Where's the debate? I thought that for the past 20 years it was an established fact that dietary(?) cholesterol has zero correlation with bloodstream colesterol to the extent the statement is printed in "Basic Medical Biochemistry".
More anecdotally. I have also heard that....
"Studies proving eggs are 'bad' were done with powdered eggs instead of real eggs to provide a double blind facility in the study. The problem being that powdered eggs had most of the fat removed so they did not go off".
"The study that 'proved' high dietry cholesterol and fat are bad for you, via numbers, filters out several cultures such as the Masaai who had somewhere around 70-80% of their calories from saturated fat but had none of the disease that 'go with it'. "
http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/early/2010/01/13/ajcn.2009.27725.abstract
This post is wrong. It is fueled by
1. concern that the idea of dietary cholesterol is still a debate (when it doesn't need to be**) and that would send people on bum steer.
2. an extreme dislike of debates.
3. shortness of time.
The first one is OK. The other two aren't and taint any good intention.
** which is of course my own conclusion
I was listening for agreement. I was not listening for understanding. (pretty much evidenced by me asking a question then answering it myself).
For anyone that wants the underlying stuff (to use for whatever way they see fit)
the statement about "basic medical biochemistry" comes a book called "beyond the zone" but I do not have the book to provide better references. And I don't remember much else about the book.
That book is piggybacking(or something) off a book called "the Zone diet" by Barry Sears.
IIRC the basic conclusion in that is that elevated insulin in the bloodstream is a cause, not a symptom, of heart disease and it is all aimed at keeping your insulin in "the zone" by eating meals that are 30%, 30% and 40% of fats, carbs and protein. (by calories not weight).
This should be easy to verify/refute.
The demonisation of saturated fat began in 1953, when Dr. Ancel Keys published a paper comparing saturated fat intake and heart disease mortality. His theory turned out to be flimsy, to say the least, but the misguided ousting of saturated fat has continued unabated ever since.
Keys based his theory on a study of seven countries, in which higher saturated fat intake equated to higher rates of heart disease. However, he conveniently
ignored data from 16 other countries that did not fit his theory. Had he chosen a different set of countries, the data would have shown that increasing the percent of calories from fat reduces the number of deaths from coronary heart disease.
as should this
| Tribe | Primary Diet | Percentage Saturated Fat |
| Maasai tribe in Kenya/Tanzania | Meat, milk, cattle blood | 66 percent |
| Inuit Eskimos in the Arctic | Whale meat and blubber | 75 percent |
| Rendille tribe in NE Kenya | Camel milk, meat, blood | 63 percent |
| Tokealu, atoll islands in New Zealand territory | Fish and coconuts | 60 percent |
and (not good for the low carbs mob) this
The low-carb crowd is very much aware of these statistics, which are often used in defense of low-carb diets as the best choice. Tell that to the Kitavans in Melanesia, who get
about 70% of calories from carbohydrate and, like the Inuit and Masai, are almost entirely free of obesity, heart disease and other chronic, degenerative diseases that are so common in industrialized societies. We see a similar absence of modern diseases in the
Kuna indians in Panama and the
Okinawans of Japan, two other healthy indigenous populations that get about 65% of calories from carbohydrate.
I can't think how verifiable this is
In the 1960s, a Vanderbilt University scientist named George Mann, M.D., found that Masai men consumed this very diet (supplemented with blood from the cattle they herded). Yet these nomads, who were also very lean, had some of the lowest levels of cholesterol ever measured and were virtually free of heart disease.
Scientists, confused by the finding, argued that the tribe must have certain genetic protections against developing high cholesterol. But when British researchers monitored a group of Masai men who moved to Nairobi and began consuming a more modern diet, they discovered that the men's cholesterol subsequently skyrocketed.
Similar observations were made of the Samburu -- another Kenyan tribe -- as well as the Fulani of Nigeria.
The basic premise for looking in this direction is that I haven't seen anything yet that indicates that the whole heart thing is not a recent problem. i.e. I don't hark back to the days of fried breakfasts. I think one needs to go much further back than that to get a better picture.
