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longer than one year. supplying a ratio of less than 0.2. It appears
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The Los Angeles Veterans Administra- Animal fats are not intrinsically deficient in
tion Hospital Study lasted over eight years, and vitamin E, however. The average store-bought from these
most of the subjects were enrolled for at least butter, for example, easily meets the vitamin E studies, then,
six years. It is the only one of these six studies requirement, and a high-quality pastured but- that vegetable
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where the mean age of the subjects was greater ter can provide more than double this require-
than sixty, so it allows us to better see the effect ment. 21,22 It is thus unclear why the animal fat oils promote
of vegetable oils on the risk of cancer, if such an diet was so deficient in the vitamin, but this cancer while

effect exists. deficiency in combination with the higher rate animal fats
Subjects eating the diet rich in vegetable of smoking may have contributed to the greater
oils had a lower risk of cardiovascular mortality, risk of cardiovascular disease in the animal fat protect against
but a higher risk of mortality from other causes. group. it even in the
As a result, diet had no effect on total mortality. It appears from these studies, then, that presence of
This is clearly shown in Figure 3. As shown in vegetable oils promote cancer while animal fats
Figure 4, deaths from cancer began to increase protect against it even in the presence of smoking smoking and
in the vegetable oil group after two years, and the and vitamin E deficiency. Vegetable oils may pro- vitamin E
increase became much larger after five years. As mote heart disease as occurred in two studies, 12, 14 deficiency.
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shown in Figure 5, the difference in the incidence but the results of the LA Veterans Administration
of all deaths from non-cardiovascular causes Hospital Study make this unclear. The authors
began to increase in the vegetable oil group
only after four years and remained extremely
small until seven years. After seven years,
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non-cardiovascular mortality began to increase
rapidly. The disturbing possibility that the true
harms of vegetable oils take years to emerge did
not escape the authors, and they concluded that
“future clinical trials of diets rich in unsaturated
fat must be planned for periods well in excess of
eight years, rather than for the five-year periods
that have been the usual goal.” Such longer trials
have never been conducted.
Although a superficial analysis of this study
would suggest that vegetable oils decrease the
risk of heart disease while increasing the risk of
cancer and other diseases, this may not be the
case. Even though the investigators randomly
allocated the subjects to each group, the random- FIGuRE 3. Vegetable Oil Had No Effect on
ization failed to equally balance rates of smok- Total Mortality in the Los Angeles Veterans
ing between the two groups. There were twice Administration Hospital Study. 17
as many heavy smokers and 60 percent more
moderate smokers in the group consuming tra- The solid line represents the survival in
ditional animal fats, while there were more light the group fed vegetable oils while the dotted
line represents the survival in the group fed
smokers and non-smokers in the group consum- traditional animal fats. There is no difference
ing vegetable oils. The diet rich in animal fats, in total mortality between the two groups.
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moreover, was deficient in vitamin E. Animal As shown in Figures 4 and 5, however, non-
experiments suggest that we should obtain 0.6 cardiovascular deaths began to increase in the
milligrams of vitamin E for every gram of PUFA vegetable oil group rapidly only towards the
we consume. The vegetable oil diet came close end of the study, raising the question of what
to this requirement, supplying a ratio of over 0.5, would have happened to total mortality had
but the animal fat diet fell miserably short of it, the study lasted longer.
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