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May 2, 2005
We Ate Less Fat but Heart Attacks Increased
To find out how fat in the diet affects heart attack rate, it is helpful to study how eating patterns have changed to see if the heart attack rate changed, too. If dietary fat caused heart disease, then the heart attack rate would increase when fat intake increases, and it would decrease when fat intake declines. The data simply does not bear this out. (Keep in mind, even if the numbers did link dietary fat and heart disease, it would not necessarily prove that the fat and not some other related factor was the cause of heart disease.)
From World War I to the 1980s, the death rate from heart attack increased while fat intake declined. In the United States, the death rate from cardiovascular disease increased about tenfold between 1930 and 1960! During that time, the consumption of animal fat declined. If the dietary fat model was correct, the heart attack rate should have declined in keeping with the decline in consumption of fat.
Additional studies shoot down this theory. In the 1960s, researchers from Vanderbilt University studied the Masai tribe in Kenya. These slender shepherds drink about a half gallon of whole milk each day, and they feast on as much as four to ten pounds of meat on occasions. If dietary fat caused high cholesterol and heart disease, the Masai would have sky-high lipid levels and high rates of heart disease, but they have neither. The researchers found that the Masai have exceedingly low rates of heart disease and low cholesterol levels, about 50 percent lower than most Americans do.
Other researchers explored changes in cholesterol when the nomadic Masai moved to urban Nairobi and changed their eating habits. They found that the urban dwellers ate less animal fat, but their cholesterol levels were 25 percent higher than their fat-eating kinsmen were.
Clearly, some people consume large – even huge – amounts of animal fat and maintain extraordinarily low rates of heart disease and low blood cholesterol levels. This evidence alone dispels the belief that heart disease is caused by dietary fat. Still, many doctors refuse to let go of this outdated idea. Most doctors never read the original studies or examine the data that supports this conclusion. When they do, they, too, learn there is no scientific evidence to support the assumption that eating dietary fat causes high cholesterol.
To read more about this topic order Al Sears MD’s The Doctor’s Heart Cure today.
Posted by james at May 2, 2005 5:48 AM