Food Myths: The Truth about Heart Disease

Food myths abound in the collective consciousness.  One of the strongest myths in mainstream thought is the belief that coronary heart disease is caused by the consumption of cholesterol and saturated fat.  The ever present advice to limit your fat intake and lower your cholesterol springs eternal from this false belief.

This myth is so pervasive that even after causing widespread suffering and the deaths of a great many people, doctors continue to prescribe statins (cholesterol lowering drugs) and the big pharmaceutical companies continue to make billions of dollars pushing these poisons.

The truth is that cholesterol and saturated fat are healthy foods, and humans have consumed them for millennia.  Paleolithic people managed to survive eating lots of animal fat and meat, without the benefit of granola and lowfat yogurt.  They didn’t die of heart disease, diabetes or cancer, and neither do the modern people who still eat a traditional diet of meat and saturated fat. The Inuit of Alaska and the Masai of Africa eat nothing but meat and fat, and neither population suffers from heart disease, or any other diseases that us civilized, supposedly smarter people exhibit.  They don’t need doctors or dentists either.

What does modern science say about saturated fat and heart disease?  Nothing.  No scientifically valid study has ever shown a link between saturated fat consumption and heart disease.  In fact, Krauss et al, the authors of a recent study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, wrote “that there is no significant evidence for concluding that dietary saturated fat is associated with an increased risk of Coronary Heart Disease or Coronary Vascular Disease.”

So what does cause heart disease?  In a nutshell, inflammation.  Inflammation is at the root of all disease, and a diet full of processed foods is very inflammatory.  These franken-foods irritate and inflame the body, and contribute not only to heart disease, but are also linked to diabetes, cancer, arthritis and other “diseases of civilization”.  Here’s a fact to support this: during the years that heart disease was on the rise in America (1920-1960), the consumption of cholesterol and saturated fat was declining, while the consumption of highly inflammatory hydrogenated and refined vegetable oils increased dramatically.  In addition, the consumption of processed white sugar and refined flour was also increasing.  It’s no surprise that the rates of heart disease, diabetes and cancer have also skyrocketed in the past 50 years.

You won’t hear the advice to eat more grass fed meat and butter because the medical industry, food processors, and drug companies can’t make money from telling people to eat whole foods and avoid processed junk food.  And one more thing…the fat in animal products like red meat is not all saturated anyway. About 51% of the fat in a steak is monosaturated like olive oil. About 45% of the fat is saturated fat, but of that, a third is a type of fat called stearic acid, which has been shown to increase good HDL cholesterol and leave bad LDL unchanged. The remaining 4% is polyunsaturated fat which has been shown to lower LDL cholesterol. So in summary, 70% of the fat in a steak or in bacon and lard will improve your levels of HDL and LDL cholesterol.

That can’t be said about processed foods full of sugar and processed vegetable oils, the true culprits in inflammatory heart disease.

photo credit

______________________________________

Ellen Davis is the author of healthy-eating-politics.com, a website which turns the conventional idea of healthy eating on its ear. Ellen researches and writes about whole food nutrition, food politics, and why the mainstream advice about medicine, food and health is usually wrong.  You can find more information about other food myths on her website.