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Eliminating meats, cream, butter and other saturated fats from your diet may not improve your health or lessen your chances of developing heart disease. A new scientific study that defies the conventional wisdom has found no connection between heart disease and saturated fats.
“Current evidence does not clearly support cardiovascular guidelines that encourage high consumption of polyunsaturated fatty acids and low consumption of total saturated fats,” is the conclusion of the study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. The study, conducted by a team of researchers at England’s Cambridge University, also found that switching to low fat products such as canola oil does not lessen your chances of having a heart attack.
The study analysed data from 27 clinical trials and 49 population studies and seems to back the conclusion that eating some saturated fats can be beneficial for your health, as Off the Grid News reported last month. The study also found that supplements that contained Omega 3 and Omega 6 fatty acids appeared to have no effect on heart health — although it found that Omega 3 from oily fish did lessen the chances of a heart attack.
Trans fats, the study said in affirming other studies, are indeed bad for the heart.
Popular Wisdom and the Experts are Wrong
“These are interesting results that potentially stimulate new lines of scientific inquiry and encourage careful reappraisal of our current nutritional guidelines,” the lead researcher, Dr Rajiv Chowdhury, told Britain’s Telegraph newspaper.
The study vindicates health experts such as University of California at San Francisco professor Dr. Robert Lustig who believes that sugar and high levels of carbohydrates in processed food are the real causes of heart disease. Lustig has long maintained that the research that linked saturated fat to heart disease was flawed. Lustig and others have also alleged that government agencies and corporations deliberately suppressed earlier studies that showed sugar contributed to heart disease.
This means that government guidelines that promote a low fat diet are flawed and might actually lead to heart disease. Lustig’s contention is that sugar or fructose is turned into fats that can cause heart disease.
Other Studies Show Problems with High Protein
Meanwhile two other studies published in the scientific journal Cell Metabolism earlier this month showed that persons who ate high protein diets did not live as long as those who ate a low protein diet.
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“These results indicate that respondents ages 50 to 65 consuming moderate to high levels of animal protein display a major increase in the risks for overall and cancer mortality,” The Wall Street Journal wrote about the studies. One study found that mice fed a high protein diet were more likely to die younger.
One of the studies found that persons under 65 that ate a high protein diet had a 74 percent higher rate of death than those who ate a low protein diet. The study also found that persons under 65 were four times as likely to die of cancer if they ate a high protein diet.
The takeaway from all the studies? The average people should not fear saturated fats but should have a well-balanced diet.
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