“But all carnivores, not just human beings...” - truthbombs of Ancel Keys!

[brownfat]

Keys: The evidence – both from experiments and from field surveys – indicates that cholesterol content, per se, of all natural diets has no significant effect on either the cholesterol level or the development of atherosclerosis in man.

Interviewer: Now the latest trend is low-fat diets. Cardiologist Dean Ornish recommends severe diets of no more than 10% of calories from fat. Is that good advice?
Keys: It’s nonsense.

Interviewer: What about the latest non-fat fats like Olestra?
Keys: More nonsense. They have nothing to do with a healthy diet.

Interviewer: What about dietary cholesterol? For years Americans have been worried about eggs and other high-cholesterol foods - but now there seems to be less concern.
Keys: There is no connection whatsoever between cholesterol in food and cholesterol in the blood. None. And we have known that all along. Cholesterol in the diet doesn’t matter at all unless you happen to be a chicken or a rabbit. … But all carnivores, not just human beings but rats and dogs - are not sensitive.
…
As for elevated serum cholesterol, our work showed that it is associated with heart disease. But curiously it is only a significant risk factor for men under 60 or 65. We don’t know about women. After that age elevated serum cholesterol doesn’t seem to matter very much. We don’t know why but it’s a fact.

Interviewer: Has olive oil been over hyped?
Keys: It probably has been, yes.

Interviewer: Have your findings influenced your diet or health habits?
Keys: Not very much, really.

Interviewer: What are the most important messages from your work regarding heart disease?
Keys: The most important message doesn’t have to do with diet at all. It’s that smoking is the most dangerous thing you can do. It’s far worse than having high blood pressure, or high serum cholesterol, or anything else.

The above are excerpts taken from:
https://www.zoeharcombe.com/2019/04/keys-cholesterol-and-rabbits/

[Ellacosew]

The more I read about that cat, the less I understand him.

He lived to be around 100 and the anecdotes I have found so far seem to indicate that he lived an upscale LCHF lifestyle. Candlelight dinners with Brahms quietly playing and ribeye roasts.

[VirginiaEdie]

I know this is in the humor section, but if it’s true, it is very very disturbing.

[brownfat]

I think it is true he said those things. Which I find humorous. The link to Zoe Harcombe’s article has photos of the magazine pages of the interview from which the posted questions and answers are excerpted. I did take the liberty of only posting the first sentence of some answers.

[KetoType2]

The article says he used a rigorous scientific method. BS. He used anecdotal evidence.

[amwassil]

The article says he used a rigorous scientific method. BS. He used anecdotal evidence.

Critics of the demonization of saturated fat have long pointed out that key findings from landmark studies were never published. One, the Seven Countries Study, originally included many more nations. But in only seven did populations consuming lots of saturated fats have high levels of heart disease, prompting recent accusations of cherry-picking data.

See:

Show Me the Data - RCT Out of the Past That Might Have Changed Everything

… Ramsden and his colleagues discovered what had been hidden for nearly half a century: records on 9,423 study participants, ages 20 to 97, all living in state mental hospitals or a nursing home. It was the largest experiment of its kind. It was also one of the most rigorous. Participants were randomly assigned either to the group eating the then-standard diet, which was high in animal fats and margarines, or to a group in which vegetable oil and corn oil margarine replaced about half of tho…

[Janie]

I think his first sentence answers were what he believed to be true. But I think he was paid handsomely by Big Food to say and try to prove otherwise.