NY Times Article, “Good Fats, Bad Fats”

media
(Robert Warren) #1

Ran across this article today in my local paper from The NY Times. What do y’all think? Lots of quotes from Dr. Frank Sacks from Harvard. Good news is he acknowledges that the SAD of refined carbs and sugar is bad, but article also repeats the trope that saturated fats are bad, particularly calling out coconut oil. Would love to hear a good response since I’m sure I’ll get this forwarded to me.

And to be clear, I’m fully committed to Keto and don’t buy any of this article, just want to know how to respond when “friends” send this article to me.

(CharleyD) #2

Bah, it was one person’s opinion that saturated fats were bad (Keys’s Seven Country Study to begin with) (not counting the 7th Day Adventist’s teachings from the late 1800’s, look up the origin of Kellogg’s corn flakes, warning, NSFW https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Harvey_Kellogg ) and as long as the fats were from a natural source and not combined with sugar, they’re beneficial.

The current gov’t guidelines from 1977 on is fruit of the poisoned tree of Keys’s bout with megalomania after ‘figuring out’ what caused Eisenhower’s heart attack.

#teamyudkin #teamnina

drops mic

(Robert Warren) #3

I recognize the name of Sacks from Taubes and Teicholz, and I recall that Harvard got a lot of funding from sugar interests.

(Adam Kirby) #4

Both the author and Harvard are longtime, faithful upholders of the dietary status quo. I wouldn’t expect anything else from them? Yeah. They can eat all the vegetable oil they want, I will enjoy butter, cheese, and bacon fat.

(Karen) #5

It’s the nytimes.

(Bunny) #6

50 Years Ago, Sugar Industry Quietly Paid Scientists To Point Blame At Fat https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/13/493739074/50-years-ago-sugar-industry-quietly-paid-scientists-to-point-blame-at-fat

Sugar Shocked? The Rest Of Food Industry Pays For Lots Of Research, Too https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/09/14/493957290/not-just-sugar-food-industry-s-influence-on-health-research

(Robert Warren) #7

Thanks, ASP, that helps a lot. “Follow the money”, right?

(Roy D) #8

I just saw that the “The Obesity Code” put out a podcast named “Doctors Get Bad Advice, Too”. May be worth a listen.

#9

I’m really keen on this topic, because I do have high cholesterol. The initial aim of Keto was to actually to get rid of some visceral fat, then switch to low carb instead of full keto to maintain it.

From my understanding, one of the reasons for persistence of the “good fat/bad fat” myth is because like every good “lie”, there’s some truth to it. Here are some of the truths that I’ve found

  1. Saturated fat raises cholesterol - but only for 90m to 2h after eating it. Longer term rises in cholesterol are linked to eating carbs and an excess of fat around the liver… Caused by eating too many carbs.

  2. Saturated fat isn’t “bad” for you, but unsaturated fat is “good” for you. How does that work? Well, it’s not a binary equation. If someone was eating for example 50g of Saturated fat, 50G of unsaturated fat for a total of 100g, then gave up all saturated fat to eat only 50g of total fats, there’s no change in their risk of mortality. On the other hand, if they swapped the 50g of saturated fat for unsaturated fats, for a total of 100g of unsaturated fat, then their risk of early mortality drops by about 16%. Apparently, many people can’t get their head around that concept, so they accept the simplified version of saturated fats are bad for you.

  3. Saturated fats are often contained in things which are bad for you, such as cakes and donuts, where as unsaturated fats are often in things which are good for you, such as salad dressings. So it correlative, not causative. Large scale experiments are REALLY expensive to fund (Imagine buying 1000+ people all their food for 10 years to control the experiment, and also having to pay for enforcement - so that participants aren’t sneaking in other food). Observational studies are cheaper, but often have difficulties separating correlation with causation.

I always grimace when people without a science background misunderstand what makes a experiment or study good quality or not. There are experiments which only require very small sample sizes, but anyone who doesn’t want to agree with the finding, calls them worthless. I usually say to them. “Just say you want to create an experiment that will determine whether a gun is loaded or not. How many samples will you need before you are satisfied that your result is reliable?”. That usually confuses them, because they don’t see the relevance, yet many findings in health are the basis of experiments, not observational studies.

Anyway, I’m going to stop ranting, but I did want to make the point that anyone who is relying on an academic study, really needs to educate themselves on how that study was performed and the quality of the study.

(Rob) #10

Sorry. but I’m not really buying what I think you are selling.

First, you need to reference where you get the 16% decrease in all cause mortality from, otherwise it’s just your opinion. I’m sure it will be enlightening.
Next, poly-unsaturated and mono-unsaturated fats are very different usually driven by the ratios of Omega 3 to Omega 6 so blanket statements about unsaturated fats are not worth much. Nor are you considering the use of the poly-unsaturated fats e.g. cooking near to the smoke point of processed veg oils create very nasty things since they are so desperate to oxidize.
Third, your gun example is also not very useful since it is describing a ridiculously simple system. Gun, bullet. The human metabolism is vastly more complex and not even fully understood yet.
Fourth, trying to confound things with a statement about where saturated fat is found is just guesswork on your part (so much saturated fat has been removed from refined/processed products in favor of poly-unsaturated and they are still as or more ‘toxic’) just shows that there is little to no value to associative studies that tout BS about specific ingredients since they can never get to an appropriate level of granularity of data to make any worthwhile conclusions. Listen to the 2KD Zoe Rocks podcast pt 2.

You can’t rehabilitate nutritional science by pretending that people are too stupid to understand it. Nutritional science is generally so bad because so much of it is done by very fallible and sadly biased humans who set up junk science experiments so get junk results. If these lab coats were in physics, they’d be marched out of the subject. What bit of science are you in?

(Bunny) #11

That’s what happens when Nebraska farm boys and Sugar Caners are funding the research!

(TJ Borden) #12

Damn straight. I’m not a particularly smart guy, and I’m understanding this stuff just fine.