Junk Science? Number 68: One great fat myth
One Great Fat Myth
As health experts like Mercola and Woollams have been telling you repeatedly, eating fat is not as bad for you as Health Authorities have led you to believe. There are certainly good fats and oils like fish oils, extra virgin olive oil, nut and seed oils, like flaxseed, coconut and walnut oil that clearly promote health. But is saturated fat and cholesterol so bad?
According to top American cardiologist Dr Chauncey Crandall, Director of the Palm Beach Cardiology Clinic, ‘No’. In his Heart Health programme he talks about the importance of cholesterol in your brain, as a precursor to vitamin D and hormones, to aid digestion and support the essential transporting functions of cell membranes. He lays the blame for heart disease on glucose and refined carbohydrates and preservatives in foods, talking of their role in chronic diseases from diabetes, to heart disease, to cancer.
Crandall argues that chronic inflammation caused by a number of factors from food additives to red meat and cows’ dairy causes inflammation in arteries, causing the fat to ‘stick’ to the walls. After calcium deposits collect on top of the fat, your fate is sealed.
Mercola has been talking about the importance of fat for 30 years; Woollams has been talking about the dangers of glucose and refined carbohydrates in the diet for a decade. CANCERactive has covered the dangers of glucose and the benefits of a Ketogenic Diet for almost as long. http://www.canceractive.com/cancer-active-page-link.aspx?n=3117
If saturated fat is not so bad after all, what is the problem?
The FDA takes action on Trans Fats at last:
It would seem that the research often quoted by Mercola and Woollams on the dangers of trans fats has at last been heeded. Originally thought to have been so refined as to be inert, trans fats have increasingly been shown to be dangerous and even cancer causing. FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg, M.D., has studied the research and now announced that trans fats “are not generally recognized as safe for use in food.”.
Meanwhile Walter Willett, M.D., of Harvard School of Public Health has opined that the FDA conclusion is “strongly supported by massive scientific evidence that trans fat has many adverse effects on health’.
The benefits of Saturated Fat:
According to an article published in the prestigious British Medical Journal (October 22), saturated fat is NOT the cause of heart disease. In fact, the opposite is true. According to BMJ, : “The mantra that saturated fat must be removed to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease has dominated dietary advice and guidelines for almost four decades. Yet scientific evidence shows that this advice has, paradoxically, increased our cardiovascular risks. Furthermore, the government’s obsession with levels of total cholesterol, which has led to the overmedication of millions of people with statins, has diverted our attention from the more egregious risk factor of atherogenic dyslipidaemia’.
Woollams in these columns and in his book ‘The Rainbow Diet’ (where he talks about the French Paradox – they eat more fat and consume more alcohol than many other natures but have less heart disease and less cancer) has talked about exactly this point and the mythology surrounding fat and the drive to get everybody on often unnecessary statins. Statins that can increase risks of diabetes and other illnesses by more than 30 per cent whilst reducing levels of essential coenzyme Q10 in the heart, muscles and brain. http://www.canceractive.com/cancer-active-page-link.aspx?n=2027
