Oops, they got it wrong about cholesterol

[claig]

"We've all spent time worrying about our cholesterol levels, but what if it was all... a conspiracy! What if the truth was that eating lots of fat doesn't clog your arteries and kill you, and that there's been a deliberate effort to ignore that evidence in order to secure the financial fortunes of Big Pharma's major anti-cholesterol drugs?"

www.cbsnews.com/news/dawn-of-the-cholesterol-skeptics-big-pharma-conspiracy-theorists-get-a-turn-in-the-spotlight/

"Flawed science triggers U-turn on cholesterol fears"
...
Its Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee plans to no longer warn people to avoid eggs, shellfish and other cholesterol-laden foods.

The U-turn, based on a report by the committee, will undo almost 40 years of public health warnings about eating food laden with cholesterol. US cardiologist Dr Steven Nissen, of the Cleveland Clinic, said: 'It's the right decision. We got the dietary guidelines wrong. They've been wrong for decades.'

Doctors are now shifting away from warnings about cholesterol and saturated fat and focusing concern on sugar as the biggest dietary threat.

The Daily Mail's GP Martin Scurr predicts that advice will change here in the UK too.
...
He added that the food industry had effectively contributed to heart disease by lowering saturated fat levels in food and replacing it with sugar.

Matt Ridley, a Tory peer and science author, yesterday said there should be an inquiry 'into how the medical and scientific profession made such an epic blunder'.

He described the change of advice in the US as a 'mighty U-turn' and said studies linking high cholesterol and saturated fat in food to heart disease were 'tinged with scandal'."

www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-3096634/Why-butter-eggs-won-t-kill-Flawed-science-triggers-U-turn-cholesterol-fears.html

I wonder if a similar thing will happen in about 40 years to the "save the planet" climate change warnings.

Oops!

[LotusLight]

If you eat only natural foods you cannot go far wrong. Works for me.

[Bakeoffcake]

GooodMythicalMorning. "I did this. Cut out sugar but still have some fat. I lost 6 stone doing this and hula hooping a bit"

Well done GoodMythical, love the hula hooping bit

[OnIlkleyMoorBahTwat]

^Hold fire a minute - yes sugar is bad but isn't artificial sweetener worse?

I dread to think of even MORE of that stuff being used in our food.

It's hard enough to avoid as it is.^

Sadly, most processed food is full of rubbish whether sugar, artificial sweeteners or other crap.

We should focus on eating mainly natural unprocessed foods like meat, fish, beans, vegetables, eggs, dairy, nuts etc and restrict processed rubbish that includes loads of 'industrial' ingredients.

If you want the odd cake/biscuit etc eat home made where possible or good quality bought stuff that is made from only eggs/flour/sugar/butter and natural flavourings.

For drinks still mainly to water, tea, coffee and alcohol in moderate amounts. I suppose beer or wine would be better than spirits with mixers that contain artifical sweeteners but it is possible to find full sugar brands.

[AbsoluteGonk]

How do statins kill women?

[HarveySchlumpfenburger]

It isn't even close to being proven wrong, LeChien. Sugar is not bad for you, excess sugar is, the same with fats.

Badly reported science, or studies that have been twisted and misreported by nutristionists and doctors flogging books and conferences are not the same as the evidence proving something wrong. We're a long way from that.

[BeCool]

If you want to know about fats read udo Erasmus's book " Fats that heal fats that kill".

Published 1986. This knowledge has been around for a very long time.

[Unescorted]

Teh rule of thumb I use is if I am being told to do / not do something based on research paid for by the industry that is going profit from it then I take it with a large pinch of salt.

I take issue with the addition of additives to "fresh" food which don't need to be listed on the label as they are classed as preservatives / non food additives. It is near on impossible to make a "choice" about what you are putting into your body.

[LeChien]

Rafals, the science behind "cholesterol is bad for you" was bad from the start.
Fair enough there wasn't the evidence to prove Ancel Keyes was absolutely wrong, but there was plenty of evidence to show there was far more to discover, yet he hand picked certain countries and areas that proved his theory, disregarding many others that proved it wrong.
Yet this was the science that went on to form dietary advice for the next few decades.

Sugar for some is ok, and they find it easy to limit the amount they have. Sugar for others is disastrous and induces cravings for more.
When a diet industry is built on eating low fat, there is usually a high proportion of carbohydrates. The diets are unsustainable, and difficult to stick to, but he dieter is caught in a cycle of eating sugary carbs (addictive) believing the hype on the box that they're ok for you.
There is a loophole which allows food producers to make all sorts of claims about vitamins, minerals, RDAs in their food, but these are often not bio available in the forms they are added, yet this is allowed because they're not making medical claims.
Ds1 bought a packet of weetos the other day, if you believed the claims they made on the packet, you would think they were as healthy as eating apples and carrots. I know this isn't true, but many people buying these products believe what they are told and feed it to themselves and their children, starting the cycle of obesity all over again, but not understanding how.
The food industry has the industrialised world by the balls.

[Bilberry]

Not sure where to begin with some of these responses though I love the idea of margarine being pushed to use up excess hydrogen as if burning pure hydrogen would be a problem or using hydrogen as a fuel is a new idea!

Statins are being pushed because they have been found to reduce deaths. Death is considered a more useful measure for researches than proxies such as cholesterol levels. Doesn't stop some people getting side effects though.

Didn't get the cannibis/cotton link though unless the pp was muddling cannibis and jute?

[didyouwritethe]

"First do no harm" - hahahahahahahaha

Like fuck.

[Bilberry]

Sugar is also not just 'sugar' any more than fat is just one sort of fat. Some sugars like fructose are bad for you in large amounts (a large amount would be a smoothie or large glass of fruit juice each day).

[LeChien]

Primum non nocere

Didyou, I don't know if you're laughing at that because you think I'm wrong, or it's a laughable concept, but Primum non nocere (first do no harm) is part of the Hippocratic oath that all Drs take.

[LotusLight]

Indeed. Our ancestors never had loads of fruit even, never mind the awful junk foods so many people eat. We might get some fruit in season but we were never eating lots of our calories from fruit so are not adapted for that.

I think it's all really simple and most research shows this - eat the non man made foods and you cannot go far wrong. Take no medicine unless you really need it.

[LeChien]

Interesting article about statins

[Bilberry]

"The art of medicine consists of amusing the patient while nature cures the disease" (Voltaire)

Medicine may have moved on a lot (and nature's cure was often death) but I think there is still something in this.

[HarveySchlumpfenburger]

Oh, I agree with you on the cholesterol containing foods e.g. eggs etc.

It's the more recent stuff on fats and sugars and carbs. There are some good studies out there being wildly misinterpreted or having results overextended by some sectors of the diet industry. In some cases the authors of those studies are having to come out and dispute the claims that are being made from their papers.

[fiveacres]

I think it's genetic. My healthy, fit, normal weight father died of a massive heart attack ages 66. Something similar happened to his mum - she was 75. I don't expect to live much beyond 70.

[TeddTess]

so glad i've listened to my mum all these years. child of farmers,

eat plenty of meat, butter, eggs, cheese,

don't eat processed food - crisps, biscuits, margarine or anything processed with too long a shelf like

enjoy cake but only if it is homemade

eat as much veg as you can.

wise words.

[TheMagnificientFour]

The thing is, even though quite a few posters on here are saying that the link between saturated fats abd chilesterold is known to be weak for a while, nothing so far is showing that 'autorities' are believing in that. And by that I mean

• children at school are still taught the food pyramid of the 1990 with very little fats allowed but lots of carbs are OK.
  
• NHS website is still saying that eating saturated fats will increase your cholesterol level
  
• the American heart association is going further saying that saturated fats are presents in all sorts of meats, eggs etc... so should be eaten sparingly
  

etc etc

So I do have a question, if the first study that pushed goverenment to tell people that fats are bad for you is so lacking in scientific rigor, why wasn't it noticed at the time?
If the link between fats and cholesterol is weak and that has been known for ages, why has it not be tickled down to the 'policy makers' and other big instititions such as the NHS etc...?

I'm certainly not one to talk about conspiracy, but I do think that some people taking decisions just aren't cut out to do so and can be easily influenced by lobbying.

As the 'do no harm'.... why is it that such a large number of treatments given on the NHS are actually proven to be detrimental to the patients (About 15% on the top my head)? Is it an issue of training, knowledge, the difficulty to keep up to date with all the advances in research? Is it that these treatments the only things we can think about doing for the patient? Or that pharmaceutical companies are selling said treatment to doctors in such a way that they look brilliant (and the doctors just don't have the time to check it up, so are relying on the pharmaceutical companies to tell the truth )?
That would be an interesting subject of research....
I do appreciate though that all GP and doctors giving said treatments do so thinking they ARE the right answer for the patient

But when you know that the 3rd cause of death in the US is medication .... there is a question to ask.

[didyouwritethe]

Sorry, Chien, I should've been clearer - I meant that most medics pay no heed to the "do no harm" principle. I'm surprised they still even mouth it.

Loads of illness is iatrogenic. Then GPs moan that patients want to see doctors too often.

I agree with TheMagnificentFour.

[tilder]

I don't think I've ever read so much pseudo, made up 'science' as I have on this thread. Cba to respond to most, as Google will no doubt throw up some bs to counteract any science I come up with.

Wrt the Hippocratic oath. Ask any Dr if they have taken it. It talks about not cutting. So that's surgeons, cardiologists etc ruled out for starters.

[noddyholder]

My doctors did my cholesterol a few years ago and it was on the edge of acceptable They said come back when you have fasted and when I said no matter what the results were I wouldn't take statins they said no point having the test! All they wanted was to give me the drugs

[didyouwritethe]

So "first do no harm" is indeed completely dismissed?

[didyouwritethe]

It makes me mad - why have an oath if you think it's rubbish? How can you take the oath, and not mean a word of it?