that are simply too easy to eat. Much of the time it dosent translate into a rational discussion about a balanced intake of protein, carbs and fats and moderation of salt.

          I should think 'real food' would be somewhat common sense, but here's some help...

          First, real food needs to be pur

      • Whole foods are food. If you look at the ingredients on the side of something in a box, it if full of things that aren't food.
    • by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 26, 2017 @10:53PM (#54310687)

      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.

      • by moronikos ( 595352 ) on Wednesday April 26, 2017 @11:17PM (#54310765) Journal

        More and more information is coming out that "peer review" is sort of a joke. The basic statistics of many studies isn't even verified. Check this on Ars: https://arstechnica.com/scienc... [arstechnica.com]

        • by tsa ( 15680 ) on Thursday April 27, 2017 @01:49AM (#54311147) Homepage

          That's like saying democracy is a sort of a joke. Yes, it has its drawbacks but all the other systems are way worse.

        • by guruevi ( 827432 ) on Thursday April 27, 2017 @07:23AM (#54312039)

          That's largely because there is neither fame nor money in peer review. Peer review IS being done though, at least in the harder sciences, many studies that build on other studies will at least attempt to verify the original results. Only when they see large discrepancies will they ever be further reviewed and published and then only if the original paper has been of quite some impact to the field (hundreds or thousands of references to the paper).

          Things like this has been known to the scientific community for a while, the models used to communicate the impact of fats and food on your health to the public are just way too simplistic. It's not just about fats, it's what you eat/drink with those fats. The food pyramid is one of those things that has been known to be false soon after it was introduced but even the food plate is way too simplistic and unrealistic.

          Everything you eat (fat, sugar, alcohol, acids etc) has an impact on each other, the French classical diet of "du vin, du pain et du Boursin" (wine, bread and cheese or alcohol, gluten and fat) does not result in fat Frenchmen even though every doctor will tell you it will blow you up like a balloon.

        • by burtosis ( 1124179 ) on Thursday April 27, 2017 @07:35AM (#54312093)

          More and more information is coming out that "peer review" is sort of a joke. The basic statistics of many studies isn't even verified. Check this on Ars: https://arstechnica.com/scienc... [arstechnica.com]

          While likely true an even more pressing problem is non-scientific clickbait headlines and juiced up summaries and articles about scientific papers/research to simply generate more revenue. No companies seem to care about long term irreparable harm to public consensus. Obligatory xkcd [xkcd.com]

        • Peer reviewed is better than privately funded and vouched for with good marketing (and a wink).
        • The only information I see coming out saying that "peer review is sort of a joke" is from propaganda artists like Limbaugh, Hannity, etc in their attempt to discredit real science where is conflicts with their narratives (global warming is a Hoax). People aren't perfect and neither is peer review, but it's a really good process and certainly not "sort of a joke". Also, I can't believe someone made this comment on Slashdot and got modded 5.

      • by Ichijo ( 607641 )

        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.

        Which respected scientists predicted those scenarios?

        • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

          by Anonymous Coward

          Quite a few. Try dusting off a text book from that era and you'll find it. Along with all the claims that the world would be out of food by 1977. There will be no oil by 1986. And Florida will be under water by 2005.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        It's not the scientific community doing this. The cases where scientists take money from special interests to lie about food (carbs are good / eat lots of sugar!) are usually small amounts of very influential and corrupt scientists, not the group as a whole. Many of the sensationalized journal articles are at BEST one study that gets blown up and popularized by newsmen of some sort, who get paid by the ounce of controversy.

      • by DarkOx ( 621550 )

        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.

        You are partly right, but science is all about making /testable/ claims. Scientists absolutely need to advance their hypothesis backed up by the research and allow others to find counter or confirming evidence.

        What needs to stop happening is people trying to make public policy based on less proven theory. Climate science is a good example its been used as a basis for policies since the 1970's and its predictions and impacts have changed a lot since that time, it was and is an immature field. As is a lot

      • Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday April 27, 2017 @09:20AM (#54312571)
        Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • by PoopJuggler ( 688445 ) on Thursday April 27, 2017 @09:22AM (#54312597)
        I guess you haven't noticed that the climate and environment are in fucking shambles. We've killed 50% of the fish in the ocean since the 1970s. We fucked up the ozone layer. We've filled the ocean with plastic and oil. We've raised the global temperature. We've caused the extinction of countless species of animals. We've decimated rainforests. And all these things continue even now. If guess your idea of "doom and gloom" is vastly different from mine.
      • 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.

        Negative. The problem with food is that there is a bullshit industry built around it that has nothing to do with science. It has everything to do with blaming, marketing, and agenda.

        I forgot to add lies and bullshit.

        All we have to do is look at advertisement. Today, we are starting to eat the healthy sugar again. A third of Americans are avoiding gluten, when only a small number are actually allergic to it. Remember how eating oatmeal was the great health food?

        Then we need to talk to vegans, vegetaria

      • The saturated fat thing was started as a response to the big Malthusian freakout of the early 1970s. The science was settled, according to Paul Erlich, author of The Population Bomb, and many others, we were all going to starve to death. Something had to be done to convince people that eating meat was terribly unhealthy in order to save the planet. So what's in meat and not in a vegetarian diet? Saturated fat! So the science was constructed by Ancil Keyes with the end in mind and all the data points th

      • Science goes where the money is...
  • by turkeydance ( 1266624 ) on Wednesday April 26, 2017 @10:34PM (#54310631)
    it is common, but not welcome.
  • No. (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 26, 2017 @10:35PM (#54310633)

    https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/04/experts-headline-grabbing-editorial-on-saturated-fats-bizarre-misleading/

    "The report was written secretly and released by the National Obesity Forum, for which Malhotra was also a senior advisor. The Forum is funded by the meat industry and drug companies."

    • Re:No. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by sinij ( 911942 ) on Wednesday April 26, 2017 @11:16PM (#54310757)

      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.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      http://www.nationalobesityforum.org.uk/index.php/about-the-nof/our-partners.html

      All-Party Parliamentary Group on Obesity
      National Institute of Clinical Excellence
      Royal College of Paediatricians
      Association for the Study of Obesity
      National Audit Office
      Korean Academy of Family Physicians
      National Association of Primary Care
      LighterLife UK Limited
      Roche Products Ltd
      Abbott Laboratories
      Slim Fast Foods Ltd
      Safeway Foods plc
      Tanita UK Ltd
      Sanofi-Aventis Ltd
      Mantis Surgical Equipment Ltd
      GlaxoSmithKline UK Ltd
      Canderel
      British

    • Re:No. (Score:5, Informative)

      by Bongo ( 13261 ) on Thursday April 27, 2017 @03:01AM (#54311351)

      https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/04/experts-headline-grabbing-editorial-on-saturated-fats-bizarre-misleading/

      "The report was written secretly and released by the National Obesity Forum, for which Malhotra was also a senior advisor. The Forum is funded by the meat industry and drug companies."

      That's funny, because these people (Malhotra, Eades, Noakes, etc.) who get together at conferences, so let's call it a "movement", they say that the lipid hypothesis was pushed by the sugar industry back in the 50s and 60s as a way to push the blame away from sugar -- that the idea that fat might cause heart disease is what the sugar industry wanted to hear. Meanwhile the British scientist Yudkin thought that sugar was the more likely cause of heart disease. But he was disinvited too often and eventually ignored. If you can't eat fat, you will have to eat carbohydrates, and cereals, and so on. So it is the cereals industry which benefits from the "fat is bad" hypothesis.

      Your or my conviction that, gee, fat really is bad, is merely because that's what we have been taught. We did not go out there and like, spend ten years doing a systematic review of all the literature going back 100 years.

      That's what Gary Taubes did, spent 5 years writing a book about this, tracing the history of the hypothesis. And Nina Teicholz, whose recent book was reviewed in the BMJ with words to the effect, "you'd believe that science was a rational objective process, but after reading this book you'll realise that was naive and the science has been perverted..." (words to that effect, in the BMJ). And hea dof world hear foundation (something like that) recently said that the science behind the heart/lipid hypothesis was bogus.

      How the Sugar Industry Shifted the Blame to Fat [nytimes.com]

      So the plain and rather obvious fact is, EVERYONE has a vested interest, so at the end of the day, the only thing that matters is, on the word of no-one, is the science actually objectively correct?

      We can play the who-funded-it game all day.

      • You might enjoy this (90m) video, Sugar: The Bitter Truth [youtube.com] by Robert H. Lustig, MD, UCSF Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology.

        The video explores the damage caused by sugary foods. He argues that fructose (too much) and fiber (not enough) appear to be cornerstones of the obesity epidemic through their effects on insulin. Series: UCSF Mini Medical School for the Public [7/2009]

        It's pretty technical.

    • Yeah - why am I not surprised? When I first saw this headline, I thought that this is nothing new; but I think this is part of a coordinated campaign that runs at the moment. I think it was only yesterday I saw another headline saying that salt doesn't cause high blood pressure - despite the fact that the connection is very well established. This is what makes fact-checking so crucial, because there really are these odious interest groups out there, knowingly spreading falsehoods in order to pump up the pro

      • Re:No. (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Aighearach ( 97333 ) on Thursday April 27, 2017 @05:45AM (#54311731)

        I think it was only yesterday I saw another headline saying that salt doesn't cause high blood pressure - despite the fact that the connection is very well established.

        Sorry Bozo, it was always true that salt increases blood pressure in a minority of patients with a particular genetic predisposition to that response. The average patient with hypertension has a very very minimal increase in blood pressure from dietary salt intake, and reducing it in those patients does not improve any of their hypertension-related outcomes. The reason that diuretics lower blood pressure is primarily because they alter the level of salt that your body maintains. Most people's bodies are well able to maintain a fairly steady body fluid salt level regardless of dietary intake.

        The reason you don't know this might be that some researchers publicly accuse people of being murderers for explaining that! Because they fear some ignorant person who didn't get tested will be affected and not go to a doctor to test and then die. This is the nonsense that people face in trying to get medical information generally.

  • "popular belief"??? (Score:5, Informative)

    by ooloorie ( 4394035 ) on Wednesday April 26, 2017 @10:54PM (#54310691)

    That's pretty rich, given that government guidelines have been [www.nhs.uk] saying for years [health.gov] that saturated fat is bad [fda.gov]:

    Saturated fat can increase the risk of developing cardiovascular disease.

    The worst part isn't even that they falsely identified saturated fats as bad, but that for years governments told people to eat a low-fat, high-carb diet, which is pretty much a prescription for weight gain and diabetes.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Carewolf ( 581105 )

      That's pretty rich, given that government guidelines have been [www.nhs.uk] saying for years [health.gov] that saturated fat is bad [fda.gov]:

      Saturated fat can increase the risk of developing cardiovascular disease.

      The worst part isn't even that they falsely identified saturated fats as bad, but that for years governments told people to eat a low-fat, high-carb diet, which is pretty much a prescription for weight gain and diabetes.

      Considering this new research (not by experts, but singular, one controversial expert shill) is complete bunk, it might have been good thing to advise people to do what is good for them.

      • So you missed the three meta-studies mentioned in some post above [slashdot.org]?
      • by Bongo ( 13261 ) on Thursday April 27, 2017 @06:17AM (#54311835)

        All else being equal, maybe it is wise to label someone a shill. But this "low fat" thing has been getting severely criticised for a good ten years now. Even the president of the World Heart Federation, Professor Salim Yusuf, has switched sides. Various people/experts have done the work of looking into what the lipid hypothesis was based on, actually, all those decades ago, and how it became dogma. If you want to call someone shill, it is probably the original people who recommended low-fat (it benefitted the sugar and cereals industry).

        Here are just a few of the controversial, but likely correct, quotes of Professor Salim Yusuf:

        “Above 40% carb we see a steep increase in CHD risk. Fats are protective.”
        “Contrary to common belief the current recommendation to reduce saturated fat has no scientific basis.”
        “You must have heard of the book Big Fat Surprise by Nina Teicholz. She shook up the nutrition world. But she got it right.”

    • It's still bad [arstechnica.com].
      • Nobody knows whether it's bad or not. In fact, right now, it seems like it depends on your genetic makeup and other factors. That is "what is a good diet for human beings" isn't even a meaningful question.

        What is crystal clear is that government dietary guidelines for the past 50 years were based on bad science, even if they are accidentally right on something. What's also crystal clear is that government dietary guidelines were heavily influenced by industry lobbying.

        • Well you definitely make clear your own personal beliefs haha.
          "What is a good diet for human beings" is definitely a meaningful question.
    • by Xyrus ( 755017 )

      No, sitting on your ass and eating far more calories than you need to sustain said sedentary lifestyle is a prescription for weight gain and all the other problems that go with it. The calorie (or more precisely, kilocalorie) is a measurement of energy. It doesn't matter if it's coming from carbs, protein, or fat. A calorie is a calorie.

      I'm tired of all these idiotic "diets" that tell you to eat this and not eat that and by MAGIC you'll be slim trim and healthy. You can not beat the laws of thermodynamics a

      • No, sitting on your ass and eating far more calories than you need to sustain said sedentary lifestyle is a prescription for weight gain and all the other problems that go with it. The calorie (or more precisely, kilocalorie) is a measurement of energy. It doesn't matter if it's coming from carbs, protein, or fat. A calorie is a calorie.

        You're wrongly assuming there that caloric intake is an independent variable. But caloric intake and activity depend on what you eat and your physiological state, and they a

    • This is a decent strategy if you're active. Since carbs are the preferred fuel of your muscles, it would make sense to consume carbs over fats as the primary energy source. Doubly so considering the number of calories per gram of fat, as you'd also be limiting your calorie intake.

      • This is a decent strategy if you're active. Since carbs are the preferred fuel of your muscles, it would make sense to consume carbs over fats as the primary energy source.

        If by "active" you mean "olympic athlete before a competition". For almost everybody else, running out of fuel is not a problem, since good nutrition is more important than running another mile. But keeping your glycogen storage full all the time is a pretty sure way of gaining weight.

        Doubly so considering the number of calories per gram

  • by moronikos ( 595352 ) on Wednesday April 26, 2017 @11:08PM (#54310725) Journal

    ... 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.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      If you are 52, it is probably time to trade in your 50 year old wife for a pair of 25s. That'll get the plumbing working again.

    • by amiga3D ( 567632 ) on Thursday April 27, 2017 @12:21AM (#54310945)

      Maybe just ignore all the crap and eat a balanced diet. Not too much of any one thing and exercise a little now and then. All things in moderation. My Grandfather ate lots of fats for his entire life and lived to be 90 in excellent health all but the last 3 years. Of course he worked his ass off farming so he burned that stuff up. He also ate lots of greens and everything else under the sun. If you sit on the couch eating potato chips and watching Ungrateful Bitches of Atlanta then sure, you're probably going to get heart disease and die.

      • by Kokuyo ( 549451 )

        Going by the name of the show you mention, I'm not sure whether it's more to do with sitting on the couch, the things you eat or your subconscious using suicide to get away from the shit you're exposing your brain to ;).

    • There is nothing contradictory in soda being bad, and then "diet" soda also being bad.

      Water is still good, 100% juice is still good. Always was.

      • by judoguy ( 534886 )

        100% juice is still good. Always was.

        Not really true. Very little difference in a Coke and apple juice. Really. One apples worth of juice, not too bad but worse than just eating the apple.

        A 16 oz glass of apple juice can have as many as 12 apples. Taken as one huge sugar hit to the system.

        Not good for you in any way. Just sugar water from apples instead of corn syrup.

        • No, you're wrong. Water was always considered good, 100% juice was always considered good.

          If you can't understand it and get confused just by mixing in an example of over-eating, which is a different issue, there is no solution for that.

          Mainstream dietary advice does not tell you to limit fruits and vegetables. Your wild theory that the sugars in juice is the same as sugar water made from corn syrup is just pap that you got from the sugar lobby, it was not and is not part of mainstream dietary advice.

    • Although 22 minutes seems like an awfully specific number so it must be true!

      It is also the exact same time of a TV show minus commercials... coincidence? I think not!

      Anyway I think common sense is more insightful that a lot of the rhetoric.
      I've always subscribed that butter was better for you than margarine. I mean come on.

      As for sugar, I've always thought that was by far the more dangerous dietary issue.
      Bodies just not built to handle the amount of refined stuff we pump into it on a regular basis these da

  • Just as Woody Allen predicted: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
  • Clickbait premise (Score:4, Informative)

    by MrKrillls ( 3858631 ) on Wednesday April 26, 2017 @11:22PM (#54310787)

    Cherry picked data can prove the moon is made of green cheese: arstechnica.com/science/2017/04/experts-headline-grabbing-editorial-on-saturated-fats-bizarre-misleading

  • by XSportSeeker ( 4641865 ) on Thursday April 27, 2017 @12:36AM (#54310969)

    What's with Slashdot and the recent unbalanced biased snippets that are being posted all the time?
    If you are going to publish a story about something, why not post both sides?

    From the article:
    Leading the the (sic) critics was Professor Alun Hughes, associate director of the Medical Research Council Unit for Lifelong Health and Ageing at University College London.

    He said: "This editorial is muddled and adds to confusion on a contentious topic. The authors present no really new evidence, misrepresent some existing evidence, and fail to adequately acknowledge the limitations in the evidence that they use to support their point of view."
    Dr Mike Knapton, associate medical director at the British Heart Foundation, said the claims about saturated fat were "unhelpful and misleading".

    He added: "Decades of research have proved that a diet rich in saturated fat increases 'bad' LDL cholesterol in your blood, which puts you at greater risk of a heart attack or stroke."
    Dr Amitava Banerjee, honorary consultant cardiologist at University College London, said: "Unfortunately, the authors have reported evidence simplistically and selectively".

    His view was echoed by cardiologist Dr Gavin Sandercock, director of research at the University of Essex, who said: "This editorial is not founded on good evidence. There is no such thing as 'real food' - the authors don't define what it is so it's meaningless."

    Here's another take:
    http://edition.cnn.com/2017/04... [cnn.com]

    • If you are going to publish a story about something, why not post both sides?

      That's what the comment section is for.

    • Dr Mike Knapton, associate medical director at the British Heart Foundation, said the claims about saturated fat were "unhelpful and misleading".He added: "Decades of research have proved that a diet rich in saturated fat increases 'bad' LDL cholesterol in your blood, which puts you at greater risk of a heart attack or stroke." Knapton states a fact coupled with an assumption. It's a fact that three chain lengths of saturated fat (12, 14, and 16) raise LDL cholesterol somewhat. http://ajcn.nutrition.org/co [nutrition.org]
  • "[Volunteers] given an oral choline supplement [tctmd.com] for 2 months have a more than tenfold increase in trimethylamine N-oxide (TMAO), a metabolite derived from the gut microbiota that has previously been linked to the development of cardiovascular disease.

    The increase in plasma TMAO levels is also associated with a corresponding increase in platelet aggregation."

    "aspirin attenuated the rise in TMAO levels as well as reduced platelet hyperresponsiveness"

  • by sims 2 ( 994794 ) on Thursday April 27, 2017 @01:05AM (#54311035)

    Experts Are Crackpots, Experts Say.

  • There has never been sufficient evidence that eating fat clogs your arteries, aside from the logical conclusion that 'it makes sense'. I watched a lecture last year where this was being said, and the lecturer wasn't giving out new information. This is all left over fallout from the Ansel Keys (spelling) Seven Nation Study that was essentially debunked as soon as it was released.
  • As someone who suffered a heart attack in 2014 at the age of 45 due to clogged arterys and subsequently suffered 6 cardiac arrests on the way to and in the hospital (I still have the paddle burns to prove it) I can confirm that so far the stent they had to fit to allow my heart to continue working does appear to be doing its job. I was informed at the time that the main contributor to the artery clogging was smoking so I gave up there and then. As much as everyone would love to have a diet that required no
    • by dwywit ( 1109409 )

      My GP said that stopping smoking was the biggest factor in reducing my cardiovascular risk profile, even though I subsequently put on 10 kilos in 6 months. He said (being an ex-smoker himself), that if you're going to smoke - and of course you should *never* start, but if you're going to do it, quit by your 50th birthday. At that point, your body still has the capacity to heal the damage, and he's quite pleased with the sound of my lungs now, four years since my last cigarette. If you keep smoking after 50,

  • by gatkinso ( 15975 ) on Thursday April 27, 2017 @07:02AM (#54311961)

    This notion was firmly implanted by education health classes, media, and medical professionals for decades.

  • It appears that the study used cherry-picked data to achieve the results they wanted. So the question lingers, who wanted the study to come out in the way it did?
  • I have a long time friend who has been harping on the benefits of a low carb, high fat (LCHF) diet for over a year now. As skeptical as I am I dismissed him since he was selling a product that purported to induce ketosis (when the brain switches from sugar/carb for fuel to fats). After watching friend after friend start losing weight and proclaiming how much better they feel now I decided it was at least worth trying. That was a little over a month ago and I have lost 20 lbs. But even if I hadn't lost a sin
  • "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."

    "relative levels of 'good' cholesterol" means, the ratio of 'good' to 'bad' cholesterol, which doctors have known for ages... my doctor has been telling me this for a
    • It's not insane. It's looking at _both_sides. Right now, the fad is to decrease all cholesterol, but decrease the worst stuff mainly. since the worst stuff tastes worse than the good low cholesterols, you end up cutting fat but making the relative percentages of cholesterols worse instead of better. Think about it without getting angry first.
      • Re-read what I wrote, because...

        1. You said the same thing that I did, albeit in a less thorough and thought out manner, and completely ignored the flaws that I'm trying to point out in the summary/article. Good job!
        2. Nothing in what I wrote indicates that I am angry, having the opinion that something is insane is not the same as being angry.
        3. As I said, my doctor has been telling me this for a decade, so its not new information.
        4. Donno what fad you're talking about, must be among dumb people, as if
  • How many people got in trouble by following a high fat AND high sugar diet, AKA the Western Diet, and then were told by their cardiologists that "you need to follow a low fat diet, low cholesterol and low salt" and then died of stroke and other problems because the human brain is MADE OF FAT AND CHOLESTEROL and our cells rely on salt?

    Come on, this is a disaster. They were fattening people up like feed lot cattle for decades. A bowl of raisin bran cereal has the same glycemic index as a can of pepsi. (or cok

  • Otherwise people will eventually find out that sugar, not fat, makes people fat.

    This is news?
  • Almost any controlled diet (short of rice-cakes and water) improves health outcomes over what people eat when they're paying less attention.

    Almost every controlled diet excludes most of the same extremely suspect foods (high-fructose bonbons, anything out of the smokey, rarely replenished deep-fat frier from hell).

    It probably is true that inflammation is the underlying malady. High LDL levels probably exacerbate the negative effects of inflammation. Refined-carbohydrate–rich diets combined with a se

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