Page 17 - Spring2012

MYTH 1: SATURATED FAT IS BAD, cholesterol levels. Playing a game of connect The
5,6
POLYUNSATURATED FAT IS GOOD the dots, they argued that substituting vegetable
The myth that saturated fatty acids are “bad oils for traditional animal fats and tropical oils foundation
fat” while polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) would lower the risk of heart disease. of the
are “good fat” emerged in the 1950s as the diet- In 1957, the American Heart Association establishment's
heart hypothesis. This hypothesis stated that the called the hypothesis “highly speculative,” and
saturated fat found in animal fats and tropical concluded that “the evidence at present does approach to
oils would contribute to heart disease by raising not convey any specific implications for drastic the riddle of

blood cholesterol levels while the PUFA found dietary changes, specifically in the quantity or heart disease
in vegetable oils would do just the opposite. type of fat in the diet of the general population,
If the nutritional and medical establish- on the premise that such changes will definitely featured no
ments had taken the approach of Weston Price lessen the incidence of coronary or cerebral ar- investigation
and endeavored to begin unraveling the causes tery disease.” Four years later, the state of the of traditional
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of heart disease by studying the diets and life- evidence remained the same but three members
styles of populations that were immune to the of the committee were dropped and replaced diets, and the
disease, it is unlikely the diet-heart hypothesis by four new members, including Ancel Keys, result of this
would ever have emerged. The traditional diets a leading proponent of the hypothesis. The negligence was
of Pacific islanders free of heart disease, for updated report recommended that men who are
example, vary widely in their proportions of fat overweight, have high blood pressure or high the diet-heart
and carbohydrate, but as can be seen in Figure cholesterol, lead “sedentary lives of relentless hypothesis.
1, they are all rich in saturated fat and low in frustration,” or have a strong family history of
PUFA when compared to the standard American heart disease should replace part of the saturated
diet. 1,2,3 Each of these traditional diets is based fat in their diets with PUFA.
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primarily on starches, fruits, coconut and fish, The hypothesis nevertheless remained
so the PUFA comes mostly from fish rather than controversial in the scientific community for
from vegetable oils. decades. The tide turned in 1984 when the
The foundation of the establishment’s ap- Coronary Primary Prevention Trial showed that
proach to the riddle of heart disease featured no cholestyramine could prevent heart attacks. 9
such investigation of traditional diets, and the re- Cholestyramine is a drug that binds bile acids
sult of this negligence was the diet-heart hypoth- in the intestine and causes their excretion in
esis. Advocates of this hypothesis supported it in the feces. As a result, the liver takes cholesterol
the early 1950s with two key pieces of evidence. in from the blood in order to make more bile
The first was that blood cholesterol levels were acids and the concentration of cholesterol in the
statistically associated with heart disease risk. 4 blood falls. Time magazine hailed the trial as a
The second was that, in highly controlled labo- vindication of the American Heart Association’s
ratory experiments, replacing saturated fats like twenty-three-year-old stance against animal fats.
butter, lard or coconut oil with polyunsaturated Butter, eggs, and bacon were all conspicuously
oils like corn or safflower oil would lower blood absent from the treatment protocol of this trial,

TokelAu PukAPukA kITAvA uSA
Protein 12 12 10 15
Carbohydrate 34 50 69 50
Total Fat 54 38 21 33

Saturated 49 30 17 11
Monounsaturated 3 6 2 12
Polyunsaturated 2 2 2 7

FIGuRe 1. Macronutrient Intakes in the Traditional Diets of Three Pacific Island Populations Free
of Heart Disease and in the Standard American Diet as a Percentage of Total Calories. 1, 2, 3
Wise Traditions SPRING 2012 SPRING 2012 Wise Traditions 17

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