No-Fat Fantasy

Do you remember the no-fat hot dogs and no-fat cheese that was so popular in the late 80’s and 90’s?  Whatever happened to that stuff?  Have you wondered why so many people went on low-fat diets for nearly a decade and cholesterol levels continued to rise and heart disease is at an all-time high despite more prescriptions?  A report from the British Medical Journal may shed some light on this phenomenon and give valuable insight to some dietary methods to prevent heart disease and numerous other chronic illnesses.

This editorial titled, From the Heart, Saturated Fat is Not the Major Issue may debunk a half century’s worth of thinking and previous research.  This most recent study suggests that the avoidance of saturated fat actually promotes poor health and may increase our cardiovascular risk.  Conventional thinking was that the large type A LDL particles that come from saturated fats were the bad guys, but new findings show that it’s actually the smaller, type B LDL particles that are implicated in cardiovascular disease.  Where do these type B particles come from?  They are responsive to carbohydrate and sugar intake.  Recent studies have shown that appropriate fat intake may actually be protective.  They have found that when you decrease fat and increase refined carbohydrates, you promote obesity, diabetes, and heart disease.  This is not all new information.  A similar study was published in the Lancet back in 1956.  They compared groups of people on 90% fat, 90% protein, and 90% carbohydrate diets and found that the fat consuming group lost the most weight.  A 2010 review of 21 other studies found no difference in the risk of heart attack and stroke between people with the lowest and highest intakes of saturated fats.  And in 2010, the Journal of Clinical Nutrition stated that “dietary efforts to improve your cardiovascular risk should primarily emphasize the limitation of refined carbohydrate intake.”

Does this mean we should bring on the fried chicken and pizza?  I’m afraid not.  Corn oils, vegetable oils and trans-fats are still known to be bad.  What this really means is sugar and all the refined carbohydrates are the enemy.  We need to cut breads, pastas, and nearly all the snack foods and sugars.  We should replace these with large amounts of vegetables and moderate amounts of organically raised proteins.  We should get our fats from raw nuts, organic eggs, avocados, raw dairy, coconut and coconut oil, wild fish and grass-fed meats.  This is basically the Mediterranean diet which has been shown to be three times more effective at reducing cardiac deaths than cholesterol drugs!