Noel Kalicha­ran

In his Sep­tem­ber 27 ar­ti­cle, "A plate of food," Dr David Bratt made some in­ter­est­ing ob­ser­va­tions and some good rec­om­men­da­tions. How­ev­er, there were sev­er­al state­ments that were mis­lead­ing and some down­right wrong. Take, for in­stance, "Bad fats, mean­ing trans and sat­u­rat­ed fats, in­crease the risk for cer­tain dis­eases. Good fats, mean­ing mo­noun­sat­u­rat­ed and polyun­sat­u­rat­ed fats, do just the op­po­site." The no­tion that sat­u­rat­ed fats are bad for you and polyun­sat­u­rat­ed fats are good was dis­cred­it­ed 50 years ago. Yet the fal­la­cy lives on in the minds of many, fu­elled by huge ad­ver­tis­ing bud­gets of com­pa­nies whose on­ly tar­get is your mon­ey, with lit­tle con­cern for your health.

This may sur­prise read­ers but quite the op­po­site is true: sat­u­rat­ed fats (the kind you get from but­ter, cheese, eggs, meat and co­conut oil) are good and polyun­sat­u­rat­ed fats (from veg­etable oils such as corn oil, canola oil and saf­flower seed oil) are bad. Mo­noun­sat­u­rat­ed fats, found in large amounts in olive oil, palm oil and lard, tend to be more neu­tral. I have spent the last five years con­duct­ing re­search on fats, oils, cho­les­terol and their re­la­tion­ship to heart dis­ease. I have come to know how the myths (such as sat­u­rat­ed fats and cho­les­terol cause heart dis­ease) start­ed and how they have been fu­elled by big busi­ness in­ter­ests to the point that, for decades, many peo­ple have be­lieved them to be fact. A news­pa­per ar­ti­cle is too short to give all the jus­ti­fi­ca­tions for what I will say but it's all spelt out in a doc­u­ment that I can send to who­ev­er is in­ter­est­ed (e-mail noel­ka­li@gmail.com).

In 1920 (when the Amer­i­can di­et con­sist­ed of milk, but­ter, eggs and meat), my­ocar­dial in­farc­tion (MI) was al­most nonex­is­tent in the US. In 1930, deaths per year from MI was about 3,000. By 1950, there were about 400,000 MI deaths per year in the US, mak­ing coro­nary heart dis­ease (CHD) the lead­ing source of mor­tal­i­ty in the US, caus­ing more than 30 per cent of all deaths. What di­etary or lifestyle changes could have caused this? In 1953, Dr An­cel Keys pub­lished a pa­per in which he at­trib­uted the steady in­crease in CHD deaths to high-fat food. His "proof" was a graph show­ing a close cor­re­la­tion be­tween the to­tal avail­abil­i­ty of fat and the death rates from CHD in six coun­tries: the more fat eat­en, the high­er the num­ber of deaths from CHD. How­ev­er, what he did was trick­ery of the high­est or­der, a bla­tant­ly dis­hon­est, un­sci­en­tif­ic in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the avail­able da­ta.

The trick­ery lay not in his graph, but in what he failed to in­clude. Da­ta was avail­able for 22 coun­tries, yet Dr Keys se­lec­tive­ly chose just the six be­cause they sup­port­ed his agen­da. When all the da­ta were plot­ted, all cor­re­la­tion dis­ap­peared. In oth­er words, coun­tries with low con­sump­tion of fats had the same death rates from CHD as those with high con­sump­tion. Clear­ly, fat con­sump­tion could not be the cause of CHD. This clas­sic case of "how to lie with sta­tis­tics" has caused more heart-ache, more stress, more anx­i­ety and made ob­scene amounts of mon­ey for many over the last 50 years or so. The de­cep­tion con­tin­ues un­abat­ed even to­day. Think about it: all the di­etary ad­vice about fats to stave off heart dis­ease that you've heard for the last 50 years is based on this lie.

De­spite be­ing de­monised by the drug com­pa­nies, cho­les­terol is our friend, the body's re­pair sub­stance. It is es­sen­tial to all an­i­mal life. Among many oth­er us­es, it is re­quired to main­tain the in­tegri­ty of our cell mem­branes and is an im­por­tant com­po­nent for the man­u­fac­ture of bile acids, steroid hor­mones, and fat-sol­u­ble vi­t­a­mins in­clud­ing Vi­t­a­min A, Vi­t­a­min D, Vi­t­a­min E, and Vi­t­a­min K. When polyun­sat­u­rates are ab­sorbed in­to the cell mem­branes, it re­sults in re­duced struc­tur­al in­tegri­ty, in­sta­bil­i­ty and "limp­ness." When this hap­pens, cho­les­terol is se­questered from the blood to re­store "stiff­ness" to the mem­branes. So the polyun­sat­u­rates cause a prob­lem and get praised be­cause it re­sults in re­duced serum cho­les­terol. Worse, we are ad­vised to use it be­cause "it re­duces cho­les­terol."

Now we know why and it's not good news. Polyun­sat­u­rat­ed fats (mar­garine) and oils (canola, saf­flower, corn) are used to sup­press the im­mune sys­tem. Such im­muno­sup­pres­sion is known to start and pro­mote can­cer. Still think it's a "good" fat? Most of our di­etary rec­om­men­da­tions come from big busi­ness, not from good sci­ence. These busi­ness­es have deep pock­ets and lob­by­ists in every ma­jor so-called health or­gan­i­sa­tion (World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion, Amer­i­can Med­ical As­so­ci­a­tion, Amer­i­can Heart As­so­ci­a­tion etc). They can af­ford to pay what Prof George Mann calls "op­er­a­tors" (pseu­do-sci­en­tists) to come up with "re­search re­sults" that rec­om­mend their foods. Many peo­ple get tak­en in when they hear "the re­search has shown..." If we know how many so-called "re­sults" are based on shod­dy re­search or no re­search at all, we wouldn't be so gullible.

Dr Bratt states, "In one study of male health pro­fes­sion­als, men who drank two or more glass­es of milk a day were al­most twice as like­ly to de­vel­op ad­vanced prostate can­cer as those who didn't drink milk at all." Now that is quite an in­dict­ment on milk. Of course we know noth­ing about the qual­i­ty of milk that was drunk. Was it laced with hor­mones as most com­mer­cial milk is? What is "twice as like­ly?" Let me ex­plain how med­ical (and oth­er) "re­search" comes up with "ma­jor break­throughs" based on in­signif­i­cant re­sults. They di­vide the men in­to two groups of 1,000 each, say. One group drinks milk and the oth­er doesn't. At the end of the study, two men in the milk-drink­ing group and one man in the non-milk group de­vel­op ad­vanced prostate can­cer. That's three men out of 2,000. That could be the re­sult of pure chance. Yet, the con­clu­sion of this study is that "men who drink milk are twice as like­ly to de­vel­op ad­vanced prostate can­cer as those who don't."

What's fun­ny is that if an­oth­er "re­searcher" found that one man in the milk group and two in the non-milk group de­vel­oped can­cer (as could hap­pen by chance), we would have heard about the great health ben­e­fits of drink­ing milk. Whom do we be­lieve? Sub­sti­tute "drink­ing milk" for tak­ing drug A and you will get a good idea of the ba­sis on which many drugs are found to be "ef­fec­tive" or "re­duce your risk by 50 per cent." It's laugh­able to those in the know but, un­for­tu­nate­ly, it sounds im­pres­sive to the gen­er­al pub­lic. Cou­pled with slick ad­ver­tis­ing, we rush to buy a use­less and, most times, dan­ger­ous drug.

Of course, the con­clu­sion stat­ed by Dr Bratt al­so ig­nores the stud­ies done on the Ma­sai and Sam­bu­ru tribes in Kenya in the 1960s. These peo­ple gorge on noth­ing but milk and meat. In both tribes, their di­ets are high in sat­u­rat­ed fat and cho­les­terol. If sat­u­rat­ed fat and cho­les­terol cause heart dis­ease, CHD would have been epi­dem­ic in Kenya. Prof Mann found that their cho­les­terol lev­els were among the low­est ever mea­sured, about 50 per cent less than most Amer­i­cans. And they do not die from heart dis­ease (or can­cer). But, as he says, they might die laugh­ing if they heard about the cam­paign against foods con­tain­ing cho­les­terol and sat­u­rat­ed fat.

Dr Bratt ends his ar­ti­cle thus: "Help­ing peo­ple get the best pos­si­ble nu­tri­tion ad­vice is of crit­i­cal im­por­tance as the world faces a bur­geon­ing obe­si­ty and lifestyle epi­dem­ic brought on in great part by bad ad­vice from gov­ern­ments and agri­cul­tur­al busi­ness in­ter­ests." He could have added, "and news­pa­per colum­nists."