That's a pretty good summary of the problems with the Seven Countries Study.  It's amazing that something so slipshod had such a great influence!

JS

Food for Thought: Have We Been Giving the Wrong Dietary Advice?

Background: Since 1984 UK citizens have been advised to reduce total dietary fat intake to 30% of total energy and saturated fat intake to 10%. The National Institute of Clinical Excellence suggests a further benefit for Coronary Heart Disease  prevention by reducing saturated fat intake to 6% -7% of total energy and that 30,000 lives could be saved by replacing SFAs with Polyunsaturated fats. 

Methods: 20 volumes of the Seven Countries Study, the seminal work behind the 1984 nutritional guidelines, were assessed. The evidence upon which the NICE guidance was based was reviewed. Nutritional facts about fat and the UK intake of fat are presented and the impact of macronutrient confusion on public health dietary advice is discussed. 

Findings: The Seven Countries study classified processed foods, primarily carbohydrates, as saturated fats. The UK government and NICE do the same, listing biscuits, cakes, pastries and savoury snacks as saturated fats. Processed foods should be the target of public health advice but not natural fats, in which the UK diet is deficient. With reference to the macro and micro nutrient composition of meat, fish, eggs, and dairy foods the article demonstrates that dietary trials cannot change one type of fat for another in a controlled study. 

Interpretation: The evidence suggests that processed food is strongly associated with the increase in obesity, diabetes, CHD, and other modern illness in our society. The macro and micro nutrients found in meat, fish, eggs and dairy products, are vital for human health and consumption of these nutritious foods should be encouraged.

Thank you for supporting gnolls.org by purchasing The Gnoll Credo...I hope you find it as enjoyable and illuminating as my other readers do.

I've heard similar stories from other paramedics, and from people all the way up and down the health care chain...for instance, open MRI scanners because so many people won't fit down the tube.

That ambulance looks like it's designed for horses or cattle, not people!

JS

The interesting thing about the timeline is that it follows my experiences as a paramedic. I started working EMS in 1975. We had the occasional patient that weighed over 225 pounds, maybe once every couple of weeks. Patients that weighed over 300 pounds were maybe every 3 months or so. The over 400 pounder was an once a year thing.

Now it has become so common that large EMSs are putting bariatric units in service that can handle up to 1000 lbs with ramps and wenches. This these: http://media.commercialappeal.com/media/img/photos/2012/03/20/ambulance_appcrop_t607.jpg

Back in the day our stretchers were only rated to around 250 lbs.

Now the basic Ferno stretcher has a weight limit of 400 lbs with their higher end stretchers have a limit of 700 lbs.

And the timelines fits with the rise of moving away from "real foods" and into following government guidelines.

Go figure

Videos present "facts" in a way that doesn't allow us to check their veracity, allowing outrageous misrepresentations.  If you're trying to debunk specific claims, as in that video, you had better write a print article with links to Pubmed. The only reason to make a video out of that is because you're misrepresenting the facts and have something to hide.  If you have a print article which I can review, I'll be glad to look at it.  

Meanwhile, you're right that PrimitiveNutrition isn't Don Matesz: I can't keep my veg*an apologists straight, especially when they hide behind anonymity.  My bad.  

However, "Plant Positive"/"PrimitiveNutrition" is a bald-faced liar.  Anthony Colpo destroys his schtick in typical crude, foul-mouthed fashion in this article. 

In the meantime, stop putting words in my mouth and throwing around unsupported assertions. The studies I quoted and referenced soundly refuted your entire argument: all you could do in response is accuse one of the secondary authors of a retrospective conflict of interest.

JS

link to YouTube video

You may find some of Frank Hu's work outside of this study particularly intriguing. What are these papers that he's supposedly misquoting and how would they destroy his entire hypothesis? I assume you're talking about the Lipid Hypothesis, which is not "his," but a scientific consensus validated by mountains of clinical and epidemiological data. Here you are acting like the Lipid Hypothesis is about WEIGHT, and you're accusing others of being misleading? Laughable.

How about reading the acknowledgments from the original paper?  "The authors’ responsibilities were as follows—PWS-T, QS, FBH, and RMK: selected the studies for inclusion in the meta-analysis; PWS-T and QS: extracted data from the studies and wrote the manuscript; QS: performed the statistical analyses; and FBH and RMK: provided significant advice and consultation. No conflicts of interest were   reported."

First, it's clear that Siri-Tarino and Qi Sun did the heavy lifting.  Second, you might consider that those sponsorships (which came later) showed up as a result of writing a paper that didn't automatically demonize saturated fat.

Finally, I don't recommend taking Don Matesz ("PrimitiveNutrition") at his word.  I've caught him misquoting statistics from papers with which I'm familiar by factors of 40 or more...figures which, if quoted correctly, would have destroyed his entire hypothesis.  In my opinion, that's not something one does by accident...it's something one does when trying to mislead people.

JS

"RMK [Ronald M. Krauss] receives research support from the National Dairy Council, National Cattleman's Beef Association, and the Robert & Veronica Atkins Foundation."

Thanks for that. You should watch some videos on this YouTube channel, especially his videos on Ancel Keys, LDL, and Low Carb Research.

http://www.youtube.com/user/PrimitiveNutrition

I was skeptical about the Lipid Hypothesis myself until watching these videos. Now I know why it's an established pillar of science.

Esselstyn's "study" was completely uncontrolled, featured a raft of lifestyle interventions including cholesterol-lowering medication, contains several discrepancies in the numbers, and over half of the participants dropped out by 5.5 years (selection bias, anyone?)  It's a collection of anecdotes, not a "study".

Here's a summary of what the Ornish and Esselstyn studies actually consisted of, and what they say (and don't say).  

Actually, there are multiple studies showing that a high-fat diet reverses heart disease, none of them from the Atkins Foundation.  Here's one to start you off:

Mayo Clin Proc. 2003;78:1331-1336

Effect of a High Saturated Fat and No-Starch Diet on Serum Lipid Subfractions in Patients With Documented Atherosclerotic Cardiovascular Disease 

James H. Hayes, MD; Angela DiSabatino, RN, MS; Robert T. Gorman, PhD; Simi Vincent, PhD, MD; and Michael E. Stillabower, MD 

And here's the big nail in the coffin of "saturated fat kills":

Am J Clin Nutr 91: 535-546, 2010. 

Meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies evaluating the association of saturated fat with cardiovascular disease. 

Patty W Siri-Tarino, Qi Sun, Frank B Hu and Ronald M Krauss

"A meta-analysis of prospective epidemiologic studies showed that there is no significant evidence for concluding that dietary saturated fat is associated with an increased risk of CHD or CVD."

In fact, studies like the Rose Corn Oil Trial prove that polyunsaturated fat is a cause of CHD.  So the evidence is that Ornish and Esselstyn are correct in saying that "vegetable oils" are bad and should never be eaten...but they're incorrect in saying that animal fats should never be eaten. 

JS

First, hunter-gatherers didn't have low serum cholesterol.  See this informative series of articles by Dr. Paul Jaminet:

"Did Hunter-Gatherers Have Low Serum Cholesterol?" (part 2, part 3, conclusion)

Second, low cholesterol is just as deadly as high cholesterol!  The region of minimum mortality is between 200 and 240 mg/dl of TC: a TC of 188 carries the same risk of death as a TC of 250, and "Mortality rises sharply as cholesterol levels fall below 200 mg/dl."

See this series, for starters: Blood Lipids and Infectious Disease, Part I

Having a 140 mg/dL TC is not healthy -- it's deadly.

There are also the awkward facts that low cholesterol is associated with lower survival rates from stroke and faster progression of dementia.

JS