If Everybody Believes the Same Thing, It Must Be True, Right? Wrong!

Anthony Colpo,
October 2, 2004.

Hi Anthony,

Thanks for your site, perhaps the very best. I have been re-reading Loren Cordain's writings [note: Cordain is the author of The Paleo Diet and a contributor to BeyondVeg.com] and have some problems. Loren seems to have accepted the diet heart myth; he states that polyunsaturated fats lower blood cholesterol while saturated fats raise it and that this seems to matter. He says that more than 200 to 300 grams of protein will make you ill, but later says it is palatable if taken with fat or carbohydrate.

He is keen on low GI fruit but likes oranges and bananas. He is anti-saturated fat and says avoid lamb, cut fat off meat and avoid eggs and poultry skin.

I have slowly lost six stone over the last two years, starting with Dr Atkins and moving towards Wolfgang Lutz; in fact I am recommending the low-carb (around 70 grams carbs per day) to my patients, I am a psychiatrist… it wasn't until I discovered Dr Atkins that I started to lose any significant amount of weight.

I am not going to change my diet now, but why is Loren Cordain so stuck on saturated fat and cholesterol?

Hi,

thank you so much for the kind words about the site, and sincere congratulations on the health improvements you have made. I also find it highly encouraging that you are recommending non-ketogenic reduced carb eating to your patients--avoiding both high and extremely low carbohydrate intakes will help stabilize blood sugar and avoid those hypoglycemic lows that can produce depression-like symptoms and irritability.

As for why Loren Cordain is so "stuck on saturated fat and cholesterol", I really can't tell you with any certainty--he would have to answer that question for himself. All I can say is that his angst against saturated fat completely lacks any scientific backing.

Fat facts versus fantasy

Cordain claims in his writings that the wild game available to our ancestors was leaner than the domesticated animals we eat today, and on the allegedly rare occasion when our ancestors did get naughty and eat high fat animals, the saturated fatty acid content of these wild animals was proportionately lower than it is today.

Cordain obviously knows little of rhinos, hippos, mammoths, etc, all hunted enthusiastically by many Paleo populations and all carrying a hefty load of body fat (an adult hippo, for eg, carries 90kg of adipose tissue). Cordain must also be unfamiliar with east African nomad populations such as the Masai and Samburu tribespeople, that have been observed to eat very large amounts of animal fat year round and yet exhibit outstanding cardiovascular health.

As for the claim that the fat from wild game is proportionately lower in saturated fat than domesticated meats, a quick check on the USDA database shows otherwise. The fat from wild bison, for example, has a similar percentage of saturated fatty acid content to beef fat. Animals like antelope, buffalo, caribou, wild boar, elk, and so on contain 30-38% saturated fat--the fat from domesticated pork, by comparison, contains 37% saturated fat.

Cordain also harps on about how the individual saturated fatty acid profile differs in modern-day meat, which I think is really getting pedantic. If it bothers you, just eat grass-fed meat for crying out loud, which will have the fatty acid profile nature intended!

I think that instead of endlessly pontificating over the finer points of myristic/palmitic/stearic acid ratios, it would be far more productive to avoid the hell out of omega-6-rich polyunsaturated vegetable oils and to consume or supplement with long-chain omega-3 fats on a regular basis (fish oil/cod liver oil is the easiest way to do this). By the way, please don't follow Cordain's bizarre suggestion, featured in many of the recipes in his Paleo Diet book, to marinate meats in flax oil before cooking them. As numerous concerned commentators have pointed out, flax oil is extremely prone to oxidative damage when subjected to high temperatures. Ingestion of heat-damaged polyunsaturated oils increases free radical activity inside the body, and free radical damage is a major player in the pathogenesis of such killers as heart disease and cancer.

I find it highly ironic that a Paleolithic researcher would denigrate saturated fat, a natural component of foods that humans have been eating for millions of years, yet enthusiastically recommend the consumption of heat-damaged flax oil, a food item that did not even exist in the Paleolithic era!

Cholesterol and MRFIT

On the BeyondVeg.com site--which truly is a great resource if you can disregard all the anti-saturated fat nonsense--Cordain claims that the massive MRFIT study, involving over 360,000 men, offers conclusive proof that elevated cholesterol and saturated fat cause heart disease. While increasing cholesterol levels were indeed associated with increasing incidence of CHD mortality in the MRFIT screenees, Cordain does not point out that overall mortality was highest at both the high and low ends of the cholesterol spectrum. The lowest overall mortality was actually seen across the 160-219 mg/dl range of cholesterol.(1)

Cordain also does not mention the results of the actual MRFIT clinical trial itself, which was the primary reason the enormous MRFIT project was instigated in the first place. In the official MRFIT trial, half of the almost 13,000 participants were randomized to receive anti-hypertensive medication, encouragement to quit smoking, and intensive counseling on reducing their fat and cholesterol intake. Despite these extensive interventions, this group did not experience any reduction in cardiovascular or all-cause mortality.

The MRFIT trial is hardly the only clinical trial to fall on its butt when trying to prove that saturated fat is harmful--no properly-controlled clinical trial has ever shown saturated fat restriction to lower mortality.(2)

Repetition--the key to turning myths into 'truths'

Personally, I find the anti-saturated fat sentiment of folks like Cordain--who judging by his published research on Paleolithic diet and health, appears to be an otherwise highly intelligent and perceptive individual--to be a symptom of a much larger problem. The widespread misguided sentiment towards saturated fat and cholesterol is a glowing testimony to the power of repetitive indoctrination. We have all heard, over and over again, that saturated fat is so harmful, so toxic to our arteries, that many of us simply take it for granted that it must be bad for us. If everybody believes and says something, it must be true, right? As Vladimir Lenin, one of history's most heinous masters of propaganda, stated: "A lie told often enough becomes the truth."

Methinks most people need to spend a hell of a lot less time worrying about saturated fat and cholesterol and a hell of a lot more time working on their critical and independent thinking skills...

Cholesterol contradictions

Those who still subscribe to the cholesterol theory have never been able to coherently explain why cholesterol is only associated with heart disease in younger individuals, but not in those over 55--the group in which most CHD fatalities occur. To claim that cholesterol is harmful in younger folks, but benign in older folks is a physiological absurdity.

Even if we close our minds to this disparity, just as so many supporters of the cholesterol theory have done, any association between elevated cholesterol and increased heart disease does not mean the former causes the latter. And it certainly does not 'prove' that saturated fat causes heart disease. In Framingham, for example, researchers noted that increasing cholesterol levels were indeed associated with higher CHD rates but also observed that those who ate the most saturated fat had the lowest rates of CHD and overall mortality!(3)

The fact is, there are numerous factors that promote CHD and also raise cholesterol levels--eg stress, inactivity, high blood sugar, low intakes of various vitamins and minerals, etc. Like an innocent bystander apprehended at the scene of a crime after the real crooks have made their getaway, cholesterol--a substance absolutely critical to our continued well-being--gets blamed for a crime it did not commit.

Cholesterol does not cause heart disease, and I never cease to be amazed by the massive numbers of so-called health 'professionals' who subscribe to the idiotic notion that it does!

For sale: one freshly-painted cholesterol myth

To help readers appreciate how utterly stupid the whole 'lower your cholesterol and you can lower your risk of heart disease' charade is, I will use the example of an article I read several years ago, about how red cars were involved in a disproportionately higher number of road accidents and therefore attracted higher insurance premiums.

If we used the mentality of the anti-cholesterol crowd, the solution to this problem would be to sneak into red car owners' driveways at night and repaint their vehicles another color. This of course, wouldn't achieve a damn thing, because red paint has never been demonstrated to cause car accidents, just as cholesterol has never been demonstrated to cause heart disease.

Any relationship between red cars and increased vehicular accidents is likely due to the type of people that typically drive them. If we were to examine a large subset of individuals who drive red cars, we may find that they are more likely to be younger and less experienced drivers, to posses more impulsive personalities, to drive faster, to own cars whose performance capabilities far exceed their own driving skills, and so on. To lower the rate of accidents among this population, we would need to successfully change their attitude towards motor vehicle use and on-road behavior. In contrast, instituting a nationwide car-repainting campaign would simply be an unproductive and self-delusional wank.

For the last fifty years, mainstream medicine has approached the heart disease problem like a bunch of spray painters who believe the road toll can be lowered by repainting red cars. This moronic approach is no doubt why the incidence of heart disease has not declined one iota,(4-6) and why CHD is still our number one killer.

Independent thinking associated with lower risk of believing establishment hogwash!

I'm not sure what the hell they teach in medical and dietetic courses these days--my experience with universities is limited to the area of their faculties that actually contain factual, solid data--that is, their libraries. It is in the libraries where one finds journals replete with research showing the cholesterol theory to be a complete bunch of crap. Obviously, most graduates never see these articles, because their indoctrination, uh, I mean education curriculum evidently does not allow for facts that contradict the reigning anti-cholesterol dogma.

I make the following appeal to all those young student minds that still have some semblance of independent cognitive function remaining inside them--as you embark on your tertiary education, be aware that it is highly geared towards making you a faithful and obedient servant of the reigning health and medical monopoly. Oh, sure when you establish your own practice and plunk down the first down payment on your new Lexus, you may well feel that you are truly the master of your domain. Don't kid yourself. As long as you fail to verify the claims of the medical hierarchy for yourself; as long as you merely glance over the abstracts in journals instead of reading the full text; as long as drug companies remain your primary source of drug information; as long as food and drug companies control the flow of information emanating from the health associations, institutes, and organizations that you look to for professional guidance, then you remain simply a puppet of our disgustingly corrupt orthodoxy.

If you think I am I exaggerating and being a wee bit hyperbolic, if you think that the present system isn't as bad as I make it out to be, then explain to me why the current health system is America's third leading cause of death,(7) and why the anti-saturated fat, pro-carbohydrate campaign has endowed us with unprecedented levels of obesity and diabetes?

The sooner more of us wake up to the inescapable reality that most of our health authorities are, quite frankly, full of shit; the sooner we start thinking for ourselves; the sooner we start taking more responsibility for our own health; and the sooner we start demanding that health officials start paying attention to the facts instead of vested corporate interests; then the sooner we can bring about meaningful improvements in public health.

Until then, expect more of the same old same old…

References

1. Iso H, et al. Serum cholesterol levels and six-year mortality from stroke in 350,977 men screened for the Multiple Risk Factor Intervention Trial. New England Journal of Medicine, April, 1989. Vol. 320, No. 14: 904-910.

2. Corr LA, Oliver MF. The low fat/low cholesterol diet is ineffective. European Heart Journal, 1997; 18: 18-22.

3. Castelli WP, Concerning the Possibility of a Nut… Archives of Internal Medicine, Jul, 1992; 152: 1371-1372.

4. Rosamond WD, et al. Trends in the Incidence of Myocardial Infarction and in Mortality Due to Coronary Heart Disease, 1987 to 1994. New England Journal of Medicine, Sep 24, 1998; 339 (13): 861-867.

5. Center for Disease Control. Hospitalization Rates for Ischemic Heart Disease - United States, 1970-1986. MMWR Weekly, Apr 28, 1989; 38 (16); 275-276, 281-284.

6. Sytkowski PA, et al. Changes in risk factors and the decline in mortality from cardiovascular disease. The Framingham Study. New England Journal of Medicine, Jun 7, 1990; 322 (23): 1635-1641.

7. Starfield B. Is US health really the best in the world? Journal of the American Medical Association, Jul 26, 2000; 284 (4): 483-485.

Source: The Omnivore