Does Saturated Fats = Heart Disease?
For decades the prevailing thought is that saturated fats & cholesterol in your diet will increase your chances of having heart disease. We have been told to avoid fatty meats & eggs or else if we want to avoid heart attacks and the like.
But does this have any truth to it? Have we been lied to?
Where did this notion come from and why does everyone believe it?
Ancel Keys published a study in the 1950′s claiming saturated fats were to blame for the increasing heart disease trends in the world.
However, there were some big holes in his study.
For one he only used data from a select few countries and neglected data from many more. Other researchers have gone back and used all the data that was collected and found no correlation between heart disease and saturated fats.
Ancel also only considered saturated fat intake as a factor. He neglected to consider smoking, stress levels, sugar intake and exercise habits.
He really only made a weak shot in the dark that was then believe to be fact for over 50 years thanks to pushing from the cereal industry (aka: buy our grains instead).
Several studies have been done to expose this myth.
Stephan Guyenet at Whole Health Source has written phenomenal posts about this very same thing here and here.
As Stephan wrote about, there have been studies done on tribal communities in remote island nations and Africa where 50% of the calories in their diets is saturated fats.
Can you imagine eating 1000 calories a day of saturated fats? That’s a huge amount!
Yet the cholesterol levels are not elevated (115 in Masai tribe males vs 198 for American males). Pretty amazing right?
You might say comparing Americans to native African tribes is comparing apples and oranges. There are many more difference than just diet between the populations.
Ok, there was also a study on tribes from the island nation of Tokelau. Their diet consisted of 50% saturated fats (mostly from coconut oil). Males aged 20-24 had an average cholesterol levels of 168. Yet Tokelauans who migrated to New Zealand ate decreased their saturated fat intake from 50% to 25%. The average cholesterol of the same age group of males was 191. It’s interesting to note the New Zealand Tokelauans consumed over 10% more sugar than the native still on Tokelau.
So it’s time to stop cursing red meats & eggs for your high cholesterol levels.
Go ahead and eat that roast or omelet. Stop throwing out egg yolk in the trash. They will not give you a heart attack.
Limit your sugars and process grains to keep your ticker happy.
But don’t take this to mean you should follow the Atkins diet for the rest of your life. That has it’s own flaws & dangers, but that’s another blog for another day.
So eat in moderation and enjoy food this holiday season.
