New study from Harvard - does it make any sense at all?

[galenus]

This is my first post, so in case I missed this article mention here, please let me know.
It would be interesting to see comments about this bombastic title:

Saturated fat, regardless of type, linked with increased heart disease risk

[Saphire]

It would be helpful if you could link the actual full study. Newspaper headlines are rarely accurate. Also, any time you see “association” be suspicious. Correlation does not equal causation

[Bellyman]

The article read like a “talking head” with little more than a tone of speculative opinion and very short on stuff like facts and data.

In this day and age, fake news is the norm, and I suspect this of being pretty much in that category.

[Madeleine]

Maybe the original post was edited, but now the link does show an abstract of the study (and not an article about it).

I read it really briefly but this is what stood out to me in addition @Saphire’s point about correlation:

1. we don’t know their carb level but since it’s not mentioned, it’s probably standard. High carb + fat is not a great strategy for health even if the fats in question are our beloved saturated fats.

2. I think that they measured “heart disease risk” i.e. lipid levels and not actual events, and there are really serious problems with medical dogma about lipid levels and heart health.

There was a huge study done a while ago (decades ago) which replaced butter with some fake something and found that the men who ate margarine did indeed drop LDL levels ( so: “decreased risk of heart disease”) but the poor fellows ended up with more heart attacks and higher mortality than the butter group. [I’m paraphrasing terribly here, but that was the gist of it]

[galenus]

@Saphire the link is to the article on Harvard’s site. And I agree regarding association.
@Madeleine so, your take on this is it is the same old blabbing about high LDL being equal to a high heart decease risk? (sorry, without the correction it had different meaning)

[PaulL]

The study described is a review of two others, one of which was the Women’s Health Initiative study. I can’t recall off the top of my head what the other study showed, but the WHI showed not only that reducing dietary fat had no protective effect against heart disease in women, but that women past a certain age (about 50, if I have it right) actually had an increased risk of heart disease and death from heart disease if they ate a low-fat diet, especially when compared to women of the same age who ate a high-fat diet. If the authors of this study are claiming the WHI showed otherwise, then they are fudging the data.

[KetoCowboy]

2. I think that they measured “heart disease risk” i.e. lipid levels and not actual events, and there are really serious problems with medical dogma about lipid levels and heart health.

There was a huge study done a while ago (decades ago) which replaced butter with some fake something and found that the men who ate margarine did indeed drop LDL levels ( so: “decreased risk of heart disease”) but the poor fellows ended up with more heart attacks and higher mortality than the butter group. [I’m paraphrasing terribly here, but that was the gist of it]

I think @Madeleine has pretty much nailed the #1 rhetorical strategy of those still clinging to the lipid hypothesis:

Always focus on biomarkers–never on health outcomes.

The less evidence we have to support our interpretations of said biomarkers, THE BETTER! That way we can just say “Cholesterol” in a very judgmental tone and repeat that it’s probably wisest to “eat food–not too much–mostly plants” because that sounds comfortingly familiar.

[akirby83]

I don’t like to broadbrush but the Harvard school of public health have been notorious anti-fatters for a long time. They uphold the entire nutritional dogma, low fat, cholesterol scare, plant based… the works. To me this calls into question any study they produce. They have a very definitive agenda.

[Chris_W]

Always focus on biomarkers–never on health outcomes.

Exactly. It’s really tricky on their part, but this sort of thing is common. They call it ‘surrogate endpoints’.

They decide that A causes B (high LDL equals more heart attacks) even if the facts are not there. Then, any time X raises ‘A’, they feel free to say that ‘X’ causes ‘B’. It’s bollocks.

[Madeleine]

@Madeleine so, your take on this is it is the same old blabbing about high LDL being equal to a high heart decease risk? (sorry, without the correction it had different meaning)

Yes, exactly: more saturated fat raised their LDL (or total, or whatever) and since we all know that higher cholesterol levels = bad for you, then saturated fats are bad for you.[We don’t know that, actually, and if the evidence is unclear for men it’s actually pretty clear for women: cholesterol levels below certain numbers are associated with MORE mortality - though I think that it’s all more complicated and more individual than x number = x risk.]

Answering this but it’s been better said by others who responded in the meantime!