Karianne and Elliot in particular: SCD and Cholesterol

[Guest guest]

Good News on Saturated Fathttp://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/21/good-news-on-saturated-fat/#more-344...But the nutritional reason why meat has been vilified over the years, is that it’s a source of unhealthy saturated fat. It’s not that meat per se is bad — unless you buy the colon cancer evidence, which has always seemed dubious — it’s that the saturated fat in meat makes it bad. So the argument about the source of the saturated fat is irrelevant.The question hinges on whether saturated fat raises cholesterol and causes heart disease. One way or the other this trial is a test of that hypothesis. It’s arguably the best such trial ever done and the most rigorous. To me that’s always been the story. If saturated fat is bad for us, then these trials should demonstrate it. They imply the opposite.Why does the A.H.A. continue to insist that saturated fat should be avoided, if these trials repeatedly show that high saturated fat diets lead to better cholesterol profiles than low-saturated fat diets? And how many of these trials have to be done before the National Institutes of Health or some other august institution in this business re-assesses this question? After all, the reason the food guide pyramid suggests we eat things like butter and lard and meats sparingly (and puts them high up in the pyramid) is that they contain saturated fat. This is also the reason that the A.H.A. wants to lower even further what’s considered the safe limit for saturated fats in the diet....