Fats do not make you fat – cholesterol won’t give you a heart attack

There is still confusion over what should be in our diet.  The healthy heart diet is out of date, scientists have clearly shown that fat is not linked to heart disease. Fat is an essential part of your diet.  This blog will outline the recent research and outline we currently believe that ‘fat makes you fat’ when it doesn’t and it is not linked to heart disease.

My colleague was recently munching on a healthy heart lunch when I called him to discuss my latest book on how easy healthy eating is. He was following a healthy heart lunch including wheat, veg and low-fat protein.  It sounded healthy but he had a bit of tummy, okay rather large. I asked Simon why isn’t there any fat in your lunch? Why aren’t people aware that fat is essential for your health?  His response: “because nobody has told them”

Fat is imperative for your health

Michael Mosley said this in a Guardian article two years ago.  Nearly 20 years scientists have known that there is no correlated link with cholesterol fat and heart attacks. Why is taking so long to change the guidelines?

Recommendations include Eat well Plate in the UK and My Plate in the USA require

• 60% carbs
• 20% fat – non-specified breakdown
• 20% protein

Your ancestors ate:

• 75% fat
• 20% protein
• 5% carbs

There are also native Americans who lived a traditional way of life of predominantly meat from buffalo who were 1905 “spectacularly health and lived to a ripe old age”

What have the Health Heart Guidelines done to our health & waistlines over the last 60 years?

If these guidelines are correct why has obesity reached epidemic proportions?  Is the Western world extremely lazy and not exercising enough?  Are you simply not making the effort?  Or are you simply eating the wrong things?

Under these British and American guidelines health statistics are:

• Diabetes diagnosis has tripled in the last 40 years. In America between 1995 and 2010 obesity increased by 50% in 42 states and 100% increase in 18 states.
• Alzheimer will outstrip obesity epidemic in 2050 and affect an estimated 100 million people.
• A low-fat diet has meant that your diet is being replaced with carbohydrates.  Carbohydrates push out fat, so the guidelines are high carb, low fat.

With this current biased on carbohydrates, the Western world has seen an explosion in ill health. The type of ill health that creates a slow and painful death.

“Almost nothing that we commonly believe today about fats generally and saturated fat, in particular, appears upon close examination to be accurate”

Nina Teicholz The Big Fat Surprise why butter, meat, and cheese belong in a healthy diet.

Take a step back – look at how this fat myth began

I appreciate that this is hard to understand for most left-brain thinkers (like me) but the proof really is in the pudding.  Trying out new ideas and being flexible in your thinking.

When I first heard from a lovely paediatrician friend that fruit juices were making kids obese back in the early 1990s I was extremely … angry. I had been serving up healthy apple juice to my only son thinking I was being a ‘ healthy mum.’  I even felt I was one up on the orange juice gang

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When I started to understand the fat myth or the ‘lipid myth’ as nutritionists call it I also remember exactly where I was – lying in bed with a cup of tea and a book. But the feeling was the same.

Don’t miss: Unblock your health using the power of your mindset, your posture and your food

Why were the BRITS so healthy during WW2?

Go back to the war years and even further back in American the depression. Americans and Brits were the HEALTHIEST they have ever been – statistically.

Some scientists argued that it was because there was little red meat, others argued that scarcity was the issue because there was not enough food everyone was on a forced diet, others have begun to argue it was because there were a bread and wheat shortage.

Scientists in Holland also (Dutch Pediatrician Dr. Willem Karel Dicke) noted that schizophrenia and death from celiac disease also dropped significantly during this period.   Through systematic analysis, the same Dutch Dr persevered with his research and eventually led him to believe that modern-day wheat causes huge inflammation in the brain.  The brain has no pain receptors you can’t tell you to have brain inflammation until you are diagnosed with Alzheimers or dementia.

“No organ is more susceptible to detritus effect of inflammation than the brain” Grain Brain Dr. David Perlmutter

The point is neuroscientists, nutritionists and biochemists all noticed that the West was very different in the war years.

After the war in the 1950s President Eisenhower, a serving president suffered from 3 massive heart attacks. He smoked 3 packs of cigarettes a day, but at the time Dr’s were endorsing cigarette smoking, so that was overlooked. I kid you not.

The race to find out what causes Heart Attacks

The race was on to find out the culprit for heart attacks.  A prominent very good looking and charismatic (a lot of assumptions there on my part) Dr. Ancel Keys from the University of Minnesota carried out the famous 7 country study. He looked at the statistical relationship based on Japan and USA.  Japan had very few heart attacks and the USA did, animal fat was a bit part of US diet and not in Japan. Ergo, therefore cholesterol gives you a heart attack, he used the words lipids and sounded very impressive.

At the time:

• Japan 10% calories from fat and how low coronary artery disease (CAD)
• US 40% calories for fat and high CAD

Japan had a significant increase in strokes, but that was a heart attack so didn’t count.

The 7 country study ignored France and Germany.  France and Germany eat a lot of fat – stuffed ducks, pate, sausage etc. Ignored, didn’t fit the results – again I kid you not.

A lonely UK based scientist Yudkin (educated at University College London, mild-mannered and wore a tweed jacket) again huge assumptions on my part. Started to explain that sugar, not fat was increasing the risk of heart attacks.  He wrote a book outline that sugar was creating the obesity epidemic ‘Pure white and deadly’ which is available on Amazon and his thinking is more current and in vogue now then it was when first printed.

Yudkin was laughed out of the nutritional conferences, he was ridiculed. His work was disparaged and in his lifetime he was ignored.

Michael Mosley watched his dad suffer from a Healthy Heart Diet

Michael Mosley, current author of the 5:2 diet is amongst the protagonists for Yudkin’s work.  He recalls from his own personal experience that his father had a high risk of stroke and heart attack and was placed on the ‘Health heart’ diet, the Meditteranean diet – which is open to a lot of interpretations. This diet includes ‘healthy grains’ and grain when it is broken down into the body makes glucose. Processed grain makes a lot of glucose – big sugar hit to your body. Don’t fret insulin – the heroine of the hour – mops up the glucose and you return to normal again.

Michael as an astonished GP watched his dad get fatter on the healthy heart diet he was prescribed, and fatter. His dad died of diabetes.

Michael made the link with sugar and hence the 5:2 diet and his amazing work with the reduction of calories and sugar and make no bones about it, Michael is suggesting a form of Intermittent Fasting. 

There are NO studies confirming the link with cholesterol and heart attacks

The Lipid debate in the 1960s, 70s and even now still grows in intensity. Despite the fact there have been no studies in the last 30 years to prove this link, in fact, there has never been a comprehensive study to PROVE this link.

Don’t miss Let’s be clear about Cholesterol

Back in the 1950s, America introduced the ‘prudent’ and the Western world replaced butter, lard, eggs, and beef with margarine, corn oil, chicken and cereal. The 1970s the ‘lipid myth’ continued and billions of dollars were spent on lower cholesterol drugs.

My mum slapped the healthiest thing ‘since sliced bread’ on the table in the form of trans fat margarine: Flora on our brown bread after we had munched through Weetabix which we added healthy ‘brown’ sugar cos it needed sweetening.   We were ahead of the game in our village, but little did we realise that following healthy heart guidelines we were right on the button for diabetes, heart attack and dementia.

In the 1980s fast-food restaurants removed beef tallow from their chips and on the advice of healthy heart specialists.  Fast food restaurants now cook with man-made, synthetically produced trans fats.  Fats are bad, carbs are good is still the message.

As Homer Simpson says Doh!

Or Dr David Perlmutter says “Drs endorsed smoking with the same kind of ignorance” 

1994 American Diabetes Association recommended the current guidelines quoted at the beginning of this chapter 60-70% calories from carbs and diabetes has EXPLODED from 1997-2007 and tripled from 1980-2011. 

1988 Surgeons General’s office decided to gather all the evidence linking saturated fat to heart disease and thus silence the naysayers. In 1999, 11 years later, the office decided that additional expertise and staff resources meant that they couldn’t continue with the study.  They found no evidence whatsoever to support the diet-heart hypothesis Gary Taubes ‘The Soft Science of Dietary Fat’ published in Science.

Cholesterol is ESSENTIAL FOR YOUR HEALTH

Cholesterol and fat are good for you it is essential and is required:

1. Cell membrane, 50% of every one of your cells is made of cholesterol. It is what keeps their structure.
2. Fat makes antioxidants (antioxidants clear up inflammation and free radicals from burnt toast and exhaust fumes)
3. Cholesterol helps make Vitamin D (Vitamin D is essential for bone strength and prevention of osteoporosis)
4. Cholesterol helps with the production of steroid hormones – sex, testosterone, and estrogen. Can you see the causal link here with a low cholesterol diet and menopause symptoms?
5. Cholesterol is the fuel for your neurons in your brain. Neurons rely on delivery of cholesterol from carrier proteins LDL (low-density lipoprotein) and LDL captures cholesterol from the bloodstream and transports it to the brain

How to add fats to your diet

Add some nuts and avocado and cook with coconut oil. Don’t miss coconut oil is poison headlines to terrify

If you would like to understand your body more, get to grips with the nutritional balance that will work for you read more about The Gentle Reset – 6 weeks reset your mind and detox your body

Interested in A Gentle Reset to your diet?

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