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  #31   ^
Old Thu, May-22-14, 09:19
aj_cohn's Avatar
aj_cohn aj_cohn is offline
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Plan: Protein Power
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Liz53
Thanks for mentioning Adele Hite's blog. It's funny, irreverent, at times deliciously ascorbic.


If this was an auto-correct from your phone, it's hilarious in a geeky way!
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  #32   ^
Old Thu, May-22-14, 18:15
Liz53's Avatar
Liz53 Liz53 is offline
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Plan: Mostly Fung/IDM
Stats: 165/138.4/135 Female 63
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Not from my phone, but my mac has the same annoying auto-correct. Acerbic, not ascorbic. But it's a nice little nutrition-based autocorrect, isn't it?
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  #33   ^
Old Tue, Jun-03-14, 04:03
JEY100's Avatar
JEY100 JEY100 is online now
Posts: 13,370
 
Plan: P:E/DDF
Stats: 225/150/169 Female 5' 9"
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Another great commentary on this book from the brilliant but little known biochemists/public health couple, Alice and Fred Ottoboni in Ketopia.

Quote:
A Revisit To The Importance Of Dietary Animal Fat

Posted on Tuesday, June 3rd, 2014 at 1:36 am.
By Alice and Fred Ottoboni

The importance of dietary animal fat, told in a post in Ketopia, is well understood by nutritional biochemists. The refusal of the government-nutrition cabal to renounce its longstanding proscription against animal fat and, by association, red meat, has seriously compromised the health status of its trusting citizens. This untenable situation strengthens the meaning and potential of a remarkable book that has recently appeared on the literary scene.

This new book demands and deserves attention. It is The Big Fat Surprise by Nina Teicholz. Nina’s story is told against an environment of decade-long efforts to waken to the American public to the epidemics of chronic inflammatory diseases caused by the official heart-healthy diet designed by their own government that are slowly killing them and their loved ones.

Why has this awakening failed to occur? It held such promise when Gary Taubes opened eyes with revelations of governmental, institutional, and academic fraud in Good Calories, Bad Calories (GCBC) in 2007. It seemed certain that truth would prevail. The publication of occasional stories that dietary fats might not really be as detrimental as painted began to appear in the secondary media. But the medical and nutrition establishments remained firm in their proscription against dietary fat, with escalated advertising of frightening pseudoscience that impugned animal fat and red meat. Within a few years, the hope that the public would insist on change faded and disappeared.

Why does the public seem as distrustful of dietary fat today as ever? Taubes himself may have suggested an answer. In an article written in 2002(1), Taubes alluded to the near impossibility of an untruth cemented in the public mind by decades of repetition being replaced by a truth. Gary wrote:

…I can look down at my eggs and sausage and still imagine the imminent onset of heart disease and obesity, the latter assuredly to be caused by some bizarre rebound phenomena the likes of which science has not yet begun to describe.

This highly skilled and knowledgeable investigative journalist had thoroughly studied the subject of GCBC and had personally benefited from following a low-carbohydrate, high-fat diet. If Taubes could not free himself of a lingering fear of fat, how could lay-members of the general public do otherwise? The general public is unwittingly brain-washed.

Today we are blessed, in the form of The Big Fat Surprise (TBFS), with another chance to right the egregious wrongs created by the government’s pseudoscience aka The Food Guide Pyramid. TBFS is a truly remarkable and persuasive book in that it is extremely well written, fully accurate in fact, and sincerely heartfelt in approach. Sentiments most often expressed in comments by readers are: I could not put it down; Saturated fats are back in our diet; I am outraged that our government would be so devious. Testimony to the reader appeal of TBFS is the fact that it made the NYT Best Seller list less than two weeks after publication.

Nina’s tale presents two stories. One describes how the transgression came to be. It entails a half century-long flagrant fraud and deception conducted by agencies, institutions, and even a few respected officials charged with setting official nutrition policy. These disclosures offer a great potential for TBFS to have a significant impact on the public’s sense of right and wrong.

The second story tells the truth about dietary fat. Data on the actual benefits of dietary fats, including the much maligned saturated ones, are essential to correct a wrong done to the health of the public by the government-sponsored heart-healthy diet.

Depending on the response of the public to TBFS, there either will be no change in the status quo – or there will be adjustments in public nutrition policy that will ultimately foster major changes in the medical treatment of chronic nutritional diseases, including cancer. It is now known that essentially all chronic diseases once thought to be the accompaniments of old age are based on chronic inflammation; chronic inflammation is known to be primarily the result of improper nutrition.(2) Nutrients will replace drugs.

The public MUST NOT let TBFS slip slowly into oblivion. Nina’s first story should create an outraged public that demands the following:

Government-sponsored nutrition must be totally terminated.
Freedom of information in valid nutritional sciences must be made widely available.
All citizens must have the right to design their own nutrition plans.
A primary prevention program based on eliminating the causes of diseases must be implemented.
Nina’s second story, the truth about dietary fats, will be more difficult to correct. Brain-washed people are hostages of their beliefs and difficult to persuade otherwise. An appeal to the following logic may be helpful in some cases.

It is generally accepted that the nutritional requirements of the first humans were the products of millions of years of evolution that brought them to the human state. It is also generally accepted that today’s humans have the same nutritional requirements as their prehistoric predecessors because of the inestimable length of time required for detectable genetic change to occur.

All readers who fear fat should consider the following:

A chicken egg contains the total number and kind of nutrients required to make a viable chick. The egg contains 76 percent moisture, 13 percent protein, 9 percent saturated and unsaturated fatty acids, and less than 2 percent non-fat lipids and glucose (combined with either protein or lipid), and 0 carbohydrates. If evolution devised a high-fat, no-carbohydrate recipe for making a live chick, could such a recipe be harmful to humans?
Mother’s milk, which is capable of complete nurturing of a newborn for a period of months, contains 87 percent water, 4 percent fats (saturated an unsaturated), and 9 percent non-fat solids. The latter is approximately half protein and half lactose. The fat component contains the whole set of saturated fats from C4 through C18. C4 is known as butyric acid; it is the fatty acid that gives butter its name.
People who fear fat should ponder the following: Butyric acid is an important energy source for the lower section of the small intestine. The ONLY human food source of butyric acid is milk fat. Have you had your butyric acid today?

Resources

Taubes, G. What if It’s All Been a Big Fat Lie? New York Times; July 07, 2002.
Ottoboni A, Ottoboni F. The Modern Nutritional Diseases and How to Prevent Them, Second Edition. Fernley, NV: Vincente Books, 2013.


http://ketopia.com/revisit-importan...-fat/#more-2025


More links in the above article, but adding their previous post on the topic:

Quote:
The Importance of Dietary Animal Fat

Posted on Friday, December 20th, 2013 at 1:17 am.
By Alice and Fred Ottoboni

THE IMPORTANCE OF DIETARY ANIMAL FAT1

Animal fat was evolutionary man’s major source of energy. Ancient humans lived primarily on eggs, fish, animals, and other living creatures. Dietary sources of glucose were minimal. Human biochemistry is in agreement with these paleolithic findings.
In contrast, the modern human uses two classes of food to provide energy for life functions; carbohydrates yield glucose, and fats supply fatty acids. Despite the fact that glucose serves as the usual and ready source of energy for the body, long-term sustained energy depends on fatty acids. Fatty acids are a much more efficient fuel than glucose. They contain twice the energy per unit weight and they are stored more compactly. Under normal conditions, the body uses both fuels alternately depending on time from last meal.

As a rule, glucose is plentiful after a meal, but it becomes in short supply several hours later before the next mealtime. Glucose is used preferentially as long as the supply of glucose is adequate. When the supply becomes low, the body switches over to using fatty acids because glucose reserves must be preserved to maintain normal blood glucose levels.

When carbohydrate foods are reduced or eliminated from the diet, the body must turn to fatty acids for energy. This presents a major difficulty for people who have been schooled in the official government recommendations to eliminate dietary fat; particularly animal fat because they say animal fats will make you ill. There is no scientific evidence that animal fats cause heart disease or any other chronic illness. On the contrary, there are considerable scientific data that vegetable fats contain omega-6 fatty acids that are harmful when consumed in excess2. Therefore, animal fats are the preferred dietary fat.

A person consuming a low-carbohydrate diet who also restricts dietary fat is begging for trouble. Dietary fat will be used first. Then, if fat is available in body fat stores, it will be mobilized for energy. This is the reason for the weight loss that occurs with low-carbohydrate diets. If no excess body fat is available, the body will search for glucose. It is at this point that a paucity of dietary fat becomes a potential health problem. The body makes new glucose from amino acids that are classed as nonessential, i.e. amino acids that the body can make for itself.

The process whereby the body makes new glucose is called gluconeogenesis. If the body is called upon to engage in gluconeogenesis to any great extent or duration, it can seriously disrupt protein metabolism. In order to obtain sufficient glucose, the body depletes circulating proteins and cannibalizes muscle tissue. Pictures of holocaust victims show the tragic result. Small deficiencies of dietary fat would probably not cause detectable gluconeogenesis, except for people who follow their blood glucose levels with a monitor. Anyone on a diabetes recovery program should be aware of this and take steps to increase fat intake. Too little dietary fat can be dangerous; too much dietary fat is not a problem providing it does not exceed the bounds of satiety(3, p. 91). When it does, it may interfere with the benefit of weight loss promoted by a low-carbohydrate intake.

How much fat should a person on a low-carbohydrate diet consume?(4) This is a highly individual matter. The idea is to provide enough energy from fat to replace the energy no longer available from dietary carbohydrates. Dietary fat should be increased when one is hungry. Dietary fat should also be increased if there is a continuous feeling of lack of energy or fatigue. Finally, dietary fat should be increased if the blood glucose monitor shows an increase in blood glucose greater than a usual reading or if fasting blood glucose readings remain above normal.

The easiest way is to add fat is with patties of butter or portions of a high milk fat product like cream cheese. The amount included in the diet should be sufficient to relieve the symptoms. It can do no harm to eat more fat than needed.

References

Ottoboni A&F with Bob. Recovery from Type II Diabetes: A True Story. Fernley, NV: Vincente Books, Kindle edition, 2013, in press.
Ottoboni A, Ottoboni F. The Modern Nutritional Diseases and How to Prevent Them. Fernley, NV: Vincente Books, 2013.
Eades MR, Eades MD. Protein Power, Paperback Edition. New York, NY: Bantam Books, 1999.
http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/...olic-advantage/
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  #34   ^
Old Tue, Jun-03-14, 04:59
JEY100's Avatar
JEY100 JEY100 is online now
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Plan: P:E/DDF
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Jimmy Moore is back to podcasting, starting with Nina Teicholz:

http://livinlavidalowcarb.com/blog/...lthy-diet/22819

Quote:
Listen in to hear Nina and I discuss why we’ve never heard of her before now, the differences between her book and Gary Taubes’ classic Good Calories, Bad Calories, the history behind how the American Heart Association bought into the anti-saturated fat bias of Ancel Keys, how the anti-sugar work of John Yudkin was mocked and ridiculed by anti-fat proponents, the fraudulent way the Mediterranean diet was created (by Keys) and marketed as “healthy,” how the vilification of tropical oils like coconut oil actually led to the increased use of trans fats, how groups like the Center for the Science in the Public Interest led by Michal Jacobson have had such an influence with good and bad results, the problem with omega-6-rich polyunsaturated fats from vegetable oils producing oxidation products when heated, and so much more! This new book from Nina Teicholz takes the message of Taubes to the next level in a narrative form that makes the notion of a high-fat diet more mainstream that it’s ever been before. The tide is turning and this book is going to be a big reason why. I’m back and your favorite health podcast is better than ever!
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  #35   ^
Old Tue, Jun-03-14, 08:12
keith v's Avatar
keith v keith v is offline
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Plan: Wheat belly
Stats: 235/220/200 Male 6 feet 2 inches
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this is a fantastic quote!

Quote:
A chicken egg contains the total number and kind of nutrients required to make a viable chick. The egg contains 76 percent moisture, 13 percent protein, 9 percent saturated and unsaturated fatty acids, and less than 2 percent non-fat lipids and glucose (combined with either protein or lipid), and 0 carbohydrates. If evolution devised a high-fat, no-carbohydrate recipe for making a live chick, could such a recipe be harmful to humans?
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  #36   ^
Old Tue, Jun-03-14, 10:19
rightnow's Avatar
rightnow rightnow is offline
Every moment is NOW.
Posts: 23,064
 
Plan: LC (ketogenic)
Stats: 520/381/280 Female 66 inches
BF: Why yes it is.
Progress: 58%
Location: Ozarks USA
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It would be a slightly better quote if it were entirely true.

http://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/foods/show/112

Eggs do have carbohydrates, just not much.

PJ
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  #37   ^
Old Tue, Jun-03-14, 10:33
rightnow's Avatar
rightnow rightnow is offline
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Plan: LC (ketogenic)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ParisMama
That comment from Jenny Ruhl has stuck with me too (she develops it more in her book Diet 101) - bascially low carbers eat both high fat AND high carb when they go off the low carb diet. I know that's true for me, and I think it's contributed to the speed of regain when I've gone off the rails in the past 5 years.

I wasn't afraid of fat before LC so that element didn't affect me, I think. I was simply ignorant about it entirely. I thought 'country crock' was butter or same-as.

LC did change the way I ate even when I was offplan (and I am intentionally not LC at all currently, except it happens by sheer accident most the time anyway). I was a lot less inclined, after the experience, to eat foods that are utterly useless and crappy and dangerous (e.g. Top Ramen noodles). And if I was going to eat something like ice cream, I wouldn't have a cheap crappy version of it at a fast food place, I'd go to the grocery and have a quality version of it like Haagen Dazs. I've always eaten butter not margarine after that, and that is still a better choice, even when carbs+fats aren't ideal.

I think LC and whole-foods made me realize, even when I was later off plan at times, that QUALITY food was important. If I did eat off plan during times I was generally LC, I was more likely to do it in a nice restaurant with rich foods that happened to have carbs, than to do it at a drive-thru.

One of the biggest lessons I learned on LC/whole-foods was that I had not paid enough attention to food and had not been kind enough to myself with it. If I was going to be fat, for godssakes let it be on tortellini alfredo and quality cheesecake and steak and baked potatoes with butter and sour cream -- not Taco Bell. Although LC obviously didn't dictate what I ate when not LC, the experience of finally paying attention to food and its quality did.

PJ
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  #38   ^
Old Tue, Jun-03-14, 11:48
keith v's Avatar
keith v keith v is offline
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Plan: Wheat belly
Stats: 235/220/200 Male 6 feet 2 inches
BF:
Progress: 43%
Location: Minneapolis, MN USA Earth
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Quote:
Originally Posted by rightnow
It would be a slightly better quote if it were entirely true.

http://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/foods/show/112

Eggs do have carbohydrates, just not much.

PJ


well .47g of carbs per egg is sure approaching zero!
I think I'll keep saying zero. On Low carbers and Engineers worry about values >1%
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  #39   ^
Old Tue, Jun-03-14, 13:10
khrussva's Avatar
khrussva khrussva is offline
Say NO to Diabetes!
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Plan: My own - < 30 net carbs
Stats: 440/228/210 Male 5' 11"
BF:Energy Unleashed
Progress: 92%
Location: Central Virginia - USA
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I was looking to buy this book on Amazon.com. I found the review stats interesting. It is about 5 to 1 for people who love the book vs. hate the book. Not many 2 or 3 star reviews - very few people ride the fence on this issue. Browsing the 8 one star reviews, I saw nothing I didn't expect. You know when the review starts out saying "As a registered dietitian..." kind words are not going to follow. Some appeared to have actually read the book - but some probably didn't. I saw comments such as "Another Atkins", "A hack", "poor journalism", etc. One reviewer even described it as another attempt "to make eating these tasty and even addictive fatty foods appear justified by nutritional research". Fat may be satisfying, but addictive? What about the simple carbs? No mention of that. Anyway - something tells me that some of these people will never change their spots - no matter what the evidence is.
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  #40   ^
Old Wed, Jun-04-14, 10:38
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deirdra deirdra is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by KDH
Olive oil was used for a lot of things, lamps, lubrication, etc. It's been around, but not soley as a dietary oil for sure.
Before the lightbulb, electricity & natural gas lines into homes & businesses, olive, rapeseed, linseed, whale etc. oils were all used mostly for non-eating. The industrial oil industry promoted consumption to grow their business. Flaxseeds & flaxseed oil still smell like paint thinner to me and give me hives, so no amount of cleansing has made them edible for me.

Last edited by deirdra : Wed, Jun-04-14 at 10:47.
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  #41   ^
Old Wed, Jun-04-14, 17:39
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jmh jmh is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by deirdra
Before the lightbulb, electricity & natural gas lines into homes & businesses, olive, rapeseed, linseed, whale etc. oils were all used mostly for non-eating. The industrial oil industry promoted consumption to grow their business. Flaxseeds & flaxseed oil still smell like paint thinner to me and give me hives, so no amount of cleansing has made them edible for me.



Ha ha - yeah linseed oil (aka flax seed oil) is used to condition cricket bats. You would never eat it!! LOL

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  #42   ^
Old Wed, Jun-04-14, 19:28
Liz53's Avatar
Liz53 Liz53 is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jmh
Ha ha - yeah linseed oil (aka flax seed oil) is used to condition cricket bats. You would never eat it!! LOL
]


And yet they do eat it! Flax oil is usually sold in the refrigerated section so that it won't go rancid and smell like what it is: linseed oil. I'll stick with coconut oil, thank you.
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  #43   ^
Old Wed, Jun-04-14, 19:33
rightnow's Avatar
rightnow rightnow is offline
Every moment is NOW.
Posts: 23,064
 
Plan: LC (ketogenic)
Stats: 520/381/280 Female 66 inches
BF: Why yes it is.
Progress: 58%
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Well, to be fair, the other uses of seed oils aren't going to be the reason why they are or aren't good used for health, of course.

Water is an "industrial solvent."

PJ
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  #44   ^
Old Thu, Jun-05-14, 04:29
JEY100's Avatar
JEY100 JEY100 is online now
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Plan: P:E/DDF
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Still laughing, saw the photo of bat oil before I read that you were writing about cricket bats.

Back to olive oil, she states that nowhere in Ancient Greek texts do they mention olive oil consumed as part of the diet, it was a cosmetic, rubbed on the body before rituals and athletic contests. Until a 100 years ago, the amount of olive oil available to the average person was very low. It's production was increased somewhat by Venetian rulers in the mid17th century, but for making soap.

Homer did not call olive oil 'liquid gold' the translation was ...olive oil in a flask of gold. And Keys' claim that olive oil was a "dominant item of the diet" going back "at least four thousand years"...apparently is a complete fabrication. Same in Spain and Italy. In Spain, not until 1880s was olive oil consumed in any significant amount. In Italy, the dominant cooking fat was lard until recently.

Quote:
so it seems that olive oil is actually a relatively recent addition to the Mediterranean diet and not an ancient foodstuff, despite the best efforts by interested parties to add Homer to the marketing team.


the occasional witty comment that makes this book read more like a nutritional mystery than dry text

And a complete aside, almost nothing to do with diet, Roman soldiers were paid with money or land, not oil or salt either.

Quote:
From the time of Gaius Marius onwards, legionaries received 225 denarii a year (equal to 900 Sestertii); this basic rate remained unchanged until Domitian, who increased it to 300 denarii. In spite of the steady inflation during the 2nd century, there was no further rise until the time of Septimius Severus, who increased it to 500 denarii a year. However, the soldiers did not receive all the money in cash, as the state deducted their pay with a clothing and food tax. To this wage, a legionary on active campaign would hope to add the booty of war, from the bodies of their enemies and as plunder from enemy settlements. Slaves could also be claimed from the prisoners of war and divided amongst the legion for later selling, which would bring in a sizeable supplement to their regular pay. All legionary soldiers would also a receive a praemia on the completion of their term of service: a sizeable sum of money (3000 denarii from the time of Augustus) and/or a plot of good farmland (good land was in much demand); farmland given to veterans often helped in establishing control of the frontier regions and over rebellious provinces. Later, under Caracalla, the praemia increased to 5,000 denarii.


So much for Mark Kurlansky's book, Salt, A World History which I enjoyed, now question some of his sources.

Last edited by JEY100 : Thu, Jun-05-14 at 05:00.
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  #45   ^
Old Thu, Jun-05-14, 09:22
JEY100's Avatar
JEY100 JEY100 is online now
Posts: 13,370
 
Plan: P:E/DDF
Stats: 225/150/169 Female 5' 9"
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Progress: 134%
Location: NC
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A Book Review today in the WSJ, that gave this book and author significant pre-publication press. And interesting perspective from the editor of STATS.org, a group that reviews numbers in the news.

Quote:

The Worst Diet in U.S. History

Trevor Butterworth

Review of The Big, Fat Surprise

In the great morality play of modern diet, the angels, we have been told by a host of experts, favor egg-white omelets and skimmed milk, while the devil gorges on red meat cooked in butter. For 50 years we have been warned to fight the good fight on dietary fats if we want to stay healthy. In "The Big Fat Surprise," as one might guess from the title, Nina Teicholz plays the devil's advocate—convincingly.

The road to dietary hell, she notes, was paved in the 1950s by a series of seemingly related phenomena. An epidemic of heart attacks fell upon apparently healthy middle-aged men, including President Dwight Eisenhower, who brought national attention to the problem. They all had high levels of cholesterol, thought to be the critical component of the arterial plaques that clogged arteries, restricted blood flow and triggered heart attacks. The cholesterol was coming from an abundance of meat, eggs, butter and cheese—foods that had all been rationed during the war.

The connection between a diet rich in saturated fats and cardiovascular disease was made by Ancel Keys, an American physiologist who, when visiting Italy and Spain in 1953, concluded that heart-disease rates among men there were low because they ate very little meat and dairy. It was a hypothesis that turned into a juggernaut of censure, not least because Congress was full of middle-aged men chomping down on red meat and eggs. "Eisenhower," notes Ms. Teicholz, "became obsessed with his blood cholesterol levels and religiously avoided foods with saturated fat." That his earlier four-pack-a-day cigarette habit might have had something to do with his coronary disease didn't seem to occur to anyone.

Eisenhower's personal doctor and America's most prominent cardiologist, Paul Dudley White, whom Keys had assiduously cultivated, described Keys's work as "brilliant" in a front-page New York Times NYT +0.17% article. Keys became a media oracle, dispensing, as Ms. Teicholz puts it, "fiery language and [a] definitive-sounding solution" to America's new health problem. When the American Heart Association embraced his message, it was game over.

But, as Ms. Teicholz observes, there was a paradox in the statistical data. At the time, the Swiss ate a lot of animal fat; so too, the Swedes, the Norwegians, the Danes and the Germans. But there was no correlation with rates of heart disease. Why, Keys's critics asked, was he ignoring this data? In 1956, armed with a massive U.S. government grant, Keys embarked on "the first multicountry epidemiological undertaking in human history" to prove his hypothesis—the "Seven Countries study," as it came to be called. Critically, and appallingly, he excluded the "paradox" countries.

Ms. Teicholz, who has a gift for translating complex data into an engaging forensic narrative, explains why the "proof" that the Seven Countries study seemed to deliver was far from conclusive. One morsel: Keys had included data on the Greek diet taken during a 48-day Lenten fast in Crete, when participants were required to abstain from meat, fish, eggs, cheese and butter. Forty years later, researchers estimated that 60% of the Cretan population had been fasting at the time of the study, but no attempt had been made to separate fasters from non-fasters.

Yet when skeptics, including the National Academies of Science, weighed in on Keys's impoverished data, and on related claims that multiplied over the succeeding years, the media attacked the skeptics, heedless of statistical reasoning. Meanwhile, the food industry—apart from the protesting cattle and dairy lobbies—happily ministered to the new dietary wisdom. Government agencies weighed in with dietary guidelines that emphasized carbs and vegetables and warned that red meat was something one could only risk eating a few times a month. And when this miserable diet, shorn of taste, wearied its adherents, as it so often did, the pharmaceutical industry stepped in, offering drugs to lower cholesterol.

As the 20th century closed, the Owl of Minerva finally stirred in the light of unavoidable evidence: None of this advice was preventing heart disease. What was left, as Ms. Teicholz adumbrates, was a monstrous thought: What if the crusade against cholesterol had fed the spread of obesity by encouraging a population to retreat from the very foods that would have satiated its hunger more efficiently than the hallowed grains and fruits and vegetables of the great dietary pyramid? What if the low-fat mantra had driven a population into feeling perpetually hungry? What if you were better off eating meat, eggs and dairy than a diet bloated in carbs and vegetable oils?

It is a commonplace in public-health discussions of obesity to warn that the search for "perfect" or "better" evidence is the enemy of good policy and that we can't afford to wait for all the information we might desire when there is a need to do something now. Yet Ms. Teicholz's book is a lacerating indictment of Big Public Health for repeatedly putting action and policy ahead of good evidence. It would all be comical if the result was not possibly the worst dietary advice in history. And once the advice had been reified by government recommendations and research grants, it became almost impossible to change course. As Ms. Teicholz herself notes, she is not the first to point out that saturated fats have been sinned against by bogus science; and yet, the supermarket aisles are still full of low- and no-fat foods offering empty moral victories.

"The Big Fat Surprise" is more than a book about food and health or even hubris; it is a tragedy for our information age. From the very beginning, we had the statistical means to understand why things did not add up; we had a boatload of Cassandras, a chorus of warnings; but they were ignored, castigated, suppressed. We had our big fat villain, and we still do.

http://online.wsj.com/articles/book...holz-1401923948

Mr. Butterworth is editor-at-large for STATS.org.

Last edited by JEY100 : Thu, Jun-05-14 at 11:53.
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