Eat Fat, Lose Fat by Mary Enig Read Free Book Online

Punjabi workers, eating their high-fat diet, also lived twelve years longer than the largely vegetarian workers in Madras.

    The Framingham–Puerto Rico–Honolulu Study
    In an even larger study conducted by the National Institutes of Health, 16,000 healthy middle-aged men in Framingham, Massachusetts; Puerto Rico; and Honolulu answered questions about their eating habits. Six years later, in 1981, the researchers compared the diets of those who had had heart attacks with those who had not.
    The most significant finding was the fact that the heart attack victims had eaten more polyunsaturated oils than the other group. This result is clearly contrary to the assumptions of the lipid hypothesis.

The idea that high levels of cholesterol
    Review of Many Studies
    In 1998, the Journal of Clinical Epidemiology published a review of 27 studies, involving over 150,000 individuals, that looked at the relationship between diet and heart. In three groups, the patients had eaten more animal fat than the controls. In one group, they had eaten less. In all the other groups, researchers found no difference in animal fat consumption between people with heart disease and those without. What’s more, in three groups the patients had eaten more vegetable oil than the controls. In only one group had patients eaten less vegetable oil than the control group.
     
    Taken as a whole, then, this research did not—and does not—support the assumption that high-fat foods cause heart attacks. Nevertheless, in 1989 the American Heart Association and the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute issued a joint statement that touted many of these same studies as “showing the link between diet and CHD.” And, on that basis, they condemned saturated fats and promoted polyunsaturated oils.
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    Should You Avoid Animal Fat If You’ve Had a Heart Attack?
    The medical literature actually contains only two studies involving humans that compared the outcome (not just indicators like cholesterol) of a diet high in animal fat with that of a diet based on vegetable oils. Both studies showed that animal fats actually protect you from heart disease.
    The Anti-Coronary Club project, launched in 1957 and published in 1966 in the Journal of the American Medical Association, compared two groups of New York businessmen, aged 40 to 59 years. One group followed a “Prudent Diet” consisting of corn oil and margarine instead of butter, cold breakfast cereals instead of eggs, and chicken and fish instead of beef. A control group ate eggs for breakfast and meat three times per day.
    The final report noted that the average serum cholesterol of the Prudent Dieters was 220 mg/dl (milligrams per 1/10 liter), compared to 250 mg/dl in the eggs-and-meat group. But there were eight deaths from heart disease among the Prudent Dieters—and none among those who ate meat three times a day.
    In a study published in the British Medical Journal, 1965, researchers divided patients who had already had a heart attack into three groups. One group received polyunsaturated corn oil, one got monounsaturated olive oil, and the third was given saturated animal fats.
    After two years, the corn oil group had 30 percent lower cholesterol—but only 52 percent remained alive. The olive oil group fared little better: only 57 percent were alive. But among the group who ate mostly animal fat, 75 percent were alive.
    Unfortunately, the proponents of the lipid hypothesis have ensured that the many studies that refute the hypothesis do not get publicity, so that few doctors know about this research. As a result, heart attack patients in the U.S. are invariably told to avoid animal fats.
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    Recent Studies Agree
    One criticism of the studies cited focuses on the fact that they are old. But recent studies confirm the same. For example, the results of a study conducted by researchers in Denmark and published in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition , 2002, indicated no association between dietary