This is Part 4 of Dr. Tim Noakes’s series entitled “Ancel Keys’ Cholesterol Con”. Part 4! This part alone cites to 83 references. And there will be more parts!
https://www.crossfit.com/health/ancel-keys-cholesterol-con-part-4?topicId=article.20200618105425065
I would not want to be one going against Dr. Noakes for anything. He’s like a bulldog – He won’t give up.
One day, I’ll make through all four articles…but by then, there will probably be more.
I imagine Angel Keys thought that he was doing what was right. I know later in life he tried to recant some of what he put out there. What is so incredible is that so many well thought of institutions like Harvard, and governments, and common man still believe much of what he said. The damage that has been done is just unbelievable.
While I don’t hate Ancel Keys, I do think this latching onto one idea, regardless of the data and possible consequences, has been disastrous. Simple things – which I once believed, too – like saturated fat raises “cholesterol” (or LDL) and therefore causes heart disease; fat has more calories per gram, thus it’s better to eat carbs to reduce calorie intake; etc.; have taken over, with a marked lack of any questioning of the original idea.
What shocks me even now is how little “science” there was and remains. If E=mc^2 fails once, it’s wrong. But because we started with a theory and attempted to prove it correct (instead of trying to get it to fail), we had so much invested in that theory that it became “correct” even when the data showed it wasn’t.
Before rendering final judgement on Ancel Keys remember this. His ‘7-country study’, from which was justified arguably the worst nutritional disaster ever visited upon humanity, was actually a 21-country study. He ignored the data from the other 14 countries because they contradicted his thesis. He cherry picked the 7 countries that he could best plot onto a graph correlating increasing fatalities to increasing saturated fat consumption. He knew what he was doing was wrong.
As @amwassil states, Ancel knew exactly what he was doing with the manipulations to support his agenda. I have no compassion for the man.
Observation: Cholesterol is present in atherosclerotic plaque.
Hypothesis: Cholesterol is the cause of atherosclerotic plaque.
Conclusion: Reducing the amount of cholesterol will reduce the amount of atherosclerotic plaque.
Observation: Fire trucks are present at fires.
Hypothesis: Fire trucks are the cause of fires.
Conclusion: Reducing the number of fire trucks will reduce the number of fires.
Keys’s own Minnesota Coronary Study yielded data that he didn’t like, so he had his name removed from it. It remained unpublished for 17 years, and when they finally published it, it was in an obscure journal that no one read. The data tapes were eventually found in Ivan Franz’s basement after his death, and his son gave them to researchers who reanalysed the data and came up with some extremely interesting conclusions. From our point of view, anyway.
Do you know more about that it sounds interesting? I know that it’s tempting to toss out data when it doesn’t support your hypothesis but that’s just not being a good scientist, but I understand Ancel Keys was very arrogant.
The man had a villa in the mediterranean so he was funded by some deep pockets… I always suspected the processed food industry, but just speculation and suspicion on my part.
He got angry and defensive when he was spotted having a plate of bacon and eggs one time.
He knew what he was doing and I believe was influential in ruining the career of a colleague whose theory was high triglycerides correlated better with CHD, which of course is caused by eating a diet high in sugar and carbs.
He was a real piece of work.
He knew he was doing the right thing to become powerful/famous, good science be darned. He cherrypicked. He hid data. He had all of the ethics of a Mark Zuckerberg. There is no credible defence for Keys.
Gary Taubes tells the basic story in Good Calories, Bad Calories, and I remember listening to a radio interview with Dr. Franz, Jr., on either the New Yorker Radio Hour or This American Life, about how he found the data tapes in his father’s basement.
Dr. Bret Scher interviews Adele Hite, Ph.D., on the U.S. dietary guidelines:
Yes, Keys was the root of the issue, but what about all the scientists ever since in positions of power that have just closed their minds to what is really healthy by ignoring the real evidence? In my opinion they are equally, if not more, culpable as Keys.
There have been many opportunities to change course, but all those powerful people just kept on going to stay on the gravy train.
And yet it still continues with the new dietary guidelines set to be published with the same old lies.
What do we have to do? How long will it take? How many lives will be cut short as a consequence?
It is a living scandal of the highest order. And yet to be properly exposed.
This whole Ancel Keys thing has nothing to do with dietary cholesterol, fat or whether you eat lots of dietary fat or not, that is not the problem and has nothing to do with heart disease.
The real core problem is eating too much dietary sugars or high hyperglycemia endogenous glucose that mimic vitamin C causing arterial glycocalyx dysfunction.
People have this idea seared into their brain from current gurus that eating dietary fat is the cure… Nope, that kind of thinking will get you no where with real scientists.
Bunny
what does a normal eating day look like for you. I’ve heard you talk about vegetables, resistant starch, limiting meat proteins. You seem to have a handle on things.
This is where it gets fun I eat instinctually and I don’t eat everyday or one type of food continually except for very hot chili peppers which I love and highest food in vitamin C and when I do eat it could be a lot of food (very active) or very little food (lazy days), have to keep tricking the metabolism (thyroid).
I use to buy hundreds of dollars of all this keto type whole food and never eat it, would end up throwing it all away because my eating windows are too far apart.
Much easier and cheaper for me to shop for a specific meal when I’m ready to eat it, like a scavenger…lol
I have access to some really good meats anti-biotic free, grass fed or finished local meats of all types and critters right around corner from my house so meat is good because I know where it comes from. All organic veggies etc.
I usually eat only Whole Foods, no processed stuff but that still leaves so many choices.
I think to myself also what if did not have access to such a dream supply of meat and fat or very little, how would I keto then? How would I survive? Starchy Whole Foods are still ketogenic if you understand the science behind it? You can keto junk food also you just have to be careful with it!
The man has turned out to be the biggest mass murderer in history, bar none.
Generation after generation of people have been affected.
You know, Darwin only had a theory. It was other people who made it into a secular religion, basically.
The response to Keys is in the same position. He should have served as a warning to others as soon as studies started proving him wrong. But an entire field of {censored} people for years and years and DECADES AND DECADES hid their data, hid entire huge studies!, “re-interpreted” and subjectively selected data to publish, and more. And not just that: people who disagreed with Keys at the time, and later, and still later, were either ignored or often vilely attacked.
It’s been nearly half a century since Keys’s fraudulent 7 Countries Study – and the equally fraudulent ‘interpretation’ book on The China Study (which Denise Minger so brilliantly shredded) – and science itself, all over the place, has now learned better.
The 2020 Dietary Guidelines are here. And as always, they are a nightmare for health. Although they are very productive for the USDA’s primary agenda (sell grain and produce worldwide), and downright lucrative for everything from pharma corps to the medical field to funeral homes. The shocking amount of money generated off poor health in humans is an entire parasitical global industry. Much like in the movie The Matrix, the AI lived off humans as batteries, right now corps – and governments as part of that – are basically doing the same thing. Never mind taxes and buying TVs, it is pseudo-food/drink that is the big income of the day. Because it’s the indirect money that is far bigger.
In the military, there are weapons and attempts to take down one man but leave him alive, not dead. Then it takes a few of his buddies to try and carry him out of the combat zone. That may sound like a failure but in fact it’s more effective for the overall goal. Well similarly, it is not in commercial best interests to outright kill us. Just to make us need multiple medications for the rest of our lives, multiple surgeries, and so on. That is far more productive economically.
My point is that Ancel Keys is like… a lot of situations in the world. They are what they are – some good, some bad, some both – but it is those with an agenda who immediately move in and pick it up and run with it.
Keys is responsible for a fraudulent study because despite being previously a good scientist, he turned out to be affected by a huge personal bias. It happens. And the point of science replication is precisely to PREVENT this kind of human nature issue from mucking up the health of nearly everyone on planet earth for the next half century.
Keys is not responsible for that. There are endless bad studies for various reasons. Science is not comprised of one guy’s study. It is money and politics and a huge boatload of other people that made all this into a food religion.
Wow, PJ! 
