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Saturated Fat is not the major issue

bmj.com

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Re: Saturated Fat is not the major issue

#41

Post by voidlogic »

mistermann wrote: post #32
yetanotherphd wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about "Big Dairy" or "Big Meat", they got the short end of the stick from the push to high carb low fat diets. Industry lobbying as a theory lacks predictive power.

Perhaps their lobbyists aren't as convincing. This is the second time I've encountered the phrase "lacks predictive power on HN tonight" by the way. Is a theory without predictive power now considered wrong?

IMHO if it doesn't have predictive power it cannot be a theory:

the·o·ry noun \ˈthē-ə-rē, ˈthir-ē\ : an idea or set of ideas that is intended to explain facts or events

Re: Saturated Fat is not the major issue

#42

Post by droopyEyelids »

scotch_drinker wrote: post #11

There have been a lot of people saying this for quite awhile. Malcolm Kendrick wrote an entire book about the poor science behind our current belief that cholesterol causes heart disease. There are many others. But in the current medical environment where doctors want to prescribe a pill to fix everything and the biogen companies have enormous influence over public policy, dissent never rises above the level of a whi…

Just want to add for any 'seekers' in the audience, some new hallucinogens probably do too.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5-HT2B_receptor

Re: Saturated Fat is not the major issue

#43

Post by droopyEyelids »

JunkDNA wrote: post #27

About 10 years ago the journal "Science" ran a cover story called "The soft Science of Dietary fat". If you have access to back issues through a library (sadly it's paywalled), go pull it and read it. Your mind will be blown at how thin the evidence is for many dietary recommendations. We know shockingly little about how our bodies actually work.

Is this what you're talking about?

http://garytaubes.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Science-The...

Re: Saturated Fat is not the major issue

#44

Post by tghw »

yetanotherphd wrote: post #21
scotch_drinker wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not ignoring them, I'm specifically speaking to that population who advocate a diet low in saturated fat as a preventative measure for heart disease when there is NO causal evidence linking the two. Also, I said nothing about them wanting to cause disease, I said they wanted to prescribe a pill to fix it, glossing over the known issues with the pill (statins in this case) in populations with no elevated risk of c…

First, I'm still not clear on your logic. On the one hand, there is a debate about whether consuming saturated fats cause heart disease. On the other hand, there is the issue of whether statins prevent heart disease. To me these are logically separate issues, yet you seem to think they are related, and my best guess at what you were hinting at seems to be wrong. So can you tell me: how would whether a doctor wants to…

Read the article. It fairly clearly demonstrates that it is not nearly the risk factor it has been made out to be. Controversy is not science, and just because there is controversy does not make scientific results less valid.

On your second point, they are very much linked issues if X is something that does not need to be treated or prevented. That's what the article is really getting at: high cholesterol is not the primary risk factor for heart disease. They are correlated, sure, but there's not a causal link.

Saturated fat has been demonised since the 1970s when a landmark study concluded that there was a correlation between incidence of coronary heart disease and total cholesterol, which then correlated with the percentage of calories provided by saturated fat, explains Malhotra. “But correlation is not causation,” he says. Nevertheless, we were advised to “reduce fat intake to 30% of total energy and a fall in saturated fat intake to 10%.”

He points out that recent studies “have not supported any significant association between saturated fat intake and risk of CVD.” Instead, saturated fat has been found to be protective.

Seriously, read the whole article.

Re: Saturated Fat is not the major issue

#45

Post by tghw »

Volpe wrote: post #26
tolmasky wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although individuals did not consciously decide to replace fat with sugar in their diets, the reality is that this policy advisement lead food producers to reduce fat in their products and replace that fat with sugar -- so the practical result was indeed this. Most products that advertise low-fat have accomplished this with sugar. Sure, it didn't have to happen this way, but thats irrelevant because it did happen thi…

But I've seen no evidence that, that is what happened. There doesn't seem to be a logical reason as to why you'd need to increase sugar in order to lower cholesterol, so why would companies do that? Can you point to an example food(s) that had high fat, and low sugar, and then after this policy, low fat, and high sugar... ?

Straight from the article:

Malhotra also points to the United States, where percentage calorie consumption from fat has declined from 40% to 30% in the past 30 years (although absolute fat consumption has remained the same), yet obesity has rocketed. One reason, he says, is that the food industry “compensated by replacing saturated fat with added sugar.”

Re: Saturated Fat is not the major issue

#46

Post by auctiontheory »

They had me right until the end, with the quote from Timothy Noakes, who is not a cardiologist, and makes plenty of data-unsupported mistakes in his own writing, e.g. about barefoot running. It's like having Malcolm Gladwell back up your research findings.

Was this piece supposed to be science or it is entertainment-journalism? The latter, I think. (I.e. it is not the abstract of any particular research study.)

I'm not saying the anti-anti-saturated fat recommendation is wrong. I'm saying this piece is just another opinion, which adds nothing to my understanding. Obviously the vast majority of educated and well-intentioned physicians disagree with their recommendation.

Re: Saturated Fat is not the major issue

#49

Post by arunc »

Am I the only one to see a trend in the increasing number of articles like these?

Traditionally for centuries people in India have been consuming coconut oil, ghee, etc which are supposed to be high in saturated fats and never had problems. After globalization (1992), the food industry in here changed a lot as well. The business promotion and the usage of refined oils increased which is good for business, nevertheless not for health. These days, diabetes, heart attacks and other such illness are very common even among 20+ and 30+. The Indian food industry is one in which India (as a society) failed to nurture and preserve its rich, diverse and healthy food culture.

Re: Saturated Fat is not the major issue

#50

Post by adamconroy »

auctiontheory wrote: post #46

They had me right until the end, with the quote from Timothy Noakes, who is not a cardiologist, and makes plenty of data-unsupported mistakes in his own writing, e.g. about barefoot running. It's like having Malcolm Gladwell back up your research findings. Was this piece supposed to be science or it is entertainment-journalism? The latter, I think. (I.e. it is not the abstract of any particular research study.) I'm n…

Here is a transcript from a show that has cardiologists on the panel :http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/3876219.htm
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