Caustic Commentary, Cracks in the Saturated Fat Dogma

A large, exhaustive new analysis of nearly eighty studies by a team of international scientists has found no evidence that eating saturated fat increases the incidence of heart attacks and other cardiac events. The study, published in Annals of Internal Medicine (2014;160(6):398-406), did not find t hat people who ate higher levers of saturated fat had more heart disease than those who ate less, nor did the study find less heart disease in those dutifully eating higher amounts of polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fat. “My take on this would be that it’s not saturated fat that we should worry about” in our diets, said Dr. Rajiv Chowdhury, the study’s lead author and a cardiovascular epidemiologist in the department of public health and primary care at Cambridge University. But here in the U.S., health officials will make sure we keep worrying. Dr. Frank Hu, professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health said that the findings “should not be taken as a green light to eat more steak, butter and other foods rich in saturated fat.” Prominent food Puritan Alice H Lichtenstein, a nutritional biochemist at Tufts University chided, “. . . it would be unfortunate if these results were interpreted to suggest that people can go back to eating butter and cheese with abandon.” And the American Heart Association is sticking to its strictures against butter, cheese and cream. These folks, enchained in academia, will still be shaking their fingers at us when everyone else has gone back to delicious, healthful eating.