Fat Tuesday: More Saturated Fat Vindication Fun!

  





Hey Everyone! After my last post was mostly a linkfest, I’m hesitant to do something similar right away, but I found something the other day that I think is worth passing along. If you’ve been following me for any length of time (and I know there are at least two of you out there who have, hehheh), then it won’t surprise you when I say that a significant amount of the dietary and nutritional advice we’ve been given by the mainstream medical establishment (not to mention the supermarket tabloids, but I’m pretty sure all of us put more stock in the former than the latter) for the last sixty years is wrong. Not merely misguided, or a little off the mark, but straight-up, flat-out wrong. Now, it’s bad enough when, say, your mechanic gets something wrong. Maybe the tires get misaligned just a bit and your car pulls to the left or right. Or he thinks he’s fixed the problem, but that pesky check engine light comes back on the next day. But when doctors, nurses, dietitians, and nutritionists get it wrong, people die. Maybe not right away, but certainly over time. Remember: just because something doesn’t kill you immediately doesn’t mean it isn’t poisonous. (Lead, anyone? Arsenic? Too much sugar? Too much soybean oil? Ah, but I’m getting ahead of myself...)




So imagine how nice it was to stumble upon the little morsel I’ll share with you today. I don't want to outsource my blog by deferring to the writing of others too often, but sometimes I come across a piece that's too good to keep to myself. Today’s bit of awesomeness was written by Dr. Dwight Lundell, a conventionally trained cardiologist and none other than the former chief of staff and chief of surgery at Banner Heart Hospital in Arizona. Please keep these credentials in mind as you read the rest of this post. This man is an M.D. A medical doctor, who attended regular ol’ medical school, and wears a regular ol’ white coat and regular ol’ stethoscope. The quotes you’ll see below come from him. They’re not the intoxicated or hallucinogenic ramblings of the village shaman, the tribal medicine man, or the guy with the dreadlocks working the supplement aisle at your local organic food co-op. Not that there’s anything wrong with any of those people; I’m simply pointing out that this guy is the real deal, and these are his words, and not merely the claims of a nutritionist who thinks she knows a thing or two about how foods affect the human body.

Dr. Lundell is clearly “in my camp.” That is, the camp that realizes saturated fat is not harmful for health, and that too many omega-6 polyunsaturated fats are. Also too much sugar, but I haven’t talked about that all that much (yet). So yes: the advice we’ve received from all the “experts” for over a half-century to cut back on saturated fats (especially from animals), consume polyunsaturated oils (mostly from plants), and literally base the foundation of our diets on carbohydrates (remember the pyramid?) has landed us smack-dab in the middle of the multiple health crises we now face. (Hmm…now that I think of it, maybe they were just trying to ensure job security. Well played, American Heart Association and American Diabetes Association, well played! You have succeeded beyond your wildest imaginings.) 

Aaaanyway, as you’ll see below, Dr. Lundell pulls no punches in calling out the mainstream medical establishment on its epic failure to reverse the epidemics of heart disease, obesity, Alzheimer's, and diabetes. In fact, he pretty much places the blame square in their faces. Not only have they failed to reverse these trends, but they likely caused them in the first place.

You can read the whole thing here (it’s short, and I encourage you to do so), but if you’re pressed for time, I’ve taken the liberty of extracting the real zingers:

• "Forget the 'science' that has been drummed into your head for decades. The science that saturated fat alone causes heart disease is non-existent. The science that saturated fat raises blood cholesterol is also very weak. Since we now know that cholesterol is not the cause of heart disease, the concern about saturated fat is even more absurd today."
• "Mainstream medicine made a terrible mistake when it advised people to avoid saturated fat in favor of foods high in omega-6 fats."
• "The long-established dietary recommendations have created epidemics of obesity and diabetes, the consequences of which dwarf any historical plague in terms of mortality, human suffering and dire economic consequences."
• "Foods loaded with sugars and simple carbohydrates, or processed with omega-6 oils for long shelf life have been the mainstay of the American diet for six decades. These foods have been slowly poisoning everyone."
• "The rest of us have simply followed the recommended mainstream diet that is low in fat and high in polyunsaturated fats and carbohydrates, not knowing we were causing repeated injury to our blood vessels. This repeated injury creates chronic inflammation leading to heart disease, stroke, diabetes and obesity. Let me repeat that: The injury and inflammation in our blood vessels is caused by the low fat diet recommended for years by mainstream medicine."

That’s all for now. Just a couple of truth bombs dropped on your Tuesday reading schedule.

Shocked and angry? You should be!

In the future I’ll be posting quite a bit about cholesterol and heart disease (and why they do NOT have the relationship we’ve been led to believe). But it is a BIG topic, and it’s going to take me a while to do it justice. So in the meantime, if you’re confused, angry, and irritated at all the MISinformation out there about these issues, I highly recommend this book: The Great Cholesterol Myth, by Jonny Bowden and Stephen Sinatra, M.D., F.A.C.C. (Another mainstream M.D., and this one’s also a fellow of the American College of Cardiology. If that’s not some serious street cred, I don’t know what is.) Book review coming soon!

You can also hop on over to Dr. Georgia Ede’s site, which has a fantastic (and very readable) explanation of cholesterol.

Another great resource is Cholesterol and Health, by Chris Masterjohn, PhD. (This guy KNOWS his lipids!)

Confused about which fats are best to cook with? And which are best used cold, like for salad dressings? See this.

Remember: Amy Berger, M.S., is not a physician and Tuit Nutrition, LLC, is not a medical practice. The information contained on this site is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any medical condition.