evilcyber.com
  • Home
  • Workouts
    • Home Workout Plans
    • How To Build Muscle
    • How To Get Toned
    • Home Workout Equipment
    • Advanced Workout Topics
    • Other Workout Programs
    • Important Workout Lingo
    • Recommendable Books
  • Cardio
    • What Is Cardio?
    • How To Start Cardio
    • Home Cardio Exercises
    • Cardio Or Weights First?
    • Best Time For Cardio
    • Does Cardio Burn Muscle?
    • Cardio On Empty Stomach?
    • HIIT – Doing It Right
    • Cross-Training
  • Weight Loss
    • The Secret To Weight Loss
    • Gain Muscle And Lose Fat?
    • Exercise And Weight Loss
    • Diet Reviews
    • Weight Loss Myths
    • Weight Loss Supplements
  • Nutrition
    • Healthy Nutrition Explained
    • Bodybuilding Nutrition
    • What Are Carbohydrates?
    • What Is Fat?
    • What Is Protein?
    • Nutrition For Cardio
    • Marathon Nutrition
    • Exercise On Low Carb
  • Supplements
    • 3 Supplements That Work
    • BCAA Supplements
    • Beta-Alanine
    • Creatine
    • Dextrose Supplements
    • Energy Shots
    • Make Your Own Weight Gainer
    • Multivitamins
    • NAC
    • Testosterone-Boosters
  • The Rest

Nutrition

Disrobing Dogma – Saturated Fat: The Heart Of The Matter

Disrobing Dogma – Saturated Fat: The Heart Of The Matter

  • February 9, 2012 7:18 pm
  • 0 comments

Share this Article

  • TwitterTwitter
  • FacebookFacebook
  • DiggDigg
  • StumbleuponStumble
  • RedditReddit
Author Rani visit my website

The first installment in Disrobing Dogma laid to rest the claim that isocaloric, low-carbohydrate diets are quantitatively superior for fat loss. This time another sorry piece of dogma is buried, that saturated fat causes heart disease.

Origins Of Indictment

In 1953, Ancel Keys conducted an ecological study documenting 9 countries and their respective saturated fat intake. He found a strong, almost unmistakable curvilinear correlation between heart disease and fat consumption [1]. Although the veracity of these findings were later called into question [2], Keys became instrumental in his position and went on to develop the diet-heart hypothesis, which states that i) dietary saturated fat raises blood cholesterol and ii) raised blood cholesterol causes heart disease; iii) ergo, saturated fat causes heart disease. This idea was uncritically adopted by medical authorities and governmental institutions during the ’60s when heart disease was making its inexorable stampede across the civilized world. Almost half a century later, regrettably, nothing has changed.

Anatomical overlay of heart location on a human body

Location of the heart in the human body

The diet-heart hypothesis features several shortcoming in all its assertions. Indeed, the first [3,4] and second [5] postulates have been critiqued at length, however the most voluminous and compelling evidence comes from the prodigious body of evidence investigating the direct relationship between saturated fat and heart disease, both observational and experimental in nature.

Starting with the observational evidence, in 2009, Skeaff and Miller published a meta-analysis of cohort studies that provided data on saturated fat intake and coronary heart disease (CHD) finding no significant association [6]. A much more extensive meta-analysis by Siri-Tarino et al. corrobrated these results in 2010 [7]. In a pooled analysis of 21 studies, including some 350,000 subjects with 11000 cases, they again found no evidence for a significant association between saturated fat consumption and coronary heart disease (CHD) or cardiovascular disease (CVD). In my own review of the literature, I found an additional 9 studies that met the inclusion criteria of the meta-analysis [8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17]. Of these, only one study found an association, however the difference in absolute saturated fat intake between CHD and CHD-free individuals in this study was not clinically meaningful at only 5 grams more per day  [17].

Although case-control studies carry less weight than a prospective cohort study, they are still worth examining. In a meticulous sweep of the literature I found 7 case-control studies, none of them show any significant association either [18,19,20,21,22,23,24].

Cakes on display at a pastry shop

Loads of saturated fats: truly responsible for heart disease?

It’s been established that the observational evidence incriminating dietary saturated fat for the past 5 decades has been largely, if not totally unfounded. Unfortunately, on the basis of observational evidence it is unequivocally impossible to establish cause and effect relationships between variables in diet, lifestyle and disease. To ascertain causation, the best hope is the controlled trial. Fortunately, several trials have been performed over the years investigating saturated fat and heart disease, do they offer support for the diet-heart hypothesis?

Saturated Fat On Trial

Controlled trials are the gold-standard of experimental science. They are expensive, time-consuming and definitely much more difficult to control and conduct than the conventional observational study. Controlled trials can prove causality because variables have been manipulated.

There have been over 25 CHD dietary intervention trials since the first was published in 1955. However many of these have been multifactoral in design. Essentially, this means that saturated fat restriction was also accompanied by, for example, increased fruit and vegetable intake, higher fish intake etc. This makes ascribing any effect of the intervention to saturated fat alone impossible. Therefore, only trials which have manipulated the sole variable of saturated fat have been analyzed.
To date, not a single controlled trial has proved beyond a reasonable doubt that the substitution of saturated fat with polyunsaturated fat actually reduces CHD or total mortality [Table 1]. Those trials purporting to show any benefit are largely flawed, these are discussed elsewhere [25].
.

TABLE 1:  CONTROLLED TRIALS EXAMINING SATURATED FAT SUBSTITUTION ON MORTALITY

STUDY/AUTHORS

DURATION (yrs)

STATISTICALLY SIGNIFICANT BENEFICIAL OUTCOME FOR CHD MORTALITY?

STATISTICALLY SIGNIFICANT BENEFICIAL OUTCOME FOR TOTAL MORTALITY?

Rose et al., 1965 [26]

2

NO

NO

Bell et al. 1965 [27]

3

NO

NO

Hood et al. 1965 [28]

5-17

?

YES

ACCS 1966 [29]

4

NO

NO

Bierenbaum et al. 1967 [30]

5

?

NO

NDHS 1968 [31]

2

NO*

NO

MRCS 1968 [32]

2-7

NO

NO

LAVAS 1969 [33]

8

YES

NO

FMHS 1972 [34]

12

YES

YES

SDHS 1978 [35]

2-7

?

NO

MCS 1989 [36]

1

NO

NO

DART 1989 [37]

2

NO

NO

* = No figures were given for CHD death, only incidence, of which there was no statistically significant benefit.

? = Data not available.

 

It becomes quickly obvious that most trials have been a woeful failure. If saturated fat was the demonic plague on modern society as so readily portrayed by health authorities, this would have been clearly reproducible in controlled trials. But sadly, it hasn’t. Substituting saturated fat with polyunsaturated fat has never been convincingly proven to lower mortality. A meta-analysis of these same trials was published in late-2010 also reached these conclusions [38].

Practical Implications

Establishing now that saturated fat is not the deleterious ‘heart-disease-causing-monster’ it’s so often characterized as, what are the real-life consequences of such information? It is simple. Trimming your meats with surgical precision is no longer required, enjoy the fats. These fattier portions also contain the highest concentrations of fat-soluble vitamins including the all important, A, D and E [39]. Don’t shy away from cooking with butter and coconut oil, saturated fatty acids are devoid of double-bonds, thus making them the most chemically stable fat when heated. On the contrary, heated vegetable oils have been shown numerous times to increase the activity of free-radicals in both animal and human models [40,41,42,43,44,45,46,47].

Conclusions

Research spanning close to half a century on saturated fat and heart disease has produced innumerable scientific papers. Astonishingly, at least 35 cohort and case-control studies have found no association between saturated fat consumption and heart disease. Even the more qualitatively superior controlled trials have failed to show any reductions in mortality from restricting dietary saturated fat.

The oversimplistic and fundamentally incorrect idea that saturated fat raises blood cholesterol and thus causes heart disease should have been forsaken decades ago. It is totally unreasonable to promulgate recommendations to restrict a particular dietary constituent by the changes on a single biomarker. After assessing the amassed literature, there is no scientific reason why any individual should subscribe the current international recommendations to eschew saturated fat rich foods, these often also being nutrient-dense foods such as egg-yolks and fatty cuts of meat. Enjoy the fat, just as nature intended.

Pictures courtesy of Jules Morgan, Mikael Häggström and Robert Young.

Help me spread knowledge and share this:

  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • Click to print (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)

Search

Subscribe to EC

Enter your email address to subscribe and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Most Read

  • teen home workout Home Workout Plan For Teenagers
  • strongman eugen sandow flexing his muscles The Eugen Sandow Workout You Can Do At Home
  • pills Why Bodybuilders Should Say No To NAC
  • Intermediate Home Workout Plan
  • How To Do Crunches

Latest Comments

  • No comments

No Comments

    1. FAT | The Skeptical Environmentalist

    What do you think?

    Click here to cancel reply.


    • About
    • Contact
    • Copyright
    • Disclaimer
    • Privacy Policy
    © Copyright 2022 — evilcyber.com. All Rights Reserved.

    Evilcyber.com uses cookies

    More info about these little buggers in the Privacy Policy.

    Close
    loading Cancel
    Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
    Email check failed, please try again
    Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.