(Note: This post was inspired by the “Ancel Keys” section in a recent series of paleo-challenging YouTube videos, which I may critique in the future. The anonymous videomaker “Plant Positive” highlighted some important misconceptions about Keys and his research that I’d like to broadcast to a larger audience, but didn’t address some equally important points tangled in the Keys saga, and likewise made some arguments I believe are incomplete or misleading. This blog post is an attempt to address those misconceptions in a more balanced and thorough way, and provide a broader context for how we view the infamous Mr. Keys.)
This is one of those “gotta bust me some myths no matter where they come from” blog posts. And by that, I mean I’m about to challenge a story that’s been so well-circulated among paleo, low carb, and real-food communities that most of us have filed it away in a little brain-folder called “Things We Never Have to Question Because They’re So Ridiculously True.”
I’m talking about the late, great Ancel Keys, and his equally late (but maybe not as great) role in the history of heart disease research. The oft-repeated tale goes something like this:
Once upon a time, a scientist named Ancel Keys did an awful thing. He published a study about different countries that made it look like heart disease was associated with fat intake. But the truth was that he started out with 22 countries and just tossed out the ones that didn’t fit his hypothesis! When other researchers analyzed his data using all the original countries, the link between fat and heart disease totally vanished. Keys was a fraud, and he’s the reason my mom made me eat skim milk and Corn Chex for breakfast instead of delicious bacon and eggs. LET HIS SOUL BURN. BURN! BUUUUUURN!
Depending on who tells the story, some of the details (and wishes for eternal hellfire) may differ. But in many cases, Keys’ infamous cherry-picking is attributed to his Seven Countries Study, a landmark project that helped sculpt our common beliefs about fat. Even the Seven Countries Study page on Wikipedia—the first hit when you Google “Seven Countries Study”—says that Keys shamelessly erased the data he didn’t like:
The study began with a great many more countries … but Keys deleted the countries whose results did not match his pre-conceived conclusions, leaving him with only Japan, Italy, Great Britain, Australia, Canada and the US. Full disclosure would have made a great deal of difference.
Ditto for the page on Ancel Keys himself:
Keys collected data on deaths from coronary heart disease and fat consumption from 22 countries. Despite the fact that 22 countries provided statistics, Keys cherry-picked the data from the 7 countries which supported his theory that animal fat was the main cause of coronary heart disease in order to publicize his opinions. The results of what later became known as the “Seven Countries Study” appeared to show that serum cholesterol was strongly related to coronary heart disease mortality both at the population and at the individual level.
…And we all know Wikipedia would never lead us astray. Other big-hitters in the nutrition blogosphere have repeated this version as well, dismissing the Seven Countries Study as manipulated bias, and claiming Keys’ theory fell apart once some discarded countries were added back in—making it all the more troubling that the study became so influential.
This, we’re told, is Keys’ cherry-picked graph:
The upward curve of doom.
And this, we’re told, is the graph with all 22 countries and a diminished fat-and-heart-disease association:
And this, we’re told, is the man who ruined the world:
Unfortunately, reality sometimes infringes on the things we’d prefer to consider “facts.” This is one such occasion.
The Truth:
- Ancel Keys did not drop any countries from the Seven Countries Study. His most famous graph—the first one up above—is from a different paper he presented at a World Health Organization (WHO) conference in 1955. The Seven Countries Study didn’t even launch until 1958, and entailed much more than just plopping numbers into a pretty curve. (That said, the Seven Countries Study had plenty of problems too; some are mentioned on this site.)
- Contrary to popular belief, the cherry-picked graph didn’t convince everyone that fat was evil. In fact, Keys was pretty much ridiculed for the weakness of his fat/heart disease theory by other scientists at the WHO meeting, and whenever his graph was cited in medical journals later on, it was usually paired with some criticism. Although Keys’ work definitely shaped our current beliefs about fat, this graph didn’t exactly take the world by storm. (More on this later.)
- When all 22 countries were analyzed, the association between fat and heart disease did not go away. It actually remained statistically significant (meaning it probably wasn’t due to chance). And to make matters worse, the paper frequently cited as a “rebuttal” to Keys shows pretty clearly that animal protein had an even stronger association with heart disease than total fat did. The China Study was right all along! Time to go vegan, you guys. (Just kidding. But this part is the most interesting of all, and we’ll examine it in excruciating depth in a moment.)
Although some of his saga has been misconstrued, Keys was still far from perfect—and his eventual role in demonizing saturated fats (while glorifying polyunsaturated fats) has led us down an unfortunate road. My goal is neither to nudge Mr. Keys into sainthood nor to perpetuate his villain status—only to lay out the history and data as objectively as possible.
Here’s the more detailed scoop.
The six-country graph
Let’s look at this sucker again—smaller now, to symbolize its diminished importance (and to ease the burden of scrolling):
Keys published this graph in 1953 in a paper called called “Atherosclerosis: A problem in newer public health” (which is apparently so brilliant that neither the abstract nor full text is allowed to exist online). It was simple, really: he graphed fat consumption alongside heart disease mortality in men from six different countries—and voila! The data points landed in a tidy little line. Keys first unveiled his Wonder Curve to a handful of people at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York, but his most famous presentation was at that WHO conference a few years later.
Curiously, instead of rolling around on the floor possessed by fat-phobia demons, his WHO audience reacted with skepticism. One report says another researcher challenged Keys to describe his “best piece of evidence” for the diet-heart idea, and effectively squashed Keys’ argument with his Oxford-educated debate tactics. As a result, poor Keys never got to show all the WHOs down in WHOville the full reasoning behind his theory, and left the conference rather defeated. (At least he didn’t steal Christmas.)
But the debate humiliation was small potatoes compared to what came next. In 1957, Jacob Yerushalmy and Herman Hilleboe—Berkeley statistician and New York State Commissioner of Health, respectively, who’d both attended the WHO meeting with Keys—wrote a scathing critique of Keys’ beloved graph. Their paper was titled “Fat in the diet and mortality from heart disease: A methodological note.” This, my friends, is the rebuttal that gets cited near and far as proof of Keys’ fraudulence, and is the source of that “original 22 countries” graph we saw a bit ago.
It’s a pretty good paper, almost clairvoyantly identifying problems that would plague epidemiology for decades to come. And like most pretty good papers, I can’t link to it for free anywhere online. Which means I’ll be screen-shotting excessively from a copy Peter at Hyperlipid kindly sent me a few months ago. (Thanks, Peter!)
It starts out with a nugget of wisdom about “indirect” studies (e.g., playing connect-the-dots with observational data):
It is well known that the indirect method merely suggests that there is an association between the characteristics studied and mortality rates and, further, that no matter how plausible such an association may appear, it is not in itself proof of a cause-effect relationship. But quotation and repetition of the suggestive association soon creates the impression that the relationship is truly valid, and ultimately it acquires status as a supporting link in a chain of presumed proof.
True that, Yerushalmy and Hilleboe. True. That. But I realize we’re not here for wisdom nuggets; we’re here to learn the truth about Ancel Keys and his picking of cherries. Here’s where the paper gets interesting:
Since no information is given by Keys on how or why the six countries were selected [for his graph], it is necessary to investigate the association between dietary fat and heart disease mortality in all countries for which information is available.
That’s right, folks. At the time he made his six-country graph, Keys actually had access to a much larger database of food intake and mortality statistics for 22 countries. Why he chose only six will forever remain one of life’s great mysteries.
And thusly, we’re presented with this. The graph with all the original countries in their non-manipulated glory. Drumroll, please. (For purposes of suspense and unbridled excitement, pretend you didn’t already see this graph a few minutes ago.) Here we have…
…a less defined, but existent upward trend. Yeah, it’s still there.
But wait! Wasn’t this graph supposed to demolish the association between fat intake and heart disease among the 22 countries? Aren’t we told that was the epic discovery of this paper? Yerushalmy and Hilleboe concede that although Keys’ six countries “greatly exaggerated the importance of the association,” the full graph still shows that there’s “some association in the conventional sense between the two variables.” And as we’ll see shortly, that “some association” was actually quite large—a statistically significant r-value of 0.59 (p < 0.02), which is pretty hefty in math-speak.
So here’s what we’ve got so far:
- Keys cherry-picked six countries and never told us why.
- The cherry-picking was shameful and terrible and unscientific, but the fat/heart disease association among his six countries was also present in the full set of data. Keys didn’t just make it up.
I’m not going to pat Keys on the back for deliberately choosing countries to make his case look stronger, but in terms of historical accuracy, we can’t say that he actually lied. His biggest error, in fact, had less to do with data-deletion and more to do with tunnel vision. Along with failing to explore reasons why fat might be linked to heart disease in a non-causal way, it seems Keys had his eyes locked so tightly on his lovely lipids that he didn’t notice the role of other dietary factors.
And indeed, this is where Yerushalmy and Hilleboe really hammer the heck out of Keys (he could surely never open a door again). In their paper, they explain that—in order to gauge whether the fat-heart disease relationship is really noteworthy—we also have to look at the relationship between heart disease and other elements of diet. Is fat as a category really the strongest link? Certain subsets of fat? A different macronutrient altogether? What’s the deal?
Luckily, the paper supplies us with a chart answering those very questions, using the same data Keys drew from. Apologies for the crookedness of it all. (Edit: A huge thank-you to Tynan Smith for removing said crookedness and emailing me the improved version below!)
There’s a lot going on here, so for now, let’s just look at that first column that says B-26. That’s neither a vitamin nor a rock band: it’s the official classification for “arteriosclerotic and degenerative heart disease,” which is the mortality category Keys used in his six-country graph.
To make it a little easier to prune through, here’s the B-26 column typed out. Values higher than about 0.43 (or less than -0.43) are considered statistically significant, meaning the association is very likely to be valid and not just due to random chance. Positive numbers indicate a positive correlation—heart disease goes up hand-in-hand with the food variable. Negative numbers indicate an inverse correlation—heart disease goes down as the food variable goes up.
- Total calories: 0.723
- Total calories from fat: 0.659
- Total calories from animal fat: 0.684
- Total calories from vegetable fat: -0.236
- Total calories from protein: 0.709
- Total calories from animal protein: 0.756
- Total calories from vegetable protein: -0.430
- Total calories from carbohydrate: 0.305
- Percent of calories from fat: 0.587
- Percent of calories from animal fat: 0.677
- Percent of calories from vegetable fat: -0.468
- Percent of calories from protein: 0.172
- Percent of calories from animal protein: 0.643
- Percent of calories from vegetable protein: -0.651
- Percent of calories from carbohydrate: -0.562
No use in beating around the bush. After statistic-ifying all 22 countries, Yerushalmy and Hilleboe found that not only was “fat as percent of total calories” still associated with heart disease (r = 0.59), but animal fat was clearly driving that correlation. In fact, plant fat had a negative association with heart disease (-0.47) while animal fat was uber positive (0.68). And to rub salt into the wounds of omnivores everywhere, the animal protein/plant protein division was equally stark: animal protein as a percent of total calories had a correlation of 0.64 with heart disease, while plant protein had an inverse correlation of -0.65.
In number-free language, this means the countries eating more animal foods were—as a general trend—reporting more deaths from heart disease.
As with any observational data, this doesn’t tell us diddly squat about cause and effect. Drawing correlations between countries is particularly risky because of massive confounding that’s almost impossible to account for. But if we’re going to be honest about these specific numbers, a heart disease/animal food relationship is very much there.
Oh, the irony. The fat Keys focused on for his 1953 graph was basically a reflection of meat and dairy. We’ve lambasted him for not using all the available data, but if he had, he might’ve turned his “correlation is causation” laser-gaze onto animal foods and plumb gone vegan.
Come join us, Ancel.
In fact, the relationship with heart disease and animal foods rather than “fat as a percent of total calories” becomes even more obvious when we improve the data a bit. Yerushalmy and Hilleboe—those perceptive fellas—note that the countries with the lowest rates of “death from arteriosclerosis and degenerative heart disease” had suspiciously high rates of “death from other diseases of the heart” (or B-27, if you want to get fancy):
Odd, oui? Yerushalmy and Hilleboe offer the most logical reason:
…unless there is a reasonable explanation for the high rates in these countries in this less definitive group of “other diseases of the heart,” it may be safer to operate on the assumption that in these three countries [Chile, Mexico, and France] some deaths from arteriosclerotic and degenerative heart disease are being recorded under the broad group of “other diseases of the heart.”
Indeed, classifying heart disease deaths was pretty inconsistent in the mid-1900s—and even today, “death coding” practices vary widely between countries. To get a more accurate picture, Yerushalmy and Hilleboe recommend combining the “death from arteriosclerotic and degenerative heart disease” with “other diseases of the heart,” instead of using only B-26 like Keys did. And when we do that, our correlations shift a bit. Here’s the “B-26 + B-27” column from two charts ago:
- Total calories: 0.593
- Total calories from fat: 0.470
- Total calories from animal fat: 0.562
- Total calories from vegetable fat: -0.282
- Total calories from protein: 0.694
- Total calories from animal protein: 0.695
- Total calories from vegetable protein: -0.153
- Total calories from carbohydrate: 0.423
- Percent of calories from fat: 0.390
- Percent of calories from animal fat: 0.557
- Percent of calories from vegetable fat: -0.509
- Percent of calories from protein: 0.465
- Percent of calories from animal protein: 0.608
- Percent of calories from vegetable protein: -0.483
- Percent of calories from carbohydrate: -0.386
Nearly all the correlations got weaker, but Keys’ favorite variable—”percent of calories from fat”—dropped off into statistical-insignificance land. Animal fat and protein, however, remained strongly associated with heart disease deaths. (Gasp shock horror!)
(Note: Even though adding “other diseases of the heart” to the mix probably gives a better picture of heart disease trends, it’s quite possible—maybe inevitable—that the mortality data is still skewed for some of the “healthiest” looking countries. A WHO paper called “Miscoding and misclassification of ischaemic heart disease mortality” (PDF) points out that countries like Japan, France, and Portugal have historically been “high ill-defined coders,” meaning they dump a large portion of heart disease deaths into the wrong category. This is typically because of insufficient diagnostic methods (especially for low-income countries), local medical practices (such as Japan’s tendency to write off coronary heart disease as “heart failure”), or simple physician error. Interestingly, the WHO paper also notes that the apparent rise in heart disease as countries become “more developed” is probably due to better classification on death certificates rather than an actual increase in the disease.)
But the story’s not over yet, folks.
Yerushalmy and Hilleboe ramp it up a notch by posing the question: “How does fat (and by extension, animal food variables) relate to other causes of death?” We’ve seen what happens with heart disease, but there are certainly many other ways for the human body to perish. Are the folks eating more fat, animal fat, and animal protein generally dropping faster than their more plant-focused counterparts?
Time for another table. Omnivores, wipe away your tears. Vegans, put away your kazoos. The playing field’s about to change.
Let’s look, first, at that middle column—deaths from everything other than diseases of the heart. Notice a pattern?
- Total calories: -0.530
- Total calories from fat: -0.674
- Total calories from animal fat: -0.466
- Total calories from vegetable fat: 0.296
- Total calories from protein: -0.398
- Total calories from animal protein: –0.505
- Total calories from vegetable protein: 0.452
- Total calories from carbohydrate: 0.172
- Percent of calories from fat: -0.657
- Percent of calories from animal fat: –0.481
- Percent of calories from vegetable fat: -0.090
- Percent of calories from protein: -0.080
- Percent of calories from animal protein: -0.405
- Percent of calories from vegetable protein: 0.521
- Percent of calories from carbohydrate: 0.671
We’re basically staring at the reverse image of that earlier heart disease chart. Fat now has the strongest negative association with mortality out of any variable—a whopping -0.674 for “total calories from fat” and -0.657 for “percentage of calories from fat” (highlighted in purple). Animal fat and animal protein, but not plant fat or plant protein, are also strongly negatively associated with non-heart-disease mortality. You may notice, too, that the folks with a higher percent of calories from carbohydrate had the greatest mortality in this age range.
Even if we look at the first column for “death from all causes”—which is a little less impressive, because none of the numbers reach statistical significance—we see that all of the animal food correlations are negative. The only positive correlations, weak as they may be, are with plant protein and carbohydrates.
The results are clear. When we look at “non-cardiac deaths,” it’s the folks eating more animal fat and animal protein who are stayin’ alive. And when we look at overall mortality, animal foods sure don’t seem like stealthy killers.
Out of curiosity, I tried graphing the life expectancy for the countries in 1950 against their fat intake to see what would happen. Considering that the bulk of each nation’s fat intake came from animal sources, plotting animal food against life expectancy would probably turn out similar. (Life expectancy data taken from EarthTrends.)
Although the dots are pretty scattered when fat intake is below 25% of calories, the trend becomes unmistakable once that number passes 30%: countries with higher average fat intake had the longest life expectancies.
But does any of this—the life expectancy graph and the “death from other causes” table—prove that eating more fat and animal foods makes you live longer, or eating more carbohydrates makes you die sooner? Heck to the no. Same goes for interpreting the animal food/heart disease relationship in this data as a reason to go veggie. Yerushalmy and Hilleboe explain precisely why we shouldn’t assign a cause-and-effect relationship to anything we’ve seen so far (emphasis mine):
Table IV shows that fat calories and animal protein calories, which were seen above to be positively associated with heart disease, are here negatively associated with noncardiac diseases. A … plausible explanation is that the dietary components which according to the rank correlation coefficients appeared to be positively related to heart disease are indices of the various countries. That is, it may be that the amount of fat and protein available for consumption is an index of a country’s development, industrially, nutritionally, medically, and no doubt in other respects as well.
Bingo. Intake of fat and protein—particularly from animal sources—is usually a proxy for a country’s development. These foods goes hand-in-hand with other features specific to industrialization, making their relationship with disease likely to be confounded. Continuing on:
It may also be that countries with more abundant diet are more high developed and diagnostic acumen is greater. Hence, it is possible that in some of the countries in which less protein and fat are available, a certain percentage of deaths from arteriosclerotic and degenerative heart disease are recorded under the non cardiac groupings.
Bingo again. As we saw in the WHO paper I referenced earlier (PDF), diagnostic patterns vary tremendously between countries. This paper even points out that the countries with the highest apparent rates of coronary heart disease often have the most valid death classifications as well. In fact, if we X-out the countries with the worst track record for classifying heart disease and circle the countries whose accuracy was nearly perfect, our 22-country graph looks pretty striking. (Mexico gets an X because it didn’t even have a death-certificate system until the late 1950s (hat tip to Plant Positive for noting this on his Primitive Nutrition videos). Ceylon/Sri Lanka and Chile—numbers 4 and 5 at the bottom—aren’t mentioned in the WHO paper one way or another, but I imagine they deserve some Xs too.)
Keep in mind that the WHO paper looks at mortality data for the ’70s through ’90s, while the graph above uses mortality data from 1948 and 1949. It’s possible that some of the countries improved their death-classifying practices in the decades between, so this graph should be taken with a grain of salt. Especially if you have low blood pressure.
Moreover, as Table IV shows, there are appreciable negative correlation coefficients between dietary components and death rates from B-45 (“senility, ill-defined and unknown causes”). The latter category may be considered a rough index of the accuracy of cause of death certification in the different countries. The negative association with protein and fat is further evidence of the non-“specificity” of the presumed association.
Indeed, if we glance at that third column from a couple graphs ago (click here to open it in a new window so you don’t get lost in scrolling-limbo), we’ll see that animal food variables have strong inverse associations with this death category, while the plant food variables have strong positive associations with it. Senility, ill-defined, and unknown causes are the equivalent of a doctor saying “Gee, I dunno why this person died so I’ll just file them away under one of these vague, essentially meaningless categories!” Such a scenario is much more likely in an under-developed area with shoddy medical care than an industrialized country with more diagnostic precision.
I wanted to explore this issue even further, so I dug up some data for each country’s gross domestic product (GDP) per capita in 1950. This is the measure of a country’s economic output divided by the population, and is a pretty good way to estimate standard of living. (Numbers taken from NationMaster; Israel and Ceylon/Sri Lanka are omitted because I couldn’t find their data from this year.)
So there we have it: more kindle for the idea that fat intake generally reflects a nation’s economic status and level of industrialization, and is hence vulnerable to confounding. (Or maybe correlation really is causation, and inhaling sticks of butter will make your country richer! Only one way to find out…)
One final, super-important point that could quite possibly render everything else useless: The diet data for our 22 countries comes from F.A.O. food balance sheets—which show how much food was available for consumption in each country, rather than how much food was actually consumed. If this sounds like a totally weird and unreliable way to measure what people eat, that’s because it is. Yerushalmy and Hilleboe explain the problem further:
These indices were constructed by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations from statistics on production, imports, exports, and on the proportion of available food used for purposes other than human nutrition. The underlying data are stated by F.A.O. to be subject to great limitations. Moreover, there are no doubt great differences in food “scraps” in the various countries compared. For example, it is highly probable that far more edible dietary fat is thrown into waste cans in the United States than in less fortunate countries.
That about covers it for the Yerushalmy and Hilleboe paper. Isn’t it neat that we just did a deeper analysis of the 1950s data than Keys himself probably did? Here’s a summary of the major points in case your eyes glazed over for any of that:
- Yep, Keys picked some cherries—but a link between fat intake and heart disease mortality existed among all 22 countries, not just his six-country graph. And as Yerushalmy and Hilleboe’s paper revealed, the real force behind that correlation was animal fat intake, not just fat as a general category. Keys definitely should’ve facepalmed himself for not looking at the data more carefully, but even if he’d been scrupulous, he probably still would’ve launched the anti-saturated-fat crusade that defined his later career.
- Although total fat, animal fat, and animal protein were associated with heart disease in this data, those variables were associated with less death from pretty much everything else. Overall, the countries with higher fat and animal food intake had longer life expectancies than the rest. This doesn’t prove that animal foods make you immortal or that plant foods will slit your throat in the middle of the night: it’s mostly a result of countries with more money and a higher standard of living tending to eat more animal products (along with having lower rates of infectious disease, better health care, diets higher in industrially processed foods, and so forth). There’s so much confounding involved with this subject that I don’t even wanna touch it with a ten-foot statistical pole.
- A lot of countries suck at classifying heart disease deaths under the right label. Especially less-developed nations with sketchy medical care. This makes it look like some countries have abnormally low rates of heart disease, when in reality, they just have abnormally high rates of messing up.
- The F.A.O. data that Keys (and others of his time) used is probably the most inaccurate way to measure food consumption ever invented. Because food-balance data doesn’t account for stuff people throw away, wealthier countries are always going to look like they have a higher intake of pretty much everything compared to poorer countries. It’s impossible to say how much this influenced the link between fat or animal foods and mortality rates, but the impact might’ve been pretty big.
- Correlation isn’t causation. Correlation isn’t causation. Correlation isn’t causation. Correlation isn’t causation. Correlation isn’t causation. Correlation isn’t causation. Correlation isn’t causation. Correlation isn’t causation. Correlation isn’t causation. Correlation isn’t causation. Correlation isn’t causation. Correlation isn’t causation. Correlation isn’t a cucumber. (Just making sure you’re awake.)
Keys on dietary cholesterol: one thing he got right
Although Keys was staunch in his belief that saturated fat causes heart disease by raising blood cholesterol, he was one of the brave few who insisted that dietary cholesterol was pretty much irrelevant. Thanks to a slew of early animal experiments—such as Nikolai Anitschkow’s famous rabbits—that used dietary cholesterol to induce atherosclerotic lesions, implicating dietary cholesterol with heart disease was all the rage for a while. For a long while, actually, considering how many folks today still to dump their egg yolks down the drain.
But Ancel didn’t buy it. In his paper “Human atherosclerosis and the diet” (PDF), he writes that “from these animal experiments only, the most reasonable conclusion would be that the cholesterol content of human diets is unimportant in human atherosclerosis.” Likewise, in some of his metabolic ward studies, Keys found that altering dietary cholesterol in the context of a normal diet had only minor effects on blood cholesterol, concluding that “attention to this factor alone accomplishes little.” And in his paper “The relationship of the diet to the development of atherosclerosis in man,” Keys is pretty clear about his views:
The evidence—both from experiments and from field surveys—indicates that the cholesterol content, per se, of all natural diets has no significant effect on either the serum cholesterol level or the development of atherosclerosis in man.
Good for him.
And since I probably won’t write any more blog posts until 2012 (unless someone surgically implants a new month between December and January), I want to use this final paragraph to tell everyone who reads this blog that I love you and appreciate your readership more than you could possibly imagine. I’m continually astounded that you guys not only bear with me through my sporadic blogging habits, but also create such awesome dialogues in the comment section. You people rock my world. If I were wearing socks right now, those would be rocked, too. I really mean it. Have a wonderful new year, everyone!
Denise Minger 
I really enjoy your blogs and they are very informative. I wish you would add a summary or “conclusion” section at the end (which sometimes your do…) because I am not a researcher and sometimes get lost (or distracted) in the stream of data.
I think an “abstract” at the beginning of the article would be great.
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This blog is the best out there I have seen in it’s presentation of unbiased facts and the scrupulous research done by the author. Keep up the good work!
Amen! I hope you keep writing/working on this. It’s excellent!
https://www.drmcdougall.com/misc/2014nl/jun/ppkeys.htm
This is what you need to explain clearly the research hows and whys. Denise is a decent researcher and obviously a proponent of the meat and diary industry.
Excellent work, as usual, Denise.
She did – it’s right under the “Fat Intake and GDP Per Capita, 1950” graph.
Great work as always Denise! Love how you make statistical dissection entertaining every time 😉
Well, it seems to me the main fact stands: Keys was a believer, not a scientist. A scientist tries to falsify his/her own hypothesis.
Best regards.
If you read Dr. Jerry Tennant’s book “Healing is Voltage” you will see Dr. Tennant, brilliant man, exposed that Keys knew that cholesterol had nothing to do with heart disease. Tennant wrote something to the effect that before Keyes published the 100 papers and after he published those papers that Keyes wrote dietary cholesterol has zero, zip, nada to do with one’s cholesterol level. He knew. He absolutely knew.
One only has to read Dr. Broda Barnes book as well to know that the cause of heart disease clearly had nothing to do with eating dietary cholesterol but rather than not eating increase the placquing of the arteries 3 to 4 fold! Dr. Broda Barnes went to Austria every year where hypothyroidism was so high only 1 to 4 babies out of 100 would live longer than a few months after birth. When WWII came along, he did over 70,000 autopsies and found that atherosclerosis increase three to four fold when the troops got all the meat, cheese, butter and egg rations and the people had to live on carbs. Dr. Barnes proves the only reason people were not dying of heart disease was because the thyroid is key to one’s pH and one’s pH is key to one’s oxygen levels in the body and thus one’s immune system – and thus people were dying of tuberculosis and pneumonia before they could die of heart disease. (Oxygen keeps the bugs, virus, bacteria, fungus and parasites from eating one up.) When people become hypothyroid, more bugs and virus create inflammation, more inflammation creates more calcium deposits (atherosclerosis) in the arteries and thus heart disease results.
With all the fluoride, chlorine and now bromine (now bromine is being put in over half of our foods including meat and cheese), all these halides block iodine consumption and thus cause hypothyroidism. Dr. Albert Syent Georgi, Noble Prize winner, said the optimum amount of iodine consumption per day is 62 mg based on 100 years of research from 1850 to 1950 around the world. This is 400 times more than the US Recommended Daily Amount and is 100 times more than the Japanese eat per day of iodine, a country with the longest longevity and the least cancer, heart disease, infant mortality, menopausal issues, etc. To learn more go to http://www.iodine4health.com and listen to the audio of Dr. Flecha, Dr. Miller and Dr. Russell Blaylock on iodine.
Sounds like Martin Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses nailed to the door of All Saints’ Church in Wittenberg
All I know is that my mom is now 83 and she has HeFH – only learned she had a cholesterol of 13 in her 60’s. My sons, however, that’s another story. They both inherited from me and at 34 my eldest got quintuple bypass surgery. I went onto Keto and it halved my cholesterol. Not doing it any longer – if my sons is afraid of it than I am not going to either. If he dies, what’s the point? Plus my younger son also has it. BOTH my sons. The women with the mutation lived to old age but the men did NOT! I am quite floored and sick of everything.
I think you missed out the second last paragraph there. Denise says that Keys knew well enough that cholesterol levels were not a factor in heart disease.
Actually, Rob, the second last paragraph was not about cholesterol levels not being a factor in heart disease; it was about “dietary cholesterol” (i.e., cholesterol content of the food eaten) not being a factor in blood serum cholesterol levels or atherosclerosis. Confusing huh?
Supposedly there is a strong epidemiological evidence for the ‘link’ between high blood serum cholesterol levels and heart disease, which is why doctors hand out statins to anybody with slightly elevated levels. It is claimed that taking statins lowers ones risk of death from heart attack by 30%.
This is the science I’d really like to see dissected.
I’m not sure how old this post is but when they report that statins reduce heart attack risk (and the papers I’ve read report it as being 50% reduction) they are actually reporting a relative risk…which is some pretty sneaky accounting. The way it works is fi you put 100 people on statins and 100 people on placebo, in the stating group 1 dies and in the placebo group 2 people die, you can report that as relative risk and say that statins reduced heart attack by 50% (1 vs. 2). That’s how that is done. There are several quotes saying that LOWERING CHOLESTEROL may actually be worse for people but that Stains do provide protection, NOT because they lower cholesterol but because something else in statins behaves like an anti-oxidant.
I don’t have time to post links etc…very busy making a workshop for healthy eating…but this info is out there.
Statins are HORRIBLE for women and no woman should take them. Women need to maintain certain amounts of fat/cholesterol for hormonal balance and optimal health. They don’t have that effect on men.
Statins are horrible for men too. Too-low cholesterol leads to low testosterone. Brain/ memory issues for both sexes as well (there might be a required black box warning about risk of cognitive impairment). Cholesterol is a critical brain nutrient. So for the pharmaceutical companies it’s a jackpot: the man on a statin now needs viagra, testosterone replacement, and maybe something for muscle pain and depression too . . . . What a complete disaster, especially when the presumed “need” for the statin is dubious to begin with.
Don’t confuse dietary cholesterol with serum cholesterol
Let us all not lose sight that at that time, the government DECIDED to step in, and essentially push a new market of food into the diet space to hundreds of millions of Americans, with NO evidence to back up the conclusions… For profit of the corporate giants who still occupy the space. Sound familiar?
This is the same tactic used for the denial of global warming/climate change. Politicians that are paid by corporations (it is called campaign contributions) to muddy the water for oil companies, do NOTHING to actually solve problems, because they aren’t bought off to fix the problem, only cloud the issue. During this siege period that never seems to end, Corporate America and the plutonomy continues selling inferior goods (food, petroleum products, pharmaceuticals) to the public. The pharmaceuticals attempt to counter the effects of the poisonous, corporate. highly processed foods our government (speaking for corporations) tell you is good to eat. This creates a nasty cycle of preying on the poor and ill-informed, which is a great indicator of the fraud of our societal institutions. It is also great for General Mills, Kraft, Nestle, Coca Cola, as well as insurance companies, healthcare professionals, and the CEO’s and shareholders of insurance stocks. All you have to do is be willing to overlook how much damage is done every day, in the name of greed, fiscal responsibility (which no major parties in America really have), and “prosperity” for some. Socialism for the rich, and crony capitalism for the rest of us.
Considering American citizens are faced daily with diminishing civil liberties, while fascism has been on the rise for decades, it is easy to see how so many people have no idea how badly they are being lied to. More people need to know this information, because if the government and corporations continue to attempt to cover up decades of lies, nothing will change, without an awakening of the public, who has been asleep since the 70’s.
This has been a bipartisan effort for decades to lie to the public, make government less transparent, while taking corporate cash to maintain the status quo, pick winners and losers in the economy, and derail anyone who attempts to stop (or even the most modest of slow-downs). Democrats and Republicans alike do NOT have your best interests in mind, only their next payday.
Let that sink in…
The cozy relationship between Corporate America and government must be broken. Corporations are more powerful than sovereign nations in many regards, and due to this fact, this relationship weakens/eradicates any real form of democracy. I don’t believe the silly notions that America is an actual democracy (I have read far too much history and declassified documents to know better), but many Americans still believe in this fairy tale. We cannot be allowed to be manipulated by the most powerful propaganda apparatus in the world (mass media), and we must elect those people who do not take corporate donations, deal with big money donors, and take no PAC money. Food, air, and water is our most valuable natural resources, and our fearless leaders have sold all of these out for profit, not sustainability. I fear we are too deeply indoctrinated as a species, and as a group of citizens, but all I can do is speak my peace, and hope the message spreads.
You hit the nail on the head on pretty much everything. Couldn’t agree more!
My gawd Chris, do you actually, sincerely believe that if people voted differently, i.e., for these mythical ‘people that do not take corporate donations’ etc., that anything would change? And that’s even if we could get the morons out of the voting pool?
If you do, I have some masks and used covid test kits to sell you.
Denise, that was funny and fascinating. Thanks.
Fantastic again! You may think your posts are too long or something, but I’m always disappointed when I finish them! Why? Because I won’t be learning anything else. I have been reading everything on low carb eating for about 5 years but you continually add to what I know.
Thanks for all of your hard work and attention to detail.
And happy holidays to you, too.
That was incredible.
I love this! I have the interest, but not the focus, or the smarts to do what you do so well. Thanks for sharing all your work with us! I look forward to your book and blog posts of 2012! Happy New Year!
Book????
Yep, please provide a book name or something!
Great post, as usual. It sure is hard to sort through old studies and compare them against (un)popular opinion. I will definitely use this post next year as a teaching tool in my Ancestral Health course.
Although 0.59 (for the 22 countries) is statistically significant, the R squared (proportion of variance accounted for) is relatively small at 0.35. Nothing that most would write home about, or make a big deal about when writing a scientific paper!
The other statistic is the eyeball test. If the data were predictive then a Norwegian w average consumption of fat who went to the effort of reducing intake by 10 or 15 % (that’s how these data are usually interpreted) would have an equal chance of increasing risk as lowering…and these are for averages within countries. Sometimes you can tell a book by it’s title “the Cult of Statistical Significance” is not a great book — simultaneously too technical and too colloquial but you can tell all from the title. What Keys gave up on is common sense (and of course science which he seems not to have understood). The original curve did suggest causality — the tight association was compelling but once that was destroyed so-so correlation meant nothing.
Perhaps there was pressure to not use his “common sense”. Funding my industry that stood to gain the most by the outcome. I definitely see the confounding issue and directly makes to idea that correlation is not causation so much more plausible in this case.
Meant to say “Funding by industry that stood to gain the most by the outcome.”
But Ancel Keys WAS using the eyeball test and common sense. That’s the principle behind cherry picking. All you have to do is compare Finland and Italy, then dive in on finding the significant dietary/lifestyle differences. You don’t need 7 nations or 22 nations to see why he invented the Med Diet. Just those two countries will do.
Japan is an obvious outlier. Remove it and the whole association looks very weak indeed. I assume (I can’t be bothered recalculating) it probably becomes non-significant (r2<0.3).
Marvelous and well thought!
The one that jumps out at me is that this is 1950 data and for much of Europe there were 6 years of societal and dietary distress in the proceeding decade. Degenerative diseases can take decades to manifest themselves. More recent data from politically stable countries is more telling since the seventies we were replacing fat with carbs and degenerative disease rates have skyrocketed.
This is the most straightforward analysis of Keyes I have seen.
Thank You
Hi Sjovall, in fact, in most western countries, most countries were replacing animal fats with vegetable fats, AND adding sugar to counter the lost flavour. This is a double whammy as polyunsaturated (vegetable) fats are pro-inflammation (many diseases now are being related to inflammation), and sugar is now being indicated as “the evil one” for causing heart disease.
The ratio of saturated fats to polyunsaturated fats has gone from 2:3 in the early 1900’s to 1:6000+
This certainly cannot be a healthy and sustainable ratio!
Nicely done, Denise!
Nicely done (as always), Denise. When are you going to get to the wheat post?
A bombshell. Thank you.
Thanks Denise.
Great blog as usual.
Ah, a new post by Denise = early Christmas present!
As always, fascinating and entertaining.
Happy holidays, and vivement le prochain texte!
Am living proof that high cholesterol does not produce heart attacks. I have inherited hypercholesterolemia, and have always had LDL levels 10X my age. Do the math. I’m now 68, walk 5 miles a day, eat things with wings, and things with fins (mercury-free, of course), eggs, cold-pressed, organic olive oil. I also abstain from wheat, corn, dairy, and soy. Have been off dairy, except for clarified butter (ghee) for 25 years and my bones are fine. Have been off wheat for almost 10 years, and my cookbook, Gluten Freedom, EveryWay Comfort Foods, has helped many of my clients to transition easily without giving up their favorite chow. The connection between the activation of inherited genetic disease markers to food intolerance’s creation of circulating cytokine proteins will be the next frontier for prevention of inflammatory aging. My ancestors were not so lucky. They died early, in their 50’s, even though they abstained from cream, butter, and eggs, following the 1950’s mantra.
Thanks for all your great work, geeky or otherwise. Saw Forks Over Knives three times, and kept arguing with the images on the screen. “Olive oil is not the culprit! Rancid, non-organic olive oil is the real villain. But I digress.
Have a great holiday and keep up the great work. We all need the light pointed in the dark corners of “known” science, and your abilities in this regard are superb.
I have a friend with familial hypercholesterolemia, and was curious… are you on statins of any sort? He’d like to get off them, but is unsure if he can manage the condition through diet alone. Thanks!
Do your friend a favor. Do a web search about the cholesterol myth and the dangers of statins. There is no “condition” requiring treatment.
No, we’re both aware/have discussed and researched the basic falsity of the “cholesterol myth”, Uffe Ravnskov, etc… but familial hypercholesterolemia, according to some sources is a unique case. Looking for others with specific experience with that.
Does low cholesterol ever produce heart attacks though? Why should I ever increase my risk of getting a heart attack by ignoring my cholesterol levels?
Does low cholesterol levels produce heart attacks though? I’m not aware of people who get heart attacks that have ideal levels of cholesterol. Why increase your risk?
As always, a fantastic job!
Thanks for the nerd-gasm Denise. I’m spent…as I’m sure you are after knocking this epic out, and I believe it is you who is the sock rocker in this instance. All the best for 2012.
Amazing post. Thank you for the excellent analysis.
Thank you again Denise for you erudite analysis.
Brian
Kudos.
Thanks, for this article and everything else you shared with us.
dude stop writing blog posts like this and publish a book that we can all buy, for money.
Shut up!
I agree super hans, except that I am old-fashioned (being an old guy) and Denise would be, in my parlance, “dudette.” Not politically correct perhaps, but identifies the gender.
The 1st part of this article seems a bit contradictory, bashing those that say Keys cherry-picked, when in fact he did. And as Gary Taubes points out, if one were to pick another 7 countries, the inverse could be said, fair is fair right.
And while you can still see a trend with 22 countries, there are still several countries with a higher fat consumption and lower HD rates than coutnries with lower fat fat consumption.
The rest of the article was nicely done however.
Ancel Keys only needed the best and worst countries to come up with the Med Diet, and it served him well personally. Under what circumstances would anyone eat and live Finnish when they could eat and live Italian? By living and traveling in Europe, Ancel experienced it all in a way that the dusty old graphs don’t convey.
Once again Gary Taubes proves that he doesn’t understand science. He writes about it, sells books about it, but it’s not his profession.
There was also one study Keys did with some others. They intentionally didn’t publish it and, instead, buried it. Many years later, someone asked one of the researchers why they didn’t publish it. He basically said because the results didn’t confirm the conclusion they wanted to find. Talk about cherry picking!
I must add to the kudos and thank yous. You saved me from going completely vegan, which would have killed me through causation of an indirect correlation to my wife. I love the way you infuse humor in your writing and I suspect it may be one of the reasons we all read your blogs to the bitter end. It’s time (if you haven’t already) to write that book debunking modern dietary myths and get your rosey red cheeks on The Daily Show and Colbert Repor…seriously. Merry Xmas, happy new year and I can’t wait for the wheat tome.
As always, a fantastic read and very informative. I always enjoy your posts! Happy New Year to you as well…look forward to your posts in 2012.
Thank you very much for this post!
Wonderful! I just love how you take us beneath the surface of our “sacred cows” — and with humor! Happy whatever-holidays-you-celebrate!
(Chris Sturdy, an R-squared of .35 is huge. 35% of the variance accounted for is seldom seen in health and nutrition research. What that means or doesn’t mean is a separate question.)
I suppose my own research bias crept in with the interpretation of .35…and I agree it is a separate issue.
Excellent article, both informative and entertaining.
What a load of vegetarian slanted nonsense,
FANTASTIC!
Valuable analysis which should be published in a high rank journal so as to get many more researchers’ eyes on it! Thanks so much for the incrediblyimportant work you are doing!
Awesome post. It’s good to be informed about this as most people just dismiss the seven countries study armed only with the knowledge that keys “cherry picked” his data. Thanks for setting the record straight, as usual. Any chance you can just drop your current career path and write a monthly research review?
I know you already bolded this Denise, but maybe you should super-bold it and put a double underline in there too…
“the amount of fat and protein available for consumption is an index of a country’s development, industrially, nutritionally, medically, and no doubt in other respects as well”
Highly significant correlation coefficients could just mean very strong correlation between getting heart disease and being rich.
Now when are you going to debunk Kitava and Inuit? (not that they are debunk-able, but this Keys piece was fun to read). Also, is Ancel Keys really the great-grandfather of Alicia Keys, or is that just an unfounded rumor as well???
… everything is debunk-able ad infinitum…
Happy Holidays D.
Best line: “This doesn’t prove that animal foods make you immortal or that plant foods will slit your throat in the middle of the night”
Denise, you are funny and smart and I like you, but I’m not going to read this crap because it is completely meaningless. Saturated fat DOES contribute to cardiovascular disease, but only in certain contexts. Unless we have data that controls for context we are seriously at risk of false positives. Even if we have extremely good data showing that there is basically no way that an association is explained by anything other than causation, we still don’t have -necessary- causation. There’s the obvious point, that saturated fat is associated with affluence which is associated with processed crap and stress, possibly pollution at the time. But then there is also the very important biochemistry. Saturated fat does impair endothelial function, but only in the context of an omega-3 deficiency http://www.nrcresearchpress.com/doi/abs/10.1139/H10-020?url_ver=Z39.88-2003&rfr_id=ori:rid:crossref.org&rfr_dat=cr_pub%3dpubmed
The informed and intelligent conclusion from clinical nutritionist Byron Richards is that DHA helps saturated fat function properly in the body http://www.wellnessresources.com/health/articles/dha_helps_saturated_fat_function_properly_in_your_body/
If you want to talk red meat we can do that, if you want to talk alcohol or sugar, we can do that too, if you want to talk any number of things that people think is unhealthy, we can do that too, and we’re always going to find mitigating factors. Epidemiology is the conversation starter.
The concept of the mitigating factor has set epidemiology back another 50 years in my mind. Until they identify, quantify, and incorporate mitigating factors into epidemiology, it isn’t worth much to me.
Okay sorry, maybe “not going to read this crap” is a bit harsh. I’ll probably read it just for the laughs when my cortisol levels are lower. But damnit, I hate epidemiology like I hate the wide array of logical fallacies that are possible.
Stabby, I don’t think we’ve ever really been fans of each other, but I get what you’re saying here.
Hey Grok! We’re just into different things, if I took up an interest in endurance running I might check out your stuff more. I’m not against fruit or carbs, and I think that low carb and very high protein can be big mistakes for a lot of people, I’m just more focused on preventing disease, I like my exercise to be shorter, mostly with weights and light activity rather than endurance.
I’m glad that you agree that -some- people spend way too much time looking at epidemiology, it’s annoying and what’s worse awesome people like Denise get sucked into addressing it and giving it so much credence.
Enough said 🙂
Stabby, you trouble-maker! Let me just say…
1. Epidemiology is fun.
2. One possible takeaway from Denise’s post is that this stuff is indeed sorta meaningless because of how quickly interpretations change when you change the outcome definition, number of data points, etc.
3. Stabbing is highly correlated with heart-related mortality.
Yeah it is good, and I have learned stuff from her posts, but should we really be arguing over whether or not X food is associated with Y way to die in Ancel Keys of T. Colin. Campbell’s studies? I want to see Denise make big and important points while incorporating epidemiology, but I make a point of not giving credence to the grounds for a hypothesis, especially when it has already been tested and failed to be demonstrated. It is fun, and we can learn some things from it, but it gets waaay too much attention. It is good that we don’t keep saying that there was nothing at all to Keys’ study, but I don’t say much about it anyway. I say “well that’s a statistical association, but here are ones where there was none, so maybe we should just go look at the clinical evidence.”
And I am glad we agree on that last point. But it is inversely correlated with iron overload, don’t forget it!
Totally agree with 3. W
If saturated fat causes problems with the endothelium in the presence of omega-3 deficiency, the obvious answer here is that it’s the omega-3 deficiency causing the endothelium problems. By the way, saturated fat preserves omega-3 in the body, so you don’t need to eat as much of it.
Low-carbers like to say that dietary fat only makes you fat in the presence of carbohydrate. Again, cause and effect are confused. It’s the carbohydrate, though the mechanism of insulin-production triggering, causing the fat storage. The fat’s just there. It’s not doing anything by itself.
Right right, I was insinuating that it isn’t a problem in certain contexts. And as for low carbers, neither of those is true, but both of them are worse than each alone in the context of extreme inflammation and the metabolic syndrome, their metabolism is bad and it does damage to the body, but it’s neither of their fault or even the combination, it is the inflammation and deficiencies.
I like your comment. A sentence like this:
“There’s the obvious point, that saturated fat is associated with affluence which is associated with processed crap and stress, possibly pollution at the time” is bound to attract my attention. I was thinking about stress and the existence of so many other factors while reading Denise’s piece which I liked too, but you’re right.
It seems to me unlikely that people in the developed world have a dramatically higher level of stress than people in earlier times. Not too long ago, one could easily have ones friends and relatives dying suddenly at any moment and at a high rate (e.g. of infectious disease), which strikes me as a major stressor.
I also read somewhere (dunno how true) that a major cause of death of prehistoric people was murder, which strikes me as a stressful way to live too.
stress is not only emotional – i think equally as important are the huge amount of environmental stresses we now have (that our ancestors did not) regarding industrial toxins, ag toxins, air pollution etc etc–
those count as much or perhaps even more than the fear of your sister getting chomped by a saber tooth – and even that was de rigueur in those days so such an event was not necessarily so dramatic (stressful) either–
Well, why don’t you look at the date of Keys’s graph and check what “wonderful” experience some people of this generation went through? I actually had specific “stressful” circumstances in “wonderful” “civilized” European developed countries in the first half of the 20th century.
In my comment (11:13:40) I was responding to Beth Kirby’s comment (00:34:43) which starts with “It seems …”
People, this blog’s comment section should be redesigned. All these IT admirers could actually make a real contribution instead of promoting the latest food fad, such as “eat animals, particularly their fat only.”
Bravo Stabby!….thanks for rapping that one up. I couldn’t have said it better, nor would I want to.
You need to study the latest research…saturated animal fat does not lead or contribute to heart disease or blockage or any heart problems.
The crooked charts are setting off my OCD and making it hard to enjoy an otherwise FANTASTIC POST!!!
If you want me to straighten them and color correct them in Photoshop, send me an email, or I’ll give you an FTP address to download them from.
Straight _], sharp, not all c/r\o/o\k/e\d/ and washed out.
Whaddya say?
Thanks,
Ben Fury
… i think the crooked was intentional Ben….
Nah, just sloppy copying.
Can’t stand it. I don’t have any other OCD issues, but that one really puts my teeth on edge.
When I get older crooked copied papers, I just have to rip the pages, straighten them in Photoshop and re-PDF them. Then I can read them in peace. LOL!
ahh, aaahhhh, (speechless…)
bravo Denise!
will you do your take on the UFO phenomenon someday soon? 😉
… and we love you too kiddo-
happy holidays!
Thanks! I have always thought the problem with the Keys data is not his analysis, but the way the authorities ran with it. His analysis was actually quite good for the time (no computers!). The problem is that others used it to set rigid nutritional policy instead of using the data as a springboard for further research. We are still living today with the bad results of such rigidity.
Another unfortunate practice has been quite prevalent until recently, that of taking data from a small subset of men, extrapolating it to everyone and then chastising others (mostly women) when the recommendations do not work as predicted.
Perhaps the biggest problem with such studies, and a problem that is still carried up to this very day, is the practice of substituting an analysis of group means for an analysis of individual people. If Keys had the data and the means to do analysis based on individuals, I am sure he would have. To put it bluntly, correlations based on country or group means and rates are mostly a crock.
http://exceptionallybrash.blogspot.com/2011/03/ecological-correlation-its-not-easy.html
Agreed. The farmers switched from pigs and beef to soybeans and corn. Either way people gotta eat it, and it’s up to the guvment to make ’em.
All I know is that Dana on vegetable oils is crazy and moody and b?!chy to an unbelievable degree, especially when lots of grain carbs are added on, while Dana on animal fats and saturated fats generally is a lot more pleasant to be around and a lot more in control of her own mental faculties.
And no, that’s not placebo effect. It was only after a year or two of having introduced butter and other saturated fats back into my diet that I even came to this realization. I also found I had better response to the carbs I did eat because the fat was blunting it all.
Also, animal fats come with their own complement of fat-soluble vitamins that the human body desperately needs. It is shaping up to look as if humans don’t convert plant precursors to the fat-soluble vitamins very efficiently, when at all. This is certainly true for A and K and, of course, D doesn’t show up in plants at all, appearing only in fungus and then only sometimes and THEN as ergocalciferol, which we *also* have a lot of trouble with.
I see no reason to drop my animal-food or saturated-fat intake just because of a few charts. I’m at risk of cardiovascular events *anyway*, primarily stroke, because I am a migraineur. I think I will enjoy my butter and cream and beef fat and bacon and coconut oil while I can. And I will be saner, and my periods will be easier to tolerate, and my skin will look nicer (no small consideration with me, I have keratosis pilaris), and so on and so on.
Oh! And bones! I like my bones too. Fat + mineral intake + fat-soluble vitamin intake = stronger bones.
Dana,
The chances of you being a Blood Type O are pretty good. And your symptoms may very well be activated by an intolerance to wheat, rye, and barley which can often set off migraines, as well as activating 147 other diseases of body and brain for those who are genetically programmed. There are 8 known genes, so far, and only 2 of them are pure celiac. The remaining 6 are intolerance genes, which activate the elevation of cortisol in the blood and circulate cytokines which set of the epigenetic markers that we each carry and which vary from person to person. Lutein supplements will reduce the aura and allow the constriction of the vessels to abate. But the real cure may be to get off gluten and give the gut lining the 3 months it needs to repair itself.
Elizabeth, are regular headaches also a symptom of gluten intolerance?
Anna,
Most headaches are the brain’s way of notifying the owner of an existing compromised oxygen delivery system via red blood cells that move through the vascular network of arteries, veins and capillaries. Gluten inflammation can be a possible cause.
Oxygen delivery can be compromised by: constriction of vessels from circulating cortisol; blood clots that obstruct the network, especially the capillaries, where size matters. Sinus mucus, that can put pressure on nerves in the head. Fluid in the inner ear compromising balance. Usually mucus membranes are more influenced by the skim in dairy, than the gluten in wheat, but it might be either.
don’t forget magnesium deficiency contributing to all kinds of headaches (and even fibromayalgia).
just dump the gluten Anna – headache or no – a good summary:
http://evolvify.com/the-case-against-gluten-medical-journal-references/
Elizabeth do you have a blog?
Sue,
I do not have one at this time, but am in the process of getting one up in 2012.
I’m interested in what you like re: my postings?
I’m interested in your info as well; specifically, the link to migraines, sinus problems and gluten intolerance.
Excellent work, Denise. Can’t wait for the disection of the wheat belly.
Juergen
Is there any study out there that you can not skewer? I’m glad you weren’t my 10th grade science teacher… or maybe I’m not – mine was a real uggo.
Recommended reading: http://nisla05.niss.org/talks/Young_Safety_June_2008.pdf
Also here — http://www.gwern.net/DNB%20FAQ#fn50 — is a rather interesting overview.
I pretty much experience a total nerdgasm every time I see a post from “Raw Food SOS” in my reader. That is all.
Thank you so much for this post & all of them. Yay for Denise!
Very well done, Denise! Another fine, objective critique. Please keep up the integrity.
Beautifully done, Denise. So the takeaway is… Keys’s study is largely irrelevant but not for the reasons we believed?
So, it seems that what the data imply is that there is a correlation between having more fatty food and better data collection.
Beth
Or it means vegans don’t live long enough to develop heart problems.
Ha.
Someone help me!
So, the data do correlate; Keyes DID find a positive correlation between saturated fat and heart disease, but since it’s just a correlation, we can all just relax (as long as we take our fish oil)?
Are we asking for trouble by eating red meat five or ten times a week, or do we have nothing to fear (forgive the black and white) because all-cause death is lower for meat eatin’ countries? Wouldn’t the correlation with HD still be there after correcting for lower all-cause death, because lower all-cause is likely due to better medical care, etc.? Or do we need to just throw out the entire study because the data are so prone to confounding factors they’re essentially useless?
I feel like we’re retreating behind ‘correlation doesn’t equal causation’ here, when there appears to be data linking sat fat and HD in Keyes’ work. But I’m notoriously slow…am I missing a huge, honkin’ point?
Oh – and Happy Holidays, Denise. I heart your blog and your work and of course, by extension, you. 🙂 Thanks for the big plate of ‘food for thought’ to chew on over holiday!
“I feel like we’re retreating behind ‘correlation doesn’t equal causation’ here, when there appears to be data linking sat fat and HD in Keyes’ work. But I’m notoriously slow…am I missing a huge, honkin’ point?”
The upshot is richer people can afford to eat more meat and also better health data collection. We may be looking at the effects of better measurement, not an actual increase or correlation of heart disease, because it’s so tough to accurately categorize the health status across countries with massively different standards of health data collection and categorization.
But if you’re concerned, eat more salmon. 🙂 Definitely stop eating sugar and white flour. That should take care of the majority of your issues right there! 🙂
Thanks HTB. 🙂
My own take on it is that don’t want to exaggerate the principle. Correlation does implyi causation — in some sense, that’s all there is. You have to have a reasonable hypothesis which you test with a correlation. As Einstein put it: your theory determines what you measure. The hypothesis may have been ok and the original data supported causation because the correlation was strong as Keys presented it. When the correlation was shown to be weak by Y&H, the theory was no longer supported. Now, stronger or relations would be needed but the 7-country study wasn’t like that — one limitation on my post on Mediterranean diet http://rdfeinman.wordpress.com. What you do in science is you try to trash your own theory. You try to put it to the test. Showing consistency is weak. Yes, we throw out the whole study. Maybe sat fat is in loved but this is no good. By analogy, w court of law, you cannot be found innocent, only not guilty. Curren perspective: sat fat should never have been indicted at least as sole perp.
I wish it was as simple and as straight forward as you put it prof. Richard. The reality is often quite different. Once we have -epidemiologically or otherwise- established concurrence, we try to prove causation through studies where we try to control or account for as many of the possible confounders as we can. Then we shout from the roof tops, or even sneakier we publish the results but precede the results with an abstract that may or may not represent exactly what we found.
I do not agree at all that correlation implies causation. Correlation implies an association. We always seem to want to separate variables into the drivers and the passengers, but in this type of study, all the things researchers are caring about may just be along for the ride with a giant, lurking, driving variable that we just don’t understand yet.
A couple of comments.
1. First, I am not “Richard.”
2. I did not mean, of course, that any association implies causality but rather that association is really what you do in science. It is the strength of the association and the underlying theory that led you to measure the association in the first place. I would say that these absolute statements about science come from medical literature and are unknown to physical scientists. There is no gold standard, that is, one kind of experiment for everything. You have a hypothesis when you start to measure associations.
3. Anyway, Denise did a great thing bringing out Y&H which most of us only knew second hand. Y&H, however, did effectively destroy the 6-country study and Keys knew it and that’s why he did the 7-country study. If you look at the full curve from the 6-country study, you see that the highest fat intake had a wide scatter of points. US had 3X the CVD incidence as Norway which would not make any sense if the independent variable were fat intake. The association, that is, the trend is held up by a couple of points at the low end. As Denise showed, Y&H said you could make an association with all kinds of things and that is the problem with this correlation studies. Take any of the Nurses health studies associating X with Y and you are likely to find in the paper a good association of Z with Y.
4. When Keys did the 7-country study, he found similar effects. The two countries with the highest fat intake had the lowest CVD (Crete) and the highest CVD (Finland) and he assumed (as in the 6 country study) that that could not mean that this was random error and he decided that it was the type of fat, saturated (Finland) or unsaturated (Crete) which gave rise to the Mediterranean diet. Of course, when diet-CVD did not correlate in other parts of Finland that did not bother Keys.
5. Keys paper is of historical value. It led us down the primrose path of scientific error. I believe it is still cited by the American Dietetic Society which made me think of BF Skinner’s critique of psychoanalysis. He pointed out they were still quoting Freud from fifty years before. If you haven’t improved on fifty year old studies, something is wrong.
Anyway, that’s my take on it and, again, I am not “Richard.”
RDF
Professor Feinman if a person does not have enough powers of discrimination to distinguish between your comments and the one from the troll called Richard, he or she will have to live with him/herself and one can only pity the intellectual mediocrity and squalor of such a life. Respectfully submitted. J.
Thanks. My first name is Richard, that’s all.
I wish people would not use acronyms. There is a very long list of acronyms for every entry.
Well said! But, I believe that the paper is significant mostly as an example of policy run amok, not so much the bad statistics. The funny thing I guess, if it can be considered funny, is that the ADA, while adamant that folks use “good” research studies, declines to do so themselves. Their recommendations are built on a pile of sand, and would have been gone by now if not for the buttressing by thousands of “registered” dietitian foot-soldiers and their handlers.
“Are we asking for trouble by eating red meat five or ten times a week, or do we have nothing to fear (forgive the black and white) because all-cause death is lower for meat eatin’ countries”
You’re not the only one who’s wondering. But according to our “gentlemen” here we are not supposed to wonder. March, march, march in nice rows and chant “Meat and fat, meat and fat, meat and fat.”
I am surprised that nobody’s ordered you to behave and questioned your intelligence. Ah, maybe because, such treatment is reserve for those whose English isn’t the first or second.
Many researchers get sidelined by “correcting for other factors”, just another more refined way to make a silk purse out of a sows ear. The information you seek just may not be available in the data. It is my opinion that epidemiology studies are essentially useless other than perhaps pointing some ways to further study. Unfortunately, there is this trend among some major research centers to collect a huge amount of data, mine it and then crank out tons of papers, and then train us to believe that there is some sort of real research behind it.
Well, consider that Keys did act on his discovery and invented the Med Diet, ate that way and moved from Minnesota to Italy to live it out. It served him well for 100 years. You have to ask yourself whether eating red meat five or ten times a week is going to get the same result for you.
Keys’ own data showed the strongest correlation was between sugar and heart disease. So, all he had to do was look at his own data and he would’ve known his conclusion was wrong.
What’s always bothered me about all these studies is the massive effect of WWII and the Great Depression. People at a certain way, and then came WWI in Europe – which forever changed the way folks ate. War rationing parts of Europe continued for 5 or more years after WWI. So much food such as meat, coffee, sugar and butter were artificially restricted by the war. Then came the depression, where meat, sugar, tobacco, and butter disappeared again because they were unaffordable for many people. Then came WWII, with more intense rationing. WWII Rationing continued in parts of Europe until 1952 and in Japan for longer. One of the first things to return was apparently tobacco. I just don’t see how you can make judgements about long-term dietary trends with such intense factors in place. Are we sure we’re not just looking at what happens when folks deprived of smoking are suddenly able to smoke like chimneys again for 5 years or more?
This is a extremely interesting and thought-provoking point of view IMO. The implications are numerous. Gives me a headache.
It’s more an more tempting to me to start considering all epidemiology as being as good as using ouija boards or crystal balls. The usual standards just feel far too low.
Still, there ARE obviously good and insightful minds at work in the field, so I choose to keep an open mind.
It seems to me that epidemiology is useful for forming hypotheses. The problem is that people then take them as meaning what they imagine them to mean.
I certainly agree, that’s exactly what I generally say epidemiology *should* be used for (forming hypotheses) and nothing else. The problem is that it is so easily twisted, and that it’s so difficult to explain to the average Joe why the epidemiologic studies that some bad scientists wield as proof, are nothing but.
Forgive me if some of my comments happen to sound strange, I’m extremely tired. I need my bed. 🙂 Time to stop posting.
Your comment sounds very reasonable to me. 🙂
Thanks 🙂
…and, you are just talking about mainly dietary factors. Most of the diet studies do not include other factors, like pollution, cell-phones, plastics, pesticides, on and on. Of course you would expect nutrition researchers to look for a nutritional answer, but what if the major answers (and questions) are somewhere else?
over 2000 nuclear bombs have been exploded all over planet Earth since 1945: on the ocean, in the ocean, on land, underground, and at every level of the atmosphere.
it’s not just about radiation at the point of explosion, but moreso the radioactive particles, which we and the animals we eat can inhale and ingest. What has that done re: disease rates? (and this is in addition to accidents at reactors, of course)
but this is never mentioned in mainstream analyses of scientific studies.
The particles from all those nuclear explosions are not a problem. The earths surface to a depth of 6 feet has about 50 pounds of uranium per acre.
The half life of uranium is very long, more than 4 billion years; not very radioactive.
The problem is when uranium decays to radon which has a half life of less than 4 days meaning it is very radioactive. Radon is responsible for more than 20,000 lung cancers a year in the US.
How you can compare naturally occurring ground radiation to artificially created atmospheric atomic radiation?
What’s your point? Natural radiation causes a large number of deaths where man made radiation is very controlled.
I would think there is one other factor “embedded” in high-fat countries being higher-development: it means that everything else they are eating that is not animal fat, may be more prone to being problematic for health (as well as other issues of stress, environmental toxins, etc.). In short, that we could say that “better developed” countries mostly have more heart disease for all the reasons you list, but also for probably 400 reasons you don’t, which are separate from the issue of fat. I know you know that — as you pointed out, there’s just way too many compounding factors here.
Gotta love a girl willing to be clear about both sides. 🙂
that was a brilliant analysis, thank-you
This was epic Denise, great job! Have a nice holiday
Denise, you are so brillant that when you make me look like a fool (I am among those who tend to spread the romantic version of the debunking of Keys’ seven studies story), you make me actually.. enjoy it! C’est fort. Très fort.
This post was about as enthralling as a novel, with this treasure-hunting feeling (showing those papers by Yerushalmy and Hilleboe felt a little like showing pieces of the treasure map…) which is exciting and very entertaining. I enjoyed myself so much that didn’t even realise that it was actually informative (kidding of course).
I am baffled by your ability to pull off such a difficult mix of humour and science. It is quite unique, and extremely valuable in our times.
Je dirais tout ça mieux en français of course, I wish english was my mother language so to write a more poetic song of praise to you.
Summary: thanks. 🙂
Thank god you’re not any better in English my dear Wizzu, you could embarrass the lady. The fact is of course, we are often surrounded by so much mediocrity and self serving comments that a decently designed analysis and carefully balanced statements come across as something otherworldly, which of course does not take away from the fact that Denise does a great job. Still for me the critique of Campbell’s China Study is in a different category and will be something to refer to for some time to come.
This here is only the beginning of a serious discussion that is sure to start and where the focus most likely will be on the confounders. What caused what and under what conditions and to what extent and what were the possible ameliorating factors
Afterburner. I have a feeling wheat and grains in general could be in for a rough ride.
Very nice…laughed and learned.
It’s posts like this that demonstrate why you are so, so valuable to the whole paleo/primal/whaddeva conversation. Fantastic work.
Wow, Denise! Your writing style is a craft of genius. You’re like a female version of CMast, er something. But seriously I enjoyed this piece. Plus… word on the street (I don’t really know which street) is that you were a hit at the AHS 2012. A fair amount of folk in the Paleo world have a crush on you. It’s super fantastic to have you in this community of people who continue to diligently seek the real truth(s) about our food culture and health and wellness in today’s world. A huge thanks to you for your contirbutions.
A crush on Minger? Pas possible.
Oopsie. I must have been casting a vision for your future, Denise. You “were” a hit at AHS 2011. Derrr.
What’s the conclusion/abstract/TL;DR? You know, for those who don’t care or have time for the details.
Conclusion, you’re a slacker.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: The NY Times needs to can frauds Jane Brody and Mark Bittman and BEG you to be their nutrition writer.
Nonsense. This rag deserves its frauds. Denise is destined for something better.
Excellent Denise, very interesting stuff.
-Bill
Denise, you are the best. You write the most brilliant, interesting, scientific and nerdy post about topics, I never imagined to be anything but dry. Maybe science makes them deliberately boring, so we don’t pay to much attention and question the data. Please keep up the good work in the new year.
You write so engagingly, even epidemiology is swallowable.
“This is typically because of insufficient diagnostic methods (especially for low-income countries”
I’ll respond with an anecdote (sadly factual). Two decades ago, a 70 year old woman started to show signs of dementia. She was brought to a professor in a premier hospital in New York. The professor wasn’t sure and ordered MRI. After MRI she anounced: “You see there are changes here and here. I think she has mini-strokes.” Several weeks later, a friend of her daughter suggested: “Give a call to a friend of mine (educated in a low-income country, passed all examinations, now practicing medicine here). After a brief exchange (questions – answers), the doctor said the following “You know that I can’t diagnose over the phone without seeing the patient, but I am pretty sure that your mother has Alzheimer’s.” Guess who was right. This foreign born doctor also said something of interest: “Sadly American doctors rely to much on tests, without thinking. Among other things, they miss the fact, that there are typical aging changes, but the healthy adults are not tested.”
anna,
I replied to your headache query just now and it is below your question above.
Thank you, Elizabeth.
The bigger question is what can or should be done to treat the patient. If mini-strokes and Alzheimer’s both are treated by trying to keep the person from walking in front of a bus, it doesn’t matter too much which it is. OTOH, the MRI’s are expensive …
“OTOH, the MRI’s are expensive.” Beth, I think you missed my point. I actually think that in this case there was no need for any high-tech – the symptoms were obvious.” I didn’t suggest MRI testing of all seniors, but only recommended understanding of test results.
What I meant is, if the treatment isn’t different in either case, the diagnosis doesn’t matter. Doing an expensive test doesn’t help provide better care.
The situation isn’t that simple, because when the diagnosis adds up to “your mother is sick and is going to die” people (understandably) tend to grasp at straws. We like to think that our high tech can cure illness. Sometimes it can, sometimes not, but people like to feel that they have done all they can.
Diane, thanks for doing the legwork that 99% of us our unwilling to do. As always, you are a gem.
I suspected that something like your findings might be the case and I know how thorough you are, so I’m going to assume you did your homework and continue to avoid reading Keys’ original research, as I’m a lazy-assed bastard with zero interest in Keys’ recommended low-fat diet. 😉
Who’s Diane?
Oopsy, see, I am a lazy-assed bastard and also muddle-headed. Sorry, Denise. Thanks for the correction, Anna. I’m in your debt.
In my defense, I happen to know a Diane Minger, but I know that’s a lame excuse, sorry.
The truth is seldom as simple as we would like it to be 🙂
Nice to see some objective digging into the graveyards of the past. BTW, Denise was a big hit at the Wise Traditions 2011 conference in November as well. She was definitely my favorite speaker as far as audience attention and entertainment value. The presentation quality was very good too, right up there with Paul Jaminet and Chris Masterjohn, whose presentations were also very popular.
Happy holidays Denise and hope you give us a great book before too long 🙂
What’s everyone make of this? Saturated fats and clotting
“Saturated fats can also cause blood platelets to stick together and form blood clots that can cause a heart attack or stroke.”
Transcend, Ray Kurzweil and Terry Grossman MD http://is.gd/tRLUHT
–
Blood vessels and saturated fats
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WH4qJ-FoVZ0&feature=autoplay&list=PLEB83EF5814779CC7&index=32&playnext=2&t=8m39s General UC Berkeley Nutrition lecture
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Dr Oz interviewing Gary Taubes @5m (says more likely to clot) and prevent vasodilating (constrictive)
http://www.doctoroz.com/videos/man-who-thinks-everything-dr-oz-says-wrong-pt-2
–
Gary Taubes GCBC book:
In preventive medicine, benefits without risks are nonexistent. Any diet or lifestyle intervention can have harmful
effects. Changing the composition of the fats we eat could have profound physiological effects throughout the body.
Our brains, for instance, are 70 percent fat, mostly in the form of a substance known as myelin that insulates nerve
cells and, for that matter, all nerve endings in the body. Fat is the primary component of all cell membranes. Changing
the proportion of saturated to unsaturated fats in the diet, as proponents of Keys’s hypothesis recommended, might
well change the composition of the fats in the cell membranes. This could alter the permeability of cell membranes,
which determines how easily they transport, among other things, blood sugar, proteins, hormones, bacteria, viruses,
and tumor-causing agents into and out of the cell. The relative saturation of these membrane fats could affect the aging
of cells and the likelihood that blood cells will clot in vessels and cause heart attacks.’
Denise Minger never replied
I’ve never understood this argument. Low fat eaters have higher amounts of saturated fat in the blood than low carb eaters. If saturated fat is truly the problem, carbs should be the first to go.
What about low carb plant based diet beats animal / Atkins based one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iojFtL4jMao&feature=BFa&list=PL53AA35449C7DD652&lf=plpp_video#t=4m59s
I have to say, I watched a few minutes of that video, and couldn’t stop myself from thinking, “this guy is imitating Bill Maher”!
Other than that, the information is not applicable across the board. All high fat diets are not the same. The type of saturated fat is important. Incidentally, my sister was on the Atkins diet a few years ago and all her blood markers improved. Plus, her blood pressure went back to normal and she did lose a bunch of weight. I am not advocating the Atkins diet, but had to point out how ridiculous it is to base an opinion on one example.
Heidi you’re right, all fat is not the same and this is a cardinal mistake made by researchers it seems, that is not realizing this. It seems baffling to me. While running errands a couple days ago I was listening to a local radio program discussing some new research on obesity. They were interviewing the lead researcher of a paper on obesity induced in rodents. What they found was an alteration in the brain of the mice which regulates fatty metabolism (in a nutshell). They kept talking about ‘high fat diets’ do this and that. I was really irked because I know that all fats aren’t the same. I also happen to know that ‘high fat’ rodent chow (thanks to Chris Masterjohn) is actually a lot higher in omega-6 fatty acids than previously thought, and they’re also quite high in carbohydrates.
http://blog.cholesterol-and-health.com/2011/11/this-just-in-infamous-lard-based-high.html
there was no clarification about the type of fat, but ‘saturated fat’ became demonized a couple of times, as if it’s a single molecular entity. There was no breakdown of anything, what amount of linoleic acid, etc. they fed the rats. They DID talk about inflammation seeming to cause the problems in the brains which gave me a really good clue that they were feeding these mice lots of linoleic (omega-6) fats.
Good grief.
Also, people aren’t rats. Rats get fat on high fat diets, but people don’t unless the diets are also high calorie relative to the metabolic needs.
More precisely, when rats are fed high fat diets, they start to overeat, where normal weight people on high fat diets (but low in carbs/sugar) don’t spontaneously overeat.
It’s not actually that simple, of course, because it seems that obese people are damaged in some way that induces high calorie intake which is not necessarily reversed by removing sugar or whatever is the trigger. It also isn’t obvious what the trigger(s) is/are, but sat fat is not a likely candidate.
Beth
Heidi G if that was my sister I would be recommending the Atkins diet!!
http://rawfoodsos.com/2010/09/08/brand-spankin-new-study-are-low-carb-meat-eaters-in-trouble/
Looks like Denise has done a good look at this. Chris Masterjohn also has a good critique.
http://blog.cholesterol-and-health.com/2010/09/new-study-shows-that-lying-about-your.html
I too am curious to hear her reply, but as it doesn’t fit into her preconceived theory, I’m sure she is afraid to touch it.
I think the idea that it’s all just classification is questionable. In particular, Pauling’s theory on vitamin C and atherosclerosis would predict that a high starch diet would cause noncoronary deaths due to weakening of blood vessel walls, while a high fat diet should reduce those deaths due to higher rates of fat deposition on those walls, which would likely also result in higher heart disease deaths. In addition, glucose displacing vitamin C in white blood cells would be predicted to increase deaths from infectious diseases.
We don’t have proof that there’s a correlation between percentage of dietary fat – or perhaps dietary saturated fat – and percentage of deaths from heart disease, but we shouldn’t consider it dosproven either.
I just love me some Minger truth. 🙂
xo
deb
Very good. Correlation is also not a rutabaga.
I often find myself coming back to Weston A Price and his findings. For instance in Europe he noted the difference in the quality of milk from the isolated Swiss alps region compared to the ‘modernized’ regions. We know that feeding ruminants and chickens ‘feed’ that is high in corn and soy changes the fatty acid profile of these animals, skewing them highly towards omega-6 composition. I have to wonder if this data somehow inadvertently shows this negative effect modernized animal husbandry practices have on humans downstream. After all there is this correlation with vegetable oils and disease, has the data made the mistake of calling animal fat ‘saturated’ merely because it comes from animals (after all we know a lot of animal fat is also mono-unsaturated) when it may be were just looking at a lot of excess omega 6 consumption?
mrchristophersea,
This is an excellent hypothesis and one I share. Your question is well worth posing. The 20th century’s increasing use of GMO soy, cotton, and corn, either upstream, directly off the cob, or downstream, in the animals we feed on, correlates with the rise of diabesity, among other diseases. If we are lucky enough, to be among those able to effectively digest animal protein, then obtaining a source with lower Omega 6’s is worth pursuing. Joel Saladin, of Polyface farm in Swope, VA, is Michael Pollan’s go-to farmer on the subject of healthy animal husbandry, and where I’m lucky enough to purchase my turkey, chicken, and eggs at a monthly drop spot. I visited the family farm on a tour narrated by Joel, and observed firsthand the ingenious techniques he espouses. The extra dollars I spend on healthier meats, vegetables, and neutraceuticals are offset by my lower healthcare costs. I end up ahead of the curve, both financially and healthwise. Among others, I also intake Omega 3 Norwegian Salmon Oil gelcaps daily, to keep my arteries clear and my brain operating at peak efficiency. I’m outliving my ancesters and am productive and healthy. This allows me to pass on the knowledge to others in my coaching practice, and help them to find their own best practices.
Elizabeth, do you eat grains and legumes?
I’ve become kind of fascinated by this aspect of the fat issue, how feeding practices have altered the fatty acid profile of animal foods. I quit making bone broths from chickens, even ‘organic’ chickens from my local market, because they’re ‘vegetarian fed’ (meaning soy, corn, etc.). I know this affects the fats in the broth which I’m not thrilled with. So I’ve switched to making beef bone broths from a new brands of 100% grass fed beef the market now caries. What I noticed was the fat that accumulates at the top of the broth once I’ve let it cool over night in the fridge is a hard layer of fat (perhaps you could call it tallow?). Even if I take it out and let it sit and warm somewhat it stays relatively hard, like coconut oil. I never had this with the chicken broths, it was mushy at its hardest quickly liquid if let warm just a bit. I had this sneaking suspicion it was because it was composed of both mono- and likely a lot of polyunsaturated oils as a result of the ‘vegetarian’ diet. Granted I haven’t found a purely pastured chicken yet to compare broth wise with (which I really want to do) but for now I’m switching over entirely to beef broths. I am lucky enough to have access to several sources of (mostly) pastured chicken eggs, the quality being demonstrably better than regular eggs.
I guess my point is that I have to wonder if this is something also contributing to the omega-6 imbalance problem that’s such a part of the SAD diet today. Ornish, Campbell, Esselstyn, McDougall, etc., may be inadvertently preventing their heart patients from yet another source of damaging omega 6s by not allowing them to eat commercially produced meats (and then just claiming it’s ‘saturated’ fat avoidance that’s doing the trick). I’m just speculating here of course.
It also really obscures the the notion that you can even say ‘animal fat’ and ‘saturated fat’ nowadays interchangeably (which is so common, especially from the vegan folks extolling how bad they are, etc.).
Just as a side note also, I don’t take fish oil supplements. My sense is that I’m getting enough EFA’s from pastured eggs, raw grass fed milk, and dairy to satisfy my needs. I would need to find the exact quote, but I’m pretty sure I read on Chris Masterjohn’s blog that this is the case when eating high quality pastured products. I could be wrong though.
I think you’re absolutely right about the Omega-3 supplements. I also eat clean nutritious food and I have never had to supplement. When I did supplement some years ago, I found it thinned my blood too much and I kept getting nose bleeds. Then I discovered that a significant proportion of the cheap fish oil supplements on the market were synthetic ethyl esters, In any case, the lesser-known fact is that, just like everything else in the diet, Omega-3 has a small healthy range – too little (common) doesn’t balance Omega-6 intake and too much (rare) is toxic. The healthy range is about 1 gram per day.
Unfortunately, the problem arises because too many people are consuming Omega-6 in the toxic range. Here’s where your chickens come in.
It’s true what you say about chickens fed non-organic, genetically modified grain. However, chickens (birds) do have a larger proportion of Omega-6 fat than animals that graze.
If I were to supplement on Omega-3, I would do it with chicken, and I would choose Krill and Calamari.
Outstanding work as usual, Denise!
love your work; thanks for sharing!
Hopefully this post reaches a broad spectrum of bloggers and academics! Super.
“Correlation isn’t causation. ” It isn’t. And therefore we need randomized outcomes trials, even if RCTs are not devoid of error and bias either. All studies will remain imperfect.
However, there are only two large randomized dietary outcome trials that have shown a *substantial* benefit on coronary heart disease in terms of both fatal and non-fatal events. They are Oslo Diet Heart Study and Lyon Diet Heart Study.
These two studies both reported 44-76 % decrease in cardiovascular events. In Lyon Diet Heart cholesterol levels in control and active group were similar. Well in line with what Keys also suggested. In Oslo study there was a difference in cholesterol levels.
What is the link between these two outstanding trials? In the active arms vegetable oils (soy/rapeseed), marine food, nuts, vegetables, fruit and whole grains were recommended (or even supplied) while the use of (processed) meat, refined grains and saturated (and even trans fat) was discouraged.
In my opinion, these two trials are hard evidence for Mediterranean type diet. Your post and the latest prospective cohort trials have also shown that advice to eat plenty of fish, plant-based unprocessed food and reduce processed meat intake is the best advice. At least in terms of cardiovascular health.
Isn’t it exciting to see the Predimed study results soon?
Agreed. That’s why Ancel Keys invented the Med Diet and lived it out to age 100. He didn’t have the Oslo and Lyon studies to draw from, but a national comparison of diets between Finland and Italy is enough to create a suitable diet plan.
Awesome stuff Denise! It’s nice to get an even deeper perspective than that provided by other great resources.
Another wonderful article Denise. You have quite a gift. Your humor makes the dry stuff a lot more fun to read.
Minger, still dwelling in the Weston-Price la-la-land? I love the primitive-nutrition serie on Denise Minger, videos (62-65), they were brilliant, and really put Denises analytical skills on much needed scrutiny. Glad you, Denise were inspired by this video-serie. I recommend also the chapters on cholesterol, 34-35, and ofcourse the video on Chris Masterjohn, video 26
The framingham study showed that once your cholesterol is under 150mg/dl one is basically immune for heart-attacks, Esselstyns study provided clinical evidence of this, the average cholesterols of his patients were around 137mg/dl
“The 17 patients in the study had 49 cardiac events in the years leading up to the study, and had undergone aggressive treatment procedures. Several had multiple bypass operations. After beginning the eating plan, there were no more cardiac events in the group within a 12-year period”.
Esselstyn
“You know, we know that if I can get your total cholesterol down around let’s say 100 to 130 or so, and I have maybe not quite a billion people on the earth like that, and those people cannot get atherosclerosis. You know in the China Study, for example, when Chou En-lai was dying of cancer he started a study in China just like the Framingham Study. The only difference was it was in 880,000,000 people so it was a little larger than the Framingham Study. But you know they found these villages in China where you couldn’t get a heart attack or you couldn’t get diabetes and the women couldn’t get breast cancer and you know their total cholesterol were 127, but the chances we could ever get Americans down that low with diet and exercise are not good”.
William Castelli, the principal scholar of the Framingham study
http://www.prescription2000.com/Interview-Transcripts/2011-02-18-william-castelli-heart-disease-lipids-transcript.html
Folks, be carefull with that cholesterol-laden food.
I just listened to the critique of Denise’s China study analyis. You should go back and read Denise’s actual critique. The guy who did those critiques, part 3 and 4, has got a massive axe to grind and completely misrepresented the great work Denise did on that., Shame he did not look at Denise’s work as objectively as she looked at Campbell’s.
I just listened to part 2 now. The author basically just does a character assassination of Denise. His grasp of the issues and data are, unfortunately for him, far behind Denise’s grasp. Big ego and not much substance.
Mario,
I watched and listened to the critiques as well and found them incredibly ad hominem throughout.
Richard – “Folks, be careful with that cholesterol-laden food”…
So you are saying that dietary cholesterol impacts serum cholesterol?
Also, those people with total cholesterol below 137 or so (really tough for me since my HDL is 106) that are immune to atherosclerosis, are they dying from other causes before the atherosclerosis can get them (like cancer or some other diseases?)? What about the study (Forette, et al., 1989) that found after the age of fifty, LOW cholesterol is clearly associated with an increased risk of dying from a variety of causes:
The study of old women indicated that a cholesterol level of 270 mg. per 100 ml. was associated with the best longevity, “Mortality was lowest at serum cholesterol 7.0 mmol/l [=270.6 mg%], 5.2 times higher than the minimum at serum cholesterol 4.0 mmol/l, and only 1.8 times higher when cholesterol concentration was 8.8 mmol/l. This relation held true irrespective of age, even when blood pressure, body weight, history of myocardial infarction, creatinine clearance, and plasma proteins were taken into account.”
Don
skip the pseudoscientific garbage, get serious with science, yes exactly dietary cholesterol impacts serum cholesterol, saturated might just even excarcebate this process. Clinically it’s irrelevant
The people of rural Asia and even more so the folk Central-Africa who consume very near vegan diets are completely free of most of cancers,diabetes, obesity, alzheimer, dementia, impotence, etc. These folk all have cholesterols under 150mg/dl and actually pretty high calory consumption, unlike the myth would suggest. Once you are under these digits with cholesterol, you are pretty much bullet-proof from loads of ill stuff. Unless you are genetically very gifted, meaning having extremely efficient cholesterolcleaning mechanisn, you have to be as close as vegan you can, and it won’t hurt avoiding the skip the plant oils as well. Those are typically not consumed in the aforementioned places, after all their diet is very low in fat.
William Roberts, the chief editor of cardiology knows what he talks about, only biologically herbivores can get heart-disease (by feeding them animal products), and human is a one.
Meaningless blather, as usual.
Meaningless blather was directed at Richard.
Richard wrote: “completely free of most of cancers,diabetes, obesity, alzheimer, dementia, impotence, etc”. I find it interesting that Richards states being free of certain diseases and overall very healthy as the marker for a particular eating pattern. But the same can’t possibly be true for people who exhibited these same patterns and ate animal foods. This is precisely what Weston A Price did, he found people with high degrees of resistance to modern diseases, especially noting excellent dental health. He never found a single group of people who were vegan, they all ate animal foods to one degree or another. The idea that humans are herbivores is at odds with traditional eating patterns where certain animals foods were prized (organ meats as an example). And the fact that Price figured out it was the fat soluble vitamins A, D, and K as being the cornerstone nutrients makes it clear humans thrive when using animal products.
Watch the primitive nutrition serie of Inuits (videos 27-28) and Masai. The idea that these folk were healthy on their natural diet is beyond ridicilous.
Does it talk about Masai and Inuits who eat a pre-westernised diet or a westernised diet? There is a difference.
There is no sign of chronic disease in Masai and Inuits who ate their natural pre-westernised diet, but as soon as they ate a westernised diet chronic diseases appear.
And for the record, both Inuit and Masai’s pre-westernised diet is HIGH IN ANIMAL FAT.
Oh snap!
Richard,
Why is it that if YOU believe it, it is science, and if you don’t it’s pseudoscientific garbage? Have you looked in detail into the study I noted (I was looking for an honest appraisal or rebuke, not a flippant remark that teaches me nothing (at least about the research in question). Who are these peoples in Asia and Africa you speak of? How much longer do they live than the rest of us (since they are bullet proof)? Who funded the studies? How were those studies performed? I have read of several disparate groups of the longest lived peoples from around the world who eat diets that are in completely different from each other – most eating animal protein of some form or another though; if I let them know of your “research” should they all change their diets so as to live longer? You are so arrogant in your remarks/responses I feel you must have iron clad evidence for your positions (possibly even some research you have performed yourself (or at least a strongly researched and intelligently written critique of the all the research in question – much like what Denise provides). You argument comes off as viscerally charged: high (understandably) on emotion but low, unfortunately, on any smoking guns. I am asking to be convinced, not preached at.
Don,
you should start from square one. No one is talking about longitude here. People in Central-Africa and rural Asian die quite young in diseases of infection, when you are lacking antiobiotics and WC you cannot expect to live long. However, most epidemiologic studies, don’t worry who have financed them, they are not designed to make headlines, are age matched. That means, average life-expectancy doesn’t matter. We are talking about cohorts with hundred of thousands of people, so they have plenty of people from all age categories, despite the low average life-span.
If you hear someone saying “correlation does not equal causation” run as fast you can. People who push these lines are always on agenda. Are you fool enough to think that people who deal with these issue have not heard about a concept that is taught in every entry level statistics course. The chances for you getting sincere information from Mrs Minger are zero. It’s about revenge against veganism. If I put my dog do analysis on the China raw data, it couldn’t get worse than Minger did it.
Anyways, start watching primitivenutrition youtubeserie, chronologically from the video 2 forwards.
What a load of dung. Without question you did not read Denise’s critique of the China Study. You just made yourself look like an arrogant fool. Her analysis (starting with the raw data) was scholarly, and your posts are shameless.
Thanks for your opinion. Denise (and many others) have made better arguments (in my opinion) with less bias or agenda (more parenthesis here) than I find in your arguments. I feel comfortable knowing I can still enjoy this holiday season with a healthy (not huge) portion of animal protein, eaten with confidence, no guilt, and seasoned liberally with an unhealthy amount of alcohol. I really hope you have a Happy Holiday season as well.
> “People who push these lines are always on agenda”
> “It’s about revenge’
Look who’s talking. 🙄
> “start watching primitivenutrition youtubeserie, ”
I did. It was painful. Sophomoric work at best. Mediocrity and lack of insight written all over it. I could have done better in high school. Really painful. I wish I hadn’t wasted my time on these.
” I am asking to be convinced, not preached at.”
Gosh; this sums it up so nicely! Kudos for having nailed it down this way. 🙂 Thas was also exactly my feeling but I couldn’t find the words to express it. You did.
Mario, Thanks, very informative.
LOL….why don’t actually watch those videos before you keep spreading that carbage. If the guy was totally loonie, I am sure Denise would have something to say about it, especially after vegans are throwing parties because of these videos. But, but no response. Wouldn’t it be rational to first address the issue that are most closest related to you. Well, maybe the silence is better, after all you americans have coined the best sayin’ in the world “once you are in a hole, stop digging”.
Judge yourself, be smart, don’t fall for pseudoscientific BS which Denise embraces.
Here’s an American saying that you should embrace, Richard:
“Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.”
Ell-oh-fucking-ell.
Perhaps you should take your own advice. I read every word of Denise’s criticism of the China Study and Campbell’s supposed rebuttal (basically just attacking Denise’s credentials and ignoring the actual arguments) and listened to this clown in the videos you presented. He totally misrepresented Denise’s analysis. What she has said in her criticism and what he said she says are more different than chalk and cheese. Why don’t you do the same. Read every word of her analysis of the China study which is on this blog (it will take a long while, but is very much worth the time) and if you think what she says in any way remotely resembles what that clown in the video says she said, well then… I can’t help you. You just want to believe what you want to believe.
No reply from you on MY questions? Hmmm… I know how you hate that…
I have some more:
Who said loonie? What’s carbage? Vegans love a good party, so? Who said I was American?
Well, this is not Denise’s fault, but again I am going to cancel my subscription to comments. I suppose vegans’ blogs are not getting sufficient hits that you have to retort to contaminate with your stupidities and rudeness those of others. Perhaps you are not aware that nobody with the brains to understand what Denise writes is going to give your babble any second thought. Your advising us a youtube channel is sufficient to not wasting time seeing it, thanks.
Bye.
Hi Richard, I watched the four China Study videos in the Primitive Nutrition series tonight and wasn’t terribly impressed. Regarding my China Study critique, the narrator says right off the bat “I don’t have the expertise nor the interest to properly fact-check her analysis of it “(minute 2:10 on video 62). It’s hard to engage in an actual discussion about the data if he hasn’t even tried looking at it.
Next, he criticizes Harriet Hall of Science-Based Medicine on several accounts. At 3:37, he mentions the part of my critique (as relayed by Harriet Hall) that questions why Campbell didn’t explore the wheat/heart disease relationship in his book, since apparently this link is too far-fetched to even entertain as a possibility. I’ll assume the narrator never saw the paper Campbell himself published (“Association of dietary factors and selected plasma variables with sex hormone-binding globulin in rural Chinese women”) that looked at the China Study data and found:
“Significant differences in the diet of rural Chinese populations studied suggest that wheat consumption may promote higher insulin, higher triacylglycerol, and lower SHBG values. Such a profile is consistent with that commonly associated with obesity, dyslipidemia, diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease. … Wheat may be unique in its relative capacity to stimulate insulin. …The relative differences in the fatty acid proportions and/or amylose content for wheat and rice may thus be responsible for modulating serum SHBG, triacylglycerols, and insulin.”
Next, the narrator says:
“In reference to Colin Campbell, she [Harriet Hall] dismisses his amazing assertion that over a period of years, some provinces of China didn’t report a single heart attack in anyone under 64, even though their populations were in the tens of thousands. That doesn’t tell us anything, she says. Thanks for the serious analysis, doc.”
Here, he’s referencing the county labeled “PD” in the China Study, which recorded zero deaths from ischaemic heart disease in women during the survey years, and only 3 deaths per 100,000 for men — at least in the China Study II (http://www.ctsu.ox.ac.uk/~china/monograph/Mono_Mortality.pdf); maybe it was zero for men as well in the earlier survey. However, we can see this county also had very high rates of stroke (page 227 in the above PDF) — 224 per 100,000 for men, compared to only 40 per 100,000 for men in the US at the same time. This county also had high rates for other forms of vascular disease, suggesting some of the ischaemic heart disease deaths might’ve been recorded under the wrong name. I’m not sure the “zero heart attacks” really proves they’re healthy if they’re dying a lot more from related diseases.
He then criticizes Harriet Hall for saying Gary Taubes debunked the connection between saturated fat and heart disease, pointing out that Gary’s work has been questioned by other bloggers such as Evelyn at Carbsanity and Stephan Guyenet at Whole Health Source. The irony is that Stephan also vocally rejects the diet-heart hypothesis — so if the narrator finds Stephan’s blog credible enough to trust his critiques of Gary Taubes, he should also find Stephan’s blog credible enough to trust his numerous posts disassembling the saturated fat = heart disease theory.
It also seems odd that he suggests we accept non-peer-reviewed blog posts criticizing Taubes, but not accept my non-peer-reviewed blog posts criticizing Campbell.
The narrator then criticizes Harriet Hall for suggesting that Bill Clinton can’t eat avocados anymore and indicates her research of Clinton’s heart-disease-reversal diet is sloppy. He says, “She also thinks one must renounce avocados to meet the recommendations of these doctors for some reason,” and then spends a while quoting from plant-based diet books trying to refute her. Considering Caldwell Esselstyn (Clinton’s main doctor) believes all fats (including plant fats) cause endothelial damage and excludes them from his diet plan, Harriet’s statement is absolutely accurate. You can see Esselstyn’s recommendation to avoid avocados in the excerpt from “Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease” on his website: http://www.heartattackproof.com/excerpt.htm — near the bottom in the bulleted lists: “Generally, you cannot eat nuts or avocados.” Esselstyn states you can only eat avocados in very limited amounts if you don’t have heart disease, but Bill Clinton does have heart disease, which is the whole reason he’s on this diet in the first place. So he’s certainly in the no-avo category, and Harriet Hall was correct in stating he can’t eat them. (This all may seem like a very nit-picky point, but the video narrator seemed to find it important enough to dwell on.)
The second video (#63) spends the first five minute or so talking about my personal history rather than discussing any data, as well as taking a literal interpretation of some AHS slides that were essentially jokes (i.e., vegans plotting world domination). I suppose humor doesn’t always translate well from PowerPoint slides so I won’t blame him for that.
At the six minute mark, he quotes a paragraph from my China Study response questioning why Campbell didn’t mention the associations between heart disease and wheat, corn, barley, etc. that were much higher than anything he found with animal products. The narrator states that “this is where her amateur status becomes a problem.” This seems to be more misinterpretation of my writing, because I wasn’t suggesting those foods necessarily cause heart disease — just that Campbell’s focus on weaker correlations in the data (and tendency to view them as showing causality) between animal foods and disease reveal his bias.
Video 64 discusses another study I blogged about that found a “vegetable-rich eating pattern” was associated with weight gain in China. Here, the narrator criticizes this type of study for using artificially assembled “eating patterns” based on unreliable recall surveys rather than direct food measurements, and (in the next video) calls such studies “impenetrable and useless.” However, back in video 62 at the 5:07 mark, he cited this *exact* same type of study as evidence that a “fruit-rich eating pattern” was associated with less cardiovascular disease, stroke, and diabetes in China than a “meat-rich eating pattern.” He accepts these results as evidence for the superiority of plant-based diets without pointing out the methodological flaws like he does in video 64. Does he consider this study design reliable when it supports his views, and “useless and impenetrable” when it doesn’t?
I sort of skimmed through video 65 because it didn’t seem worth it to keep critiquing.
As for the Ancel Keys videos, I *really* appreciate that the “Plant Positive” guy pointed out the frequent misunderstandings about Keys and the six-country graph that are often repeated within the paleo community. However, he admits to not having access to the Yerushalmy and Hilleboe paper, and it looks like he’s mainly referencing two graphs from it that were reproduced in a later paper by Stamler in 1958.
As a result, he leaves out some of the most important points of the Y&H paper, including the unreliability of using food-balance data, the authors’ explanations of why animal food and fat intake can be correlated with heart disease in a non-causal way due to its association with a country’s industrial and medical development, and the discussion of what the inverse association between fat/animal protein and “death from other causes” really means.
Also, the video narrator tries to selectively drop countries off the 22-country graph to make the fat/heart disease association look stronger: his rationale is that Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Sweden — which had high fat intakes but low-ish heart disease mortality — don’t belong on there because their heart disease rates were probably still recovering from plummeting during the war years. Yet one of the abstracts he flashes to support this idea says point-blank “Denmark didn’t have any reduction in heart disease mortality during the war,” so his rationale for deleting its data point is bunk, and he doesn’t explain why other countries affected by war rations (like Finland and Austria) should stay on the graph. Likewise, if he wants to delete data points, he’d also need to get rid of Japan and France and Italy because they notoriously under-reported death from heart disease.
There’s a lot more, but again, I don’t feel like it’s worthwhile to critique this particular video series. If he creates a transcript of the videos, I’d be more willing to prune through that, because at least I could skim through the huge sections of the videos that are basically nothing but personal attacks on various paleo figures and low carbers.
Thank you for that one Denise 🙂
What better way to spend Christmas Eve Eve than arguing online? 🙂
Guess somebody’s got to do it. I’ve given up on it.
Since you haven’t changed the time in your blog settings, the record will forever show it to actually be Christmas Eve 😉
Thanks for doing it. It is MUCH appreciated regardless of the date(s).
Fair well, Denise
when we do we get your interpretion published on a scientific platform, peer-review process encourages for scientific rigorosity, as you sure did know by now. Considering the sheer aggressiveness of the animal-based diet promoters I am sincerely puzzled how come now one has published your interpretation/lessons from the China Project raw data. LOL! Still Waiting.
You don’t seriously believe skeptics are going to invest reading a work by lady who thinks Lierre Keiths book is great piece.
I see you cleverly managed to sidestep from the fact that Campbells study is short from unique.
“because at least I could skim through the huge sections of the videos that are basically nothing but personal attacks on various paleo figures and low carbers”
LOL…..com’on, this was a much needed critical look on the science behind low-carbers. I recommend everyone the videos 2-3 for starters. You cannot argue against that the clips about, let say Mark Sisson Weston Price Foundation were not funny. Maybe your next blog post could be about refuting the alleged good health of Inuits (videos 27-28) or Masai (vid 29), I see you all animal-based diet pushers got it wrong on those as well.
Hmm, seems like a double standard you’ve posed here. You won’t take Denise seriously because of ‘peer review’ but you want us to watch a couple of videos on YouTube (by a guy who by admission doesn’t have the “expertise nor the interest to properly fact-check” the data) which I’m guessing are also not peer reviewed and published in scientific journals.
No, not at all double-standards, most of the ideas expressed by the paleo-community are not peer-reviewed, Ravnskovs book is not peer reviewed, the idea that Inuits and Masai stay healthy on their natural diets is not a peer-reviewed, Keys alleged crime is not peer-reviewed, etc. So it’s basically sorting out misconceptions and psedoscience. Highly recommended channel. If it wasn’t then Minger would have hardly shared any of the ideas expressed in it for her readers.
Anyways, what do we have? Animal protein carries a huge correlation with heart disease in the 22 country data, In the Y & H paper “Calories from protein” had values of r= 0.709 with “arteriosclerotic & degenerative heart disease”.
The fact that vegetable protein had higher correlation with non-heart disease category as opposed to animal products is irrelevant. That correlation has no biological plausibility.
High plant-consumption in Europe at the time was a proxy for poor socio-economic status and everything that followed from it: poor sanitation, poor access to health-care, etc. This should be reversed by now, high plant-consumption in Europe today would be correlated with high socio-economic status and everyting that follows from that, better health-care, higher life-expectancy, etc. And let us not forgot that heart disease was and still is the most common disease of the West. Atherosclerosis, cancer and rheumatoid arthrisis is prevalent everywhere where animal products are highly consumed (the Inuits and Masai makes no exception) and reverse is true where starches are on high demand (Central-Africa, rural Asia, Papua New Guinea, etc)
Avoiding saturated fat and replacing that with fruits or non-processed starches is a very clever move. “Calories from carbohydrates” had the lowest positive correlation of all: 0.305 with “arteriosclerotic & degenerative heart disease”.
“That correlation has no biological plausibility.” That just shows your bias. The fact that data from the China Study points to a vegan source of food (wheat) as a strong correlate with of heart problems should give you pause about that assertion.
At the end of the day, the massive rise in cancers and heart disease during the course of the 20th century is now supposedly caused by OLD FOODS. Foods humans have been consuming for a very long time. It just doesn’t work. What has happened, and documented very clearly by Price, was the rapid change in human dietary patterns leading rapidly to degenerative diseases, marked skeletal changes and terrible dental health. OLD FOODS did not cause this rapid change in poor health. It was abandoning these food patterns in favor of ‘modernized’ processed foods.
Seriously, the fact that vegan foods (sugar, refined wheat, vegetable oils, etc) can put one at risk for heart problems is actually exemplified by some interesting research on the Masai from the early 1970s.
The short of it is that during a 15 to 20 year period when men exist almost exclusively on meat, milk and blood they have ‘low cholesterol’ and very low rates of atherosclerosis. While there were no deaths from heart attacks, a rise in atherosclerosis parallels their re-entry into the rest of Masai culture which had access to processed foods.
http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2008/06/masai-and-atherosclerosis.html
You can see the papers and graphs above along with a more thorough rundown. The issue is that the Masai began developing problems as they abandoned their traditional, non-Westernized diets.
http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2008/06/masai-and-atherosclerosis.html
^Don’t worry I know the old story, that’s why asked Minger to do a refutal about it, so that you’d know as much as I do.
Primitive Nutrition serie on Inuits (27-28) and Masai is highly recommended (29-30).
Atherosclerosis was observed even in ancient Egyptian Mummies, the hair molecyle analysis showed them to have eaten loads of “real food”, meat and eggs that is.
Weston Price Foundation is meat lobbying foundation, and heck yeah, they portray a nice picture of dairy and meat. What are the odds that you get sincere information from sick, confused and emotional wheat-hater such as Minger? I tell, you the odds are next to nothing. One thing I give her, she is very good in sidetracking the issue at hand (her amateur status) to pinpoint inconsistencies on other debators, but don’t be fooled by the facade.
She has consistently made you look like a fool and your videos criticizing her China study work are little more than character assassination with no substantiation.
The fact is you don’t like her work not because it is flawed, but because it conflicts with your belief system.
In some ways it is almost amusing. Most people like yourself who attack Denise and others who support a diet that includes animal products try to portray them as nuts who want to essentially live on meat products. For the most part, that is complete nonsense. They are people who have a serious concern about health and wellness and who basically just eat “real” food and eschew all “manufactured” food. This means they eat an abundance of vegetables, some fruit, meat, eggs, nuts etc… They eschew grains, vegetable oils and sugar and shockingly, they are extremely healthy… imagine that.
Your criticism of the Weston A Price foundation is very lame. Suggesting it is some kind of industrial lobby group shows you haven’t looked into it one iota. It is a small underfunded organization that supports family farms, pasture fed organic meats (particularly organ meat) and rails against large commercial farming operations that force feed beef corn, load them with antibiotics and growth hormone etc… Yes the powerful “liver and kidney” family farm lobby.
If you actually took the time to read anything Denise has written on the China study and to actually watch her “How to win an argument with a vegetarian” video which was in large part very humorous, you might actually be able to contribute something to the discussion other than useless blather.
“Most people like yourself who attack Denise and others who support a diet that includes animal products try to portray them as nuts who want to essentially live on meat products. For the most part, that is complete nonsense. They are people who have a serious concern about health and wellness and who basically just eat “real” food and eschew all “manufactured” food”
Oh, com’on I am sure Denise is a nice lady, but let’s be honest. You have to quite a blue-eyed to expect her delivering sincere information. Her only and sole concern in this world is that people keep loading themselves with animals. She is not a good person. All diets goes except veganism.
You obviously know absolutely nothing about what Denise stands for. You are either just trolling, or you are a complete idiot who won’t take time to inform himself in any way about what he argues. Denise barely eats any animal products by the way. The vast majority of her diet is plant based. It’s bad enough that you walk around in ignorant bliss, but try to do it without assassinating someone’s character whose intellect absolutely dwarfs your own.
ad homonym attacks are pointless and make you look ignorant.
Indeed.
“….the hair molecyle analysis showed them to have eaten loads of “real food”, meat and eggs that is.”
How is this possible?
Egyptians actually had a diet high in grains.
At the end of the day you are a vegan with an agenda. Most of your posts do not make sense except to demonise animal products!
Minger, the noble promoter of animals. I am sure you can be proud of having a positive influence to the world, to environment to our ecosystem; making sure people ain’t forgetting to pile up on those animals. LOL
UN urges global move to meat and dairy-free diet
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jun/02/un-report-meat-free-diet
Richard stop using ad homonym attacks, it totally discredits any argument you are making. The UN is dodgy and has an agenda, i wouldn’t put much trust in anything they say.
I think most of us on this forum are all for animal welfare and are against factory farming methods and artificially fed animal products. Stopping humans from eating other animals is like trying to stop a Lion or a Wolf from eating other animals.
There are also many other critics of the china study besides Denise. Do further research instead getting emotional and using personal attacks against people just because they differ in opinion from you.
“I recommend everyone the videos 2-3 for starters”
I recommend everyone to avoid wasting his/her time with these videos. Which are not really ‘videos’ BYW, just a powerpoint-like presentation with a voice over.
They are very amateurish and basically just and opinionated, superficial and (I like ot repeat it..) sophomoric high school work.
The one thing that I do like with them, is linked to my old belief that the worst enemies of an idea are not its detractors, but it’s poor defenders. And these are very poor defenders! 🙂
No please, fair well Richard and your ad hominem attacks. It is obvious you do not like us omnivores. Why try to save us, then? Why don’t you just let us shuffle off, dragging our knuckles, to our early deaths?
That certainly sounds like a temptating though. If you are idiot enough to listen these “saturated fat is good for you”-bloggers, maybe you actually deserve to get one of those sympton-free leathal strokes.
However, for the environments sake, I wish people could cut down the animal foods.
“However, for the environments sake, I wish people could cut down the animal foods.”
Animal foods? Non mon cher, you mean meat. I don’t see why butter, dairy and eggs, if from pastured animals (and not from poor sick grains-fed animals in CAFO), can’t be environmentally sustainable.
“If you are idiot enough to listen these “saturated fat is good for you”-bloggers, maybe you actually deserve to get one of those sympton-free leathal strokes.”
Yes, yes, we do, we do!
Just let us die! 🙂
“Animal foods? Non mon cher, you mean meat. I don’t see why butter, dairy and eggs, if from pastured animals (and not from poor sick grains-fed animals in CAFO), can’t be environmentally sustainable”
Animal husbandry is inherently, no matter of the feeding practise, always unsustainable, and a distress to our ecologic system. Something we 7 billion people cannot afford.
“Animal husbandry is inherently, no matter of the feeding practise, always unsustainable, and a distress to our ecologic system. Something we 7 billion people cannot afford.”
That’s the biggest load of nonsense yet. Unrestrained population growth would eventually make any system unsustainable. Idiot.
“Animal husbandry is inherently, no matter of the feeding practise, always unsustainable”
That is mere opinion. Bring on the evidence.
“That is mere opinion. Bring on the evidence.
”
Oh LORD, no… Now Richard will start directing you to a bunch of other moronic videos!
Make it stop!
Richard,
You said “Animal husbandry is inherently, no matter the feeding, always unsustainable, and a distress to our ecological system.”.
There are places that are unsuitable for growing fruits, vegetable, and grain, yet certain forage could be grown there. New York state is an example.
Peters, Cj, Fick GW, Wilkins JL. Testing a complete-diet model for estimating the land resource requirements of food consumption and agricultural carrying capacity: The New York State example. Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems. 2007; 22(2): 145-153
http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract;jsessionid=9C835D9C1E6111D4C8790D0C4CBCFEA5.journals?fromPage=online&aid=1091328
Below is a quote by Christian Peters, M.S. ’02, Ph.D. ’07. A Cornell postdoctoral associate in crop and soil sciences and lead author of a research study, published in the journal Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems, examining the land requirements of complete diets. The researchers compared 42 diets with the same number of calories and a core of grains, fruits, vegetables and dairy products (using only foods that can be produced in New York state), but with varying amounts of meat (from none to 13.4 ounces daily) and fat (from 20 to 45 percent of calories) to determine each diet’s “agricultural land footprint.”
“Surprisingly, however, a vegetarian diet is not necessarily the most efficient in terms of land use,” said Peters.
“The reason is that fruits, vegetables and grains must be grown on high-quality cropland”, he explained. “Meat and dairy products from ruminant animals are supported by lower quality, but more widely available, land that can support pasture and hay. A large pool of such land is available in New York state because for sustainable use, most farmland requires a crop rotation with such perennial crops as pasture and hay.”
“Even though a moderate-fat plant-based diet with a little meat and dairy uses more land than the all-vegetarian diet. It feeds more people (is more efficient) because it uses more pasture land, which is widely available.”
Click to access Land%20Efficient%20Diet.pdf
Miriam Goler ’09, president of Farm to Cornell explained the importance of the energy aspect of the agricultural footprint.
“Much land in New York State is not suitable for growing row crops. For example, if land is too steep, erosion and soil loss will be a major problem if you try to till it. However, some of this land may be suitable for growing forage crops, which can be used to graze livestock. Therefore, if we use this land in its most productive way, we need to be eating some meat in order to maximize the number of people that are fed”.
http://cornellsun.com/node/25285
Great link, thanks Anonymous.
I’ve butchered quite a few animals and they were never mistreated. All farm animals I have seen have always been well treated. That is why very few run away. Chickens, goats, pigs will always return to their home. Cows just wander until they want to get milked and them moo loudly until they are found.
It’s not always so cut and dried: http://theconversation.edu.au/ordering-the-vegetarian-meal-theres-more-animal-blood-on-your-hands-4659
And name calling shows the strength of your arguments.
And again with the ad hominem attacks! Also Richard use a spell checker!
I think there are much bigger problems affecting the environment besides animal food production. e.g. HAARP, mining industry, toxic waste, plastics etc.
Hi Richard,
When is Dr. Campbell going to publish his ‘results’ in the China Study under peer-review?
Where are the peer-reviewed studies from the China Project linking animal protein and disease?
When do you think he’ll get around to that?
Why is it exactly that Dr. Campbell had to write a non-peer-reviewed book to link animal protein to disease instead of using the China Project data to write peer-reviewed research?
I really don’t see how Vegans constantly miss the irony of calling Denise’s critique out for not being peer reviewed. “The China Study” is not peer reviewed!!!!
If this link is so strong, is it really that hard to publish peer-reviewed research showing it?
Well the only problem with the China study is it might as well be Sci-Fi, like the Key’s report is, not worth the paper it is written on let alone to be used,
Baloney.
Most Heart Attack Patients’ Cholesterol Levels Did Not Indicate Cardiac Risk
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090112130653.htm
It’s so interesting that instead of making them stop and consider that their hypothesis may not be right, they just assume that the cholesterol isn’t low enough yet.
And, no! Denise did not come up this, she merely just recited the primitive-nutrition serie on Keys and put up her own pseudoscience on the mix. Videos on Keys, 36-39. She got nailed to the extent, she had nothing to say about the videos about herself.
Primitivenutrition series is highly recommended to all who wants to explore further from the paleo-blogopsphere, including Minger.
She responded.
Sorry, Denise, not to mean to spam your blog, but more thing. Why didn’t just copypaste the primitivenutrition videos on Keys and shared them with the readers. After all 95% of your text came from them. Instead, you put people to endure to horrible mammuth post. Besides, now there’s a risk that people actually think you are more than just a simple, silly and confused persona 🙂
Since you didn’t do it, I feel it’s my obligation. Don Matesz certainly shared the videos, and not pretent he was expressing his own work. Moreover, putting your readers to go these videos, they’d learn heaps of other things as well: to realize what mess this these animal-based fad diet promoters are, and to stay away from Ravsnkovs book, unless looking for comedy.
Shit, just when I almost promised to not to contribute anymore, I remembered this; the high mortality of high-fat meat eaters has been shown in multiple cohorts, from first rate, AAA-level, top-snotch countries. Unless it was the whole-wheat bun in the burgers….LOL
Proof that Ancel Keys was not an uber-villain but only a human trying his best to further the lot of mankind. Aah, something about good intentions and a road?
Thank you for this!
PS: Consider making these huge blogposts available in episodic form, so that we your loyal readers can chew on a little at a time. It meshes better with at least my blog reading habits…
Ancel Keys was ofcourse right, animal products induce heart-disease. The fact that plant-protein had higher correlation with all-around mortality has no biological fact, it merely reflects poor socio-economic status. The more plant consumed at Europe at the time, the poorer the consumer. This may be hard to understand in US, but industrial animal food in Europe isn’t that old thing. The social differences in Europe during the post-war and prior era were huge. The poor plant-consumers in rural parts of the country hardly had even the loo at the house, let alone access to quality health-care. In my country it was an issue to brag about if your family had pork of butter during the war and immeadiate post-war years, it was only something that the rich folk had. The fact that poor people have higher mortality in non-heart related categories is perfectly understandable.
Has no biological plausibilty, that is 🙂
“The poor plant-consumers in rural parts of the country”
at the continent, that is.
“The poor plant-consumers in rural parts of the country”
Not only in rural parts. In many families, poultry/meat was rationed within families, and basically went to children. That’s why I asked above to look at the date of Keys’s graph.
This what I’ve noticed in some discussions – lack of historical context. It seems to be comical when I hear people discussing with certainty the “details” of paleo lives when frankly we can know very little, but ignoring recent history which in some cases is at least history of close relatives if not our own.
Yes, significant part of Europe had a different nutrition pattern than the U.S. in the 1940s/early 50s.
Great post as usual!
Oh, But I loved hating him so so much. You just ruined my Christmas.
ROFLOL …
I want to make a T-shirt that says “Correlation isn’t a cucumber – Denise Minger”. For some reason I’m thinking it should be a green shirt…must be the cucumber.
Yes 🙂 Maybe I’ll do just that one of these days & see if anyone I meet on the street laughs …
How about this?
http://www.cafepress.com/cp/customize/product2.aspx?from=CustomDesigner&number=605903231
That is sure easy … 🙂 The green color is very cucumberish too.
Is this for real? Can I really buy this T-shirt?? I want one!!
*LOL* Excellent
Come to my street. I’ll be the only one to laugh, though.
They don’t even know what a cucumber is, let alone a correlation. “Denise Minger” could be some brand of chocolate cookies. The whole picture would be as mysterious to my neighbours, as a chinese receipe from the 15th century.
Denise, thankyou for dedicating so much time to genuinely trying to set the picture straight, on this and all your posts. I love you are always genuinely unbiased. You have changed the world of health forever, and for the better.
And you can talk about really serious technical stuff, and still make everyone smile 🙂
I wish Richard would learn how to write and spell…
He could also maybe look into the Australian aboriginal population, who have some of the lowest naturally occurring cholesterol levels coupled with very high incidences of cardiovascular disease. But his head might explode.
Aaron…So true, and the N.Z. Maori pre european contact, then after.
I read and write in 4 languages, how many languages do you master? What I can’t do is typing.
Richard, I am with you on that. Let me explain. There is at least one generation of Americans who were taught in an interesting way: learn how to write correct MANIPULATIVE (CYA and the like) sentences … and you are set for life and success in corporate America. You don’t have to know anything else. Ah, and remember to smile permanently and idiotically and millions and billions and of course the automatic admiration of the idiotic crowd is all yours. Simple. Easy. Idiotic.
dr anna writing in her 7th language
I think it’s should be obvious that individuals raised in this manner don’t know that English ISN’T the only language in the world (they don’t know anything) and of course have no experience of learning a single foreign language. Why would they do it if “we, the best and the brightest,” need only the mastery of manipulative memo writing. In English, of course.
Not knowing that English isn’t the only language is only one aspect. Not knowing the differences between different mediums, differences between spontaneous, emotional and and polished, “calculated” writing etc. is something else. What is common is ignorance, ignorance, ignorance.
This stress on correctness of grammar is common particularly among geeks, narrow, very narrow educated, with huge complexes who tend to strike “cultural” poses: “You see I know that this incorrect. I am so well educated.” No, you are not.
@Anna
do you blog or something? I am fascinated to learn to write better, what you just said made huge sense to me, and along the lines I’ve been thinking but couldn’t quite nail it by myself. With the skill of writing you can be 24 years of age, graduated from a worthless “red brick” uni, have no training in medicine nor statistic and still fool bunch of people to believe you’ve actually debunked a peer-reviewed body of work. That’s so intriguing. Is there a way I can get in touch with you? I am curious to know and learn more.
Richard, you’re welcome to post here if you have something to contribute about data I’ve presented, specific points in the Primitive Nutrition videos (not just “watch these videos, end of discussion”), or other relative topics. Part of my goal for 2012 is to keep the comments section of this blog more hospitable for people who want to have an intelligent dialogue, and right now, you’re definitely skirting troll territory.
Feel free to express your anger towards me via email. If you keep doing it here I’ll ban ya. 🙂
Sorry for off-topic posts, and apologies for writing “worthless red brick uni”, totally uncalled move. Every accredited educational institution deserves my utmost respect.
Denise I seem to be developing the habit, but I would seriously consider following through on your threat.. We live in a democratic society where we allow everybody to be part of the process of communicating his/her ideas. If these ideas contribute to the general discussion so much the better. If they hinder the discussion, if they become detrimental, if they become ad hominem, if they cause others to refrain, I think you have the right, maybe the duty to expel. We will otherwise be losing valuable contributions and as I mentioned in my comments to dr. Feinman and Wizzu, I have a feeling that this only just the beginning of a much wider discussion. Furthermore Richard has shown he is not interested in that discussion at all. I could use a pars pro toto for such a person but I will stop short.
James, Denise has the absolute right to totally sensor everything posted on her blog. There is no democracy at this site. She is in control. Freedom of speech means the “government” can’t pass laws against speech.
Denise, please ban Richard from comment section. This guy has been writing his arrogant messages to many blogs and discussion forums and I can tell you it’s impossible to have an intelligent discussion with him. Having him here commenting and other people answering to him is just waste of everyone’s time.
It seems to me that it is a good thing that Denise has a thick enough skin to be able to handle snark — or at least, I hope she does, since some of the comments that have been posted are very snarky. The comment Richard made qualifies as serious snark in spades.
I could ask what Richard think he is adding to the conversation, but I am a bit afraid that the answer would just be more abuse.
Beth
Figures.
It’s getting more and more probable that Richard and Anna are pals in real life, or even the same person.
That level of connivence and mutual support after such a limited communication on some blog, is highly improbable. I’ve never met it. And I’m on the internet since 1997 and have been a moderator on a dozen forums.
Of course people sometimes ‘fraternise’ quickly but not on the specific mode displayed here. It’s like a bad hollywood script.
Denise, I have the feeling that you are dealing with more than ‘average’ trolls here. There is pattern feeling to it. It sounds… organized. You banned a too-obvious troll recently, so they’re back with more subtle tactics.
Maybe I’m just being paranoid. But since the moment when I have been called a neo-nazi supporter by ‘Dr.’ I’m-holier-than-thou-with-froth-at-the-mouth, I’m enclined to trust my intuition.
Merry Christmas BTW! 🙂
“Richard and Anna are pals in real life, or even the same person.”
Interesting idea, good point.
Uh no. You actually have to have an IQ off the charts, a great understanding of statistics and incredible patience to go through all the data the way Denise did to come up with that work. It was so good, that the only criticism Capmbell or any of his supporters have ever come up with are similar to yours…. attack the messenger because you can’t attack the message. Not a soul has been able to come close to attack the actual work Denise has done, and believe me, it isn’t because they don’t want to. It is because they can’t. Read it yourself. What she did is bullet proof. Too bad your preconceived notions won’t let you see it.
Thanks Mario, nice reply.
Beth
Wrong, Richard, wrong.
Actually, I think that Ivy students/graduates are the most brainwashed and opportunistic. After all they are the most ambitious and want really to succeed in corporate America.
A decade ago or so, exactly at the time when David Brooks wrote his piece (only half good) in Atlantic monthly (?) “The Corporation Man,” I started to have nightmares, after having a close encounter with the New York Ivy students. After one nightmare, I woke up with a poem (my first, my last, a masterpiece) – see below.
Marching zombies, marching zombies, marching zombies march,
Marching zombies, marching zombies, marching zombies march
They don’t think, they don’t dream
They march, they march, they march
Marching zombies march … etc.
Now, excuse me, Richard, but I didn’t watch a single video of yours and have no intention. I did read Denise’s article, brilliant as usual. I don’t know how Denise got so smart (a genius?), but I know that she is outstanding in method and style (exceptionally sophisticated, light and witty).
Somehow, she (and probably many others) escaped the required zombie training.
Denise, please, please, please redesign this comment section. My “Wrong, Richard, wrong” comment was a response to Richard’s address to me several miles earlier.
I wish Richard would go away. Talk about gumming up a blog with idiocy and ad hominem attacks. {eye roll} (Yes,that’s an ad hominem… or it could just be disgust with him for wasting my time.) Maybe if we all get really quiet and don’t answer when he’s hanging around, he’ll think we’re not home and he’ll go away!!
Campbell said we shouldn’t listen to Minger because she’s not old enough. Well, we shouldn’t listen to Richard because he’s not tall enough. Goodbye Richard.
Wow,
Great post Denise, and the comments!! The Australian Aborigines are by and large subjected to a very poor Standard Aussie Diet, that is killing them with diabetes, heart disease and kidney failure. Remote indiginous communities have very little access to food that is reasonably priced or fresh, and the implications on their well being is huge.
As an aside linked to the way countries report and measure things, I had recent bloodwork done, and my total cholesterol is 8mmol/143mg/dl, which here in Oz is considered at deaths door, with the range being 3.9mmol/l to 5.5mmol/l. However from what I have read here and elsewhere my reading isn’t too bad! Needless to say there are an awful lot of people on horrible statins here in Oz, but I wont be joining them.
I wish everyone a safe and joyous Christmas wherever you are,
cheers 🙂
@ Heather
The Australian Aborigine reference was more to demonstrate (to Richard) that having low cholesterol is no guarantee you will not suffer from cardiovascular disease.
I adore you. Just found this and spent two hours reading your blog. You have a new fan. Between you and Mercola (yes I know, he gets preachy/strident sometimes, plus you are way cuter and write better), my needs are covered.
I am a type A, as far as blood type goes, so generally I do better with lots of veggies and less heavy meats. However, I have come to believe that with higher stress, meat – the high quality, that is – and raw milk – are good for me, I get too weak on vegan diet. If I was a monk or librarian, perhaps vegan could work… but not now.
I do much better when I am gluten free, too, however I tend to tolerate the german rye bread ok, in small doses.
I think most people – especially in the US – would do so much better, if they cut out sugar + grains for a little while, as well as pasteurized dairy. The US food chain is ****ed. I am lucky to live in a place with access to several farmer’s markets.
Corn is ***ed in the US, as is soy. I don’t touch soy with a ten foot stick.
Speaking of wheat… I know of several people whose tolerance of wheat is much better when in France/Italy, rather than when in the US. Same goes for me and wine, interestingly. CA wines kill me, generally. I think the more unadulterated the foods are, the better the tolerance, perhaps? Of course that could be because they (people, not foods) are on vacation, too:) Correlation is not a cucumber, indeed.
But I have often wondered – as the whole GMO and hybridization of crops, such as say, wheat, increased pace in 20th/21st centuries – could it be partially a reason for some of the growing intolerances? Our bodies took a while to evolve and figure out ways to deal with our staple foods. As we tinker with them on molecular level, I wonder…
I just wish vegans would stop bashing Weston Price. And it seems like any time a vegan goes public to say: sorry, folks, I tried, but it didn’t work, let me tell you why – they are instantly branded as meat industry shills, blah blah blah…
I get it about animal cruelty and speciesm and all that good stuff. But ideological stridency in lieu of common sense annoys me.
Plus, I also think low B12 is linked to aggression, paranoia and fuzzy logic.
😉
“I know of several people whose tolerance of wheat is much better when in France/Italy, rather than when in the US.”
this touches on something I wish Davis had addressed in Wheat Belly: quick-rise yeast, which doesn’t give time to neutralize the phytic acid. (in addition to his good points re: modern dwarf wheat, I mean)
What really disgust me in this post is Minger who enunciates that it was she who found this big lie about Keys. Where’s the kudos to primitivenutrition who did all the work?
You people should thank him. His videoseries primtitivenutrition at youtube is amazing.
http://www.youtube.com/user/PrimitiveNutrition/videos
Please just go away Richard. Every time you write something, you sound more paranoid, less informed and more belligerent. You have added absolutely nothing to the discussion in any way, shape or form. Honestly, you just sound unable to construct an argument for yourself or to respond to anyone else’s arguments.
Didn’t you read the post? She linked to it in this sentence: “In fact, it was his glossed-over portrayal in a recent series of anti-paleo YouTube videos that inspired me to write this post.”
Richard – “You are a sad, strange little man, and you have my pity.”
“I wish Richard would learn how to write and spell…”
Now, this comment is truly idiotic and obviously is made .. by a marching product of American education. Richard’s response was correct.
Actually Anna, you need to get a perspective. It is an English language message board, whether you like it or not. Richard writes in English in a confusing and difficult to understand way, whether you like it or not. So do you for that matter. The author of that post expressed a frustration with being able to understand Richard. Your arrogant attitude towards others who write on this board is a little lame too. It might be your 7th language, but you have yet to express yourself in an intelligent way in this language, only badgering others and offering little of your own.
Sorry, Mario, I disagree. I don’t care whether the author is frustrated or not. Why don’t you tell her to take her frustration somewhere else. Her comment is IDIOTIC. You can’t change facts.
Secondly, I can assure you that I didn’t write anything which is not intelligent. You are accustomed to simplicity of something else, it’s your problem. That you see things the way you do, is not surprising. Everyone sees things his/her way. But to tell me to see the way you do is absurd and insulting. Yes, I am multilingual, multicultural and “multidegreed” and I worked hard to see things the way I do. Give orders to someone else, this idiot for example.
dr anna
Frankly speaking, I think I would like to ask Denise to remove those who order others to write perfectly in English – looks like harassment to me.
Dear Mario, if I understand it correctly, this isn’t the meeting place where promoters of “eat meat and fat only or die” promote EACH OTHER and tell everyone else to get lost. If I understand it correctly, it’s an open forum where people of various views and level of expertise share their opinions, serve facts, learn (personally, I am here to learn), etc.
Look Anna. I am generally a pretty patient person. You have spent more time picking fights and insulting others (actually, insulting an entire nation and its educational system) than you have debating issues. You are whole heartedly correct that it is a forum to express different points of view. However, it is a better forum if people express those points of views in ways that we can all understand. Richard, and to a lesser extent yourself, have difficulty doing that. Despite your consistently patting yourself on the back about your great intellect and your ability to communicate in multiple languages, at the end of the day, you have made very few points worth remembering and generally just write words that don’t mean much. If you want to add to the discussion, I am all ears. And by the way, my native tongue is french, and at least I can be properly understood in both my languages.
You see Vachon, you don’t understand simple things, such as that there is a difference between the second language and the seventh. Seems to be simple, but you have trouble understanding. Similarly, your seem to believe that only repeating endlessly “people should eat meat and fat only” is a contribution. You’re wrong, Vachon. Somewhere in the discussion there is a great contribution by a woman who asks a simple question (very intelligent in my view) whether we’re supposed to eat meat seven days a week. Her contribution is totally ignored while “meat and fat” people praise each other and attack some lonely “eat grain and grass only” poster (and me). Simple, but probably wrong in its simplicity.
So, maybe you don’t understand me not because of my English.
Anna, has anyone in this post, or in Denise’s entire blog ever said, “eat meat and fat only”? Are you like Don Quixote and love to swing at windmills? And you have certainly given Wizzu credibility in his belief that you and Richard are the same by referring to Richard as a “she”. No language issue there Anna. In any case, if you want to be taken seriously, quit blowing your own horn about your linguistic abilities and great intellect and just stay on topic. If you make good points, they will be recognized. If you just insult entire nations and compliment yourself, you will be taken for a fool.
Mario, Il n’est pas possible de convaincre un troll. Ils ne sont pas intéressés par le résultat. Ils sont désespérés de contact, quelle que soit la forme ou la forme. Alors, soit vous continuez pour le fun ou tout simplement arrêtez.
Thanks James. Your french is a little rusty, but you made me chuckle.
You both confirm that I am right. Life is simple – I am troll who isn’t interested etc. March, march and label anyone who stops to think as …
BTW, Mario, for your information – not a single nation (let alone a huge and diverse one) is so monolithic that one can insult “the entire nation.” Pomposity doesn’t mean correctness. But we do have to stop.
Thanks James. 🙂
Mario, effectivement je pense qu’avec Anna ça n’ira jamais nulle part, ne vous cassez pas la tête. Vous avez totalement fait mouche avec l’image des moulins à vents. Laissez tomber…
The only thing I’d still like to clarify is that personally, I eat a plant-rich diet and certainly not preach to eat meat and fat only.
While I’m not sure that such a “meat and fat only” diet could have any ill effects if the meat is organic and organs are liberally eaten, my hunch goes towards what I currently eat which is “vegetables, fats, dairy and eggs” based low-carb diet, with some meat and organs on the top (about 4-5 times a week), and no grains.
. Vegetables: everything, seasonal. Very liberal amounts. The base of my own food pyramid.
. Fats: saturated or partially saturated (butter, coconut, lard) and monounsaturated (olive oil, hazelnut oil..), some complex n-6/n-3 vegetable oils (walnut, camelina sativa), no n-6 rich oils, no processed oils.
. Dairy: organic and raw – cream, butter and cheese (no milk)
. Eggs: organic, up to 3-4 a day, raw yolks as a supplement
. Meat: fatty cuts, organic
. Organs: what I can find from organic circuits, which here is mainly beef liver.
Some seasonal fruits from time to time.
Olives. Cocoa. Coconut. Red wine. Green tea.
Now that this is out of the way, on the other hand I don’t think that those who want to go “meat and fat only” for some time are wrong. I’m even enclined to think that people who have been damaged by grains and/or poorly implemented vegetarian diets, can greatly benefit from such a diet.
I’m just not convinced yet that it can be a long-term sustainable way of eating, for both health and environmental reasons. YMMV, and I keep my mind open (I even read J. Stanton’s gnolls.org and enjoy it very much).
Thanks Wizzu. Good advice which I will follow.
ELE people! (At least until Monday) “Everybody Love Everybody!” ~ Jackie Moon – A wise man and one helluva promoter.
Denise,
Interesting post but I think you’ve mixed up the 6- and 7- country studies. The 6-country study was the one that was attacked by Y&H and, although there is still an association, it is not nearly as strong as Keys claimed. It is good that you went back to Y&H. I didn’t realize that they made the argument that should be made on all these kinds of studies: if there are many kinds of associations, it is questionable that any mean anything.
Anyway, the 7-country study (not the one with all the points) came after and found, in fact, that there was no association with total fat and CVD but rather with what he attributed to saturated fat. This also had problems as you point out. I cite an interesting one on my Mediterranean Interlude, namely that he collected data during lent: http://wp.me/p16vK0-91
RDF
Wait, wait. Part of the problem is that the Wikipedia entry on seven countries study is inaccurate, possibly widely inaccurate.
Denise, it amazes me how your mind works. You are the Einstein when it comes to thinking outside the box. I am so happy that you are following your passion in life–this is what you were born to do–and helping so many thousands of people at the same time. Thanks to many other people: Mark Sisson, Chris Masterjohn, Sally Fallon, Robb Wolf, etc. for spreading the nutrition word and improving the health and happiness of so many people worldwide.
Happy 2012!!
First of all: A heartfelt thanks Denise! Of course you of all people realize full well that the work is now only just beginning. When talking about fats from animal sources we are dealing with both sat- as well as mono-unsaturated. Often in equal amounts. It is also true that fats are incredibly important at all levels and that they carry many nutrients not water soluble. A lot of fat from plant sources is poly-unsaturated, high in n-6. (see also Homer Black’s work on skin carcinogens)
And then of course there is, as far as I am concerned the one diet constituent that is undoubtedly present in all the different countries, that may quite well pose a, up till now, a still under estimated danger : wheat.
Yes, yes, I know, if you only have a hammer, you see all problems as nails.
Have a Wonderful New Year.
I’m still unconvinced that we are looking at anything except for the idea that certain diseases may be low in societies too poor to afford much sugar, tobacco, or good government data collection.
I’d still like to see a graph overlaying Key’s chart with a chart showing those same countries’ tobacco consumption during those same years. Because i think the real culprit here is tobacco.
“I’m still unconvinced that we are looking at anything except for the idea that certain diseases may be low in societies too poor to afford much sugar, tobacco, or good government data collection”
Sounds right to me.
It’s been some time now that I wonder what Keys’ graphs would have looked like, if he had chosen to look at sugar (and white flour) instead of looking at fat.
My take is that he probably wouldn’t have needed to drop some data to make the correlation look stronger.
>”I’m still unconvinced that we are looking at anything except for the idea that >certain diseases may be low in societies too poor to afford much sugar, >tobacco, or good government data collection”
Without good data collection, we don’t know what diseases really kill people. It seems to me that what Denise has essentially pointed out is that countries that are too poor to eat a lot of meat or fat are also too poor to know an accurate cause of death much of the time. In other words, the seven country study has very little information that is interesting vis a vis a “good diet” at all.
In truth, I am not convinced that all the deaths that are attributed to CV causes in the US are really caused by CV and not instead by the doctor writing down a CV cause when “I don’t know” is more accurate.
True, Anecdotal case in point: A very successful realtor had a massive heart attack at age 40,and dropped dead. It was attributed to a heart attack of course but word had it, he was a coke-head.
He died in his own home but if he’d been in an accident, there probably would have been an autopsy.
Amazing post. Absolutely brilliant. Keep up the good work!
Amazing post! Absolutely brilliant. Keep up the good work!
OK, I think it’s time for some summary.
There are problems. There is a problem with the original graph – problem with its “simplicity.” I looked at it again to verify my concerns and yes, the problem is there. Someone pointed out right at the beginning that there were many more factors involved than only eating grain/meat. IMHO, comparing of the population of Switzerland or Australia of 1951 with the population of Israel (high percentage of survivors/refugees) without considering other factors is incorrect.
Now a summary of problems with comments. The “gentlemen” who dominate this section should start eating less meat (too much energy) and stop silencing everyone who has legitimate doubts and concerns. The proper, polite questions are totally ignored or dismissed, the rebels are attacked by a numbers of posters (you see I am nice and I didn’t use the word “mob”) and are labelled trolls, sent to school, or threatened by leaving, etc. I am pretty sure that precisely this attitude resulted in banning of fat. At that time it was done by “grain” marchers.
Several people (all are women) share, for example, the same concern: how safe is meat/fat overeating. Women know that iron overload is not good for them, some are also concerned about phosphorus excessive intake. There are probably other concerns and I think they should be addressed.
Most people here are truly impressed by Denise, understand the importance of what she is doing and wish her success. I think we should strive for improvement of the comment section. No, uneven “nutritional” level of comments isn’t a problem – this is not an academia. The fights are a problem and they should be reduced. I promise to tone down. I expect the “gentlemen” change too.
Those that keep posting constantly thinks not related to the post is because they don’t have the smarts, beauty and witty writing style of Denise. Please stop if you have so much to write make your blog.
Thanks Denise for another great post.
OK, I am back. Those who complain that their parents were not as witty as Lucy in the film and who don’t know the difference a text prepared for publication and arguments in a discussion should NEVER write ANYWHERE.
🙂
Well, “the gentlemen” will never learn.
I was thinking … is it possible that Keys reduced the number of countries he considered because he was aware of the imperfection of the 22 country list? I didn’t check the list of the countries he chose, so I am just guessing.
OK, I want to correct the text and it is in the wrong place. I’ll try again to place it after Charlie’s comment.
Those who complain that their parents were not as witty as Lucy in the film and who don’t know the difference between a text prepared for publication and arguments in a discussion should NEVER write ANYWHERE. 🙂
Actually we have a similar situation to the one above. Pretensions, ignorance and aggression. Denise has a great style, but … it doesn’t mean that
– others don’t have a great style
– that it’s the most important thing
– that circumstances, such as speed of response and of course whether or not we are dealing with the mother tongue don’t matter.
Frankly, this can be viewed as a biased silencing. You don’t like comments by not native speakers – skip them – your right. To tell them to stop being themselves (drop that accent) looks like harassment.
anna, you’re not making sense. Try laying off the drugs.
I don’t take drugs. Try to educate yourself. What is illogical in my last comments, friend?
What a fantastic piece, I read this through totally absorbed. First time I have visited this site.
I love your sense of humour. I’m off now to read the rest of your articles.
Best wishes
Kim
I LOVE you.
Dang people…stress kills regardless of your diet of choice.
Take a chill pill (vegan or not) and add a couple of years to your lives.
😉
“stress kills regardless of your diet of choice”
Correct, Mark. That’s why it’s important for analysts to know what kind of stress was behind the scenes – for whom it was “Oh, my mansions value just decreased by 5%” or stress of watching you family burned alive. Those who insist on counting calories (or fat, or grains or whatever) only really don’t know what they are doing. There are so many things “related.” Nutritionists usually are not prepared to deal with the complexity of human existence and its historical/cultural aspects and the results … are predictable. I laugh when I read “Look there is so much sun in this or that country, but yet women have very low level of vitamin D.” Why do I laugh? Because it’s funny. The author just forgot the fact that women are covered TOTALLY and spend most of their days indoors. Just an example.
OK
I believe the major uncertainties in all epidemiological studies involving diet, health, and mortality are from large uncertainties in the accuracy of the diet information and large uncertainties in the proper classification of the cause of death as already discussed here. Diets are so varied between individuals and over time and causes of death are usually multi-factored. These uncertainties alone are so large as to make these studies quite useless unless the results show very large differences by factors of 2 or 3 or more. And of course, even then we have only association and not proof of cause. But another often overlooked aspect to this type of epidemiological study is the age at which people die from the disease and the age distribution of the population. In these studies that aspect was properly handled by looking at mortality within specific age groups.
However, I notice in looking at Figure 3 from the Y-H study that the absolute mortality from “B-26” type heart disease in males aged 50-59 ranged by a factor of three at about 40% of calories from fat, from about about 0.25% in Norway to about 0.75% in the US. At about 30% of calories from fat, the range in mortality rates is even larger, a factor of about seven, from about 0.1% in France to about 0.7% in Finland. And of course, France with near 30% of calories from fat appears to have about a 30% lower rate of B-26 heart disease mortality than Japan at near 10% of calories from fat. To me, these statistics only help to confirm that humans are well adapted to a wide variety of fat intakes and that other factors are far more likely to be stronger influences on heart disease. In my current view, the leading candidates for *premature* development of both heart disease and cancer are 1) too much dietary sugar (sucrose and fructose) in conjunction with 2) too much dietary omega-6 polyunsaturated fat. Next 3) are a wide variety of toxins and poisons in the environment, where exposure dosage and health status are likely to cause widely varying tolerances as well making it difficult to single out specific chemicals as being the greatest contributors. Also worthy of mention is 4) digestive health, which is strongly influenced by diet, including 1, 2, and 3, but is the critical defense mechanism for the body. And of course 5) at least adequate dietary nutrition is required to live very long anyway (which is not usually a big problem except in starvation situations or compromised digestive health).
Since I have now reached 59 years of age, according to US CDC stats for 2007, my life expectancy (for “white male”) if I make it to 60 next year should be to reach age 81. If get lucky and manage to live to be 100, what difference will it make if I die from heart disease, cancer, or slipping on ice? I don’t want to end up spending 20 years in a wheel chair or bed-bound in a nursing home where they keep me alive, but just barely, so they can make more money. Quality of life is very difficult to discern in these studies as well.
>I don’t want to end up spending 20 years in a wheel chair or bed-bound in a >nursing home where they keep me alive, but just barely,
I worked for a little while in a nursing home. After I had been around the people there for a while, I realized that many of them were there because they wanted to be alive, even if they could hardly hobble around.
You may not feel that life in a nursing home is worth living, but that is not actually a sentiment that is shared by all. Just saying …
Beth, yes, most people will take a nursing home over suicide or dieing at home because they can’t take care of themselves, but that doesn’t mean it’s their idea of a good quality of life. My point is simply that I feel quality of life, especially with aging when many diseases are more prevalent, is a very important concern that is often overlooked in studies about “health” and especially in the context of aging.
Denise, I saw your talk at the WAPF conf in Dallas. So awesome! I think you need to quit your day job and be a science writer. (What is your day job?) It just goes to show that with a good (Liberal Arts) education and a lot of common sense, plus some excellent investigative skills, you can poke holes in a lot of stuff that we have come to believe today as the “honest truth”. My mantra is this: In God We Trust, All Others Bring Data.
only NT can do science (see MBTI/Keirsey if unfamiliar science of w/inherited preferences), degrees/careers do not make the scientist. Obedience is rewarded, the truth is often disruptive.
sorry: if unfamiliar w/ science of
also, unfamiliar is a great song by Ride.
In a wholly separate vein: Denise, would you consider changing out your html ‘style’ for links? The web convention is that a dotted underline is used for a pop-up box that either defines an acronym, or adds a wee bit of a data specific to a piece of text. (I often use it to define/explain American slang for non-native-English speakers; so as to retain the ‘flavor’ of a web client’s writing style by leaving the slang in there, without confusing non-Americans (or Americans, for that matter!).
(I’d do the following bit with a dotted underline and pop-up if I could, but I can’t — so please see it as an explanatory aside.) Web conventions *are* conventions because the vast majority of web surfers ‘know’ them unconsciously (akin to grammar, which is picked up by very young children without them being taught grammar directly). An example would be when we “automatically” look for the search box in the top right corner (which makes Tom Naughton’s blog annoying — his is left-side and down…), or clicking on the top right corner logo to go to the home page. (Or, think of those annoying building doors that have a ‘pull-handle’ design, but some idiot designer made it a PUSH door.) Using web conventions makes navigating a page an unconscious act; mis-using web conventions makes the ‘style’ come to the forefront and takes the reader out of the material. (Like using (any) underlines on the web — how many times have you “clicked” on a underlined bit of text to find that person used the underlining for emphasis, not as a link. That’s breaking a very long-standing and fundamental web convention.
LOVE your stuff! Enjoyed meeting you in passing (and your talk) at AHS.
That pretty much explains why the initially observed positive correlation between heart disease and total fat (or saturated fat) is reduced to insignificance in modern cohort studies. The scientific methods have, luckily, improved over time.
It’s always a treat with a really good paper (Yerushalmy and Hilleboe) as well as a really good blog post (long, informative, well written). I will link to this in the comment section of other blogs I read.
Ancel Keys did some very interesting weight loss experiments and probably other good research too. Worth looking at for anyone interested in science history.
The really tragic part of the story is how the diet-heart hypothesis became politics. And how it just continues to live on, despite all the evidence against it.
Yay !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Deniese is Back !!!
I think it is possible that the countries in the “six-country graph” were actually not cherry-picked by Keys. His mortality data covers (as indicated in the graph) the period 1948–49, while Y&H (as you can read from their Table II in the text) used data from the period 1951–53. These data were obviously not available at the time Keys prepared his 1953 paper, and some countries included in Y&H:s paper (including the Nordic countries, pdf) did not use the international ICD-6 (containing the disease categories used by Keys) classification for mortality statistics before the 1950s, so there is nothing strange that they were absent from the data used by Keys.
Very interesting, Karl. It just shows how complex everything is and how often we’re missing (or miss) important information. Just the awareness of complexity makes me reluctant to march happily and sing in unison.
@Karl
what part of “correlation is not a cucumber” did you not understand?
Jeffrey,
Where does Karl question the ‘correlation-is-not-causation’ thing in his post?
To me, you seem to be replying to an argument he never made… if I’m wrong, care to provide pointers?
Personnaly I find Karl’s observation about the dates, a rather sharp one!
You have interpreted me correctly, I think. My point was just that Keys was not necessarily fraudulent in his selection of the six countries. I also think this is an issue primarily of historical interest — even if Keys’ selection was not intentionally biased, Y&H:s data still gives a more accurate picture of the country-level correlation (which, of course, does not necessarily imply any causal relationship) between fat availability and reported cardiac mortality in the world about 60 years ago.
Nice and dandy analysis, in both the main text and the comments. But 6/7 countries studies are still epidemiological hogwash (okay that WAS the whole point in the post but still). History is always cool but IMHO it’s far more interesting to think what lipid/diet/heart theory looks like in context of more recent international epi studies like MONICA. Now that would be actually interesting – if there still is something fresh 2 find.
Oh and Back to the Keys – how about the sugar controversy and earlier papers by Cleave and esp Yudkin that take on Keys. Now thinking about THAT would be cool and actually current and topical.
More ambitious international studies, where dietary patterns are compared with disease rates, seem to be rare. However, in a review from 1998 (J Clin Epidemiol 1998;51:443-460, see author’s homepage), Ravnskov noted that the positive ecological correlations between (saturated) fat and vascular mortality, as measured by official FAO/WHO data, seem to have disappeared since the 80s. A couple of months ago, I also looked at data of this type for more recent years, and even noted statistically significant negative correlations between e.g. energy percent fat and age-specific coronary mortality (post in Swedish).
But this may be due to the same type of confounding as seems to lie behind the strong negative correlations between fat/animal products and non-cardiac mortality in Y&H. Within age-groups, vascular mortality has declined in wealthier Western countries in recent years (which may, at least in part, be related to improved medical treatment), and rates nowadays are highest in relatively poor countries in eastern Europe and Central Asia, while the positive correlation between wealth and fat availability still exists.
Hey Neisy,
I know it’s been the holidays, and I’m sure you’re bizzy, but just wondered if you got my e-mail (“Heavy Tail”)?
p.s.
happy winter solstice (the days are getting longer!)
Hi Denise, wow Shoreline to Hawaii. I’m a former Seatlite, (Capital Hill/Volunteer Park stomping grounds) and former SDA. I still have many friends family who are SDA, and I know many who have adapted, or tried to do a strict vegan diet. I’ve currently been influenced by Dr. Robert Lustig of the UCSF/youtube Sugar the Bitter truth video, and from there have been reading science writer Gary Taubes. They both talk about Ancel Keys. They both say saturated fat from diet isn’t the major cause of health problems, that the major cause of most chronic health diseases is high carbs which leads to metabolic syndrome, which can lead to the major diseases. I’m learning, barely scratching the surface, I’ve the habit of not eating much meat, but am quite confused by the warring of the diet camps. I’ve been beaten over the head by the China Study by a few friends. Why vegans are so often so militant is surprising: one of my vegan friends is in denial that he needs vitamin B12. I find this blog refreshing in that you have a particular diet that works for you, yet you are all about getting to the truth, scientific objective truth as much as possible. My request: you review Gary Taubes latest book if you get a chance. Regardless, I enjoy this blog, and am digging in a bit. Rather thank-you for this blog.
Hey Philip, I’m a current Seattlite (CapHill area). This is certainly a very interesting area to be researching. I’m curious if you’ve read Weston A Price’s Nutrition and Physical Degeneration? In my mind this is one of the best sources for finding out what humans have thrived on (traditional diets). They’re quite varied (some ate more plant foods, some less, all ate fat from animals and/or fish). He never found a group of healthy humans who were vegan. It’s something that I think in and of itself refutes the China Study in addition to Keys. You can find it online. It’s just fascinating. At the end of the day, for me at least, what Taubes and Lustig do is demonstrate that refined foods (carbs/sugar usually) aren’t healthy for humans and this is something that Price noted over and over again in his studies of various human populations.
Hey Christopher! Greetings and Happy New Year from Montrose Colorado! Yes I’ve fond memories of being body slammed into the Jack in the Box front window near Seattle Central by three riot police during WTO! lol. Ah nostalgia. (note I was peacefully videotaping on the side walk, not a protester.) despite that I miss Seattle and Capital Hill. Wonderful place to live round about Lake Washington, yes?
Thank-you for the recommendation “Weston A Price’s Nutrition and Physical Degeneration” I’ll look into reading that.
And for Denise, to clarify my post. I was hoping you could *review* Gary Taubes latest book. It would be nice to hear what you think of it.
Hey, here’s another one you could maybe look at when you are bored. Dr. William Davis of Wheat Belly mentions it in chapter 8 of that book. Lookie here… their whole basis for judging how much animal protein is eaten is those same FAO tables you mentioned. They misrepresent the FAO tables as being about food *consumption* rather than food *availability*, too.
Click to access 3a00.pdf
I haven’t read the whole book yet, but in that part of that chapter where he cites that source (in other words, just where it’d be most timely to mention it), Dr. Davis neglects to mention that *all* proteins need to be buffered, not just animal protein! Too, unlike most plant proteins (notable exceptions being wheat and spinach, neither of which you want to consume in excessive quantities), animal protein comes with its own buffer–the amino acid glutamine. We can make glutamine if we’re in good health, but consuming extra in the diet frees up what we make for its other functions.
I wish just *one* person out there would write a book about nutrition where they were more interested in telling the whole story than just promoting a narrow agenda. I don’t mean explaining the entirety of the field of human nutrition, but geez, I’m so over all the scaremongering about animal foods.
Denise is writing such a book and will be published by Mark Sisson in 2012. It’s called “Death By Food Pyramid”. Should be a best seller!
“I wish just *one* person out there would write a book about nutrition where they were more interested in telling the whole story than just promoting a narrow agenda”
Me too, me too.
My personal view has been, that a balanced diet of max 30 percant animal products, 70% of vegatables is ideal.
It is also clear that with the prelevation of processed foods, vegatable oils, refined carbohydrates, and varied (yes varied) food intake is significantly decreasing lifespans and health.
this article pretty much proves my point, although i can never prove it (my assumptions).
I would eat meat and fat in moderation, and place great importance on the other factors mentioned above.
The body is a fine tuned instrument, not a garnage dump.
Also, the fact that we are physiologicly the same, does not equate to the fact that our genetic inheritance is very different.
Ergo, the idea of examining a group of people with extremley varied genetic markers, and drawing conclusions is extremley idiotic. And science clearly points this out.
We can learn from clinical studies (and indeed have), but only if we read them, as the results are many times skewed in favore of the theory.
For some reason medic science especially likes to draw conclusions from insufficient data, and make claims when no such exists. Hencs it could hardly be called science, but a colle tion of random observations, and judgements.
In the end we are responsible for ourselves, and ur body will ket u know what exactly to do, if u fine tune urself.
What is good for one, may not be good for the other. Duhhhh. This is where some medic scientists have apperantly not advanced.
Denise-
Your writing is as delicious as a bowl of freshly picked cherries.
Only picking the good ones, of course.
After reading a week’s worth of internet douchebaggery, I feel the need to clarify that your writing is actually delicious and that the cherry-picking reference is jokingly aimed at Keys, not you. Because every joke is funnier when you have to explain it.
Richard/Anna-
Denise has shown that she clearly has the ovaries to not only articulate her position publicly, but to allow anyone to anonymously comment on it, and then even refute anonymous criticism point by point knowing full well that the provider of that criticism has no intention of returning the favor. If you really want any credibility at all, go start your own blog and try going head to head with her based on facts, not insults. But you won’t do that because it would mean actually putting your own words together instead of letting someone else’s video do it for you. People like you turn the internet from a wonderful resource into a Lord of the Flies-esque day care for retarded children. Good day sir.
(I said good day)
Denise, I apologize for the gratuitous use of the word “douchebaggery”. Feel free to edit any or all. That first part wasn’t really meant for anyone else anyway.
“Illegitimi non carborundum”
Dear, Eric.
I can assure you that not a single part of me is that of Richards.
And you see my criticism of Denise … where? And the value of you comments …is?
dr anna
From Richard Feinman’s blog:
“The idea of a Mediterranean diet derives, in some way, from Ancel Keys’s Seven Countries study. He discovered that the two countries with the highest consumption of fat, had the lowest incidence of cardiovascular disease (Crete) and the highest (Finland), and he attributed this to the type of fat, olive oil for Crete and animal fat for Finland. It was later pointed out that there were large differences in CVD between different areas of Finland that had the same diet. This information was ignored by Keys who was also a pioneer in this approach to conflicting data. ”
Nicely put.
It derives directly from the comparisons. Read Eat Well and Stay Well, written by Ancel & Margaret Keys in 1959. I’d argue that they pulled in the best features of many national diets (Japan, Italy, Crete, China, France, etc.) as they created what came to be known as the Med Diet.
If you get nothing else from it there’s a great recipe for soup stock (aka bone broth) from beef bones/off cuts, as well as many red meat recipes, from Irish stew to Italian beef tongue. Ancel stressed eating the greatest possible variety of foods. And he was not anti-fat, just moderate in using it.
And enjoyed this article very much (the first I read on this blog). I’m gonna read more now!
Keep up the good writing!
Here is a database to play with variables -> http://www.mediafire.com/?m2zjq4zbo336jnb
Thank you Denise for a great research, and an attempt to make an honest conclusions. Personally I think you leaving this article without a “summary” in the end is not a good idea.
I will write one as a comment, in case someone will find it useful.
Summary for the article:
Was Keys a liar? Not really. He just tried to make his discovery more “shocking”.
Does fat makes your heart stop? No…just animal fat.
Do people die from anything else, except heart diseases? Yes, and animal fat has nothing to do with it.
Addition from Max:
Since coronary hear disease is consider one of the most popular death reasons, we can say that animal fat is most likely to kill you, in comparison to any other factors. Given, that you are a human of cause =)
Who said it: “A sicko is a sicko is a sicko?”
Denise, pretty soon you will be able to form a fully staffed neo-Nazi camp out of your visitors. I doubt it’s the intention of your blog, but they seem to invade everything.
“Since coronary hear disease is consider one of the most popular death reasons, we can say that animal fat is most likely to kill you, in comparison to any other factors”
OMG what a baffling summary of Denise’s article.
My eyes are rolling so high that I’m probably looking like a zombie.
Maybe I’m just being thick and you were actually joking?
If not, you could consider reading the article again….
lol! and no serious offense meant MaxPavlov, that’s the most pretentious thing I’ve seen in a while: summarizing some else’s writing. If you want to write a bad summary, start your own blog!
Philip, he has a blog which not only is the most pretentious (sharp observation), but also the sickest thing.
Wizzu, he seems to be a vegan (“plant based”), but we shouldn’t blame his diet for his mental condition, since it looks like he’s a newly minted vegan.
“he seems to be a vegan (“plant based”)”
Why would someone with a “plant-based” diet be a vegan, let alone a vegetarian? My own diet is “plant-based” an I’m neither vegan nor vegetarian.
My acception of ‘base’ here: a fundamental ingredient; a chief constituent (‘a paint with an oil base’).
To me, “plant-based” only means that one’s diet consists mainly of plants, like vegetables, legumes and grains. It can be an omnivorous diet nonetheless. Mine is definitly omnivorous, though 80% of my plate consists of vegetables (but as previously stated, no grains – they make me sick).
YMMV with the word ‘base’ of course, and if to some “plant-based’ means ‘plants-only’ why not. But I think “plant-only” would be clearer to everyone.
Just a quick reminder though (since I have the feeling that this is not as clear to everyone as it should):
* ‘Vegan’ = eating zero animal products (not even dairy)
* ‘Vegetarian’ = eating no meat (some ‘vegetarians’ eat fish, though) but eating animal products like dairy and eggs
OK, I understand this. That’s why I was cautious. I don’t want to go back to this charming website to check whether it says something more than “plant-based.”
BTW, I think we had recently several what looks like “hit and run” (a beautiful name) comments.
I think he says something about switching to plant-based diet which suggests something more radical than just adding a carrot or two.
no offense, but labeling anyone who summarizes others as pretentious, without even bothering to address the points, is the height of pretentiousness
just found you quoted in ‘wheat belly’
love it 🙂
Quiet.
Did you ever submit this to wikipedia.
Why is it that site attracts so much crapola?
Would it be so hard to introduce genuine science into the discussion?
Let me guess … another “hit and run?”
Do you know anything on healing Teeth?
Stop brushing your teeth with tooth paste, it leaves a solid glycerin layer which prevents minerals to do their job. Cut out all cereals, or at least cut back quite drastically and eat lots of vegetables that are high in magnesium.
http://www.whfoods.com/ and maybe supplement with magnesium citrate. Avoid the oxide form. Although we are not very good at extracting minerals from pills. Better making broths from soup bones. Add a little vinegar to aid the process.
You can argue nutrition and its correlation to heart health all day and likely never agree. This forum, like many others, depicts the amazing fact that very few experts in the realm of nutrition actually agree on a one size fits all diet. This is, I believe, because the data is, at best, difficult to disseminate for actual PROOF of cause and effects regarding diet and health. One thing that all of this ignores if genetic concerns and implications. Nowhere is anyone acknowledging the powerful implications (much of which is NEW information) regarding the C677T component of cardiac health, and the nutritional concerns regarding that! This will be a far bigger factor to cardiac health than cholesterol ever will be!
Cheers!
That’s an interesting graph in terms of the “ferritin hypothesis” too. Aborigines tend to eat a lot of lean animals, not much dairy (Although it’s not clear if these are Aborigines on a native diet, or eating Western food). Russia, Lithuania, and the Czech republic are also bigger on ruminant meat. France, Switzerland, and Germany get more calories from dairy, which blocks iron. Spain, France, Sweden, and Denmark eat more fish than ruminant meat.
I was thinking … I have the impression (I don’t follow the discussion seriously) that all those who talk about primal hunter-gatherers or gatherers somehow forget that the world was probably quite diverse and primates live in various circumstances – some probably near some shallow waters where fish were jumping themselves onto these primates’ china and others probably lived on some meadows covered with wild wheat and still other lived in some snow covered mountains where they ate … something. Didn’t this diversity affect those primates, their children and us, their grandchildren?
Anna I think this is probably right, humans have always lived in very diverse environments. In fact Weston Price documented this with all the various ‘primitive’ cultures he visited. I think it’s why humans are omnivores.
Everything I have read so far indicates to me that the same food quality—or lack of it—administered to different persons, will have different effects.
Now, there MUST be something in the way things are being done by a society that is now used to sit and wait which one of the “affluent” diseases is going to kill you, your brother, your spouse, your sister, your friend, your children.
In the end, most of them die of one of the “affluent” diseases. And each death means several tens of thousands of dollars worth of hospital and medical expenses that the global system must inject into the medical system.
No wonder that if the person dies from something different than one of the affluent diseases, this person probably had a different diet… Sorry, I can’t say that, right? No, it wasn’t the diet, it was his/her genes! Or he/she probably was careful enough to take supplements.
So, the positive correlations to plant protein and fat intake of groups of people dying from something different from the affluent diseases, is inviting me to think that if your life intake of protein and fat and carbohydrates comes directly from plant food, you will die, yes, but NOT from one of the affluent diseases.
Doesn’t this sound very much like what Dr. Campbell suggests? What did I miss?
Artcomm, I think you’ve kind of missed the point of this entire blog. Denise (and others) has been pointing out that these ‘correlations’ to plant and health, or inversely, animal protein and poor health, used by Dr. Campbell are highly flawed. In fact you can easily make the argument that it was the introduction of vegan foods into Western diets that began the slow decline into ‘modernized’ degenerative diseases, aka refined wheat and sugar. I hear this from vegans, that it was the introduction of meat products that suddenly caused modern degenerative diseases. It’s complete nonsense.
Ancel Keys found that both sugar and fat were correlated with heart disease but he never bothered to do the proper multivariate regression analysis as explained in this video, Sugar the Bitter Truth, to determine rather it was fat or sugar that was causing heart disease.
Watch starting at 32:30 to see the discussion about the Seven Countries Study.
impossible to be a vegan:
its also impossible to be perfect, but one can still aim for it… just sayin’
The world is getting weirder and weirder.
It’s impossible to live without oxygen, but you, imnewhere, can still try …
Denise
How exactly do you eat eggs?
Do you eat them raw?
Do you mix them in with a smoothie?
What qualities are you looking for in a good raw egg?
Epidemeology suggests hypotheses; but perhaps there should be a law against discussing those hypotheses publically without a) proper proof, or b) a strong correlation, like smoking is 22:1 associated with lung cancer.
A 30% increase, or even doubling, in some disease rate, compared to that just doesn’t cut it…
So what happens when you graph heart disease against ferritin levels? It’s pretty well known that high iron levels in the blood lead to heart problems. Eating a lot of beef, esp. combined with potatoes and iron-supplemented wheat, and in the absence of tea, leads to higher iron levels, and ferritin levels in the US are one of the highest.
I think the iron issue might account for some of the relationship between diet and heart disease. Countries like France and Japan get plenty of protein, but it’s not generally high-heme meat. Plus both dairy (cheese!) and tea block iron absorption.
The incidence of iron deficiency is about 5 times higher than iron overload. Iron overload is mostly a genetic inherited disease. A person should not treat for the condition without proper diagnosis.
That is what a lot of people believe, that iron deficiency is common. Based on more recent research though, it seems that we may need to revise what is “normal” iron. For instance:
1. When “anemic” Maasai are given iron supplements, they become prone to amoebic infections and malaria.
2. Ferritin levels of over 100 are associated with higher levels of diabetes.
3. Oral iron stimulates insulin levels, much like sugar does.
REALLY high levels of iron is genetic, for sure. But it absolutely is the case that “normal” people over-absorb iron, and toxic iron levels are commonly seen where cast iron is used, for example, or in kids who eat iron supplements. Our American foods have way too much iron in them, according to some experts. Anyway, Ray Peat has a good summary of the problem:
http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/iron-dangers.shtml
I’m not anti-meat at all, and a lot of this has to do with other factors, like parasites. In rural countries, everyone has hookworm and anemia IS more common than overload. As those countries get more medicine though, and start getting rid of worms and a richer diet, iron levels go up. And as iron levels go up, I think, so does heart disease.
The “treatment” for Americans is generally: Avoid iron-supplemented food (mostly processed food, which you should avoid anyway) and drinking tea, coffee, or milk with a meal, and avoiding fruit or Vitamin C with a meat meal. These steps are not dangerous at all. Getting your ferritin levels checked is a good idea for anyone though.
heathertwist, I agree.
In China, consumption of white flour but not white rice is associated with heart disease as Denise has shown, and with diabetes as Zumin Shi and others have shown, and according to Dr Shi, white flour in China has twice as much iron as white rice.
I actually have a letter from Ancel telling me that my doctoral proposal wouldnt work- I made some queries among scholars asking for their professional opinion. His was the only negative response.
Actually my idea was similar to his, without the lab testing. Based on that proposal I wrote my dissertation, was awarded a PhD, won a Fulbright grant from the US government to conduct research in Slovenia, a country in the former Yugoslavia.
.
Two of his groups were from the former Yugoslavia and if my memory is correct, the Serbian group smoked, ate lots of animal fats, not olive oil, but still had low rates of CVD.
Ancel gave new meaning to the term ‘flip-flopping,’ but for all his efforts he ended up living in Italy in a beautiful country villa, The Olive Oil Board perhaps played a role or was Ancel just so wealthy?
I previously congratulated Denise on her ‘The Truth about Ancel Keys: We’ve got it All Wrong’. I feel that I must now retract this for the following reason. Subsequent to my praising Denise for her erudite critique, I came across the power point presentation by the Plant Positive author, and discovered that he had discussed almost every point brought up by Denise shortly before Denise had written her paper. Although Denise gave some credit to this author, it was minimal, considering that the bulk of her paper appeared to be lifted from his work. This may not qualify as explicit plagiarism, but it does suggest intellectual dishonesty.
By the way, I am not a vegan, or any other variety of vegetarian. However, I have directed and conducted scientific research in university settings, and at this point find myself questioning Denise’s integrity. Perhaps she should consider this matter seriously if she has plans to enter the academic world.
Hi Brian,
I noted near the beginning of this post that the Primitive Nutrition videos are what inspired this post, but in case that wasn’t emphasized enough, I just added a note right at the top stating it in more detail. I do owe Plant Positive a hat-tip for digging up the info on Mexico’s birth certificate history, which I realized I left off, so I’ve updated this post to credit him for that. Judging from the number of click-throughs this page gave to his Ancel Keys videos (over 1,000), he got a fair bit of traffic from this page, and I do want to give him full credit for bringing attention to the myths about Keys circulating in the paleo and low-carb spheres. Although we obviously cover a lot of the same ground because we’re analyzing the same paper by Yerushalmy and Hilleboe, I think the fundamental message of his critique and the one of mine are extremely different, as are the ways we discuss and interpret the graphs and charts contained within the paper. It is not my intent at all to “lift” any of his original ideas.
For what it’s worth, I corresponded with Plant Positive over email after this post was up, and in the time between this post going up and now (3 months?) he has never asked me to attribute his name to anything in this post, nor otherwise expressed concern with what I’ve written in terms of “intellectual dishonesty.” If he contacted me with any unhappiness about this, I would gladly add any addendums necessary to clarify his role in bringing the Ancel Keys “myth” to the fore.
I have also discussed his videos in some of the earlier comments on this post:
“As for the Ancel Keys videos, I *really* appreciate that the “Plant Positive” guy pointed out the frequent misunderstandings about Keys and the six-country graph that are often repeated within the paleo community. However, he admits to not having access to the Yerushalmy and Hilleboe paper, and it looks like he’s mainly referencing two graphs from it that were reproduced in a later paper by Stamler in 1958.”
“As a result, he leaves out some of the most important points of the Y&H paper, including the unreliability of using food-balance data, the authors’ explanations of why animal food and fat intake can be correlated with heart disease in a non-causal way due to its association with a country’s industrial and medical development, and the discussion of what the inverse association between fat/animal protein and “death from other causes” really means.”
“Also, the video narrator tries to selectively drop countries off the 22-country graph to make the fat/heart disease association look stronger: his rationale is that Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Sweden — which had high fat intakes but low-ish heart disease mortality — don’t belong on there because their heart disease rates were probably still recovering from plummeting during the war years. Yet one of the abstracts he flashes to support this idea says point-blank “Denmark didn’t have any reduction in heart disease mortality during the war,” so his rationale for deleting its data point is bunk, and he doesn’t explain why other countries affected by war rations (like Finland and Austria) should stay on the graph. Likewise, if he wants to delete data points, he’d also need to get rid of Japan and France and Italy because they notoriously under-reported death from heart disease.”
Plantpositive has uploaded new videos, addressing Minger pseudoscientific bull-shit and plagiarism. I warmly welcome everyone to check them out. The logic of Minger is utter perversed and bizarre. As if the author has to beg and look for the plagiator to pay a respect to the original work.
“For what it’s worth, I corresponded with Plant Positive over email after this post was up, and in the time between this post going up and now (3 months?) he has never asked me to attribute his name to anything in this post”
Unbelievable………Minger, get some standards. You are nothing but a fraud. I have lot to write to the amazon page of your upcoming book. You can fool these half-retarded cavemen clowns, but the smarter ones will see through your disintegrity.
I wonder where all the hate comes from Richard. Get a life.
Don’t worry, I am just pissed seeing sick, confused people spreading their perverse agenda while attempting to give it all a scientific mask.
“Death by food pyramid”….LOL…give a me break.
What part of healthy is sick?
My numbers could not be better since I gave up grain and sugar and other questionable so called nutritious plants. Don’t let facts like the debunking of cholesterol get in the way of your nonsense.
This Richard being the one previously referred to as a troll? The slime from him is making my skin crawl. Denise, thanks again for your work, I appreciate it very much.
Beth
If this is true, we don’t need any statistics:
http://www.tierversuchsgegner.org/wiki/index.php?title=Taxonomy
Maybe that’s why we all feel so much better, once we have learned to eat according to the original structure of our bio equipment.
Thank you for your response Denise. First, let me say that I admire your intelligence, inquisitiveness and commitment to understanding difficult and controversial subject matter. Very few are able or willing to take on such a task.
Since the early part of 1998, I have read most of what has been written in the Paleo literature. In fact, I engaged in a most edifying volley of exchanges with Loren Cordain, Mary Enig and Sally Fallon at that time, currently recorded in the Peleodiet Archives (For those interested in some of the earlier debates: My first posting: http://listserv.icors.org/SCRIPTS/WA-ICORS.EXE?A2=ind9811&L=paleodiet&F=&S=&P=832 ; Mary Enig & Sally Fallon’s response to me: http://listserv.icors.org/SCRIPTS/WA-ICORS.EXE?A2=ind9812&L=paleodiet&F=&S=&P=719 ; Loren Cordain’s response to me: http://listserv.icors.org/SCRIPTS/WA-ICORS.EXE?A2=ind9811&L=paleodiet&F=&S=&P=1599 ; My response to Loren Cordain, Mary Enig and Sally Fallon: http://listserv.icors.org/SCRIPTS/WA-ICORS.EXE?A2=ind9903&L=paleodiet&F=&S=&P=67 ).
Subsequently, I explored the general principles of Paleo thinking and those of the Weston Price Foundation over a number of years, both intellectually and in practice. Within both bodies of literature, I have found value, but also serious basic flaws in their understanding of historical and prehistorical data, as well as of current nutritional research. These limitations have been well covered and critiqued by other sources, for those who care to avail themselves of this information. On the level of praxis, I have noticed little personal health result differences between a well balanced vegetarian diet, the general outlines of a diet promulgated by the Paleo group (low fat version) and a diet more in line with the Weston Price Foundation. Perhaps one could attribute this personal health outcome homogeneity to my particular dipping point into the genetic pool, or to some other difficult to measure variable or variables. Since this last question is a level of ignorance I am most likely doomed to never surpass, I am left with the task of assessing the intellectual rectitude of these positions.
I have carefully read your papers Denise, as I have examined all of the Plant Positive power point presentations, as well as having read much of T. Colin Campbell. As someone trained in scientific research methodology, I must say that Campbell is a first rate researcher and his China Study is the finest nutritional research to date. As far as the Plant Positive author is concerned, his research is exhaustive and his thinking of a high caliber and for the most part, flawless. It is not necessary for me to elucidate on a point by point basis the rejoinders to your critiques of Campbell and the Plant Positive author, as the latter has done this in detail in his recent power point youtube postings.
Let me state once again that I am not a vegan or any other kind of vegetarian. However, I do believe that the bulk of evidence supports a vegetarian diet over an omniverous diet. I have personally made the choice not to adopt a vegetarian diet due to generally good health status on an organic omniverous diet, as well as for hedonic reasons.
Just a further comment regarding posting etiquette. For those posters on this site who have a penchant for name calling and other slurs, you may believe that you are being ‘authentic’ and ‘telling it like it is.’ In truth, what you are doing, is destroying your credibility by an unskillful display of emotional incontinence and rudeness.
Once again Denise, thank you for creating this forum and for your continued work in the field of nutrition.
Kind Regards,
Brian J. MacLean
Animal farming is an efficient use of land
http://www.second-opinions.co.uk/vegetarian.html#link1
Why “failure to thrive” on vegetarian
diets is rarely talked about
http://beyondveg.com/nicholson-w/veg-prob/veg-prob-scen1b.shtml
“Why “failure to thrive” on vegetarian
diets is rarely talked about”
I think its talk very much, you certainly seem to be very well aware of it. Here’s my two cent. Many aspiring vegeterians in US enter the scene through extremely dobious frame. Most of the time it’s the raw scene. Moreoverer, many of these people harbour the same thoughts on diet as everyone else, carbs are unhealthy…fruit makes you fat. Or then they just eat soy five times a day in addition to being raw vegan and pretend it was particularly the vegan diet that made them sick.
However, you in different situation. I am here to tell you that carbs won’t make you fat. Skipping unprocessed carbs on veg diet is likely to end up badly. We never see anyone ending up in troubles among those people who follow f.ex vegan RD Ginny Messinas blog, have read the works of Michael Greger, Esselstyn, Barnard, etc. It’s only the kind of whackjobs who speak about entzymes who enter into problems with veg diet, and frankly it’s often not the only issue they end up having problems with in life.
Nice comments Brian,
PrimitiveNutrition has done such staggering jobb that the paleo crew can only pretend he doesn’t exist.
The three additional videos on cholesterol are amazing….I think we all learn from these that if scientist want to inflict an atherosclerosis on us quickly as possible, they do it by feeding us the Inuit diet, not lectins nor wheat. Thanks to plantpositive anyone referring to Tokelayns, Masai, Inuit as model for good health will end up looking like a bordeline retarded.
“Futility of cholesterol denialism”
I find it very interesting that Miss Minger recommends the diet of Kurt Harris for people looking diet advices, intresting especially in the context that Harris has disclosed people following his regime get their cholesterol on the 300mg/dl region pretty quickly. Moreover, interesting also in the context of Harris being part of religious sect that thinks Ancel Keys is criminal…which should reveal all about what kind of intellectual powerhouse Dr Harris is. …just saying
This video start with pure ad hominem: “are you foolish enough to believe some random Internet blog (Free the animal) rather than confirmed scientists”?
If I apply the same dishonest reasoning to these videos: “why believe some ANONYMOUS video on Youtube rather than books written by doctors with real names”? (for the gullible people out there who bought the argument in the video that only online fools are cholesterol skeptics, I have news for you: there are actual *doctors* exposing the fallacy of the cholesterol hypothesis in actual *books*…)
When a presentation starts this way, I just KNOW that it’s going to be bullshit, because people who use this approach (anonymity, fallacious rethorics, ad hominem arguments) always distort everything they touch with bias, prejudice, group thinking. That’s not the way of actual thinkers.It appeals to people with poor critical thinking skills. I’ve read countless material making a far better case for the cholesterol hypothesis, than these sophomoric videos that just regurgitate the current doxa, in a way that’s not even remotely interesting at that.
The above video is response to original primitivenutrition series which covers cholesterol already in detail. You’d do yourself a great favor by forgetting your rules about ad hominems and actually just watch the vidoes. Primitivenutritions worked for Denise Minger very well. She certainly invested her time in them, maybe even too much as she plagiated her whole blog post based on primitivenutritions original work. So, it’s safe to say, you are not dealing with BS here.
Minger likes myth-busting and who knows, maybe her next plagiated work is “The truth about lipid hypothesis – we all got it wrong”, in which she ofcourse refers to those half retarded cavemen quacks who got it wrong.
The troll is back!! Don’t get into the gutter with him folks, some are simply beyond help. So be it.
Yep. It’s doubtful anything productive comes from this. But, maybe by responding to the troll, we are able to solidify our own thoughts/beliefs? Still, time to move on, seriously… There is a huge difference between an intelligent argument and just someone with misguided anger
@Wizzu,
and don’t forget these doctors who are cholesterol deniers are also, every single one of them, in the faith that Ancel Keys manipulated the data. This should all reveal how sincere and intellectual powerhouses these doctors are. These clowns are not even willing to do a rudimentary research, that’s why it’s so ridiculously easy to point their fallacies for someone with real talent, such as primitivenutrition.
In his article, “the cause of atherosclerosis” the chiefeditor for American Journal of Cardiology says heart disease is a question of one factor and that’s cholesterol . One is immune to heart disease with total serum cholesterol under 150mg/dl no matter what you do, drink, smoke, stress, etc, since it’s physiologically impossible for atherosclerosis to develope under the magic treshold under normal conditions. This fact is nicley illustrated in the Framingham study for example. Roberts has hosted about 1300 scientific articles. I pointed out this to Minger while she debunked it by saying that Roberts was referring to “debunked” Ancel Keys study inter alia and thus cannot be taken seriously. LOL…so who is the twisted troll?
Also, I’d like to add, I am not trolling or trying to convince you to plant-based diets, you guys are twisted, stupid muppets, completely brainwashed by this sect-like religious lipid confusionists. However, it’s sooo…satisfying to know, that anyone entering the scene with open mind is very unlike to fall for Mingers & Co’s BS once we get this material out to people. Brian above makes a good example.
Framingham Heart Study
http://www.second-opinions.co.uk/cholesterol_myth_2.html
“These clowns are not even willing to do a rudimentary research”
Sigh. Look who talking. Richard there is a huge gap between what you think your know/learned about all this, and what you actually know/learned, which is not much. You’re too busy being rude, agressive and posting crap, to actually learn much, I guess.
As previously stated, you are being sophomoric, just like the guy in these videos (who I suspect is probably… you).
These videos (that I did look at, as painful as it was) didn’t have anything to teach me. I already knew all these arguments, which have already been voiced by much brighter minds and better orators than this anonymous clown. If the ‘big guys’ didn’t convince me, how on earth could these poor videos change my point of view?
If you are so sure that cholesterol causes heart disease, it shouldn’t be difficult for you to find a scientific proof. I mean a real proof, not conjectures from associations found in epidemiological studies or the opinion of some ‘specialist’. Bring the scientific proof. Good luck: for If it actually existed, there wouldn’t be so many skeptics.
Start with this, let me know when you are done so I’ll give about 150 papers in addition.
The Lipid Research Clinics Coronary Primary Prevention Trial results. I. Reduction in incidence of coronary heart disease.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6361299
And, no. I am not behind http://www.youtube.com/user/PrimitiveNutrition?ob=0
I would never have the talent for put a work like that, however I do have the talent to figure out in which kind of an intellectual hierarchy Masterjohn, Minger, Harris, etc stands next to the man behind primitivenutrition series.
If don’t believe me, then trust Minger, it was she, not me, who plagiated her whole blog post based on one segment of the series. Imitation is very sincere form and admiration, I guess….
Aaah, yes, the famous cholestyramine trial.
Cholestyramine has a long list of metabolic effects:
. lowers LDL (the obvious reason why it’s been chosen for the study, of course…)
. increases HDL (not by much, but it’s there)
. Increases triglycerides
. lowers some kinds of inflammation
. binds several kinds of dangerous toxins
. binds fat-soluble vitamins(A, D, E, K…)
. forces the liver to make more glycocholic acid
… the list goes on.
So now tell me, Richard. What makes “lower cholesterol” the best explanation for the reduction in CHD from cholestyramine intake, rather than:
. better HDL/LDL ratio (since cholestyramine lowers LDL without lowering HDL)
. transitional lack of vitamin A
. the detoxifying effect of cholestyramine
. some other possible metabolic effect of cholestyramine that hasn’t even been investigated?
The reply is: blind faith, brainwashing, hidden agenda, group think, doxa, and lack of rational thinking. Just what you think are *our* problems.
This study (whic has met lots of controversy in its time, and not only from cholesterol skeptics…) is very, very far from being a scientific proof that cholesterol causes heart disease. Try harder.
Gee….look at that, have cholesterol deniers critized that study, in addition perceiving Ancel Keys as criminal, well since it didn’t do for you, we can continue, better?
Saturated fat–rich diet enhances selective uptake of LDL cholesteryl esters in the arterial wall
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1177997/
I know this paper. I like it.
What’s really funny is that this very paper goes totally AGAINST your belief that “cholesterol causes heart disease”.
A single quote from this study will be enough: “a decreased trend in the incidence rate of CHD with an increasing HDL cholesterol level was consistent in people with any level of LDL cholesterol”.
So you increase HDL (thus, UPPING ‘cholesterol’) and CHD decreases, WHATEVER the LDL levels are. So, at the end, whatever the TC level is, you can decrease CHD by upping ‘cholesterol’, as long as it’s HDL.
This study is actually one of the dozens showing that total cholesterol levels per se have no relation with heart disease. Lipoproteins ratio (LDL/HDL) are a different story.
I’m pretty sure that you are very confused as to what actually are ‘cholesterol’, ‘HDL’; ‘LDL’, ‘Triglycerides’ and so on. Are you aware for instance, that technically, neither LDL nor HDL are even ‘cholesterol’? They are lipoproteins.
Still waiting for a proof that ‘cholesterol causes heart disease’. A hint: avoid posting papers you didn’t even read, unless you just want to keep on looking like a fool, like you do here by posting a study going against your beliefs…
Get smarter: post less, research/learn more.
Your comment was the best thing about this page. Until these “vegans” can find ONE civilization in the history of the entire world that didn’t eat meat (and thrive) then I will stick to being an omnivore. You don’t need science to know what is right.
“… the top specialists in the relevant fields have come to a virtually unanimous conculsion: Yes, high blood cholesterol is preventable risk factor for heart disease.”
Indeed it is, and nobody is claiming anything different.
What’s being claimed is that the link between dietary cholesterol and blood cholesterol is poor, and that it is an epiphenomenon… a (not-so-good) predictor.
The rest of this video is a mixture of ad hominem attacks and argument from authority.
Hi Brian,
Thank you so much for sharing a bit of your background and voicing your perspective so respectfully. I think disagreements and alternate viewpoints — when they don’t devolve into character attacks — are the most valuable part of any nutritional discourse, since they force us to consider new angles and hopefully climb closer to whatever the truth is. I hope you’ll stick around and continue contributing to the discussions here!
As others have suggested, using “vegan” and “vegetarian” interchangeably could be a problem since the nutritional difference between veganism and vegetarianism is much bigger than between vegetarianism and omnivorism. Eggs and dairy still provide a number of animal-based nutrients that could ward off the issues many vegans end up facing, and I tend to think a well-designed vegetarian diet could be pretty sustainable for many folks. And although research on vegans is limited, some studies suggest they have a significantly higher mortality rate than vegetarians and health-conscious omnivores (e.g., http://cebp.aacrjournals.org/content/14/4/963.full — “Being a vegan was associated with a higher mortality risk (1.59; 95% CI, 0.98-2.59) than being a lacto-ovo vegetarian (1.08; 95% CI, 0.86-1.34), when compared with nonvegetarians with moderate meat/fish consumption, accounting for all other variables”).
Thanks again for your thoughts, and for the kind words. 🙂
Denise
[…]the nutritional difference between veganism and vegetarianism is much bigger than between vegetarianism and omnivorism. Eggs and dairy still provide a number of animal-based nutrients that could ward off the issues many vegans end up facing[…]
I’m glad that you insist on the difference between vegetarianism and veganism, which is indeed much bigger than most omnivores (and sometimes even vegetarians themselves) seem to think. These are two very, very different ways of eating.
[…] and I tend to think a well-designed vegetarian diet could be pretty sustainable for many folks. […]
And I’m glad that we share this opinion.
You can be a vegetarian and never touch grains or legumes. You can live on vegetables, dairy, eggs, cheese, nuts…and I’m pretty sure that if well designed, such a diet can be healthy. Though it’s harder to design it properly, and follow it, than a balanced omnivorous diet: I for one, threw the towel after 12 years of trying to keep up with the everyday thinking about possible missing nutrients in my diet. But for people who are enclined to it, I’m all for vegetarianism.
On the other hand, a vegan can’t live long without a combination of grains and legumes, since no vegetable can bring the proper proteins in the diet. Besides, it will be difficult to provide the proper amount of fat-soluble vitamins. So I consider a vegan diet as a being simply a nonsensical concept, even more so since I see zero reason not to eat dairy (assuming you’re not intolerant to it of course…) and eggs, other than from the common misconception that these are bad for your health because of cholesterol and sat fat. Even the moral standpoint (exploiting animals) doesn’t make any sense when you dig into it.
Apart from these populations in India where veganism is a traditional way of life, which I must respect, I see veganism either as a fad, as an immature way of feeling special, or as a depersonalizing moral dogma.
Vegetarianism is completely, entirely different.
Minger,
why didn’t reveal us that the was only 23 reported deaths in the vegan group, that would help us to put things into perspective.
Moreover, failed to report this,
“The nonsignificant reduction in mortality from ischemic heart diseases in vegetarians compared with health-conscious persons could be explained in part by avoidance of meat intake”.
Now, if non health conscious vegeterians (and Vegans) do atleast as well as health conscious omnivores, shouldn’t we all be vegeterians, keeping mind the ecologic and ethical reasons. I wonder how health conscious vegeterians would have fared.
“Let me state once again that I am not a vegan or any other kind of vegetarian. However, I do believe that the bulk of evidence supports a vegetarian diet over an omniverous diet.”
Brian, I am most certainly not an expert, however …
– I tried to read Campbell’s book and rejected it as a piece of vegan propaganda
– I didn’t watch any of the videos (Campbell’s or this anonymous guy) so I won’t comment here
– There is a huge difference between veganism and vegetarianism and it seems strange that you ignore the difference. I find comments like: “Vegan researchers are wonderful, VEGETARIAN diet is superior to omnivorous diet” strange. What am I missing?
Thank you for your comment Anna. With regard to my omission of drawing a distinction between a vegan diet and other forms of vegetarianism, this is for two reasons. First, I have no personal experience with a vegan diet. Secondly, I am not aware of any well done studies comparing a carefully constructed vegan diet and, let us say, a lacto-ovo vegetarian diet. The studies available appear to have too many confounding variable to draw firm conclusions.
With regard to your question,’What am I missing?’, in the interest of not cluttering this post with excess words, I think you would find what you are ‘missing’ in the Plant Positive videos.
Regards,
Brian J. MacLean
Brian, well … I don’t think we’re communicating.
Something is really, really, really wrong.
You don’t have a personal experience with veganism, but it doesn’t prevent you from promoting promoters of veganism and stating that vegetarianism? (you mean veganism?) is superior. Forgive me my logical inclinations, but I am an unrealized mathematician.
Anna, as I said in my earlier posting, I am making statements primarily based on data and the quality of conclusions drawn from these data, not personal experience. However, on a personal level, I have noted that my cholesterol measures are more favorable with a reduction in saturated fat. Because of other favorable lifestyle factors, I have tended to ignore this, perhaps foolishly. If I suffer any cardiac events (and if I survive them) as a result of my less than optimal cholesterol ratios, I will perhaps be more qualified to share with you my personal experience resulting from the omnivore diet .
Having health-minded mindset and based on the all the data we have. I’d never accept having my total serum cholesterol under 150mg/dl, everything else is playing with risks.
Over 150mg/dl, that is 🙂
If your total cholesterol is under 150 you may be in danger of serious health issues. Cholesterol is vital for good health.
This is a good question (seriously, no snark). We hear a lot about how bad cholesterol, but close to nothing about what the body does with it IRL. I have heard that it wraps nerves and is used as a precursor to vit D (and I suppose other hormones that are closely related chemically), but not in much detail. What do people know about the benefits & uses of the various classes of lipoproteins?
I’m sure the body doesn’t produce lipoproteins & cholesterol for the purpose of giving people heart attacks. 🙂 They have an important function, which it could be interesting to understand.
Beth
Richard, I think he’s right. Stop typing and start reading.
The way I see it is that, we indeed do not have any data suggesting for veganism. However, I cannot comprehend why I hould add any animal products in my diet. As Joel Fuhrman nicely said animal products are like processed food. Lacking all the micronutrients. The average plant food has about 64 times more antioxidants compared to animal foods. In addition you get loads of cholesterol and saturated along the package. Keepin’ mind that the lipid hypothesis is one most established, researched and approved model in medical community. No thanks. So, I am happy to be 100% vegan eventhough the last 5-10% may be due to faith, ethics and spiritual reasons, I think that’s enough to compensate the lack of data.
You seriously think animal foods are not nutritionally dense? Get a clue. And the lipid hypothesis is losing traction in scientific circles day by day. And you know what, a good sirloin steak might just take the edge off the obvious “vegan rage” you are walking around with.
Dude…what an earth are you talking about. Apparently you are living some kind of a religious sect life, where your “scientist” are made of people who think Ancel Keys is criminal. Welcome to reality. You can start that by introducing yourself to primitivenutrition video serie on youtube. Lipid hypothesis is particularly emphasized in the additional “response serie”. It’s a free second opinion for you. Use it.
I am sure animal products are nutritious, however the question we ought to be asking is, nutritious next to what?
No, I am not living some kind of a religious sect life, whatever the heck that means. I am a very logical guy who has had a huge interest in health for over a decade. Simply being a parrot and repeating poor you tube material does not an argument make.
The lipid hypothesis is dying on the vine and in a generation or two will have gone the way of the flat earth society. It simply does not hold up to scrutiny. The guy who I think exclaims the role of cholesterol in health better than anyone is Chris Masterjohn. If you are willing to broaden your horizons and do some research on his arguments, you will learn a great deal.
I have said this several times on this forum. The enemy of healthy omnivores like myself is not vegans (although I truly believe they are misguided) or a vegan diet per say, and the enemy of vegans should not be healthy omnivores. The enemy of both and of all people who truly have an interest in healthy living is the horrendous Standard American Diet (SAD) and its proliferation of processed crap. That diet threatens to bankrupt the nation with spiraling health care costs due to metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, cancer etc…. that is taxing our health care system and continues to spiral out of control.
If we could somehow magically make people give up the processed crap they eat and stick to real food (meat, vegetables, fruit, tubers, eggs, nuts, some dairy…) and eschew all “manufactured” food, we would very quickly become much healthier, lower the obesity epidemic dramatically rein in health care costs. Alas, it isn’t going to happen but one can dream.
Sorry, guys, but are missing something very important – namely the quality of life itself. You can’t expect people who are unemployed and losing their houses and medical care or people who live in terror of a workplace and the horror of being unemployed and losing their houses and medical care to walk leisurely to a farmer market (possibly thousands miles away) for a fresh, very fresh piece of something for this evening, then to spend hours preparing this fresh piece of something and then educate themselves what would be good for the next evening and where to get it … When people work in terror for some 80 hours a week, they collapse after work’s charms and pleasures in front of stupid TV with some comfort food in hand or mouth.
So many comments here are so elitist and so detached from reality.
Anna what we need is a new intensive goverment sponsored education program against the dangers of cholesterol and saturated fat. This way could align more people with the science of year 2012 and help them to make better lifestyle choices.
There is no proven correlation between saturated and heart disease.
http://www.ajcn.org/content/early/2010/01/13/ajcn.2009.27725.abstract
Also, many of us who reintroduced saturated fat *and* lowered carbs, found that their blood lipids improved, sometimes dramatically so. Count me in.
Epidemiologic studies on homogenic cultures does not really give any merit to the idea that diet causes sickness, that’s why because everyone is already in a high risk diet. The saturated fat hypothesis comes from clinical trials, drug trials, cross-cultural epidemiologic studies, etc.
The saturated fat caused heart disease is proved from the waist down thousands of times, so that the only one you have left who does not believe in it are folks who think Ancel keys is criminal.
“The saturated fat caused heart disease is proved from the waist down thousands of times” —– Yeah, right. Keep on chanting, mindless parrot, lobotomized that you are by the doxa imposed by the pharmaceutical lobby and short-sighted incompetent technocrats. Unable to think on your own.
Until you provide the actual proof you are talking about (now you have TWO proofs to provide, that we will of course never see…), your allegations are as good as “Santa Klaus exists and it has been proved from the waist down thousands of times”. Simply repeating something doesn’t make it any truer.
You have a loooong way to go, sonny. You’re not even scratching the surface: you’re just singing with the ignorant, mindless mob, trained to bark at the ones with real insight, the very ones trying to save you from your slave life. Five hundred years ago, you would have burned innocent women, shouting “they’re witches, it’s been proven!”.
Now that was fun to write. 🙂
“The saturated fat caused heart disease is proved from the waist down thousands of times”
Sorry, making ex-cathedra statements like that doesn’t make it true. If this were so true Weston Price would have found people dying right and left from heart disease and other modern degenerative diseases while doing ‘cross-cultural studies’. But he didn’t. He found very healthy groups of people who ate lots of cholesterol and saturated fat.
And of course nature chose saturated fats as a great source of energy. Ruminants as an example convert all that cellulose they eat into saturated fats which are one of their primary energy sources.
Please go away. It’s the kind of nonsense you’re espousing that led the government and corporations to tell people that ‘polyunsaturates’ like corn oil are ‘heart-healthy’ and ‘natural’ and ‘healthy’.
http://omega-6-omega-3-balance.omegaoptimize.com/2009/01/30/the-american-heart-associations-agendait-sure-aint-science-or-public-health.aspx?ref=rss
What is the American Heart Association’s Agenda? —It Sure Ain’t Science or Public Health
Controversy and debate are an expected (and welcome) part of the scientific process. But the American Heart Association’s recent advisory urging Americans to gobble up their omega-6 fat is an unconscionable disservice, to both the scientific process and the public health.
Old School Cholesterol Dogma versus Science
On January 27, 2009 the American Heart Association (AHA) issued an advisory touting the benefits of eating plenty of omega-6 fats. Here’s the problem–AHA made sweeping statements that are not supported by the research, while ignoring landmark studies, which don’t support their views [Harris]. While the cholesterol myth has finally been put to rest as the cause underlying heart disease (it’s inflammation and beyond), it would seem that heart healthy eating would need some refinement.
Yet, the American Heart Association’s key rationale for promoting omega-6 polyunsaturated fats, is because of their ability to lower blood cholesterol, when eaten in the place of saturated fats. (Keep in mind that one out of every two people with heart disease has a normal blood cholesterol level.) Furthermore, the AHA asserts that if Americans were to lower their current omega-6 fat, their heart health would suffer.
Omega-6 fat intake has sky-rocketed in the last century, so it would seem that we should see a dramatic lowering of heart disease in the USA, yes? No. The incidence of cardiovascular disease has increased in parallel with the increase in linoleic acid intakes in many countries [Ghosh]. Linoleic acid is the most commonly eaten omega-6 fatty acid.heart disease have higher blood levels of the omega-6 fat, arachidonic acid, as shown below [Okuyama].
yes? No. The incidence of cardiovascular disease has increased in parallel with the increase in linoleic acid intakes in many countries [Ghosh]. Linoleic acid is the most commonly eaten omega-6 fatty acid. Notably, people who have died from heart disease have higher blood levels of the omega-6 fat, arachidonic acid, as shown below [Okuyama].
You know Anna, sometimes you are just a pain in the you know what and you should get off your own high horse. I’m sick of your very tired act.
Dear Mario, I love your posts and we often think along the same lines. But I personally believe that sound words are sound words, wherever they com from. So if Anna writes sound words, so be it: whatever her real motives, they are still sound words.
She had the intellectual honesty to reckon the same two weeks ago (she sees me as a nazi, but she recognized that my words made sense despite her poor opinion of me as a person). So I’m kinda enclined to cut her some slack in this area, if you see what I mean.
It’s difficult to keep a personal discipline of avoiding ad hominen, isn’t it? 😉 To me, it’s an everyday struggle. But I think it’s worth it.
When she writes sound words, I don’t make a comment like the one I made above. In fact, most times, I bite my tongue no matter how off topic or lame her comments are. In this case, I had simply had had enough. That last one was just a little too arrogant and a little too pious for me.
Where in God’s green earth did her comment about working 80 hours a week and walking thousands of miles to farmer’s markets and taking hours to prepare that food etc… come from?
It was in response to simple comment about eating real food. Guess what? For the most part, real food is not that expensive (or at least you can certainly choose real foods that are not that expensive), is available in every supermarket in the nation and can be prepared in a lot less than “hours and hours”. I work, I am a single dad of 4 (admittedly they are older ranging in age from 16 to 24, but they still all live with me with the 3 oldest in university here in Calgary), and I go to the gym every day. I still make it to the supermarket every day to buy what I am going to cook for dinner that night and prepare wholesome but mostly simple meals pretty much every day of the year.
Do I sympathize with obese people and with people who make terrible food choices every day? VERY MUCH SO. Many people think they are making great choices when they aren’t. We place “heart healthy” stickers on Eggo Waffles for goodness sake. No wonder the average consumer is confused and makes terrible choices. I think unless one does an awful lot of personal research, knowing what is a good diet is extremely difficult. Processed food companies spend billions trying to convince us that Coco Puffs is a healthy choice to feed our children, and there is a massive amount of misinformation floating out there so that even many people who are health conscious still have no idea what to eat. It infuriates me that our governments, consciously or not continue to propagate myths that keep people unhealthy, flirting with type 2 diabetes and metabolic syndrome etc…
The fact remains though, that the vast majority of people still eat far too much “manufactured food”, no matter what the reason. If over time, through Lord knows what means and methods we can change that mentality and get the majority of people to make “real” food their choice the vast majority of the time, they will be better off and we will be hugely better off as a society that is being crippled by health care costs that are quickly spiraling out of control.
Hey Mario, very much enjoyed your comment but I would like to emphasize that government should stay out of the health advise business and let the consumer make the choice of who stays or goes in business. More and more people are going to grass fed and away from factory food. I have two 5 cubic foot freezers which allow me to buy in bulk at discount. I’m just finishing 190 lbs of beef and I think next I’ll go with full fat pork. I shop for food about once a month to get my vegies that enhance my meat centered meals. I stay away from grains and anything with sugar. I’ve discovered several things buying in bulk. Bone soup is delicious, surprised me.
Unfortunately, our government is in the health advice business. That is part of the problem. The government “food pyramid” is a big part of the problem. I do get your overall point however about government involvement being kept to a minimum.
As far as bone soup is concerned, I am with you all the way. I bought a huge soup pot a while back and pretty much every week I make a big batch of bone broth (I buy some soup bones from the local market and whatever else I have gathered in the last week from every day eating) and let it simmer for up to 48 hours and then use that as a base for soup. I’ll throw in everything but the kitchen sink in that broth with a ton of different spices and it almost always comes out delicious. Real good for you and just plain yummy to boot.
Now that’s a reply that makes sense. 🙂
I don’t think I can find any part in it that I’m not in agreement with.
You’re right about real food actually costing no more than junk. Actually, I think it costs even less (even more so if We count the health care costs but I’m not even going there). But what does cost more, is *premium* real food, like grass-fed meat, organic vegetables and so on. Even so, it’s still possible to reduce the costs by eating organs and fatty cuts rather than lean meats, which is what I do BTW. But this needs education in a society where people are more easily disgusted by chicken liver than they are by Twinkies or sugar-loaded drinks… sigh.
Chicken livers and chicken hearts are delicious. There is a little place that sells organic chicken livers and hearts from pastured hens on my way home from work and that is a regular treat. Cheap, delicious (with sauteed onions and a couple of fried eggs), chicken hearts and livers are a treat. Have to say I am even more partial to the hearts.
Yeah, bone broth rules! To think I discovered its health benefits, then started the habit to constantly make broths, only three months ago… where was I?!
“Where in God’s green earth did her comment about working 80 hours a week and walking thousands of miles to farmer’s markets”
Well, Vachon, why don’t you check how many vacation days, how many sick days, etc, your neighbors have and how many hours they work. Your government and American are different, You just don’t know that and … anything else.
I am not going to continue this discussion.
Well Anna, how does it feel to be all knowing about other people and their cultures?
And by the way, it is extremely rude to address someone by their last name when you are aware of their first name. Can’t say I am surprised though. Throughout this entire blog, in post after post, you tend to be arrogant, self righteous and condescending. It gets real old real fast.
Ouh…and for the all the sub-retarded cholesterol deniers who think Chris Masterjohn makes up a good scientist by telling the Inuits and Masai are healthy.
This is what Denise Minger wrote to primitivenutritions youtube comment pages.
“I agree cholesterol denialism (in the sense that blood lipids are … … unrelated to heart disease) is a problem”
It’s very problematic indeed! You guys can be 100% certain that if scientist wanted to inflict you atheroclerosis as quick as possible in a laboratory, you would not be fed by wheat or lectins.
Even Masterjohn does not contend that you should just ignore cholesterol numbers. Try to stay with the program Richard. He believes oxidized LDL is a contributor to arteriosclerosis. You obviously have not researched his thoughts on the topic and are just parotting something you saw or read elsewhere. What he doesn’t buy into are that certain levels are ideal or that cholesterol is a particularly good marker for cardiac health.
What he certainly does not believe is that ingesting cholesterol in the form of eggs, unprocessed meats, dairy etc… is inherently unhealthy. Quite to the contrary, he recognizes that these foods are extremely nutritionally dense and healthy.
And that’s why Masterjohn deserves the characaterization retard. Had you actually watch primitivenutritions channel, you’d know all about oxidized LDL. Claiming that cholesterol laden foods does not elevate cholesterol is just silly, since we clinical evidence that shows it does. The only being those who already have sky-high blood cholesterol levels.
Egg cholesterol in the diet
http://nutritionfacts.org/videos/egg-cholesterol-in-the-diet/
The only exception being those who already have sky-high cholesterol levels, that is.
Chris Masterjohn NEVER said that cholesterol laden foods do not elevate cholesterol levels hahaha.. Where are you getting this? I am not a follower of masterjohn at all and I know he never said that. He specifically says that it DOES elevate your levels and that his cholesterol levels are pretty high. He pointed out that cholesterol Levels are not a cursor for heart disease, and also talks about the differences between LDL and LDC-C cholesterol. Btw people in Japan have higher cholesterol levels then those of us in America, and they tend to live longer too 🙂
Sorry, you’re so full of crap it’s not even funny. Not a single person following Denise or Christ Masterjohn is going to take you seriously. You’re speaking to a group of people far more aware of these food issues than the general public and your epithet laden diatribes don’t do much to lend you credibility. You basically want us to believe that old foods cause new disease epidemics. Please. go somewhere else with your strange and quixotic anti-saturated fat/cholesterol foolishness somewhere else.
I really think it’s time for Denise to ban you, calling people ‘retard’.
I second that motion
Richard, this is your third warning and you won’t be getting a fourth. You are absolutely entitled to your views and opinions, and I want this blog to be an open platform for anyone to share their perspective (including you) — but when you start making the comment section an unpleasant place for other people, that’s crossing a line. You are welcome to stay IF you express your opinions in a more respectful way and refrain from calling people names. Otherwise, you’ll be cordially invited to my very exclusive banned-IP list. 🙂
If you have any specific gripes you’d like to express to me, of course, you are welcome to use the “Contact” page on this site.
Shape up or ship out, my friend!
I agree. When people speak disrespectfully to those they are responding to, I stop reading, but I also dislike such posts.
Thanks, Beth
He doesn’t Denise and it doesn’t look like he will or can. It’s like a mental diarrhea brought on by an inability to cope with sane people having normal conversations about points of view, scientific findings, etc. Please stop him, it’s stinking up the blog.
Afterburner: Are you aware of what Jack Kruse is up to these days? Either he is totally out of it, or he is brilliant and on the edge of something we have been overlooking all along, like an elephant in the room. As we did for instance with supplementation with Omega 3 instead of reducing Omega 6. I think it homeostasis at cell level and proper energy balance in the mitochondria is where it all plays out. Am beginning to apply his cold thermogenesis. Carefully, slowly, but I must admit an ice cold shower feels absolutely exhilarating.. afterwards.
“It’s like a mental diarrhea […]” 🙂 Thanks for the laugh, James.
For the record, I do hope that Richard does “shape up” and does not get exiled to Veganland, as this would leave me quite alone as an occasional dissenting voice from the shadows. Who knows, I might even feel so lonely and alienated, that conversion to the fold may seem compelling. If this occurred, I am wondering what would be left for us to talk about, aside from congratulating each other for being smarter than the vast majority of world renowned medical and nutrition scientists, with regard to the lipid hypothesis? And of course, this would also make us much smarter than Loren Cordain, who also makes the egregious error of giving credence to the lipid hypothesis. Geez, just contemplating all this gives me a sense of rising self-esteem!
The truth about the ‘Noble’ Hunter Gatherer lifestyle: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYRkNhJDZws&feature=player_embedded#! So, I,m trying to recall, just what part of this ‘natural’ tradition is worth emulating?
Not many obese, or diabetic people there. I guess not many people there either who are a drain on our healthcare system and who will most likely ruin it for all of us.
So what part of your “natural tradition” is worth emulating?
Yes indeed, not many ‘obese, or diabetic people there’ and as you cleverly point out, there are ‘not many people there either who are a drain on our healthcare system.’ In fact there are no people there who are a drain on any healthcare system, because they don’t have one, and associated with this, are a different set of health problems, including a likely load of parasites, which assist in keeping blood cholesterol within safe limits. Another obvious area where a health comparison with our societal level is specious, is that these traditional peoples have an activity level far exceeding those of the vast majority of people in western cultures.
And James, there is no part of my “natural tradition” worth emulating, since I don’t have such a thing, and neither do you. Pretending to be
a modern ‘hunter gatherer’ or ‘paleolithic’ is just plain silly. You may have heard of the naturalistic fallacy.
“Pretending to be a modern ‘hunter gatherer’ or ‘paleolithic’ is just plain silly.”
Of course it would be silly because the industrial machine and division of labor have removed the need to be a hunter gatherer but the evolution of our metabolism requires that we eat like a hunter gatherer. Have you ever wondered in the history of man the cost to human lives finding which plants are safe to eat? (include mushrooms)
In regards to the video I think it was staged to display hunting as a savage disregard for animal life.
I don’t buy it. Hunters have a great deal of regard for animal life.
What is the safe limit for cholesterol and how do you know?
This is kind of a typical vegan ploy, the shock tactic. Stop with it.
Chris, you think that Brian is a vegan? It looks like. I suspected it because what he was saying was too convoluted and I never got a straight answer.
But I do have a problem with some of paleo tenets. I think I just don’t need them or any other tenets.
Sorry to upset your binary classification scheme, but as I said previously, I am not a vegan or any other kind of vegetarian. I consume both meat, fowl and dairy, although not in large quantities and all organic. In fact, since Denise eats a diet which is 90% plants, she is considerably closer to being a vegan than myself. Based on the bulk of scientific evidence, I would move as close to veganism as Denise, but alas, I enjoy the bon vivant lifestyle far too much, and quite frankly, am not as disciplined.
And Anna, you did get a straight answer from me.
Regarding your last point, I am curious why, if you don’t need any ‘tenets’, that you are engaging in such a dialogue, which is largely about ‘tenets’?
Actually, this blog has a lot of useful information and I am learning. I don’t see it as ideological. Denise has clearly an analytical mind and comments are diverse.
Oh please, this video is masterful at creating and intensifying a suspenseful grip, not by what is shown, but by the music.
Play the same music with a video of a nursing baby and you would have the same affect.
A small group of hunters who perform a well thought out stalk to a quick kill should offend no one. And hunters don’t hunt to background music.
‘A small group of hunters who perform a well thought out stalk’ – not exactly. If you watched the video, you would have noticed that this ‘small group’ is often composed of about 10,000 hunters(roughly the same number of African elephants still alive in the wild state). And far from being a ‘well thought out stalk’, it is an inevitable kill as they close the vice trapping and slaughtering the animals within.
Wondering how many meat eaters would still be interested in this food choice if they had to get their own hands dirty (i.e., bloody)? Would this still ‘offend no one’ among those writing on this site?
” Wondering how many meat eaters would still be interested in this food choice if they had to get their own hands dirty (i.e., bloody)? Would this still ‘offend no one’ among those writing on this site?”
This is a non-issue. In almost all societies we are far removed from the killing floor. I say too bad because we are also far removed from where our food comes from.
I know people that don’t have a problem being very close the source of their own food. My very own mom, who lives in a very rural area in the central Western US, just this last year went hunting for the first time with her husband. Shot an elk (they’re pretty abundant out there) and had wild game meat for quite a long time from it. She and her husband even ‘processed’ the elk themselves.
I told her to make sure and eat the organ meats and use the bones to make fantastic and nutritious bone broths.
Well, my chickens are right outside my window, and I personally supervise when beef are butchered. My mother tells me that in her day, it was considered unsafe to buy a chicken already plucked, because you didn’t know how healthy the chicken was. She bought them live, then the person selling them cleaned them while you watched. So no, harvesting animals isn’t really worse than say, digging potatoes or gathering soy … probably something most vegans don’t do either.
Small-farm chickens and goats are great for the environment. Chickens recycle garbage and make great manure, while goats mow the grass and give great milk. Beef do best on large plots of wasteland, and letting the buffalo roam again would be a great thing for the Gulf of Mexico. Inland fish farms can produce great fish, using duckweed and algae and earthworms to grow fish.
But I don’t think this is an either/or thing, the vegans vs. the carnivores. The ideal diet, if you look at the entire world, does tend to be plant-based, with fish, eggs, poultry, or milk, as the bulk of protein. People can’t eat all that much protein, so you have to get the calories somewhere! Traditionally, “meat”, as in “ruminant muscle” wasn’t eaten all that often, as the animals were valued more for their eggs, milk or wool. Young male animals couldn’t grow into adult males, or they become violent and fight each other.
And I don’t think that “eating ruminant meat” is off the hook in terms of health damage. I know it’s unpopular in the Paleo crowd, but the studies about neu5gc are troubling. The stuff IS inflammatory, and it is absorbed in the body. Also, unless combined carefully with other foods, like tea or milk, iron is over-absorbed in meals that contain heme iron and saturated fat. It’s more of a problem since WW2, since “fortified” foods were invented and hookworm was mostly eradicated. Iron is *known* to cause heart disease, and iron levels in the US are higher than those in China or India or most of the rest of the world.
It’s not surprising that there are no examples of vegan cultures, since humans really do need some of the nutrients in animal foods. But I also have not found an example of a healthy culture that eats mainly ruminant meat. The pastoral people like the Maasai drink mainly milk, and those ranchers in old Texas ate mainly beans. The Inuit eat mainly seafood, which has a very different profile. The Plains Indians ate a huge variety of food, but we don’t have a really clear record of the usual daily menu. The Paleo people were tall, but we have no idea what their hearts looked like, and mostly they died young in any case. So I guess we won’t have the data until a lot of American “mainly meat eaters” reach older age?
Please explain ruminant meat.
I’m not sure what the question is? What is a ruminant, or why do I not think they are the best animal food for humans? By ruminants I mean goats, sheep, and cows. I’m not against eating meat at all, but I can’t find an example of a healthy society that uses ruminant meat as the primary protein. This bothers me a little in that the more paleo-oriented folks seem to be warning people to not eat much fish or poultry, because of “PUFA” … yet fish and poultry have been dietary mainstays for some of the healthiest people.
Thank you, my question is answered but this brings up another question maybe someone can answer. Omega 3 and omega 6 are supposedly balanced on grass fed beef because cattle are normally grazing animals but how does the omegas balance on poultry and pork? Poultry are one of the only animals that grains may be acceptable as a staple and hogs are not grazing animals, they are more rooting animals that will eat almost anything a goat will eat. Are free range chickens better than the alternative? What about hogs?
Chicken fed ‘grains’ are usually fed soy. In fact this is often a marketing ploy when the packaging says, ‘vegetarian fed’. This soy protein becomes part the meat and eggs of the chickens. So we’re no longer eating an egg so much as eating a soy tainted product.
http://healthfreedoms.org/2011/10/11/soy-protein-found-in-egg-yolks-chicken-tissue/
Chickens when raised in pastured situations eat bugs, worms, insects and all kinds of other things that lay on the ground, including natural seeds and grains. I get my eggs from a small farm whose chickens are pastured (which I know for a fact because I go out there and see them for myself running around the grass and landscape). The eggs are vastly superior to anything, including ‘organic omega-3’ eggs I can get at the grocery store.
We’ve standardized on fish, eggs, and chicken. The eggs we get from our chickens. They used to be free-range, but then the free-range eagles and fence-jumping bobcats started eating them, so they are “cooped up” now and going to a bigger enclosed space shortly. However, there weren’t enough bugs etc. to really keep them fed, so most of their actual calories come from leftovers from our kitchen. Actually the eggs are even better since they started getting more leftovers (I get other family’s leftovers too: some people are using restaurant scraps). Chickens prefer to be under cover, esp. when there are flying birds around, and ours spent most of the time huddled under a vehicle. They seem quite happy in their “house”. Actually they can get out at this point, but they don’t unless I kick them out to forage.
I’m probably one of 3 people left in the US that don’t think soy is always evil, but one of the best ways I think to feed chickens is to buy bulk seeds, then sprout them. They LOVE sprouted seeds. Also I want to raise black soldier flies as a supplement, and I do raise worms. Leftover dinner though, is still their favorite, esp. leftover bones, enchiladas, etc. The original reason we got the hens was because we didn’t have a garbage disposal, or garbage pickup, and if you compost food it attracts bears. If you have chickens, you don’t have food leftovers! They compost what they don’t eat, buy burying it in chicken litter. If it attracts flies, they eat the flies! They are amazing omnivores, and can handle a huge variety of foods.
We’ve raised meat chickens before, and plan to shortly when we get better housing for them.
Pigs I’m not sure how I feel about. On the one hand, their protein profile is a lot like a human’s, which should make it easy to assimilate. OTOH, their protein profile is a lot like a human’s, which means they carry diseases. The smallpox that wiped out the original North Americans … was carried by wild pigs. The ecoli that got in some salsa … was carried by wild pigs. The flu varieties that pop up each year … is incubated by pigs on small farms. MRSA is mainly from pigs on factory farms. Anyway, I lost my taste for eating pork mostly.
Fish farming, if done RIGHT, can be a great thing. I think you’ll see it more in the next decade or two. I’ve seem some really good systems, which can raise huge amounts of food. The Amazonians had huge fish farms 1,000 years ago, and fed millions of people. The Hawaiians actually harvested 3 times more fish than today, yet didn’t overfish the waters.
http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/overfishing/
Goats are great animals, though I think the milk and cheese is probably healthier than the meat. The Maasai who are so often used as an example … use milk mainly. There are a lot of examples of very healthy people living off fermented milk. One small goat can produce a gallon of milk a day, eating scrub (or mowing your lawn for you!). And produce food for your black soldier flies or earthworms or garden too.
Brian, I am with you, even without watching the video. Personally, I am reluctant to go primal and participate in any of these activities: hunting, gathering, and most certainly human sacrifices and similarly charming activities.
Why can’t I just eat my meat and some grass and avoid sugar, vegetable oils and excess of carbs without admiring human sacrifices, let alone participating in them?
I am unhappy with this comment. I think that Brian is dishonest and playing some games which are not my games.
An excellent account on how the low-carb saturated fat apostles online operate, it’s nothing but a religious sect with their set of believes. These low-level people perpetuate a lie and manipulation
“Vegan propaganda”
Richard, are you truly clueless to the value of cholesterol in human metabolism?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cholesterol
And after more than fifty years don’t you think that a hypothesis should either become a theory or be dissolved? I’m talking about the lipid hypothesis. A good scientist looks for data that does not support a hypothesis and so far nothing supports the hypothesis.
gager, seems like you have some respect for wikipedia as an information source on such matters. Also found there: ‘As of the end of the 1980s, the evidence accumulated through studies resulted in general acceptance of the lipid hypothesis and the rejection of the “cholesterol controversy”,[12][13] and by 2002, the lipid hypothesis was accepted by the scientific community as proven,[14] or, as one article stated, “universally recognized as a law.”[15]’
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lipid_hypothesis)
The lipid hypothesis is “universally recognized as a law”. My God what a load of dung.
The article is clearly biased and poorly written. Why would anyone use this article as a reference?
For those interested here are some alternatives hypothesis for heart disease and cholesterol that you can read;
http://www.thincs.org/links.htm
http://www.fathead-movie.com/index.php/2012/03/22/another-good-diet-produces-lousy-results/comment-page-1/
So gager, you believe your article from Wickipedia has truth value, but the one I cited you consider “clearly biased and poorly written”. It might interest you that a number of the contributors to both articles are the same. Perhaps this is why these statements are included in the article you seem to consider credible: “Elevated levels of the lipoprotein fractions, LDL, IDL and VLDL are regarded as atherogenic (prone to cause atherosclerosis).[43] Levels of these fractions, rather than the total cholesterol level, correlate with the extent and progress of atherosclerosis. On the converse, the total cholesterol can be within normal limits, yet be made up primarily of small LDL and small HDL particles, under which conditions atheroma growth rates would still be high,” and “The vast majority of doctors and medical scientists consider that there is a link between cholesterol and atherosclerosis.”
atherosclerosis as discussed above;[60] a small group of scientists, united in The International Network of Cholesterol Skeptics, questions the link.[61]
You forget? I referenced the article because it states the importance of cholesterol in metabolism and the important functions in provides. It is not because it was at the wiki site and I do discriminate on opinion and facts. We are not stupid.
The article you referenced is useless except to show bias.
Gager, since “We are not stupid” and are aware of the important functions of cholesterol, why the need to cite a basic article on this?
Perhaps you do discriminate between “opinion and facts” but did not seem to apply discrimination with the article you cited, since it agrees with the article I cited, which you consider “useless.”
Smith-Lemli-Opitz syndrome probably best demonstrates the critical role cholesterol plays in healthy human physiology. Chris Masterjohn presents the best take on the role of cholesterol in heart disease.
http://www.askthelowcarbexperts.com/2012/02/6-all-things-lipids-cholesterol-101-chris-masterjohn
I happen to think he’s correct, that there’s like a bystander role here, but not a direct ‘your cholesterol is too high’ directly causative role. Certain fractions or cholesterol carrier molecules can become oxidized because of inefficient metabolism. It’s not about reducing cholesterol it’s about improving your metabolic efficiency. Avoid foods that lead to lipid peroxidation like processed vegetable oils (PUFA’s) for instance.
At the end of the day, old foods can’t be causing 20th century disease epidemics. This is precisely what Weston A Price noted when he studied groups of people around the world.
I am one step further, besides aknowledging the huge important of cholesterol in human body per se, I’ve actually asked how much of this good stuff is enough. You should too. It’s really easy these days, just start by watching primitivenutritions serie “The futility of cholesterol denialism”. 3 videos and you get the answer.
Primitivenutrition teaches you why everything you had ever known about cholesterol and heart disease is utterly wrong. Welcome to the year 2012
You are being duped. Facts not claims should be your guide.
“I am one step further”
No, actually you are 50 years behind, like the anonymous clown making these videos, who has probably used a time machine to collect the material in the 70’s. He seems to have missed most of the recent (last 15 years) research in blood lipids and associated CHD risks.
BTW I’m still waiting for the scientific proof you promised, showing that “cholesterol causes heart disease”. Post less. Research more.
Richard is wrong about cancer and low cholesterol;
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120326113713.htm
Low LDL Cholesterol Is Related to Cancer Risk
ScienceDaily (Mar. 26, 2012) — Low LDL cholesterol in patients with no history of taking cholesterol-lowering drugs predates cancer risk by decades, suggesting there may be some underlying mechanism affecting both cancer and low LDL cholesterol that requires further examination, according to research presented March 25 at the American College of Cardiology’s 61st Annual Scientific Session.
suggesting there may be some underlying mechanism affecting both cancer and low LDL cholesterol
If the relationship had come out the other way, there would be big headlines saying that high LDL causes cancer. Just saying …
Beth
They are covering for statins but until that mysterious underlying mechanism affecting cholesterol and cancer is discovered what remains is a strong association between low cholesterol and cancer. Contrary to Richard claims low cholesterol precede cancer by many decades.
I’m not sure what you mean by “covering for statins”. The study looked at people that were not on statins to remove the possibility that statins caused the result.
My point was that the prevailing belief that low cholesterol is good, so it must be some common cause, not the low cholesterol itself, that is the cause of this effect — in the minds of the researchers. IRL, it’s an epidemiological study, so good for raising the possibility that there is something to find, but that’s all.
Well they are looking outside statins because low cholesterol has been associated with increased cancer risk and higher mortality in older population and statins lower cholesterol. That low cholesterol is good has been question by a lot of skeptic doctors with an alternative hypothesis on the role that cholesterol play on health. Until some mechanism is discovered that reveal direct cause many cholesterol skeptics can point out that it it’s not necessarily an indication of good health. What is sure is that is not like many proponent of very low cholesterol like Richard said that cancer was causing the low cholesterol.
“What is sure is that is not … cancer was causing the low cholesterol.”
In other words, they have provided evidence that either there is a common cause for both low cholesterol or that low cholesterol itself causes cancer. Right, and it is good to have this data point.
Another interesting point is that obesity is associated with increased cancer and (I think) also associated with high cholesterol. Given that, I would be interested in looking at the association between the subtypes of cholesterol and cancer. For example, do people that get cancer (obese or not) tend to have low levels of the large/fluffy LDL?
Beth
There could be at least one underlying problem: people who have undetected celiac often have low cholesterol, and also increased risk of cancer. Celiacs who eat wheat are also often thin no matter how much they eat, so on health profiles … and to most people watching them … they seem both healthy and often beautiful.
It seems that Richard has taken a break from posting, or fallen victim to the obvious ‘dangers’ of low LDL, and thus it seems left to me to point out the obvious concerning the relationship between cancer and cholesterol.
In the Science Daily March 26, 2012 article that compared a relatively small group of cancer patients with controls (201 and 402 cases, respectively), one of the authors “cautions the current study does not suggest that having low LDL-C somehow leads to the development of cancer,” and that the “relationship between the two exists for many years prior to cancer diagnosis.” This author, is obviously pointing to a correlational relationship and to a time frame leading up to diagnosis. In oncological research, it is pretty well accepted that cancers often take decades to develop and thus, they could have an LDL lowering effect over time. It is also important to recognize that this was simply a paper presented at a conference and until it has passed the litmus test of acceptance into a peer review journal, the quality of the research remains undetermined.
Considering a study with somewhat more cases than the cited 2012 study in the Science Daily, a 2009 paper in the peer reviewed journal, Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention, of 29,000 Finnish men over an 18 year period, showed that low cholesterol levels did not increase the risk of cancer in a clinically meaningful way. Although less than 200 milligrams per deciliter was associated with an 18 percent higher overall risk of cancer, this increased risk applied only to cases diagnosed in the early years of the study. In other words this finding supports the idea that lower cholesterol levels are the result of cancers which have not yet been diagnosed. In the same issue of this journal, another paper reporting on more than 5,500 men enrolled in the Prostate Cancer Prevention Trial, yielded results showing that those with cholesterol levels lower than 200 had a 59 percent lower risk of developing the most dangerous form of that cancer. In a more recent research paper in another peer reviewed journal (Urologic Clinics of North America, Aug, 2011), the results strongly point to hypercholesterimia as a risk factor for the progression of prostate cancer.
Looking at the bigger picture, there are many studies that show a relationship between saturated fat and cancer across countries. Those countries having the highest saturated fat intake also have the highest cancer rates. There are also many studies linking the intake of animal foods and cancers. And, as in all fields of scientific inquiry, there will be research study outliers presenting a picture at odds with the generally accepted conclusions from the bulk of research. Being an outlier does not necessarily mean that the conclusions are wrong, nor does it mean that they are right. To legitimately gain acceptance in the scientific community, and thus overthrow a generally accepted theory, the competing viewpoint necessarily requires a considerable amount of supportive well conducted research. With regard to a viable alternative to the lipid hypothesis, such knowledge conditions do not exist at the present time.
“Those countries having the highest saturated fat intake also have the highest cancer rates. There are also many studies linking the intake of animal foods and cancers”
Sorry, that’s just pure, complete, unadulterated nonsense. I’ve said it many times and I’ll say it again. Old foods don’t cause new, modern disease epidemics. This is exactly why Weston A Price’s Nutrition and Physical Degeneration has been so valuable. Precisely because he was at a period of the 20th Century when he was noting increasing rates of not only poorer dental health, but a commensurate decline in overall health and increases in degenerative diseases. People weren’t suddenly eating MORE of old world foods, like animal products, they were moving away from them and eating more refined, nutrient poor foods (refined wheat, sugar, etc.). The fact that we eat dramatically more sugar now then 100 and 200 years ago is a huge clue to me. In a recent lecture Stephen Guyanet, Ph.D. (http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com) note that we now eat in 7 hours the amount of sugar in one 12oz can of soda that a person in 1822 ate in 5 days.
The thousands upon thousands of healthy teeth Price examined, the well formed dental arches and robust skeletal structures in people eating old foods didn’t lie.
Price did note a drop in the quality of animal products such as dairy coming from cattle raised in large population groups in Europe, compared to isolated area that hadn’t adopted modern foods and animal husbandry practices. Because he had foods analyzed for their nutrient contents and densities, he knew something was moving in the wrong direction in ‘civilized’ humans. What effect has modern animal husbandry practices had on human health? Chicken are now ‘vegetarian fed’; fed massive quantities of soy and corn, something that permeates their meat and eggs and then poisons us.
He did not note people eating lots of saturated fats, cholesterol and animal foods having cancers and heart disease and rampant tooth decay. He found group after group after group with exactly the opposite situation going on, robust healthy people. When he noted people abandoning their traditional foods for ‘modern’ fares, that’s when the problems began.
In the name of anti-saturated fat, anti-cholesterol, anti-animal mania, over the course of the 20th century corporations and government policies have pushed people into eating COMPLETE garbage; things like hydrogenated margerines and vegetable oils and low-fat, highly processed, low nutrient dense junk foods while being told these were healthy. Please go watch Florence Henderson bestow the virtues of ‘all natural, cholesterol free’ high PUFA corn oils for frying foods. While saturated fat from sources like butter and lard/tallow decreased steadily over the 20th century these garbage ‘healthy’ oils and margerines increased dramatically.
So right, it’s the old foods causing new disease epidemics.
“Sorry, that’s just pure, complete, unadulterated nonsense.” No need to candy coat it here, so why don’t you tell us how you really feel? 🙂
First, let me say that no argument here regarding adulterated processed foods – Nutrition 101 knowledge. However ChrisSEA, the knowledge base you adduce to make your point is more than a bit antiquated, both from a methodological and a data base perspective. Weston Price, although an important and admirable pioneer in the investigation of cross-cultural nutritional patterns, was by today’s standards, employing relatively naive research methods. Furthermore, his data samples were not representative of current conditions. At the time he was writing, the state of medicine, nutrition, public sanitation and health record keeping accuracy were very undeveloped in industrialized countries compared to the current state of affairs. Infectious diseases were still killing a sizable portion of these populations before the so called ‘diseases of civilization’ such as cancer and arteriosclerosis could take root, and the cause of deaths were often not classified correctly. Furthermore, in his understanding of the health status of traditional peoples, Weston Price was apparently unaware of their high infant mortality rates, short life expectancy, endemic diseases, and frequent lethal infections.
It must be remembered that although Weston Price was a keen observer, he was a dentist. Dentists then and now, have typically not been trained to do research even in their own field and certainly not trained to do cross-cultural nutritional research. So although I have great admiration of Weston Price as a keen observer and humanitarian, I view his work as inspirational, but in the context of our current knowledge base, minimally informative. To hold up an attempt at nutritional science from the 1930’s as any kind of standard of truth is tantamount to saying that the Wright Brothers got it right and that current space shuttle technology is all wrong, the latter being the result of a government conspiracy trying to keep us from understanding the real nature of air travel.
But since you put so much stock in Weston Price, it seems worth asking what diet he personally viewed as best. In 1934, Weston Price composed a touching letter to his nieces and nephews, instructing them in what he considered the best diet: “The basic foods should be the entire grains such as whole wheat, rye or oats, whole wheat and rye breads, wheat and oat cereals, oat-cake, dairy products, including milk and cheese, which should be used liberally, and marine foods.” This seems highly inconsistent with the current Diet Dictocrats at the Weston Price Foundation, and is certainly at odds with Paleo/Primal notions. Perhaps if Sally Fallon and Mary Enig had in fact followed Price’s advice they would at least have some visible markers of healthy organisms. And perhaps Stephen Byrnes, a former member of the Weston Price Foundation’s Board of Directors, who was said in an “About the Author” section of an article highly critical of vegetarianism (“The Myths of Vegetarianism”), to “enjoy robust health on a diet that includes butter, cream, eggs, meat, whole milk, dairy products and offal,” would have done better if he had taken Price’s advice seriously. Stephen Byrnes suffered a fatal stroke in June, 2004 prior to reaching his 40th birthday.
Oddly enough, the co-founder of Bastyr University (into veganism and holistic medicine) also died at a young age of a heart attack, along with his son.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003543647_mitchellobit27m.html
I think Price was correct to look with broad strokes “how a culture works”, esp. with bone structure. You can see bone structure really easily, and our psyches recognize a healthy bone structure from a famished one, even if we don’t really understand why this happens. Thin, narrow faces that need braces, and have lots of cavities … there IS an issue, and it starts at an early age.
My daughter had really rotten teeth until she was 6 or so, when I changed my diet, and hers by default. She is 17 now, and the FIRST person in our extended family that didn’t need braces, or have many cavities, or have joint problems. She might not appreciate her broad face, broad hips, narrow waist, and great skin and hair, but sheesh, the diet we use, works, and she is gorgeous. Her friends grew up with horrible teeth, bad hair, bad joints, depression, neurosis, etc.
Granted our solution was not Price’s … I looked at his data and said “most of the healthy people don’t eat wheat!” and it turns out I am celiac. Also it turns out most healthy people have seafood. I agree his studies were naive, as were most back then, and those of Newton and DaVinci, FWIW. But valuable.
It’s a mistake to look at only one researcher or set of data. Linus Pauling had a lot of good stuff to say. So did Atkins, for that matter. And the food pyramid. They are all right, and all wrong … but all the data sources together, you can find “what really works”.
Regarding William Mitchell Jr., one of the founders of Bastyr College, I don’t believe that he was a vegan or even a vegetarian, and there are indications in his legal history that he had alcohol abuse problems. Having known quite a few Naturopathic physicians, I noticed that they tend not to be vegetarian. Having known a considerable number of vegans, many of them have very poor diets consisting of fragmented and nutritionally low density foods. The founder of the American Vegan Society, Jay Dinshah, whom I met in the early 60’s, died in 2000 at the age of 66, apparently of a chronic heart condition unrelated to diet. My recall of Jay is that his primary concern regarding diet was ethical and he appeared to have little interest or knowledge about appropriate exercise needs. At that time he was a young man and was quite thin and frail looking. Pictures of him prior to his death indicate that he had become overweight and most likely suffered from the typical middle age sarcopenia. He certainly didn’t look any healthier than the founders of the Weston Price Foundation in his last years. On the other hand, he didn’t look any worse.
I’m wheat/gluten free also. Price also wasn’t recommending the frankenwheat we have now days. It’s fascinating to hear Dr. William Davis (Wheat Belly) talk about the way wheat has been drastically altered over the course of the 20th century into the breed we have now. So saying that Price recommended wheat is not the same as saying he recommended what is grown today, especially if it’s not soaked and sprouted.
Yes indeed, current agricultural methods are disastrous, environmentally and nutritionally. However, the Paleo/Primal adherents are not just critiquing poorly grown grains, but rather all grains. This is contrary to Price’s nutritional views.
Grains make perfect feed for birds, not so for humans.
Price was against wheat as well as sugar and vegetable oil. I would like to see a reference where Price recommends wheat.
As quoted in my earlier posting, in a 1934 letter to his nieces and nephews, Price instructed them in what he considered the best diet: “The basic foods should be the entire grains such as whole wheat, rye or oats, whole wheat and rye breads, wheat and oat cereals, oat-cake, dairy products, including milk and cheese, which should be used liberally, and marine foods.” This is found on page 492 of his book, ‘Nutrition and Physical Degeneration’. As you notice, as well as recommending grains, there is no mention of meat products.
Could you give a chapter heading. I don’t have numbered pages in my copy.
http://autoimmunethyroid.wordpress.com/2006/03/28/vegans-lies-and-the-death-of-dr-stephen-byrnes/
Sorry don’t have a copy in front of me – was a note I made quite a while ago in my wanderings.
Sally Fallon quotes it … somewhere in her Traditions.
From the WPF: “The diet Price used with his patients included whole milk, whole wheat, stews made from bone broths, meats and organ meats, fruits and vegetables. It was not devoid of plant foods or very low in carbohydrates. The Weston A Price Foundation and Sally Fallon’s book Nourishing Traditions do not recommend specific carbohydrate and fat guidelines. Nourishing Traditions recommends limiting protein intake to 15-20% of calories and experimenting to find the right balance of carbohydrates and fats that will be determined by ancestry, circumstance and other factors.” (http://www.westonaprice.org/basics/the-right-price). You will also notice that Sally Fallon’s cookbook has many grain recipes, including a good number of wheat ones.
The above mentioned quote by Price: “The basic foods should be the entire grains such as whole wheat, rye or oats, whole wheat and rye breads, wheat and oat cereals, oat-cake, dairy products, including milk and cheese, which should be used liberally, and marine foods” is from the 8th Edition of Price’s book.
But that advice is not longer really relevant considering the wheat he advocates in that single quote is no longer the primary form of wheat grown. It’s not even got the same number of chromosomes as what makes up the vast amount of wheat grown and consumed today (the frankenstein-high-yield-altered-gliadin/gluten-semidwarf variant). Not to mention most people don’t even know what sprouting and soaking are, both old world processes that were common with grains, something Sally frequently recommends to reduce the phytic acid content.
His statement also doesn’t preclude meat given how much he noted healthy people eating it. Getting stuck on one quote as if it throws out all the rest of his work is kind of silly. Here are just a few mentions of meat:
“These members of the Masai tribe illustrate the splendid nutrition provided by their diet of cattle products namely: meat, milk and blood”—
Regarding the people of Loetschental Valley, “The general custom is to have a sheep dressed and distributed to a group of families, thus providing each family with a ration of meat for one day a week, usually Sunday. The bones and scraps are utilized for making soups to be served during the week.”—
“Wherever the Indians were living on their native foods, chiefly moose and caribou meat, their physical development including facial and dental arch form was superb with nearly complete immunity to dental caries.”—
“He took me, for example, to several typically modernized Indian homes in the city. In one, the grandmother, who had come from the northern shore of Cook Inlet to visit her daughter, was sixty-three years of age, and was entirely free from tooth decay and had lost only one of her teeth. Her son, who had accompanied her, was twenty-four years of age. He had only one tooth that had ever been attacked by tooth decay. Their diet had been principally moose and deer meat, fresh and dried fish, a few vegetables and at time some cranberries. Recently the son had been obtaining some modern foods. Her daughter, twenty-nine years of age, had married a white man and had had eight children. She and they were living on modern foods entirely. Twenty-one of her thirty-two teeth had been wrecked by dental caries. Their diet consisted largely of white bread, syrup and potatoes.”—
“Muhima Tribe or Anchola, Uganda… They, like the Masai, are primarily a cattle raising people and live on milk, blood and meat… They constitute one of the very primitive and undisturbed groups… In a study of 1,040 teeth of thirty-seven individuals, not a single tooth was found with dental caries.”—
“A marked variation of the incidence of irregularities was found in the different tribes. This variation could be directly associated with the nutrition rather than with the tribal pattern. The lowest percentage of irregularity occurred in the tribes living very largely on dairy products and marine life. For example, among the Masai living on milk, blood and meat, only 3.4 per cent had irregularities. Among the Kikuyu and Wakamba, 18.2 and 18.9 per cent respectively had irregularities. These peap!e were largely agriculturists living primarily on vegetable foods. “—
“Anglo-Egyptian Sudan has an area approximately one-third that of the United States. It is traversed throughout its length from south to north by the Nile. There are several tribes living along this great waterway, which are of special interest now owing to their close proximity to Ethiopia….. These tribes, therefore, use milk, blood and meat from cattle and large quantities of animal life from the Nile River….. I was particularly interested in their food habits both because of their high immunity to dental caries which approximated one hundred per cent, and because of their physical development.”—
In fact he notes that those groups eating the most grains had poorer dental health. As an example In chapter 9 he notes:
” Kasenyi Port, Lake Albert, Belgian Congo. These natives were members of several tribes surrounding this district who were for the most part temporary residents as laborers. The people had been living largely on a cereal diet and now during their temporary residence at the port had had fish.
An examination of 1,940 teeth of sixty-three individuals revealed 120 teeth with dental caries, or 6.1 per cent of the teeth. Fifty and eighttenths per cent of the individuals had dental caries.”
“But that advice is not longer really relevant considering the wheat he advocates in that single quote is no longer the primary form of wheat grown. It’s not even got the same number of chromosomes as what makes up the vast amount of wheat grown and consumed today (the frankenstein-high-yield-altered-gliadin/gluten-semidwarf variant).” You seem to be missing the point ChrisSEA. The kind of wheat that both Price and myself is speaking of has been grown properly. Industrially grown modern wheat is not fit for human consumption, but neither is industrially raised meat products. No individuals with relevant knowledge about nutrition, whether vegan or omnivore, would willingly consume such toxic products. So for the reasons you seem to be dismissing most wheat grown today, these same reasons can be brought forth to dismiss most animals raised for food today. We should be comparing apples with apples, don’t you think?
As far your statement about “Getting stuck on one quote as if it throws out all the rest of his work is kind of silly,” making some distinctions regarding the target audience would be useful for reflection. All the quotes you listed about meat eating are from his book and reflect the findings (not recommendations) to be presented to the public. The quote about eating grains with no mention of the need for meat, was written to his relatives. Do you imagine he would be more concerned about giving the best nutritional advice or implicit suggestions to the public, or to relatives for whom he appeared to have genuine affection?
“…. Industrially grown modern wheat is not fit for human consumption, but neither is industrially raised meat products.”
Wheat, (grass seed) is energy dense but nutrient poor. For that reason I view wheat to be consumed when all other food is not available. Since modern wheat is not for you, some how you equate that with modern meat, without reason. As with most of your arguments it does not follow. Grazing beef finished with grain allows extra fat in the beef. My kind of meat. Also, lamb, poultry, and pork is all available from the local farmers market at reasonable prices. It works well.
I think my arguments do follow, gager, but it seems that you are not following them. However, perhaps I was being unclear, so allow me to try again. You wrote, “modern wheat is not for you, some how you equate that with modern meat, without reason.” What I said was “Industrially grown modern wheat is not fit for human consumption, but neither is industrially raised meat products” – the “reason” is that both are inferior products – get it? On a personal level, when I eat meat, it is grass-fed organic and when I eat grains, it is organic. So the main issue for me is how the food is produced. However, I tend to see grains as more of a bland filler and not really necessary for my nutritional needs, and thus rarely consume them. I also, from experience, don’t buy that meat is necessary for my nutritional need, and when I consume it occasionally, it is primarily for hedonic reasons.
Thing is, while Price was WAY ahead of his time in what he did, he didn’t really get a comprehensive view of what was going on. The Maasai do NOT live primarily on meat and blood. They live on milk, and their iron levels are so low that westerners have wanted to give them iron pills. But when they get more iron, they get malaria and lose that awesome good health. As for the Swiss … some time before Price got there, they had a 20-30% rate of goiter in the young recruits, which the Swiss cured by sending in truckloads of iodized salt.
Since Price concentrated mainly on skeletal deformities, he picked up on dietary issues that affected the skeleton, which are likely Vit D and Vit K issues. That is very different from the issues that might, say, cause cancer or CVD. From looking at the skeletal evidence, it seems that wheat-eating cultures are extremely prone to the skinny faces and weak teeth issues, which I think are because wheat interferes somehow with Vit D and/or K. You can’t tell from skeletons though, or from looking at people, whether or not their hearts are healthy.
As for wheat and whole grains … he correctly identified that whole wheat was a whole lot better than white flour. I don’t think anyone in his time could deal with the idea that wheat *by itself* might be bad. But none of his “healthy people” actually had a wheat-based diet. The Swiss were the closest, with a dairy/rye diet, but rye is really low in gluten. Wheat was a problem in Price’s day, and it was a problem for the Egyptians and Romans too, albeit ours is likely even worse.
Price also thought that it was the “lack of nutrients” that made “white flour and sugar” bad. Yet, the Asians appear to do rather well on white rice. Billions of them. And other countries do ok on cassava, which is similarly processed to remove pretty much everything except the starch.
Price identified “marine foods” as really good for people. That was a kind of radical idea at the time. “Fish” was poor people food, and you might as well have been recommending chitterlings or haggis. I don’t think he would have recommended the London seafood either, which was from rather polluted sources.
I guess what I’m saying is that sometimes you have to stand on the shoulders of giants to reach the stars. Price was one such giant. But he’s not a god, and not to be worshipped. He would have laughed at such an idea, I think.
Ok, but what affects the teeth affect the heart. Vitamin D and especially K(2) is incredibly important for heart health. That Price found a relationship between dental health and overall health includes heart health, especially what we’re learning about the role that K2 (but not K1) has in preventing heart problems.
http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2009/03/latest-study-on-vitamin-k-and-coronary.html
This is borne out in the Masai, especially during their Muran phase, when milk was indeed their mainstay food for a period of 15 to 20 years. Stephen Guyenet really has some fascinating research on this.
http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2008/06/masai-and-atherosclerosis.html
I think ultimately the issue here is not whether Price recommended meat or not to his relatives, it’s that he found cholesterol rich foods (like full fat dairy) had special protective effects on health. We know a lot of that now has to do with the fat soluble vitamins A, D, and K2.
This is why I drink raw grass fed dairy almost daily, in addition to pastured eggs.
I think there might be something to that, though I’m not sure that the key is “cholesterol”. Dairy and egg based diets seem to work rather well, even for rats. Both foods have been “designed” by nature to feed a young animal. There is a lot that goes into that, not just one ingredient!
Oddly though, both dairy and eggs are highly allergenic, and I can’t process dairy myself. Though my kids can, who were raised on a better diet.
Cholesterol (and saturated fat) isn’t the issue, that was exactly my point. Sorry if I wasn’t clear. Despite Richard and Brian’s repeated assertions to the contrary. Price postulated the existence of an ‘activator’ substance which hadn’t been identified at the time, and it’s now believe to be K2. And specifically K2, not the K1 for which is primarily from plant sources. So essentially government food policy, based on the food pyramid and anti-saturated-fat absurdity, pushed people away from eating K2 foods, then low-and-behold we end up with epidemics of heart disease over the course of the 20th century, all the while Florence Henderson selling us ‘all-natural, healthy cholesterol-free’ vegetable oils. Couple that with a push to eat ‘healthy-whole-grains’ and substitute what Price was seeing healthy people with with a genetically modified form of wheat that is unfit for consumption essentially, and you get a disaster.
I think your children are very lucky to have a mother who figured some of this out in time to feed them correctly. I’ve spent a very long time repairing the damage myself having followed the governments food pyramid (low-fat, high grain) before I finally woke up. My digestive system was so screwed up I was allergic to everything, eggs, dairy, you name it, I was allergic to it. Luckily I found some alternative healing approaches that have worked for me and I can eat those things again. But wheat is one my body just lets me know in no uncertain terms is an unfit food for me so I stay clear.
“….To hold up an attempt at nutritional science from the 1930′s as any kind of standard of truth is tantamount to saying that the Wright Brothers got it right and that current space shuttle technology is all wrong, the latter being the result of a government conspiracy trying to keep us from understanding the real nature of air travel.”
Once again you try to equate things that are not related.
The Wright brothers tried to prove that “powered” heavier than air flight was possible and they succeeded. It still holds true today. Price was looking for a relationship of diet to health and he succeeded.
Sorry, you are missing the point here. I am not equating aviation events to nutritional observations – I am drawing an analogy. I am pointing out that there has been historical progress in both fields and to accord a privileged status to work in the infancy of a field is sentimental, naive and certainly not science.
And yes, Price “was looking for a relationship of diet to health and he succeeded” – and so have most who have thought about it, from my grandmother to Linaes Pauling. A “relationship” does not necessarily have truth value.
“…- I am drawing an analogy.”
Oh please, I recognize the attempt at an analogy but it’s not working.
“…I am pointing out that there has been historical progress in both fields and to accord a privileged status to work in the infancy of a field is sentimental, naive and certainly not science.”
You must be ignorant in science and how science progresses. There is nothing naive about first discovery. In fact first discovery is the path to progress. Science is method. And it is all science from Aristotle onward.
Again you are misunderstanding my point. Yes, first discovery is often naive. Let me be more concrete, by reminding you of what early peoples such as the Greeks construed heavenly bodies to be, namely gods and goddesses. As they discovered a new one, this was a ‘first discovery’. We now know that such an understanding of heavenly bodies is naive. And no, it is not ‘all science from Aristotle onward’ – most thought efforts were historically not driven by rational methods, and even less were driven by the scientific method.
Richard you basally want us to believe that as the 20th century wore on, and heart disease and other degenerative diseases became more and more prevalent, that people were eating MORE of traditional foods in lockstep. But that’s not the case. Again, Weston A Price saw what was happening. Just the fact alone that butter was being displaced by margarine should be a big clue here.
I already posted you the most comprehensive trial ever, which you briefly referred as something that’s been “debunked” (just like the Ancel Keys study..LOL)
The Lipid Research Clinics Coronary Primary Prevention Trial results. I. Reduction in incidence of coronary heart disease.
Anyway, since it didn’t do for you, we’ll continue:
When you have “debunked” this in detail, let me know, I’ll have plenty of more for you.
Joint effect of high-density lipoprotein cholesterol and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol on the risk of coronary heart disease
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22023802
Richard wrote: “I already posted you the most comprehensive trial ever […]”
Wait a minute. You mean this was your best shot? No kidding?
I also posted already this, but since you missed, we’ll do it again. It’s all very 2012.
Egg cholesterol in the diet
http://nutritionfacts.org/videos/egg-cholesterol-in-the-diet/
And your hero Ancel Keys himself said in 1990: “There’s no connection whatsoever between cholesterol in food and cholesterol in blood. And we’ve known that all along. Cholesterol in the diet doesn’t matter unless you happen to be a chicken or a rabbit.”
Richard, you’re the hero of junk science.
Yes, and science has shown that Keys was wrong in this issue. Simple as that. Hillebo which Minger referred as awesome, certainly did not miss his chance confirming the lipid hypothesis.
I personally do not give two cent which drives blood cholesterol, cholesterol or saturated fat. It’s all the same.
“science has shown that Keys was wrong in this issue”
Science? Reference please?
“Hillebo which Minger referred as awesome, certainly did not miss his chance confirming the lipid hypothesis”
Hilleboe, did he now? Reference please?
“I personally do not give two cent which drives blood cholesterol, cholesterol or saturated fat. It’s all the same.”
Mmmh… I don’t think you entirely realise what you’re actually revealing about yourself by writing such a sentence.
Still waiting for the proofs you promised.
Primitivenutrition gives plenty of reference. Check out the response for Minger, four videos in total . Hillebo cholestrol views was in one of them. The point was to ridicule how Minger portrays Yerushalmy and Hillebo as the good guys and Keys as the bad, while attempting to create a soap opera for her readers.
“Primitivenutrition gives plenty of reference. Check out the response for Minger, four videos in total ”
I’m not going to look at videos (I much prefer to read anyway) from an anonymous clown, just because you’re too lazy to give me a straight answer.
We’ve all been gathering by now, that you don’t like to play fair, but you’re just shooting yourself in the foot by not even replying to direct questions. The audience here is not exactly composed of hillbillies, you know. You won’t impress them with high school rethorics.
Your credibility was already very low, but it’s getting lower by the second.
So…. do you have actual answers to my questions?
Where is the promised scientific proof of your claim that cholesterol causes heart disease?
I’m also wondering: how old are you, Richard? (not that I’m expecting a honest reply to this question anyway….)
I think Richard is being dishonest. I think his agenda is to convert people to vegan at any cost. Ethics be damn, the ends justify the means.
“I think Richard is being dishonest”
Of course he is being dishonest. I’ve simply been trying to make it entirely plain for the casual reader who could still be fooled. Most regular contributors here know better and can spot such baloney from kilometers away, of course.
Denise, you’re my hero.
I’m all for standing up for yourself when you feel you’re right, but there is a danger of becoming a zealot if you forget that being right depends on good science and good arguments (and with it a willingness to be wrong).
Here you out of your way to de-vilify (is that a word?) Ancel Keys when you could easily, as many of us did, write him off as part of the problem.
Furthermore, you went out of your way to respond to PlantPositive’s demeaning YouTube videos in which he:
1. Admitted he didn’t understand what you wrote
2. Clearly hadn’t read what you wrote
3. Responded with a series of ad-hominem attacks on you
Most of us would have written him off as a jerk, but you patiently tried to explain the issue to him.
You a model of good scientific discourse in dark time and a saint of the functional paleo movement.
“a saint of the functional paleo movement.”
OMG this compliment is even more embarassing that mine.*LOL*
I hear you, Terry. But let’s not take the risk to have Denise getting too full of herself. We need her to stay as lucid as she’s been up till now. 😉
Vegans have the knighted professor in epidemiology Richard Peto, the inventor of meta-analysis, the statistic wizard in China Study, professor in Oxford. Vegans have William Clifford Roberts, the chief editor of American Journal of Cardiology. Vegans have George Lundberg, the former editor of Jama.
Paleo has Minger, a protégé of Weston Price Foundation, a foundation that never mentions that mr. Price actually promoted high carb diet based on whole-wheat. And unlike Minger, the above mentioned gentlemen have not been accused of scientific dishoneusty and plagiarism.
Minger wrote:
“And although research on vegans is limited, some studies suggest they have a significantly higher mortality rate than vegetarians and health-conscious omnivores”,
She forgot to mention that the overall reported death for vegans for the 20 year follow-up was 23 person. What a case. And missed her chance to a) stress that the researchers fully adhered to the lipid theory:
“Vegetarian diet was associated with a reduced RR of 0.70 (95% CI, 0.41-1.18) for ischemic heart disease, which could partly be related to avoidance of meat”.
b) illustrate that the scientist considered a health conscious omnivorous diet (used as a control group) as something which contains very small amount of animal foods, very contrary to her views c) inform that vegans non-speaking countries (Germany) are not genetally even aware of the need for b-12 supplementation (not everyone is blessed to live in the States).
Minger recommends people to follow Kurt Harris archevore diet, a “get your cholesterols on the 300mg/dl range within weeks” -diet
Does this sound we would have a sincere people showing scientific integrity here,
High cholesterol = die young!
Relationship of baseline serum cholesterol levels in 3 large cohorts of younger men to long-term coronary, cardiovascular, and all-cause mortality and to longevity
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10891962
Minger, is it fair to say that you are not a sincere and good person? And that you are manipulative plagiator.
I suspect that your brain is suffering malnutrition. That might explain your blathering nonsense. Try eating some animal protein with a heavy dose of saturated fat. Good for the cure.
Richard. You have been led to water but have clearly chosen that you don’t want to drink. You have shown many times that you are just interested in repeating the same platitudes without backing them up.
By the way, I’ve been following a diet similar to Kurt Harris’ archevore diet for many years now (a little over a decade) and my blood lipids are all terrific by the way. So have millions of others I’m sure, so please – enough with the talking out of your “you know what”.
Add me to the quorum that seems to be forming to have you banned.
Those on the very left of bell-curve can eat Kurth Harris diet and have their cholesterol under 150mg/dl, 90% cannot.
Sorry Denise Mingy, if I’ve went to personal-level, I’ll watch my language in the future. However, I think you should sharpen up and join the team good people and stop your anti-vegan BS crusade.
Having a total cholesterol of under 180 has a higher death rate from all causes especially cancer. Cholesterol has the function of protecting against inflammation and cancer.
LOL…..Give me a break. Man you need to break with that destructive religion of yours. Cancer causes low-cholesterol, not the other way around. Also, old sick people see their cholesterol plummeting, once its been high most of their lives.
William Castelli the chief scholar of Framingham study.
“You know, we know that if I can get your total cholesterol down around let’s say 100 to 130 or so, and I have maybe not quite a billion people on the earth like that, and those people cannot get atherosclerosis. You know in the China Study, for example, when Chou En-lai was dying of cancer he started a study in China just like the Framingham Study. The only difference was it was in 880,000,000 people so it was a little larger than the Framingham Study. But you know they found these villages in China where you couldn’t get a heart attack or you couldn’t get diabetes and the women couldn’t get breast cancer and you know their total cholesterol were 127, but the chances we could ever get Americans down that low with diet and exercise are not good”.
“KIRK HAMILTON: But what would the diet be if you didn’t have drugs and you could get everybody to do exactly what you wanted diet-wise in the United States? How would you reverse the heart disease?”
“DR. WILLIAM CASTELLI: Well you’d have them on a pure vegetarian diet and not getting fat on the vegetarian diet.”
Based on the data at hand, cholesterol cannot be too low. Impossible. The requirement for LDL in body are ridiculously low. Everyone with cholesterol over 150mg/dl is in high risk group and should consider statins Hey…just listen Loren Cordain, not a single of his hunter gatherer groups have cholesterol over 150mg/dl, meat eaters can rarely achieve this without parasite. And parasites are paleo.
The very moment you have your doctor suggesting statins on you, keep in mind that you actually were warned).
“….Only pure vegetarians for practical purposes do not need statins, most of the rest of us do”
William C Roberts, 2009, the chief editor of American Journal of Cardiology
“Everyone with cholesterol over 150mg/dl is in high risk group and should consider statins”
Another scientific proof you’ll never bring to the table: do statins actually save lives? They don’t. Never had, never will. Prove me wrong, witch hunter. You can’t.
Talk talk talk like a parrot, that’s all you are able to do. You’re so out of your league and so unaware of it. Sophomoric. Investigate the meaning.
You could take a hint from the way someone like Brian handles a discussion with a conflicting point of view. That’s the way rational, adult people do it.
But you’re obviously unable to take a hint of any sort. Who cares, you’re as good as banned from here, it’s a matter of hours, maybe minutes. Goodbye, witch hunter.
Wiffu, you have no clue. There are loads of studies documenting decrease in coronary deaths due to drugs.
I am sorry Denise but I am ending my subscription to the updates. I will miss several commentators, but most of them seem to have left a long time ago anyways. I will distill the best and put it in a separate file. People like this Richard character is what is wrong with America
James. I will no longer bait the troll. I’m finished with Richard.
No need to leave.
SOPHOMORIC
1: conceited and overconfident of knowledge but poorly informed and immature
The OVERCONFIDENCE EFFECT is a well-established bias in which someone’s subjective confidence in their judgments is reliably greater than their objective accuracy, especially when confidence is relatively high. For example, in some quizzes, people rate their answers as “99% certain” but are wrong 40% of the time..
Deliberate FLAMING, as opposed to flaming as a result of emotional discussions, is carried out by individuals known as FLAMERS, who are specifically motivated to incite flaming. These users specialize in flaming and target specific aspects of a controversial conversation, and are usually more subtle than their counterparts. Their counterparts are known as trolls who are less “professional” and write obvious and blunt remarks to incite a flame war, as opposed to the more subtle, yet precise flamers. Some websites even cater for flamers and trolls, by allowing them a free environment, such as Flame-Wars forum.
Denise, really it’s more than time to muzzle the beast.
In my opinion, as someone who’s been a moderator on many forums, you shouldn’t even give more than a single warning to people who give signs of flaming or post the same link more than 3 times without anyone asking for it (which is spamming). Banning such individuals should be your first choice after a first warning, NOT your ‘last resort’ one. It’s not a question of tolerance or the lack of it, not at all. It’s a question of keeping your blog an inviting place by keeping the trolls and flamers away so that normal people can have actual exchanges.
My two cents.
Those are opinions. Nobody’s gonna change your mind, we get it. Bugger off, Dude.
Right, opinions. I would love to see what kind of conflicts of interest Mr. editor has also. Considering the conflicts of interest those setting ‘healthy’ cholesterol levels have (financial ties to the pharmaceutical/statin industry) I wonder how anyone can take anything they say as serious.
http://www.bmj.com/content/343/bmj.d5621
Conclusions: The prevalence of financial conflicts of interest and their under-reporting by members of panels producing clinical practice guidelines on hyperlipidaemia or diabetes was high, and a relatively high proportion of guidelines did not have public disclosure of conflicts of interest. Organisations that produce guidelines should minimise conflicts of interest among panel members to ensure the credibility and evidence based nature of the guidelines’ content.
“LOL…..Give me a break. Man you need to break with that destructive religion of yours. Cancer causes low-cholesterol, not the other way around.”
Richard you are really a tiresome POS. Correlation is not causation. I did not say a cholesterol reading is the cause, I said a cholesterol reading lower than 180 has a higher death rate from all causes. Ijut.
@Heidi,
you are religious sect members. You would not change your mind even while having your symptom-free, first (and last) heart attach….sudden cardiadic death.
Gager,
do you think your postulation on cholesterol has any relevance to anything related to health. Yes, we know that sick people who also take statins have low cholesterol, which further plummets gradually while the condition of the patients goes down. But what the heck this have to do with people who keep healthy cholesterol levels, under 150 mg/dl with lifestyle factors and accoding to data are immune to many diseases. In Japan during the fifties, under 150mg/dl was the norm, year 1950 there was 18 autopsy reported death from prostate cancer in the whole nation. Just to give you one example.
It is important to take context into consideration. There are multiple factors that contribute to the susceptibility of LDL to oxidation, so just saying that cholesterol itself is problematic and leaving it at that isn’t exactly what we want to be doing.
There are some eggs that do not increase the susceptibility of LDL to oxidation http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18442246 They are higher in antioxidants that protect LDL from becoming oxidized, and lower in polyunsaturated fat, a potential oxidant within LDL.
So right away the mantra “cholesterol bad” ought to be thrown out the window. It depends on context, right?
Isn’t it also plausible that the degree to which one cooks a polyunsaturated fat influences the degree to which it is oxidized? Obviously oxidized polyunsaturated fats will increase the susceptibility of LDL to oxidation, or modify other constituents of eggs. I tend to only eat soft-boiled eggs, and some people only eat raw egg yolks, which I don’t know if I’m prepared to do! But suffice to say there are numerous things to take into consideration, including the oxidative environment of the blood stream. Reducing the amount of oxidants in the blood stream will also have an impact.
So you see the issue is kind of complex, and blanket statements aren’t warranted. This is kind of why I like to post studies and discuss things, not post videos, because videos are an extremely limited way of discussing things. On you Youtube no less! Not the best place for learning, I’ll tell ya.
So you see the issue is kind of complex, and blanket statements aren’t warranted. This is kind of why I like to post studies and discuss things, not post videos, because videos are an extremely limited way of discussing things. On you Youtube no less!
deniiiiise, why can’t we edit our comments? Get Disqus or something with a community element. There will be so many benefits. Also for some reason things stopped scrolling down when I typed and I couldn’t see what I was typing, so I had to copy and paste into a word document but then something messed up when copying and pasting.
We raccoons do not have an affinity for technology. This is a plea for change.
This is a p
I think you’re right. I’ve been saying this, that the quality of the feed that are given to chickens alters the quality of the eggs that come from them. That and also the chickens themselves. Chickens that are ‘vegetarian’ fed are usually fed soy. This soy alters the fatty acid profile of the eggs towards PUFA heavy fats. I am very lucky to get eggs from a small farm, I’ve interacted with the chickens having been there from time to time and know they are well taken care of, truly free range, pecking around the grass and bushes, etc. The quality of the eggs are amazing, deep rich orange color. Not the tepid yellow color of commercial eggs. I like scrambled eggs and I usually begin scrambling the eggs white first, then add the yolks after the whites are more cooked so the yolks stay ‘wet’. I should also note that I have mentioned that in the name of this ‘cholesterol and saturated fat are bad’ nonsense corporations and governments sold HUGE amounts of PUFA rich ‘vegetable oils’. Florence Henderson probably made a big chunk of change selling corn, safflower and sunflower oils for high heat cooking. The commercials, available on YouTube, extol the virtues of these ‘natural, healthy, light’ oils for frying foods. The use of vegetable oils rose dramatically over the past half century while traditional fats like butter and lard have decreased over the same period. But according to the saturated-fat-is-bad people, it’s the saturated fat that has to be avoided.
On the very right of the bell curve, that is.
More evidence that governments are incompetent.
http://www.cbn.com/media/player/index.aspx?s=/mp4/LJO190v1_WS
Heather repeated several times the following wisdom:
“From looking at the skeletal evidence, it seems that wheat-eating cultures are extremely prone to the skinny faces and weak teeth issues”
Well, I am pretty sure that there are ethnic differences and people with the same diet living next to each other have skinny or round faces. I also am pretty sure that “roundfaceness” is a sign of idiocy.
What Price did was to convincingly document … in thousands of photographs … how the facial features of tribal peoples changed when they started eating “white flour and sugar” and other “Western” foods, although I don’t think he really figured out the WHY of it all. What is interesting is that if you look at the ancient European skeletons, the skulls are nicely proportioned, with plenty of room for teeth, and wide hips that make it easier to have babies, and few cavities. What we see in that same European stock now are kids that don’t have room for their wisdom teeth or even their regular teeth, and can’t have straight teeth without braces.
You can see the same divide if you look at some immigrant groups, esp. from somewhere like Korea. The parents … even though they often grew up in poor villages with not enough to eat … have wide faces and healthy teeth. The kids that grew up eating American food … have crooked teeth, acne, and narrow faces, but are taller.
Now, in our family, I have a narrow face, lots of filled teeth, and needed braces. Ditto for my husband. But our kids, who never got much typical American diet, have wide faces and well-spaced teeth, and no cavities.
So yes, there could be ethnicity involved. But if you look into it, you can easily see the evidence. What is really odd is that except for Price, all the dentists I’ve talked to think “crooked teeth” is just a genetic anomaly.
Are we setting up for a battle between the ‘Roundfacenesss’ and the ‘Skinnyfaceness’ factions? 🙂 And of course the relevant question, is which one,if either is most vulnerable to the evils of wheat? Since Asians are predominantly of the former and there are more of them, basic arithmetic gives it to the former.
Certainly it’s not a war. It WAS the focus of Price’s study though, which is the point. Narrow faces (narrow sinuses, narrow dental arch) is associated with “modern” societies, and it’s easily studied in skeletons. He went all over the world, took thousands of pictures and measurements. Within the boundaries of what he could do at the time, it was as much of a “study” as what is being done in the laboratories with lab rats. I’m kind of surprised that WAPF hasn’t taken up the banner, and done their own set of studies on the issue.
And yes, I think it likely has something to do with wheat, based on who is affected. The first examples of these narrow skeletons seems to be the Egyptians … look at the bust of Nefertiti for a good example. Compare the ancient Egyptian skeletons to, say, the tribes living on mainly corn and beans, in Mexico or Arizona, or the rice-eaters in Asia. It’s probably safer to look at the skeletons, and measure the sinus openings or dental arch, so there isn’t any confusion with “fat”. But exactly what is causing it? It might be wheat intolerance, or it might be K2, or it might be something else entirely.
The skull does develop before the baby is born, obviously. So do the teeth. Babies that are born of celiac women, often are born with discolored or damaged enamel. We don’t know the effects of the other forms of wheat issues.
Studies on bones is a good way to get quantitative data on people, even those who lived thousands of years ago. As isotope analysis and archeology gets better, we are getting a better idea of what exactly people really did eat back then. I’m not sure we have tools to measure heart issues though, except in mummies. Hm. Looked like Oetzi had heart problems, even on his 5,000 year old diet (whole grains and grass-fed venison?). And bad teeth too.
http://articles.nydailynews.com/2012-03-05/news/31125231_1_south-tyrol-museum-lactose-intolerance-heart-disease
http://news.discovery.com/history/oetzi-iceman-bad-teeth-110615.html
The funny thing that ethnic groups which have been on wheat longer tend have skinny faces, unlike some far North ethnic groups which tend to have round faces.
I am now pondering the following issue. If we are switching to cannibalism, I’d like to be sure that the “food” I’ll get won’t be less tasty than the one I have now. Here’s the problem: I am pretty sure that my enemies are not tasty, and I am reluctant to eat my friends. You see the problem?
Yes Anna, I sympathize with your dilemma, and your concerns are not unrealistic. Perhaps you have been following a similar thread of thought as myself. That is, considering that within roughly 20 years, the oceans will be far too toxic to provide food, and the thin layer of remaining topsoil will be gone, as will most of the oil supplies (which makes the current food supply possible for most of the human population). This of course means mass starvation and the real possibility that cannibalism will not only be likely, but government sanctioned, as it was during a period in medieval China when families could legally sell their children to be slaughtered for food. Given this as one possible future, it becomes a worthwhile exercise in planning to consider who one will eat, taking into account both taste and nutritional factors. Considering that our tastes in western countries are oriented more towards eating vegetarian animals, it seems that vegetarians/vegans would be the logical choice. Not only are they lower on the food chain, which means a lower concentration of heavy metals and other toxins which are found in higher density in carnivores, but they are less likely to be capable of putting up much resistance during the kill, and will typically be spending their days mindlessly grazing with their heads down, thus making the hunt much less energy expensive. The downside to making the vegetarians a food choice, is that many of them are likely to have more saturated fat in their bodies resulting from grains (especially wheat) forming the staple of their diets, which would concern those followers of Loren Cordain, but not be a problem for those who have adequately misunderstood Weston Price’s dietary recommendations (read WPF founders and many in the Paleo/Primal fold). Another big problem with the vegetarians is that unless we cull those from the herd that have designed their tasteless plant diets intelligently, they are likely to have an Omega 3 deficiency. With the strict vegan group who have failed to supplement with B12, we will have to be mindful of possible mental disorders, which introduces unpredictable variables into the hunt.
So, Anna, you see that your dilemma is more complex than simple food choices related to taste and friendship. Thus I would advise you to do an inventory of both your friends and enemies and make the necessary adjustments with the above factors in mind. You will notice that I have omitted the vast majority of the population as viable food choices, as they consume the toxic Standard American Diet. When the time comes, they will be easy to identify and avoid as food choices, by their obvious physical markers (morbid obesity), extensive knowledge of television programs and political orientation (usually right wingers). Our main concern with them at that time, will be to make sure that we don’t become their food choice, as they do not and will not discriminate regarding what they eat. Best to stay out of their way and let them reduce their own herd numbers, which should be at a mercifully speedy rate in the U.S., where gluttonous greed has long since replaced mindless patriotism as main defining quality of the national character.
I hope this helps, and I wish you luck.
Actually, Brian, I was referring to something else – to the ideology, ideology of the illiterate who didn’t have an hour of history in their lives and preach return to the wonderful life of no Golden rule when everyone of course loved each other and earth and birds. Sure. I am inclined to start a donation to send them to some basic classes.
Frankly, a return to this charming period doesn’t appeal to me.
I take it Anna, that these ‘illiterates’ are your ‘enemies,’ whom you think would not be ‘tasty’? Well, I think one could make a dent in their obvious deprivation of the benefits of a Liberal Arts education by some well chosen classes (however, not sure that would make them more tasty). But at least they would, with at least a C- passing grade on these courses, be less likely to pollute the air with sound waves spouting platitudes about some imagined Golden Age. In the nutritional world, such nonsense is often heard among some members of both the Paleo and Vegetarian crowds. Among the Paleo types, such drivel often takes the form of imagining a noble, healthy and perfectly proportioned individual – the veritable Crown of Evolution, sometimes with names such as Grok. Among the lunatic fringe of the vegetarians, we find those whose consciousness has been indelibly colonized by biblical fables of people of vibrant health and longevity into the 100’s of years, who happily coexisted with all life forms and subsisted on fruits.
A variant of this modern day Rousseauvian silliness, can found in those of little education, who assign privileged truth value to outdated scientific efforts from the mid 20th century and before, mainly because it supports their limited understanding. Such work is easier for them to grasp as it doesn’t challenge their modestly endowed mental arena with the knowledge of sophisticated current research methodology.
Brian, I was thinking about mentioning the charming Jean-Jacques with his tendency to drop children here and there, abuse everyone and write the most unreadable novels. Yes, it goes back to him.
My delicate and intelligent stomach 🙂 responds brutally to all New Age (whatever it is) idiocy and to all the nonsense you describe so well. I really can’t stand it. It’s tragic that history isn’t taught. In this country it was deliberately killed with absolutely tragic consequences.
I am sorry I was confused by you original comments. And yes, I am an omnivore.
If you mean by ‘original comment,’ my posting re cannibalism, this was a run at the fine art of satire (although filled with Pearls of Wisdom). 🙂
Where has Richard gone? He seems not to still be on the ‘Forks and Knives’ post either – has he been banned, or just got tired of jousting? Feeling like I now have to do his part also, and not being a vegan, this will be somewhat difficult. It’s dirty business but someone needs to do it, so I guess I will just have to step up to the plate. Things are so quiet here – even gager has ceased his efforts at being logical- do you think he and Richard have both met their Maker for each being on their own particular wrong side of the Lipid hypothesis? I am feeling that maybe it is time to go onto the ‘Forks and Knives’ post and stir the pot and annoy some folks there. 🙂
No, Brian, I had in mind your initial (first) and maybe a couple of comments which followed.
“But if you look into it, you can easily see the evidence”
If you look into it, you can see anything you want. Personally, I have a cat’s narrow face (I was born with it) and my mother had a round face (she was born with it). So?
Anna, Don’t confuse a case with a study. I like all faces as long as the faces are younger than mine.
Gager, it isn’t me who confuses. Read above about skinnyfaced parents and roundfaced children. Why choose a RESPONSE for preaching?
Oh, studies … Who needs reality when we can have studies?
Ah, I forgot to say that my mother had perfect teeth (no crookedness there) and so did I.
Please create a new site similar to this one but where you tell people who are using illegal recreational drugs that they are good for them. We all want to hear that our bad habits are good…
Chuck, that wouldn’t be the least bit logical. Illegal recreation drugs such as cocaine, marijuana and methamphetamines produce significant oxidative stress on cellular constituents. It’s pretty clear from doing a cursory scan of the evidence that it would be lame to attempt something you’re kind of suggesting with more than a hint of snark.
Whereas foods like raw, full fat milk raise glutathione levels, helping to protect you from oxidative stress (such as lipid-peroxidation). Saturated fats (and to a degree mono-unsaturates) also protect from oxidation because of their stable chemical structures.
In the name of anti-saturated fat and cholesterol messages people have been pushed into eating highly process and biochemically unstable vegetable oils which are quite prone to oxidation, both inside and outside the body.
You may want to go comment in forums with people who are likely to be less swayed by juvenile comments.
Good comment, Chris.
We live in an Orwellian world – some chemical nonsense is called food, eating of real food such as butter and eggs (which have saved who knows how many lives throughout history) is called addiction.
It’s a mad, mad world.
Hi Denise, I’m a newcomer to your blog (found you in the references section of Dr. Briffa’s book ‘Escape the Diet Trap’) and I’m loving your humor and rigorous research methodology. In one swift post you’ve put a lot of so-called scientists, health journalists and nutrition bloggers to shame. If you don’t mind me saying, that’s some astounding confounding you’ve got going on here!
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/
120419163553.htm
Cancer-Fighting Goodness Found in Cholesterol, Study Suggests
ScienceDaily (Apr. 19, 2012) — A Simon Fraser University researcher is among four scientists who argue that cholesterol may slow or stop cancer cell growth. They describe how cholesterol-binding proteins called ORPs may control cell growth in A Detour for Yeast Oxysterol Binding Proteins, a paper published in the latest issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry.
The scientists came to their conclusion while trying to understand how cholesterol moves around inside cells in the fat’s journey to cell surfaces where it reinforces their outer membrane.
This may work better.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120419163553.htm
Speaking of going wrong.
Look at this
“Adjusting a Waistline for a Wedding, but at What Cost?”
The high-fat consuming countries are all northern European majorities. The countries that are considered low-fat, are southern European or temperate climates, where fresh vegetables are more prevalent.
SO…
Is it Genetics? Tomatoes? Chili peppers? Wasabe?
Wha’s up?
How about the climate itself – you know … the sun, the water you can actually swim in, the “nature” you can actually be in and not to look at through a frozen window, more relaxed way of life and yes, more vegetables.
Nobody negates that vegetables are healthy. In other words, what is your point?
More fat. more vegetables? Its all so confusing
A Denise based diet would be very appealing and I suspect both healthy and non fattening 🙂
Denise’s particular significantly plant-based diet, might come as a little too high in sugar (though probably nowhere near as bad as someone who routinely drink sodas or so-called “energy” drinks). Because of this she may come at risk of developing hypercholesteromia and hyperlipidemia…
“Fruit–and juice, especially–carries a high sugar content, and consuming too much of it rapidly raises the blood sugar. The body compensates to the sugar high with a surge of insulin from the pancreas–and the insulin, in turn, stimulates the liver to manufacture more cholesterol. (the text refers to this study: http://www.nejm.org/doi/pdf/10.1056/NEJM198910053211403). It may also elevate triglyceride levels.” p. 71 of _Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease by Caldwell Esselstyn (other sources exist online for this).
Of course, sugar comes as just one aspect of fruit consumption. The fiber in fruit can also play an important role. I suspect more vegetables would work out better for her. Also, I suspect she could benefit from some lightly cooked food. Tomatoes have more lycopene when cooked. Other examples exist: http://www.livestrong.com/article/536645-vegetables-that-should-be-cooked-to-maximize-their-nutrients/.
Doug, I get your main point, but you left out the sentence that preceded the Esselstyn quote in your post: “It is also best to avoid drinking pure fruit juices.” This recommendation is because of the nutrients and fiber found in the pulp and skin, compared to the fructose concentration found in the juice, an aspect that you mentioned as well. Thus, Esselstyn’s characterization of the glycæmic response to fruit as a “sugar high” is misleading, because 1) he was referring only to “too much” fructose, and 2) in fact, the glycæmic load of most fruit is medically categorized as “low”.
Of course, any food consumed in excessive amounts can be problematic. I have no knowledge of how much whole fruit Denise eats every day, but a few servings would be fine by any standard.
“In fact, Keys was pretty much ridiculed for the weakness of his fat/heart disease theory by other scientists at the WHO meeting, and whenever his graph was cited in medical journals later on, it was usually paired with some criticism.”
The idea that fat comes as a key factor in the development of heart disease certainly didn’t originate with him. Daniel Steinberg’s _The Cholesterol Wars_ p. 39-41 imply this (J. Groen proposing that the unavailability of animal fats during the war had caused a decrease in blood cholesterol which had in turn caused the observed decrease of risk of heart attacks, 4 different metabolic ward studies which started in 1952 which *experimentally* carefully demonstrated if saturated only gets change in a diet, then blood cholesterol levels rise). Raymond Reiser’s paper from 1973 here: http://www.ajcn.org/content/26/5/524.full.pdf, references a book by Bloor from 1943, which might contain information as to when this idea first existed.
The data clearly show that speaking English is what kills you, n’est ce pas? ;-p
This post and the one after it don’t show up on Blogger. I thought you’d died! *sad face*
I always say that geeks shouldn’t be allowed to vote. Today, it’s time for some elaboration. Of course, the author of this idiocy is some illiterate geek. Now what should I start adding?
I think that each geek should get 5 psychiatrists/psychologists working on his (usually it’s he) complexes and 5 educators explaining simple things, such as “You should know that there are many countries in the world. You should know that people speak different languages. It’s time for you to try to learn a different language. For the next decade you’ll be repeating in … language “M Y N A M E I S … You can do it. By the end of the decade you will be able to say it.”
Hello Denise,
I went through your research. I really appreciate people that are in it for their health, and for the health of others. I read not to long ago about Americas omega 6 to 3 epidemic. Omega 6 causing inflammation and even constricting the blood vessels. While omega 3 is an anti-inflammatory, making your arteries able to let blood flow freely.
In America in the 1920’s heart disease was rare. But the people didn’t eat the high omega 6 butter, that is at our grocery store today.
They ate butter that was lower in omega 6 content. Beef and meat today that you buy in the grocery stores are horrible in nutrition. But Weston A Price, a dentist studied people in primitive areas, and found the people ate a diet high in animal fats. He notice that they prized the fats and organ meats of the animals. These primitives ate a high cholesterol diet, with no signs of atherosclerosis. Just like Keys said “the cholesterol content of human diets is unimportant in human atherosclerosis.”
Their animals were raised healthy on grasses, instead of grains like our cattle. Grasses keep the omega 6 to 3 ratio in a cow around 3 to 1, while grain fed cattle have about a 20:1 ratio. These primitives teeth were almost cavity free compared to the Americans. They were free of diseases and were a very happy people with little crime in their towns. The Eskimos ate 80% of their calories as animal fat and were free of Heart Disease. The others ate around 60% or so of animal fat with no heart disease.
Today grass fed and range free mean nothing. The meat industry grass feed and then feed corn to cow 60 to 90 days, which strips the meat of nutrition, and increases omega 6. Make sure your meat you buy is 100% grass fed, and your chickens/eggs are pastured, where they can go out in the fields and pick like their supposed to.
I found this info on westonaprice.org- awesome website. Also eatwild.com.
On the Weston A Price website, you can actually learn how to remineralize your teeth. Which it works, because last year I ate balckberries and my teeth stained. This year I ate them and there was no stains on my teeth, showing I have a covering of mineral filled enamel on them.
You either pay a good price for nutrition now, or you pay for it later, with disease and dental work.
Kristina, I appreciate that you have read a lot of interesting (but already well-known) things on popular Websites, but when parroting them you need to learn to be more accurate in your own conclusions. For example, your claim that feeding grain to cattle “strips the meat of nutrition” is silly, since a change in the ratio of essential fatty acids is not the same thing as removing meat’s nutrition. Is the protein eliminated or even reduced? Are the vitamins? Is the iron? The creatine? Of course not.
In addition, even in true grass-fed beef there is only a relatively small amount of omega-3, because the overall fat content in grass-fed meat is much less than in grain-fed. Had you read the explanatory information about this on the Eat Wild site that you refer to, you would figured out that a 3-oz serving of pure grass-fed beef would have only about 65 mg of omega-3, which is better than nothing but still a paltry number. (The reduced omega-6 is a benefit, of course.)
Besides, with no US entity overseeing and verifying commercial claims of “grass-fed” products, there is no guarantee of buying such food, unless purchasing directly from a rancher known to you personally.
Denise, Plant Positive absolutely humiliated you. I have been a diligent reader of your blog for several years now. Not anymore. You are intellectually dishonest. You also said in his comment section that you eat 90% plants and 10% meat, which is ironically in line with what T. Colin Campbell recommends. Hypocrite much?
I have already made similar comments to Tom in a previous posting. However, unlike him I tend to overlook the inaccuracies of Denise’s theoretical critique and applaud her actual behavior, which is consistent with eating a plant based diet (90-10). I am guessing that even Plant Positive would approve of her actual direction.
Anyone interested in finding out the long term consequences of avoiding animal-based foods would be interested in listening to this interview with John Nicholson. http://pamkilleen.com/app/download/7012988804/Andy+Oudman+Pam+Killeen+John+Nicholson.mp3
He was a vegan for 26 years whose health became increasingly worse over that period. He’s since written a book, ‘The Meat Fix’ about how his health improved by reintroducing animal based foods.
This evidence is anecdotal and thus proves nothing. I know many long-term vegans who do very well health wise, and those who do not. The same can be said for carnists.
I have tried to follow good research findings and my own experience. The tipping point for me was a recent CIMT assessment which indicated that my vascular age was several years greater than my chronological age – this means considerable plaque in the arteries. This is consistent with my ecent results of borderline high LDL and TCH. For most of my life I have eaten a diet in the range of primal and WPF, but with very few grains and legumes. During the past few months I have cut most animal products and have dropped my LDL and TCH by 32 points and increased my HDL by several points. Research shows that by reaching a low LDL and staying there for several years, atherosclerotic plaques typically reduce.Of course this personal evidence is also anecdotal, and by itself proves little . However, this anecdotal evidence is consistent with the bulk of nutritional and medical research.
it’s pretty easy to hand waive away people’s actual health outcomes like this and then focus on laboratory markers. This is what ‘modern’ medicine has done for us. But his story is not unique. It’s quite easy to find people talking about trying veganism and having worsening health. There’s a point where ‘anecdotes’ are meaningful. Besides, even though he ate no animal products, and to put it in his own words, ‘I waddled around, sweating and short of breath, battling extremely high cholesterol…’. In fact he was on statins because of this, yet he was on a low-fat vegan diet.
This is something I’ve suspected for some time now. Tom, your words echo my thoughts. I’m done here.
Maybe the food someone eats has nothing to do with personal taste, science and search of truth ? Maybe.
Strange, in a world where the most ridiculous dietary studies are plastered across the front pages of the newspapers, and get top billing on the BBC. You know the type of thing…. Eating red meat regularly ‘dramatically increases the risk of death from heart disease’ A typical headline from the Daily Mail.
But when a ten year study looking at cholesterol levels, overall morality, and heart disease comes out….Silence. I wonder why? Perhaps it has something to do with the results. (See below) http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2753.2011.01767.x/pdf
A friendly journalist asked me if I had seen the paper from Norway which looked at cholesterol levels heart disease and overall mortality. Amazingly, as I have sensitive antennae for such things, I had not heard of the HUNT 2 study. Not quite so amazingly, no-one else seems to have heard of it either.
The graph on the left looks at overall mortality vs. cholesterol levels. The one on the right looks at ischaemic heart disease and cholesterol levels in both men and women.
As you can see, for women the story is very straightforward indeed. The higher the cholesterol level, the lower the risk of overall mortality. With regard to heart disease alone, the highest risk is at the lowest cholesterol level. For men there is more of a U shaped curve, but overall mortality is highest at the lowest cholesterol level.
This was a ten year study done in Norway, looking at fifty thousand people – with no pre-existing heart disease. So what we have here is five hundred and ten thousand years of observational data.
This is a work of art – Thank you!
Plant Positive tracked down the full text for “Atherosclerosis: A Problem In Newer Public Health” and made a new video showing Keys’ rationale for selecting the six countries he did. You should retract your incorrect statement “Keys cherry-picked six countries and never told us why.”
I think when you work so hard to come up on a conclusion based on study of the actual data then you should be impartial and neutral and let the actual statistics do the talking. I think keys, instead of taking the pains of studying data from so many countries and had concentrated on only one country, India, which has got most heart patients than any other country in the world, would have saved lots of energy and probably had his preconceived notions busted because India is the only country in the world, which has got greatest number of vegetarians.
Good point. The mark of a good research scientist is to search for evidence that is contrary to his theory. When evidence is found then his whole theory should be abandoned. This is where Campbell is a total fail. He completely ignores any evidence that does not support his beliefs. This probably is motivated by either income from selling a book or pushing his bias onto the public. Both? The French paradox is not a paradox…it is the reason the whole lipid theory should end in the toilet.
Dr. Keyes KNEW dietary cholesterol had ZERO, ZIP, NADA to do with causing high cholesterol and heart disease. In brilliant HONEST Dr. Jerry Tennant’s book “Healing is Voltage” Dr. Tennant found that BEFORE and AFTER Dr. Keyes published some 100 papers – most likely all his papers were peer reviewed BS – Keyes wrote that dietary cholesterol has zero, zip, nada to do with one’s cholesterol level. We know from the Framingham study that has now gone on for over 40 years that the director says those who eat the MOST saturated fat, the most cholesterol and are slim (eating fat does provide healthier energy, healthier adrenals and does make one more easily saited and thus slim) have the least heart disease. So Keyes knew and Big Pharma wanted us to eat more grains that are high glycemic and cause leptin resistance and obesity. His info was 100% pure praganda designed to create disinfo and thus disease. Dr. Weston Price long ago proved those that eat grains and sugar and not a high fat cholesterol diet had more cavities, smaller jaws, brain and skeletal problems and disease. Watch “The Oiling of America” by Sally Fallon on youtube. Cholesterol is healthy for us if it is not pasteurized.
Lovely stuff.
I’ve just spent half an hour (!) reading the comments and did not even get half way! No mention of what surely is a huge elephant in the blog: Did Keyes have some connection (whether overt or covert) with the margarine industry. I wouldn’t mind betting that he did.
Pierre Meneton:
“Qui dit intérêts économiques dit manipulation des données » (Wherever you find vested interests you will find manipulation of the data).
Pierre Meneton – French government researcher and whistleblower sued for defamation by the French salt industry for daring to speak out about the financial links between vested interests and supposedly independent researchers and saying that salt consumption in France was double what all nutritional experts knew was the safe level. The case was dismissed.
Thanks for your personal marvelous posting! I actually enjoyed reading it, you’re a great author.I will make sure to bookmark your blog and will come back in the foreseeable future. I want to encourage that you continue your great writing, have a nice morning!
Denise, I’m new to your blog and, more generally, ALL of these online nutritional debates. Unlike many (or most) here and in the nutrition blogosphere, I don’t really have any predetermined view or agenda at all. I am not a particularly healthy person (I like beer and I’m an intermittent smoker (GASP)). As a semi-lucid American, I’m interested in the obesity epidemic, especially as it hits my pocketbook and bankrupts my country. I’m not a vegan or vegetarian, and, honestly, I think the Paleo diet’s intellectual underpinnings are sort of funny. If we can’t figure out our own nutritional biosphere, trying to emulate one from 10,000 years ago seems….aggressive. And kind of fun, actually (which I believe is criminally underrated by the serious nutrition crowd. I fell into the arena while researching my personal cholesterol issues (10+ years of very high TC (like 375) very high LDL, very high HDL and low triglycerides; at ideal weight and active, no signs of insulin resistance). I had read a few articles by Gary Taubes on sugar/simple carbs and they are very difficult to fault, and then a week ago I ran across Dr. Peter Attia’s site. I’ve generally avoided nutrition blogs because everyone seems to have a preformed opinion and all data is molded to fit such (much like some of the comments in this section…). What caught me about your site, Attia’s and some others is how…even handed you generally are. I am quite intellectually curious (I have been accused of hating conventional wisdom) and I have been amazed at how little evidence there is for the low fat diet’s health benefit, or the high fat diet’s danger (notwithstanding some fellow named Richard’s opinions). My goal is not health maximization, but truth maximization, so that I and others can make decisions based on the best science out there. I might decide to eat more healthy so I can sneak a few more cigs with less guilt, after all. I’d also like to have a solid enough understanding of both nutrition and blood chemistry to make reasoned decisions about my own healthcare, primarily the use of pharmaceuticals to control cholesterol. I don’t want to hear “never” and I don’t want to hear “always” from people whose motivations I distrust, or who don’t have the intellectual chops to really understand the current state of scientific research (speaking of…that Attia fellow is something else!). If nothing else, you and Dr. Attia have taught me how to critically review epidemiological studies in order to form my own opinions. Honestly, I’ve read the media reports for these for years, screaming “correlation is not causation!!!” Thank you, and I look forward to your future work. I’d also like to add that I am unbelievably impressed with your willingness to take on the intellectual establishent in its own living room as an outsider. The world has truly changed, and for the better, such that brilliant and hard working outsiders can legitimately do so. I hope you have a thick skin!
Excellent Excellent, excellent, I thoroughly enjoyed reading this post
you are amazing!!! Thanks for the info
I would highly recommend going to the PlantPositive.com website. He does more than just “highlight some misconceptions about Keys ” , he presents a full historical and scientific basis for Keys’ significant and groundbreaking research. The ‘controversy’ over his research is essentially fabricated. The discussion is incredibly compelling and easy to absorb.
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What a material of un-ambiguity and preserveness of valuable knowledge concerning unpredicted emotions.
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Oh my goodness! Incredible article dude! Thank you, However I am experiencing problems with your RSS.
I don’t know the reason why I can’t subscribe to it. Is there anyone else having identical RSS issues?
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Click to access Keys,%20Atherosclerosis,%20A%20Problem%20in%20Newer%20Public%20Health.pdf
Is there a point? The report has been thoroughly debunked.
The diet and 15-years death rate in the Seven Countries Study:
http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/nhk14e00/pdf;jsessionid=C047EC741F2FBDB8DD0FE477C7975692.tobacco03
Another opinion on heart disease.
http://www.sott.net/article/242516-Heart-surgeon-speaks-out-on-what-really-causes-heart-disease
The great irony here is that, as the article points out, it’s likely a ‘vegan’ product, all the vegetable oils widely consumed in the typical American diet, at the heart of heart disease. Denise has also pointed out that another vegan product, wheat, has an association with heart disease from the China Study data.
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I haven’t read through the comments section, so I don’t know if anyone has added these thoughts yet or not, but I felt they were relevant to the discussion:
1) Ancel Keys himself died at 100 years of age. While he refused to attribute it to his diet due to lack of a study following 5000 people on the same diet, I am curious to know at what age Yerushalmy and Hilleboe died?
2) As for “all causes of death”, you briefly mention infectious diseases but does this classification also include homicides, suicides, and accidents? Wouldn’t that also skew these statistics?
3) Ancel Keys did say that dietary cholesterol was not correlated with blood cholesterol, but he also attributed it to dietary saturated fat which caused the liver to manufacture its own cholesterol. Saturated fat is in both vegetable (avocados/coconuts) fats as well as animal.
Thanks for presenting a more balanced portrayal of Ancel Keyes work than has been presented by most in the Paleo blogosphere. It’s good to see an objective, fair look.
*Keys’
I am curious if you have researched a connection between the timing of the popularity of Keys’ study and the introduction of high fructose corn syrup.
Thank you Denise, I very much enjoyed your article and its in-depth analysis. I do have one question relating to Keys’ 22 country graph. I am finding it hard to reconcile the discrepancies in the data.
Israel’s fat intake is about the same as France and some of the South American countries, but its incidence of mortality is more than 400% higher.
Similarly, Fat intake in Europeans is very similar to North America but mortality rate is less than half.
These are clinically very large differences.
The other factor is the actual incidence of heart disease and its mortality rate, which may be more telling than the absolute mortality.
Your analysis is insightful and thorough and most informative. The other interesting factor in this puzzle is the role of epigenetics where expression of genes can be modulated by diet. There is one group, in particular, in whom a low fat diet leads to an increase in sdLDL-C whereas a ‘Mediterranean’ moderate fat diet actually lowers their LDL-C. With all these confounding factors it is difficult to definitively identify myths.
In the presence of a family history of heart disease a high cholesterol is said to be grounds for statins. However, I am not aware of any good evidence that shows lowering cholesterol in this group actually alters their outcome. I suspect that it is the family history (genetics) that is relevant rather than their cholesterol.
Thank you once again for your thoughtful insights.
Seems to me the disparity between the countries you mentioned shows that there many be other factors, not fat, causing the disease. I recall that sugar was also correlated, in the same data, with heart disease, if not more so correlated. I believe that as nations become wealthier, and thus consume more fat/protein from animals, they also consume much more processed foods. I believe it is the refines, processed junk causing the disease, not the fat.
you propagate Yerushalmy and Hilleboe’s statement uncritically:
“Since no information is given by Keys on how or why the six countries were selected [for his graph], it is necessary to investigate the association between dietary fat and heart disease mortality in all countries for which information is available”
i think it might advance the discussion if you actually read Key’s paper, where he clearly explains his selection process. even though it might include less details than you might want, the Y&H claim is false at face value
A very in depth article. It is always interesting to find out both sides to a story and to look at data from a natural point of view. Good stuff.
One thing I do not understand is this..
If statins and other Cholesterol-production inhibitors are taken (and they ARE known to be effective [i’m not saying its good!] in inhibiting cholesterol production in the human body) AND eating animal food with cholesterol does NOT end up with that cholesterol in the blood stream, how come people who take statins and do eat animals STILL have cholesterol in their body, as opposed to dangeriously VERY low levels of cholesterol?
My father for example, took statins, while his diet includes meat, poultry, fish, eggs and milk.. yet his cholesterol was still high. where did the cholesterol come from? Is is claimed that statins are NOT really inhibiting cholesterol production?
Statins do help, but in other way, not by lowering cholesterol. They have an anti-inflammatory effect, and inflammation is very bad for the arteries. The conclusion is that you could lower inflammation with much less dangerous supplements. Whoever takes statins, they should also take CoQ10 enzime with it, because the statin gets ride of this very important heart muscle helping enzime.
To your question, I think there is actually a negative correlation between blood and dietary cholesterol. You only get like 10% of your cholesterol from diet, but the less you get, the more your body is going to make. At least that is my view, based on people eating food full of cholesterol and still lowering their blood cholesterol level.
Hi Denise, Thank you for the article.
Have you looked into who funded these Cholesterol/Heart Disease research?
I heard it was Crisco Cooking oil and their ilks that funded Ancel Keys and Nikolaj Anichkov. Is this true?
Thanks again
Doesn’t matter how the fukin science is interpreted. Cause/correlation/whatever. The gobbly-gook changes with the (fart)wind, anyway. This country alone will double in another 70 or so years and there will never be enough protein to go around. There won’t be enough fossil fuel to irrigate. BUT it will be a lot easier to gmo plants than to clone animals. –Bon Apetit.
actually it is plant agriculture that is not sustainable but ruminant and farm animals will feed us until the end.
i particularly like the part where all scientific endeavour since 1960 is excluded from the conversation !!
Just dissected a study on SFA, cholesterol, animal fat and IHD in UK 1980s that runs the same way as Keys and his critics – using a vegetarian volunteer group (who should have had all the advantages) and friends and family as controls; strong associations between cholesterol, SFA, animal fats and IHD.
BUT
Strong protective associations between these things and all other causes of death, with NO net change in mortality at all associated with these risk factors.
http://hopefulgeranium.blogspot.co.nz/2014/06/epidemiology-can-be-interesting.html
Here we do not have ecological fallacy. The study was biased to favour the vegetarians, who were allowed to volunteer (or opt out), and who were motivated health nuts compared to controls.
Thanks! I had been fooled by the paleo bs that had Keys for a liar. So what if he trimmed the data to a few countries. Many researchers do this especially when they think that the countries will interest their audience, and especially when the trend was in the full data set. And thanks for the full set of correlations. Carbs aren’t as bad as meat, and vegetables are the answer!
Trimming data is extremely important! If I trim the data down to 4 countries #4,5,8, and 13 I prove that more fat% means LESS death!!! Also you can pick 7 countries at the far right in an almost vertical line (very little fat% difference) but huge 250% death rate difference! That would mean that this 7 countries study proves that fat% has no effect whatsoever on death rate!!!
Reblogged this on Physical Culture Study and commented:
Just an incredible blog post about one of the most important studies behind America’s fear of dietary fat.
More “broad and thorough?” You meant “more biased and dogmatic” methinks.
Please explain the mechanics of a biased and dogmatic mathematics.
I think the fact that Ancel Keys later shifted his blame from ALL fat to saturated fat only may have something to do with the fact that he took the Yerushalmi paper to heart. Apparently, throughout the 1950s, he maintained that all fat was bad. His shift toward the “Mediterranean diet” and plant oils occurred later.
Reading Eat Healthy Stay Healthy (1959) closely, Keys linked the body’s ability to purge excess cholesterol in the liver with unsaturated fats, particularly safflower oil. At that time statins were unknown, and unsaturated fat and niacin were competing theories. Keys did not like safflower oil, feeling that it should not be sold as an expensive drug, and recognizing that it had very high calorie density.
This has very little to do with CVD health though. Today Americans get about 50% of dietary calories from fat (2/3 as added fat in processed foods). Keys would not approved of this, as his ideal diet was 30% fat. The current American fats are hydrogenated vegetable oils which mimic the animal fats he avoided. The results for CVD health and obesity speak for themselves.
http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/eib-economic-information-bulletin/eib33.aspx
Oops. Eat Well and Stay Well.
As I can’t understand most of this, I would like to look at it from the simpleton’s viewpoint. Ancel Keys lived to 100, his wife to 97 (as a matter of very secondary importance Yerushalmy made 69). So whatever the debate…he just about had it right. Now did he actually follow his own advice?
Sample sizes of n=1 or n=2 are completely irrelevant and you have no measure of variables…that comment promotes nothing. Lets consider Jim Fixx.
James Fuller “Jim” Fixx (April 23, 1932 – July 20, 1984) was the author of the 1977 best-selling book, The Complete Book of Running. He is credited with helping start America’s fitness revolution, popularizing the sport of running and demonstrating the alleged health benefits of regular jogging. Fixx died of a heart attack while jogging at 52 years of age.
So whatever you do, don’t run…
As far as I can determine, yes. He moved from Minnesota to Italy and lived there for at least 20 years. I found a typical menu for what he was eating in his 90’s. It included cocktails, wine, pasta, seafood (octopus), sauteed fresh vegetables, bread and fresh fruit for dessert. All prepared with liberal use of olive oil. The Med Diet, eaten by the man who invented it.
Funny blog, but wrong conclusion on Keys cherry picking countries. The data does or can prove the exact opposite. Connect countries # 13,4,5 and 8. This 4 countries study proves that more fat means less death! Now connect countries #22,3,6,21,16,19,17 and you get another 7 countries study that proves that although the fat % is almost the same, the death rate increases by 250%!!! Thus fat has nothing to do with death rate….
So dear blogger, you might want to correct your conclusion. That would make Keys look more evil…
What I never got about Keys was, what drove him? Was Big Pharma behind him or what? Not to mention he had a degree in economy, political science and zoology, hardly something to classify him to make my food pyramid. Although he did get a biology degree later on but he wasn’t a doctor….
There’s nothing evil about living to 100 and lecturing in your late 90’s.
Keys was a researcher and was his own lab rat on his “best diet” theories. The Med Diet came directly out of this country study, and he ate that diet for 50 years. Whether it’s the excessive fat, the excessive sugar or the excessive flour, the Nordic White Food Diet Keys attacked wasn’t healthy! Cherry pick Italy vs Finland and you’ll see. I grew up on that diet, and by 54 I was obese and diabetic like all my Nordic relatives.
Show me similar contributions to science by ANY HFLC promoter. They named them K Rations, not A Rations. Put that in your Atkins pipe and smoke it.
Good blog. However, I don’t understand your claim that he did not cherry pick his data. Why were these 7 countries chosen when there was data for 22? Did Keys not have access to the data from all 22 countries? Just curious.
Hi Bill,
If you’re talking about the Seven Countries Study, there was no way to cherry-pick that because the study was ‘prospective’ — meaning they chose countries before they had any data available for the citizens they were studying.
If you’re talking about the six countries graph (a much more minor part of Keys’ career), Keys wrote that he excluded certain countries because their data was unreliable — due to post-war population shifts, or having too few citizens, or having poor birth and death record systems, etc. He claimed to picked only the countries whose data was comparably reliable.
Neisy – And do you actually believe this? Working with data as a profession, I think everyone I know would call bs on this or as we do too often do just sit back and watch it burn. Both the process of picking countries to begin with and the exclusion based on blah blah blah.
I don’t think his analysis would even make it out the gate. The science of food as with the science of medicine in general isn’t really science at all. I would classify it more in the realm of marketing. Pick the data and pretty pictures we want and “Let’s go sell this!”
History over Science any day.
If Ancel was cherry picking, why did he exclude Finland? In my readings, it was the poster child for the Nordic White Diet of starchy fatty sausage laden foods, and had very high CVD rates. Ancel was rebelling against this diet specifically, and probably slanted his analysis to making it look bad. High fats, which at that time were mainly animal fats, were part of the whole bad package. Today’s Americans create the same effect using vegetable fats, which constitute 50% of dietary calories (mostly as added fats in processed foods).
Just discovered this blog post and got to say (if you even get this comment that is) it is amazing.
I’m a nutrition adviser and work self-employed and currently writing a nutrition booklet and was about to include the stuff about Keys being a big fibber! I’m a big advocate of full fat diets and that saturated fat is not the enemy but I thought I’d do a little digging about this theory of him altering his results and I’m so glad I did!
Informative, interesting (which is f*cking difficult with stats, as my last university module taught me haha) and all round a great read. I’m going to keep researching for an hour or so but I’ll certainly be re-wording my page on Mr. Keys!
Many thanks! You’ve gained a new follower (not that you needed any!) 🙂
Read Eat Healty Stay Healthy. Then weigh how much that was affected by the Nations study. Ancel invented the Med Diet and lived it out for 50 years in Italy. Despite the criticism of cherry picking, he tried to pick the best and lived it out to age 100.
Oops again. Eat Well and Stay Well. Ancel and Margaret co-wrote it, but the long preamble on coronary disease appears to be Ancel’s work alone.
I think your “analyses of the analyses” was 80-20 spot on; meaning if I had to lean one way or another, I would by far lean in the direction of agreeing with your conclusions.
1. Kudos for extracting all of the R-square values and drawing conclusions on those. This was quite revealing. In fact, it opened the door to number 2…
2. I believe that there is a missing factor. (Well, it’s not necessarily missing, you did reference the high correlation to carbohydrates or known to some of us as sugar.) I say that it is missing because IMHO the original study tried so hard to demonize fats that it just ‘glazed over’ (notice the doughnut pun) this evil culprit and what some consider to be THE drug that America and other western cultures are killing themselves with. Too much Sugar=> Too much Insulin => Arterial Inflammation=> Plaque forms on lesions and inflammation of the arteries.
3. I believe there is ANOTHER missing factor. The Keys Study was presented in 1955. Well, in the early 50’s, we Americans still had doctors on widely spread cigarette adds. Smoking is one of the leading causes of atherosclerosis. Tobacco Chemicals => Arterial Inflammation=> Plaque forms on lesions and inflammation of the arteries. Imagine if Keys would have had to fight the tobacco industry and Madison Avenue, too. He may have become as scarce as Jimmy Hoffa. Hmm, In fact, I want to know the answer to which of those 22 countries were heavy smokers at the time?
Finally, this has been a thought provoking article. Thank you, Denise
There is no doubt that he data Dr. Keys used is bad, but how bad can it be? He’s shown England and Wales average fat increase as around 30% between 1947 and 1949. If my memory serves me correctly during 1947 and 1949 food rationing was in place in the UK with a weekly allocation of 4oz of bacon and 8oz of milk, butter and eggs were similarly rationed.
I’m also failing to see how you can make a correlation between fat and heart disease in Fig 3 from the Y&H paper. There is no correlation if, say, a 35% fat intake results in death rates spread between 200/100000/ annum and 700/100000/annum for around the same intake of fat.
If there is a correlation in that chart it’s that you’re more likely to die of heart disease than pretty much anyone else in the world if your native language is English!
Still, like others I liked this blog post a lot, you’ve brought the story together nicely. thanks
Quoting Ancel on the tobacco effect on coronary heart disease (from Eat Well and Stay Well, 1959):
“These differences between populations are not explained by personal habits such as the habitual use of tobacco or alcohol. Many of the populations who suffer relatively little coronary heart disease contain plenty of men who are heavy smokers or drinkers or both. If tobacco or alcohol have any effect, this does not seem to be primary.”
Of course it would be real interesting to see the the consumption of sugar plotted alongside those death rates.
Having done my own experiment since 2012 and improved all my blood work by cutting out all sugar and aiming for 50% of my calories in Quality Saturated Fats, i know the path i will be following.
Keys path led him to create the Med Diet, and he lived to age 100. The path you have chosen has an unknown outcome, but Robert Atkins HFLC path ended at age 72 with CVD problems. The diet that made him lean in his 40’s made him overweight for the last decade of his life.
I was almost convinced until I read this line –
“The China Study was right all along! Time to go vegan, you guys.”
and realized that this entire post was a crock of misleading shite. 🙂
Over two years since the last comment, and I’m reading Eat Healthy Stay Healthy written by Ancel Keys in 1959. I’m trying to figure out what nuances he used to live to be 100. I think it has a lot to do with the 7 Nations study published at about the same time. From what I can determine, Ancel was trying to determine the causes for the CVD unhealthiness of the “Nordic White Foods” diet. Finland was the poster child (and also not one of the 7 included nations, but clearly the worst at the time). If he was cherry picking, it was probably to simplify and illustrate how to move from bad diet to better diet, working with the mortality data available at the time.
Remarkably, Ancel lived out his theory for 50 years. He invented what is now known as the Med Diet and moved from Minnesota to sunny Italy. He almost completely removed meat and animal fats from his diet (but kept seafood and eggs in), and ate a lot of bread, pasta, olive oil, soup (made from homemade beef stock – AKA bone broth), sauteed vegetables, and fresh fruit. He drank cocktails and wine.
EHSH strongly recommends eating a highly variable diet in order to make eating as enjoyable as possible. But it’s nuanced, and not an unlimited feast. Calories count (remember that Ancel was into rationing – one of his principle contributions to winning WWII), and are tabulated for both foods and different forms of exercise. The first half of the book lays out the science and philosophy as known in 1959. The second half lays out sample diet plans and recipes, which seem complex and regimented…though much less so than the nonagenarian Julia Child’s….
In 2015 could anyone live their life this way? A proper bone broth takes 4 hours to prepare starting with good meaty bones. Someone has to be ready to spend most of their day in the kitchen and market EVERY DAY to pull this off. And to be able to pack up and move to Italy for 20 years of ones life is not happening for most people. But all that sun and fresh food availability is important. At least someone did it, and the results in longevity speak for themselves. Ancel, an ordinary guy from Minnesota, was able to recreate the national advantage (Italy, France, Okinawa, whichever you pick) to his own personal benefit.
Eat Well and Stay Well.
The more I read from Eat Healthy Stay Healthy, the more I realize that the HFLC is hung up in a self-enforced Ludditism. Ancel benefitted from the nations study by picking the best cherry he could see (Italy) and discarding the worst (Finland). He lived it out for 100 years, avoiding a diet which he called “rich foods”, distinguished by lots of sugar, starch, dairy and fat.
Today Americans eat the rich diet. In 2005 this consisted of 50% fat calories, 2/3 of which come from added fat in processed foods like chips and cookies. Animal fat is gone, replaced by vegetable fats manipulated with hydrogenation to give the same mouth feel as butter and lard did in the 50’s. This is not anything that Ancel was responsible for, not the way he ate, and nothing he would approve of. Converting it back to an animal fat basis wouldn’t fix it.
Eat Well and Stay Well.
Someone did the same quality research as Keys. “Much Ado About Nothing.” And I am still eating bacon.
I’m still eating bacon too @stephen. I had a BLT for lunch with some chips and a little glass of madiran wine. Does your diet allow this, or do you eat what the ketostix tell you to eat?
I’ve been thinking about another success that Ancel Keys had. The whole reason for the Nations studies was to understand and reduce CVD mortality. In the US CVD mortality peaked in 1968, and has fallen dramatically ever since. Dixon summarizes this in the following link.
Despite the obesity epidemic, and our massive increases in fat and carb consumption, our hearts have gotten healthier. This is a multifactorial effort, involving better therapies, statins, reduced smoking….and diet. The last was Ancel’s part. Trans fats are more or less wiped out (he always hated margarine), and McDonald’s no longer fries in lard.
True there was much ado. But as a result of CVD mortality reduction we now live on average 5 years longer than we used to, even though we are fatter. Heart attacks in 50-somethings are way less common. That’s something. That’s what Ancel lived for.
How much of the decline in CVD mortality can be accurately ascribed to diet changes? I suspect that treatment advances (not necessarily including statins) and reduced smoking are strongly dominant factors.
It would take a really bizarre list of specific character traits to work through everything you wrote in this post. Apparently, I have those traits. This is some fabulous analysis, commentary and humor. We are not worthy. Someday I will reach these heights.
I wish to point out that Ancel Keys actually DID what he preached. He moved to the Cilento area of Italy and lived there for 28 years eating a mediterranean diet (Actually he ate the Cilento Diet). He died just shy of his 101st birthday (you can verify on Wikipedia). Compare this with the Atkins diet and Dr Atkins who died at 72 years old. Whose advice would you take? The town of Acciaroli in Cilento is still in the news today has having a disproportionately high number of people over 90 yo and making it to 100 is no big deal there (10% do so). the paleo diet is an interesting theory and makes sense. but if a village of people lives well into their 90s and 100s, why not do what they do (eat homegrown chicken and rabbit and fish for fresh anchovies and put rosemary on everything). Also take a look at the Italian region of Marche, where the number of centenarians has increased fivefold since the year 2000. And their diet is not really “mediterranean”, yet they have the longest average lifespan for Men AND Women in Italy. Acciaroli is a village of 700 people. Marche is a region of 1.5 million. Average lifespan is over 85 years for women and 80 years for men. It beats Japan, where by the way, a lot of their centenarians are “missing” like in “Dead”. Try googling “missing japanese centenarians” and see what you get. Additionally the longevity data from Okinawa cannot be validated, because they were reconstructed after the originals were lost during WWII. So it is not possible to verify the actual ages of people there. Draw your own conclusions.
Keys got nothing correct randomized controlled trials have proved his theories in valid. If you have the stamina review the HSPCA court testimony in the Noakes trial. Its a lot you could skip to part 60 on cholesterol and heart diseas and go from there but there is good and valid information in all 78 depositions
It’s terrible that the food industry still has everyone believing saturated fat is harmful for your health and we’re ignoring age old experience!
Well written. I arrived here from searching for a definition of the “Keys score” in the epidemiological literature, but I was hooked on the writing! I like the style of the author. Casual but with a purpose.
Really great blog post. So thorough and clear. I am investigating the validity of the Mediterranean Diet – in particular in relation to saturated fat – and this has given me some clarity on the primary research in this area. If you have any good sources of up-to-date research on health and diet I would love to hear from you!
Dear Denise,
Thank you very much for such an illuminating post. Although I was a vegan before I read this post carefully and I am still a vegan after, you did clarify a few points about the muddled history of the diet-heart hypothesis and Ancel Keys . However, you obviously stayed clear of more recent data from dietary intervention RCT studies.
Thanks again.
Hi very interesting read. Am researching for my dissertation on successful ageing. One point on the Keys data. He did not look at sugar independently, just carbohydrate as a whole. This video has some very interesting bio chemistry showing ITS IMPACT. I think this is a factor that has been overlooked by public health bodies . Sugar:The Bitter Truth https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM
You are a genius. I have the Yerushalmy and Hilleboe article before me and have been trying forever to figure out what most of it actually means. I do not know how you did it, but it makes total sense now. Plus you made it an entirely accessible and interesting read and included lots of other important and intriguing information. Thank you and now please help us figure out some of the other messes we are in [smiley face]
Few questions for my clarification.
Q. How come after 50 years, CAD is still the number 1 killer in America and around the world? In 2019, 49% of America has T2D or at least pre Diabetic and has MetS. Assuming low fat high carb diet still works.
Q. How come you forgot to mention (probably because it happened in 2017 and you didn’t know when you wrote the article), so at least this will tell every one know, that one person who followed AHA Diet (Low fat High Carb) the most, had a heart attack recently, is the President of AHA at the age of 52.
How come you forgot to mention Fructose Metabolism which actually leads to LDL CB and high Triglycerides. And also that the ratio of TG to HDL plays more important role in CAD. And tha Fructose cause the ratio to go higher.
Q. How come you forgot to write about Lipitor, that has made Pfizer 1 trillion USD since it was first marketed after Cholesterol was demonized.
Q. How come you never mentioned that Upper limit of normal Cholesterol was dropped from 300 to 200, since then more patients were put on Lipitor and rate of CAD and entire MetS was doubled since then.
Q. How come an Epidemiology study is being regarded as a double blind, cohort study, which actually is for causation, instead of correlation which epidemiology studies are in built to be doing?
Q. How come you never mentioned Omega 3 to Omega 6 ratio that should be 1:1 ish and veg oils have 1:10 or 1:15? By the way if you noticed, the veg oil revolution started after Ancel Keys’ study gained approval.
Q. How come you never mentioned all the studies which showed dif types of LDL-C and never mentioned that which part is more important causative factor in CAD?
Q. How come you forgot to mention Trans fats in veg oils which were invented in 1960s only after the study showed that Low fat diet is the key. I mentioned about Omegas above.
How come you forgot to mention that Mother’s Milk contains more than 50% fat as saturated fat.
I can probably write a longer article then yours on the flaws in your blog post but let’s start with these questions.
The rebuttles of low fat high carb diet can be summarized in one sentence. Eat what your ancestors eat. That’s all. No bigy.
It was unheard off for the son to die before his father before Veg Oils all thanks to Ancel Keys.
Let’s see the answers. May be I am wrong. The science is still evolving. But I need to be convinced by facts.
As someone once said “In God we trust. Everyone else has to show reliable, unbiased data”.
Don’t be a corporate hack. A calorie is not a calorie. Period. No matter what Coca Cola tried to make you believe.
This is the most informative, fair, and accurate article I’ve ever come across. Such a relief in a world of immature, sensationalized, cherry picking, table banging BS. And hilarious. Please keep writing. And start a fact checking site we can actually rely on, because you may be the most impartial person on the internet. Thank you.
AMEN
Convincing, but still wrong.
His cherry picking was to show a stronger r^2 which would support the conclusions. You’re absolutely right that yes, there still looks like a teenie tiny trend when using data from all 22 countries, but a sample of 22 data points isn’t enough to make any sort of reliable point. Heck, not even enough for a hypothesis. The plot is so scattered, I wouldn’t even call it a trend.
Interestingly, if he had plotted CALORIC INTAKE instead, you’d see that Japan also had the lowest average and U.S had the highest. It shows an even stronger relationship with CHD mort. But take it a step even further, you could also see similar trends using average height instead of caloric intake… actually, Northern Europe and the u.s are the only two areas to show an upwards trend of CHD mortality with increased cholesterol… it’s obvious that fat intake may be related to CHD but is not a causitive variable and that there are many confounding factors. Not only that, the sample sizes for studies based on averages over entire countries is a flawed position to draw any conclusion on…
Why are people sticking so hard to a poor study when there are countless more modern examples of studies showing so many more relationships between diet and health outcomes that do not share these results?