Fats & Protein vs. Carbohydrates (Everyone, ne, Jody)

[Guest guest]

This multipart article (9 parts) below by Enig PhD, with

numerous citations, will establish why conventional medicine's

stance on insulin resistance related issues (which includes heart

disease) has been inaccurate for the past 50+ years. This will also

help explain why the Food Pyramid in also wrong.

Enig is an internationally renowned biochemist and nutritionist who

single handedly was able to pass legislation that requires food

manufacturers to show trans fats on labels.

Beth

MARY ENIG PhD is an expert of international renown in the field of

lipid biochemistry. She has headed a number of studies on the

content and effects of trans fatty acids in America and Israel, and

has successfully challenged government assertions that dietary

animal fat causes cancer and heart disease. Recent scientific and

media attention on the possible adverse health effects of trans

fatty acids has brought increased attention to her work. She is a

licensed nutritionist, certified by the Certification Board for

Nutrition Specialists, a qualified expert witness, nutrition

consultant to individuals, industry and state and federal

governments, contributing editor to a number of scientific

publications, Fellow of the American College of Nutrition and

President of the land Nutritionists Association. She is the

author of over 60 technical papers and presentations, as well as a

popular lecturer. Dr. Enig is currently working on the exploratory

development of an adjunct therapy for AIDS using complete medium

chain saturated fatty acids.

THE OILING OF AMERICA (part 1)

by Enig, PhD

In 1954 a young researcher from Russia named Kritchevsky

published a paper describing the effects of feeding cholesterol to

rabbits.1 Cholesterol added to vegetarian rabbit chow caused the

formation of atheromas—plaques that block arteries and contribute

to heart disease. Cholesterol is a heavy weight molecule—an

alcohol or a sterol—found only in animal foods such as meat,

fish, cheese, eggs and butter. In the same year, according to the

American Oil Chemists Society, Kritchevsky published a paper

describing the beneficial effects of polyunsaturated fatty acids for

lowering cholesterol levels.2 Polyunsaturated fatty acids are the

kind of fats found in large amounts in highly liquid vegetable oils

made from corn, soybeans, safflower seeds and sunflower seeds.

(Monounsaturated fatty acids are found in large amounts in olive

oil, palm oil and lard; saturated fatty acids are found in large

amounts in fats and oils that are solid at room temperature, such as

butter, tallows and coconut oil.)

RISE OF CORONARY HEART DISEASE IN THE 20TH CENTURY

Scientists of the period were grappling with a new threat to public

health—a steep rise in heart disease. While turn-of-the-century

mortality statistics are unreliable, they consistently indicate that

heart disease caused no more than ten percent of all deaths,

considerably less than infectious diseases such as pneumonia and

tuberculosis. By 1950, coronary heart disease, or CHD, was the

leading source of mortality in the United States, causing more than

30% of all deaths. The greatest increase came under the rubric of

myocardial infarction (MI)—a massive blood clot leading to

obstruction of a coronary artery and consequent death to the heart

muscle. MI was almost nonexistent in 1910 and caused no more than

three thousand deaths per year in 1930. By 1960, there were at least

500,000 MI deaths per year in the US. What life-style changes had

caused this increase?

One change was a decrease in infectious disease, following the

decline of the horse as a means of transport, the installation of

more sanitary water supplies and the advent of better housing, all

of which allowed more people to reach adulthood and the heart attack

age. The other was a dietary change. Since the early part of the

century, when the Department of Agriculture had begun to keep track

of food " disappearance " data—the amount of various foods

going into the food supply—a number of researchers had noticed a

change in the kind of fats Americans were eating. Butter consumption

was declining while the use of vegetable oils, especially oils that

had been hardened to resemble butter by a process called

hydrogenation, was increasing—dramatically increasing. By 1950

butter consumption had dropped from eighteen pounds per person per

year to just over ten.

Margarine filled in the gap, rising from about two pounds per person

at the turn of the century to about eight. Consumption of vegetable

shortening—used in crackers and baked goods—remained

relatively steady at about twelve pounds per person per year but

vegetable oil consumption had more than tripled—from just under

three pounds per person per year to more than ten.3

The statistics pointed to one obvious conclusion—Americans should

eat the traditional foods that nourished their ancestors, including

meat, eggs, butter and cheese, and avoid the newfangled vegetable-

oil-based foods that were flooding the grocers' shelves; but the

Kritchevsky articles attracted immediate attention because they lent

support to another theory—one that militated against the

consumption of meat and dairy products. This was the lipid

hypothesis, namely that saturated fat and cholesterol from animal

sources raise cholesterol levels in the blood, leading to deposition

of cholesterol and fatty material as pathogenic plaques in the

arteries. Kritchevsky's rabbit trials were actually a repeat of

studies carried out four decades earlier in St. sburg, in which

rabbits fed saturated fats and cholesterol developed fatty deposits

in their skin and other tissues—and in their arteries. By showing

that feeding polyunsaturated oils from vegetable sources lowered

serum cholesterol in humans, at least temporarily, Kritchevsky

appeared to show that animals findings were relevant to the CHD

problem, that the lipid hypothesis was a valid explanation for the

new epidemic and that by reducing animal products in the diet

Americans could avoid heart disease.

THE " EVIDENCE FOR THE LIPID HYPOPTHOSIS

In the years that followed, a number of population studies

demonstrated that the animal model—especially one derived from

vegetarian animals—was not a valid approach for the problem of

heart disease in human omnivores. A much publicized 1955 report on

artery plaques in soldiers killed during the Korean War showed high

levels of atherosclerosis, but another report—one that did not

make it to the front pages—found that Japanese natives had almost

as much pathogenic plaque—65% versus 75%—even though the

Japanese diet at the time was lower in animal products and fat.4 A

1957 study of the largely vegetarian Bantu found that they had as

much atheroma— occlusions or plaque buildup in the arteries—as

other races from South Africa who ate more meat.5 A 1958 report

noted that Jamaican Blacks showed a degree of atherosclerosis

comparable to that found in the United States, although they

suffered from lower rates of heart disease.6 A 1960 report noted

that the severity of atherosclerotic lesions in Japan approached

that of the UnitedStates.7

The 1968 International Atherosclerosis Project, in which over 22,000

corpses in 14 nations were cut open and examined for plaques in the

arteries, showed the same degree of atheroma in all parts of the

world—in populations that consumed large amounts of fatty animal

products and those that were largely vegetarian, and in populations

that suffered from a great deal of heart disease and in populations

that had very little or none at all.8 All of these studies pointed

to the fact that the thickening of the arterial walls is a natural,

unavoidable process. The lipid hypothesis did not hold up to these

population studies, nor did it explain the tendency to fatal clots

that caused myocardial infarction.

In 1956, an American Heart Association (AHA) fund-raiser aired on

all three major networks. The MC interviewed, among others, Irving

Page and Stamler of the AHA, and researcher Ancel Keys.

Panelists presented the lipid hypothesis as the cause of the heart

disease epidemic and launched the Prudent Diet, one in which corn

oil, margarine, chicken and cold cereal replaced butter, lard, beef

and eggs. But the television campaign was not an unqualified success

because one of the panelists, Dr. Dudley White, disputed his

colleagues at the AHA. Dr. White noted that heart disease in the

form of myocardial infarction was nonexistent in 1900 when egg

consumption was three times what it was in 1956 and when corn oil

was unavailable. When pressed to support the Prudent Diet, Dr. White

replied: " See here, I began my practice as a cardiologist in 1921

and I never saw an MI patent until 1928. Back in the MI free days

before 1920, the fats were butter and lard and I think that we would

all benefit from the kind of diet that we had at a time when no one

had ever heard the word corn oil. "

But the lipid hypothesis had already gained enough momentum to keep

it rolling, in spite of Dr. White's nationally televised plea for

common sense in matters of diet and in spite of the contradictory

studies that were showing up in the scientific literature. In 1957,

Dr. Norman Jolliffe, Director of the Nutrition Bureau of the New

York Health Department initiated the Anti-Coronary Club, in which a

group of businessmen, ranging in age from 40 to 59 years, were

placed on the Prudent Diet. Club members used corn oil and margarine

instead of butter, cold breakfast cereals instead of eggs and

chicken and fish instead of beef. Anti-Coronary Club members were to

be compared with a " matched " group of the same age who ate

eggs for breakfast and had meat three times a day. Jolliffe, an

overweight diabetic confined to a wheel chair, was confident that

the Prudent Diet would save lives, including his own.

In the same year, the food industry initiated advertising campaigns

that touted the health benefits of their products—low in fat or

made with vegetable oils. A typical ad read: " Wheaties may help

you live longer. " Wesson recommended its cooking oil " for your

heart's sake " a Journal of the American Medical Association

ad described Wesson oil as a " cholesterol depressant. " Mazola

advertisements assured the public that " science finds corn oil

important to your health. " Medical journal ads recommended

Fleishmann's unsalted margarine for patients with high blood

pressure.