Does eating a high-fat diet, or a high saturated-fat diet, cause heart disease? I shall start by presenting all of the evidence in support of the dietheart hypothesis. This time I am actually not joking. Aside from Ancel Keys’s study – a study subject to accusations of selection bias – there is no evidence in support of the diet-heart hypothesis. I believe that the strongest backing for this somewhat bold statement comes from two different sources.
Firstly, the Surgeon General’s office in the USA. Secondly, from Professors Law and Wald, the high priests of heart-disease orthodoxy. Both of these sources were, and remain, utterly convinced of the diet-heart hypothesis. In 1988, the Surgeon General’s office decided to gather together all the evidence linking saturated fat to heart disease, and thus silence any remaining naysayers forever.
Eleven years later, the project was killed. In a letter circulated it was stated that the office ‘Did not anticipate fully the magnitude of the additional expertise and staff resources that would be needed: After eleven years, they needed additional expertise and staff resources? What had they been doing up to then? Using a million monkeys bashing away randomly at typewriters in an attempt to produce a report? Eleven years …
Perhaps the research was hidden in a secret vault guarded by the Knights Templar, only to be discovered by de-coding centuries-old puzzles set by Leonardo Da Vinci. ‘Only a penitent man may enter: But eleven years seems a long time. (Yes, I know, this was in the earliest days of the internet. But the principle remains. It isn’t that difficult to track down the relevant research.) Bill Harlan of the Oversight Committee and Associate Director of the Office of Disease Prevention at the NIH, commented: The report was initiated with a preconceived opinion of the conclusions, but the science behind those opinions was clearly not holding up.
Clearly the thoughts of yesterday were not going to serve us very well.’ I shall do a translation: ‘We were wrong, the idea that saturated fat causes heart disease was wrong. Everything we always thought about this area is wrong. Full stop: But no one will step that far out of line. On the surface, the world of medical research looks calm and pleasant and reasonable, like a well-tended garden with people smiling and saying things like ‘with respect’ and suchlike superficial pleasantries.
But the world of academia is red in tooth and claw. Step out of line and you can expect no mercy. International opinion leaders guard their empires with implacable will. And crushed you will be, oh yes. To summarise: after 11 years, the Surgeon General’s office in the USA had found no evidence whatsoever to support the diet-heart hypothesis. Believe me, if they had found even the smallest scrap you would never, ever, have heard the last of it. I believe that the utter and complete failure of this organization to support the diet-heart hypothesis represents a compelling argument against that hypothesis.
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