Saturated Fats and Heart Disease

[King Rat]

New study shows no link between consumption of saturated fats and heart disease. I've been reading about there being no link for years now, but now maybe the pop-nutritionists will shut up.

[th1nk3r]

isn't it linked with obesity though? so there may still be an indirect correlation.

[VoxRat]

Originally Posted by King Rat

New study shows no link between consumption of saturated fats and heart disease. I've been reading about there being no link for years now, but now maybe the pop-nutritionists will shut up.

I haven't followed this at all. What else have you read on this - either pro or con - that is more credible than pop-nutrition?

[TestyCalibrate]

seriously, read this book. There is virtually no science of nutrition that has ever been conducted according to this guy.

They study the effects of broccoli and release the effects of riboflavin since it's in broccoli.

Whether his thesis is right or wrong, he destroys, shreds, jumps up and down on, pees on, soak in gasoline and then lights on fire, any credibility that the field of nutrition science might have ever held onto. It's homeopathy with real labs.

I.e. there has never been -never- a study that successfully correlates food to disease.... heart disease, pancreatic etc etc etc.

You really have to read the book. It's shocking if you ever believed anything that 'scientists' said about what food you should eat.

[Koyaanisqatsi]

"Meta-studies" are always suspect, IMHO, but this looks pretty good in abstract form anyway. Pass the bacon!

[Matty]

Originally Posted by TestyCalibrate

the field of nutrition science might have ever held onto. It's homeopathy with real labs.

well an immediate distinction is that dietician is a medically protected term, nutritionist isnt.

any twat can claim to be a nutritionist, you just need an opinion on nutrition, right or wrong sane or retarded, to do so. To be a dietician is a different matter. Its kinda like a doctor and a healer. Or a dental surgeon and a toothyologist (thanks Dara O Brian)

and meta analysis is something i always think should be taken with a pinch of scepticism, its one of those fields where the data mine is invariably carried out with the intent of proving a specific idea (and hence selection bias) to begin with.

Thats not to say that i disagree that most claims of nutritive science are either bollocks or massively simplified, they are. The honest upshot of most actual food science studies tends to end up as "a little of what you fancy does you good and moderation is key" but that doesn't sell fad diets.

[cold one]

Here's an excellent article on this topic: http://www.nasw.org/awards/2001/01Taubesarticle1.htm

Summary: despite $100s of millions in research, no link has ever been demonstrated between dietary fat and heart problems. On the contrary, very low fat diets can lead to weight gain and then heart disease, and high fat diets do not. The US national policy on fat was heavily influenced by a small congressional committee in the 1970s, which based its findings in large part on the beliefs of a small number of nutritionists and doctors with views that didn't represent those of the majority of experts.

[muon]

Dietary fat per se not being unhealthy doesn't surprise me. Saturated fat not being unhealthy is a surprise, however, and goes against a lot of prior work.

[TySixtus]

If you consider that there are still tribes of Inuit that subsist entirely on meat loaded with fat and will go years without eating vegetables, and they have almost no history of heart disease, it is not a surprise that we really don't know shit about how fats are metabolized, etc.

http://discovermagazine.com/2004/oct...tart:int=2&-C=

[borealis]

Diet experiment, high fat, low carb, trad foods, seems to have helped diabetics in this First Nations community.

ALERT BAY, B.C. -- Greg Wadhams tipped the scales at 291 pounds when he joined a bold dietary experiment in this island village.

Today, he's a poster boy for the Big Fat Diet, one of the most extreme dietary interventions for diabetes ever tried in Canada.

The low-carbohydrate, high-fat diet is heavy on traditional foods like seafood, game and oolichan grease, a delicacy finer than the best olive oil to connoisseurs here on the Pacific coast.


Read it on Global News: Big Fat Diet a recipe for good health: Doctor
http://news.globaltv.com/health/Diet...526/story.html

[TySixtus]

Hooray for corn driven agrobusiness!

[th1nk3r]

if fats are out, who do we blame for all those people with clogged arteries? is it just down to bad genes and other factors like smoking?

[Matty]

Lack of exercise has always been a big factor. if this proves out then i'd bet it just proves to be a bigger one.

[FIGUER]

Originally Posted by TestyCalibrate

You really have to read the book. It's shocking if you ever believed anything that 'scientists' said about what food you should eat.

It's shocking you so uncritically believe that book.

Ever heard the word SKEPTICISM?

[th1nk3r]

stop shitting up the thread.

mods please split this nonsense out when you're done protecting LD from the boogey man...

[Matty]

yup.

[mod] I split out Figuer's and my derail on embryology and emotional rhetoric to a new thread here.
http://www.talkrational.org/showthread.php?t=22738

back to nutrition and health. Many thanks, sorry for the derail.
carry on, [/mod]

[TestyCalibrate]

Originally Posted by FIGUER

It's shocking you so uncritically believe that book.

Ever heard the word SKEPTICISM?

Hmmm. I always do that. I apologize. I don't uncritically believe the book. Nor should you. It might be quite right and it might be quite wrong. If it is wrong though, it is not simply in error. It is slanderously lying.

[TestyCalibrate]

Originally Posted by Matty

well an immediate distinction is that dietician is a medically protected term, nutritionist isnt.

any twat can claim to be a nutritionist, you just need an opinion on nutrition, right or wrong sane or retarded, to do so. To be a dietician is a different matter. Its kinda like a doctor and a healer. Or a dental surgeon and a toothyologist (thanks Dara O Brian)

and meta analysis is something i always think should be taken with a pinch of scepticism, its one of those fields where the data mine is invariably carried out with the intent of proving a specific idea (and hence selection bias) to begin with.

Thats not to say that i disagree that most claims of nutritive science are either bollocks or massively simplified, they are. The honest upshot of most actual food science studies tends to end up as "a little of what you fancy does you good and moderation is key" but that doesn't sell fad diets.

That's exactly the message of the book BTW.

But yeah.

[Teshi]

Originally Posted by borealis

Diet experiment, high fat, low carb, trad foods, seems to have helped diabetics in this First Nations community.

Is this surprising, considering that diabetes is essentially a sugars problem, and this diet seems to cut out carbs?

[borealis]

Teshi, both my parents were/are (dad died of it) diabetics. Dad was type 1, Mom type 2. Nutritionists were involved in directing their diets for years, and the ruling strategy was to consider fats as carbs as seriously as sugars and starches in controlling blood sugar. The diet I linked to is a high fat diet.

[Lugubert]

I'm not surprised that someone finds saturateds not so dangerous.

I'm more surprised that it so seldom is mentioned that saturateds are nicely metabolised into useful stuff all the way, while unsaturateds leave a free radical, and we all know how dangerous and cancer provoking those are.

[Teshi]

Originally Posted by borealis

Teshi, both my parents were/are (dad died of it) diabetics. Dad was type 1, Mom type 2. Nutritionists were involved in directing their diets for years, and the ruling strategy was to consider fats as carbs as seriously as sugars and starches in controlling blood sugar. The diet I linked to is a high fat diet.

My mom's a diabetic, too - type 1. She's never been fussed about fats, but then again, I don't know how compliant she is with her doctor's orders. From what I understand about how various types of food are broken down, it just seems logical that fats wouldn't be as problematic for diabetics as sugars and starches are, but then again, I don't know much beyond freshman bio on the subject.

[muon]

I've gone through diabetes boot camp, as they call it. We were told that fat is not an issue per se for blood sugar control (and in fact we are encouraged to mix fat and protein with our carbs to slow their digestion), but because diabetes greatly increases your risk of heart problems diabetics need to be especially aggressive about keeping other risk factors such as cholesterol and triglyceride levels under control.

[borealis]

I know advice has changed in recent years. Mom was diagnosed at 55 and is now 84, been on two insulin needles a day throughout. So the older advice worked for her.

My dad was diagnosed when he was forty, they thiought he may have had it from childhood, but he worked so hard physically and ate well, was really fit, that it took that long to be noticeable. By then he had eye and heart damage. Six heart attacks later he died, at 67.

Evil disease.