According to Gary Taubes, the author of Good Calories, Bad Calories, the publication of Dietary Goals for the United States on January 14, 1977 solidified the belief that dietary fat was unhealthy.
Scarily, the recommendations of the publication are not founded on good science. Taubes writes, "Dietary Goals took a grab bag of ambiguous studies and speculation, acknowledged that the claims were scientifically contentious, and then oficially bestowed on one interpretation the aura of established fact."
Taubes discussed how people spoke out against Dietary Goals but because of the similar opposition to Dietary Goals from the dairy, egg, and cattle industry, the scientific challenges to Dietary Goals were discounted.
Taubes suggests that political posturing led to the recommendations with which we are now familiar: reduce saturated fat intake, limit fat consumption, and try to consume unsaturated fat over saturated fat. Taubes also points out that the corn industry and the makers of margarine and corn oil supported these ideas. He argues that scientists who studied and wrote about nutrition were pressured to produce evidence in support of the ideas espoused in Dietary Goals and that funding from industry was used to discredit those who were of a differing opinion. Taubes writes, "it is always left to your critics to decide whether or not your pursuit of truth has indeed been compromised. Jeremiah Stamler and the CSPI held the same opinions [as the government and Dietary Goals] on what was healthy and what was not . . . so Stamler's alliance with industry--funding from corn-oil manufacturers--was not considered unholy."
Taubes writes:
it's hard to avoid the suspicion that once the government began advocating fat reduction in the American diet it changed the way many investigators in this science perceived their obligations. Those who believed that dietary fat caused heart disease had always preferentially interpreted their data in the light of that hypothesis. . . .
[T]hey seemed to consider their obligation to be that of "reconciling [their] study findings with current programs of prevention," which meant the now official government recommendations.
So what is happening now? According to the USDA Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion,
The Dietary Guidelines are jointly issued and updated every 5 years by the Departments of Agriculture (USDA) and Health and Human Services (HHS). They provide authoritative advice for people two years and older about how good dietary habits can promote health and reduce risk for major chronic diseases.
"Authoritative advice" indeed. Read Taubes' book and you'll realize that taking the government's advice at face value on this topic may be harmful to your health and shorten your life. As Taubes points out, some of the studies conducted, such as the Honolulu, Chicago, and Framingham, Mass. studies and the Multiple Risk Factor Intervention Trial (MRFIT), seemed to show that lower cholesterol levels resulting from low fat diets leads to higher mortality (i.e. you are more likely to die). The studies also seem to reveal that low cholesterol may lead to colon cancer.
ADDITIONAL READING: However, according to the American Cancer Society, a recent study of Israeli men may show that taking statins (cholesterol reducing drugs) reduces one's risk of colon cancer.
A study conducted in Britain showed higher mortality rates among British Men who had lower cholesterol. Please note that this study's author's attribute higher rates of death to other factors and state that recommendations of reducing dietary fat should not be reconsidered.
XML Feeds
