In a sense, I can’t believe I’m writing this article. From a scientific perspective, this issue has been firmly settled. The answer is very clearly “NO!”. And yet, if I google “is saturated fat unhealthy?”, then seven of the top nine results proclaim with great certainty that “yes, it is”.
Here’s what the NHS says to people living in the UK: “Too much saturated fat can increase the amount of cholesterol in the blood, which increases your risk of developing heart disease.”
And here’s what the US government tells its citizens: “Eating too many foods high in saturated fats can be bad for your health. By replacing saturated fats with unsaturated fats, you may lower your risk of getting heart disease.”
To be fair, the US government doesn’t sound quite as confident as the UK health authorities. There’s a lot of “can” and “may” in that sentence. Which is actually a bit funny, when you consider that it was the US government that got the whole world to cut down on saturated fats in the first place.
Interestingly, none of the self-appointed fact checking organizations that have sprung up in recent years has yet tried to pull the NHS or the US government off the internet for spreading misinformation.
If you’re in a habit of subscribing to interesting newsletters, Rushworth’s a good one.
Very interesting article that, unfortunately and sadly, about 99 % of humans will never read.
Once most people believe something, it takes decades or century to “dislodge” that belief.
It is in part why the Main Stream Media are so dangerous.
They have an immense power.
Friend writes:
“It is in part why the Main Stream Media are so dangerous.
They have an immense power.”
Media is effectively self regulating. They developed this impression of authority over generations of claiming that only they can be trusted and that freedom on the press is a vital cornerstone to human existence.
(minor irony – Newspapers evolved in many ways from the ‘pamphlets’ of the earlier industrial eras. And what was written on the pamphlets? Claims actively questioning the official narrative. Now they are the official narrative.)
Having established themselves as important they now openly believe their own self justification. “We are guardians of the truth! We are not at war with the nation, we are at work!”
They openly believe that only those who are the media have the skills and moral rights to control how discussion is held. News is a top down process. Those with the Media infrastructure edit the news and pass down to the unwashed what the unwashed need to know.
They established immense power and this is why they are so openly hostile to any form of Nu Media that allows the unwashed to discussion issues and transfer information sideways. It removes them from the equation and makes them irrelevant and they are completely aware that once they become irrelevant they would have to learn to code.
MSM hate discussion they do not control.
MSM will never respect the common discussion of the masses because that directly threatens them, and in return the members of Nu Media should not inspire to be accepted by the MSM, but instead openly push to be a replacement.
Add me to the list of those with high cholesterol but zero plaque (test results) in my arteries. High fat diet, with regular doses of red wine and moderate exercise.
saturated fat is animal fat. unsaturated fat is plant fat. gee, I wonder …..
I’ve been put on a cardiac diet during a hospital stay, and if I recall the only things I wasn’t allowed to have were pork products and the chicken tenders (even though they were baked). Otherwise, I had the full run of the menu. So no bacon for me (turkey sausage was approved), but I could have had all the bread, pasta, cookies, cake, brownies, pudding, potatoes, sugary soft drinks, and Popsicles I wanted, and no one would have batted an eyelash (I probably forgot a few items).
I cycle between Atkins, Ketogenic and Carnivore eating to keep my weight between a narrow range. This allows me to pretty much eat whatever I want, including high carbs, during holidays and such. Then going on one of the three low carb diets makes it easy to drop a couple of pounds when nearing the upper weight limit. Add in daily exercise and it’s not difficult to maintain health and fitness.
Obviously the carnivore diet drops weight the fastest while Atkins and Ketogenic are slower but give you more food variety.
I think a study that compared heart disease with levels of sugar and carbohydrate consumption might be interesting ….
For the past at least 30 years, the nutritional epidemiology research field has been corrupted with various biases (e.g., systematic alteration of study designs, data manipulation, manipulation of statistical analysis or selective reporting of results) which leads to nothing more than false published claims. This is further worsened by junk/idiot government scientists using these false claims to conjure up nonsense about how to improve our health.
“…Eating too many foods high in saturated fats can be bad for your health. By replacing saturated fats with unsaturated fats, you may lower your risk of getting heart disease.”
If this were true in the real world, low-carbohydrate/high-meat diets (Atkins, etc.) would be banned. Other than heredity (genetics), the only things that adversely contribute to heart disease risk in a major way is eating more/moving less and believing what the government tells you.
Interesting how – despite knowing that cholesterol is an essential compound which the nody manufactures for itself – cholesterol is still demonised.
I run on a “low-carb, whole-food” diet – which is code for 95% carnivore – and my Doc pulled a long face at my last test results. So I asked him to arrange an CAC scan, and the result came back as a perfect zero.
Rushworth is routinely excellent.
Idiot physicians have been trying to put me on statins for 35 years.
Until recently, all studies on the health effect of saturated fat lumped together animal (natural) fat and hydrogenated oil (artificial) fat. Shortening contains trans fat, animal fat do not. Trans fat do not exist in nature, and we know they are toxic on the long term. It is not yet clear what part of the ill effect they were responsible for in the earlier studies.