Is Cholesterol the Bad Guy?
In 1952, physiologist Ancel Keys presented his diet-heart hypothesis that linked heart disease to fat intake. In his (in) famous 7 Countries Study, Keys confirmed his belief that animal fats contain cholesterol, and higher cholesterol was causing atherosclerosis in humans. Conclusion? Eating high fat diets causes heart disease and are ultimately dangerous for our health. The 7 countries that Keys studied clearly show an increase of rates of heart disease in correlation to increased consumption of fats.
There was one problem with the study. It was a 22-country study, and Keys cherry picked the countries to verify his own misguided hypothesis that fats cause heart disease. When viewing the results of the 22 Country Study, there was no statistical significance of high fat consumption linked to heart disease. In fact, France, Switzerland, and Chile were outliers with high fat consumption and low rates of heart disease. Any experts who dared to disagree with his conclusion were silenced by the federal government and from professional peer pressure. Despite this fraudulent study, low fat diets became the cornerstone of America’s dietary guidelines for the past 70 years. In that time, the health of the nation has drastically gotten worse, and it is now reported that over 70% of our population is overweight and over 40% is obese.
As you can see from the picture below, the 1990 Food Pyramid, devised by the USDA and based on the “high-fat = heart disease” hypotheses, promotes the consumption of sugar laden and high carbohydrate foods which massively increased weight gain and the prevalence of Type 2 Diabetes in the United States.
According to Dr. Ken Berry in his book, Lies My Doctor Told Me, once the cholesterol theory was officially accepted, everyone started to cash in on ways to lower the patient’s cholesterol levels. Amazingly, no further research was done to confirm Dr. Keys’ findings, or to try and reproduce them.
Enter statin drugs and the prevalence by which they are prescribed now on a daily basis. According to the Weston A Price foundation, during the last 20 years, the pharmaceutical industry has mounted an incredible promotional campaign–enlisting scientists, advertising agencies, the media, and the medical profession in a blitz that turned statins into one of the bestselling pharmaceuticals of all time.
Unfortunately, what most people and certainly many doctors do not know, the USDA Dietary Guidelines Committee issued a report in 2015. This report states the following:
“Previously the Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommended that cholesterol intake be limited to no more than 300 mg/day. The 2015 guidelines will not bring forward this recommendation, because available evidence shows no appreciable relationship between consumption of dietary cholesterol and serum cholesterol, consistent with the conclusions of the AHA/ACC report. Cholesterol is not a nutrient of concern for over-consumption.”
We are living in a time where we cannot always trust the news and information that is disseminated to us. In our Mansfield active-aging studio, LeAnna and I always encourage our clients to do their own research. We have the world at our fingertips, and within minutes we can retrieve information from around the world to educate ourselves. I highly encourage the reading of these two books which I found quite helpful:
The Great Cholesterol Myth by Jonny Bowden, Stephen Sinatra, MD. 2015
The Cholesterol Myths: Exposing the Fallacy that Saturated Fat and Cholesterol Cause Heart Disease by Uffe Ravnskov, MD/PhD. 2000