How did we come to believe saturated fat and cholesterol are bad for us?

I have two eyes and that doesn't square at all. The fat people eat packaged food and restaurant food, which are very skimpy on meat and real animal fat.

The main thing I notice about fat people is they eat very often. Thin people eat moderate meals and don't snack. Fat people continuously have handfuls of crap like nuts and fruit and soy and soda.

There are two really interesting things, however.

1. The link between dietary saturated fats and increased LDL isn't nearly as strong as those earlier studies suggest. This is certainly supported by my own anecdotal evidence: My LDL levels went way down when I moved to a higher fat diet.

2. Some studies have suggested that controlling for all natural deaths that OUTCOMES on higher fat diets are better, meaning people on those diets tend to live longer. It appears that cancer rates are reduced for those eating higher saturated fat diets for one thing.

This is all outlined in "Good Calories, Bad Calories", and there is a wealth of study to support the idea.

I recently was seated with a prominent nutrition researcher at a local university. His take was interesting. Essentially he laid out why these studies are very difficult (as your cited book did). He said there are two clear things that comes up in research time and time again:

- Many preservatives, particularly the high sodium nightmares found in processed foods, are pretty bad for you. - Sugar is the devil. Studies have suggested time and time again that it's sugar that is responsible for elevated LDL levels. Worse yet sugar promotes higher levels of very dense LDL which is a huge risk factor for heart disease.

He recommends a whole food diet. Basically don't worry so much about what your eating and more about how fresh it is. The shorter the time between something living and the time you eat it the better. The fewer steps it takes for something to be prepared the better.

Calories still count of course, but I've essentially been following that idea for awhile. I eat more fruits and vegetables and I've drastically cut my sugar intake. I eat more steak and pizza (made from high quality and fresh ingredients) than the ADA would like. My blood chemistry levels have been amazing ever since.

The correlation with testosterone is equally invalid. Low-hanging fruit: it is not the simplest steroid (1). But lets go a bit further: by this logic, men with hypercholesterolemia should be bulls among men. Clinically, this is not the case (FWIW, I'm a physician and have diagnosed a few of these). Yes, cholesterol is a precursor to testosterone. But it is also a precursor to estrogens. Most cholesterol is synthesized by the cells themselves. There is no essential dietary minimum of cholesterol. You can't really avoid it in your diet either, because all cells have cholesterol (broccoli, beef, rice, you choose). Never mind the thermodynamic equilibria of the various enzymes involved, the hormonal regulation of the adrenals and gonads, etc, etc. And if you want to walk the biochemistry back further, the cholesterol is derived from lipids, which can easily be assembled from carbohydrates, especially in an anabolic state (i.e.: growing).

Counterpoints on your "males with..." theories. Spatial reasoning differences disappeared in the only known study of two genetically identical societies where one was matriarchal and one was patriarchal (2). From a more consequentialist perspective, vegetarianism increases with income in developed countries. (3)

The cholesterol in arterial plaques is a red herring. That cholesterol represents something less than a rounding error compared to total body cholesterol, and even less when compared to the total flow of cholesterol that must pass over the plaques in named vessels. A plaque is like a scab of the arterial wall. The plaques are more likely due to repetitive macroscopic injury potentiated by weak connective tissue, due to the connective tissue molecular injuries (collagen cross-linking, glycosylation, etc) caused by excess free radicals and other high-energy intermediaries (introduced from, e.g., smoking, excess dietary calories).

The answer remains the same: eat less. If your weight is outside the normal range according to wolfram alpha, you probably need to visit bwsimulator.niddk.nih.gov.

I assure you, many of your forefathers on the Serengeti lived long lives without jumbo eggs, and still had some wicked hacks (like wheels, music, property rights, etc).

People want to hack their bodies. Hack your relationship to the society you're in, that's the problem: figure out how to eat in moderation despite all the messaging. Get rid of Earl K. Butts' stain on the farm bill. Get rid of the farm bill entirely. Quibbling about tenth-degree issues like the relationship between eggs and testosterone is just a win for Monsanto. They got you to talk about something other than the problem. The problem is there's too much food.

(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Steroidogenesis.svg

(2) http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/08/19/1015182108

(3) https://www.econstor.eu/dspace/bitstream/10419/50169/1/63222...