It's Sad, that SAD

I've promised a tale.  It will not be a happy one.  It has not ended well for a lot of people and it's a tale of government and power and long term terror.  SAD is shortcut for Standard American Diet.

We have to go back to the early 1950s and we have a guy named Ancel Keyes.  Ancel was not an MD, but held a PhD in fish physiology.  Ancel went to Italy and saw how thin the people were and what they ate and decided to look into it.  From that data and others he collected he put forth the fat intake - heart health theory.

He has a famous Seven Country Study, where he shows that the less fat a nation eats, the less heart attacks they have.  At the bottom was Italy and Japan and at the top, id est, the ones with the most heart attacks, was the US.

Interesting points about this famous graph.  There were originally 24 countries in the data, but some of them didn't fit the curve, so they were excluded.  Poor science there, you should not exclude data unless you have a very good reason and if you do exclude them, and you'd better explain why.

One of the countries that didn't make the list was France.  The French have a diet very high is saturated fat and very little heart disease.  The joke is that if Ancel had vacationed in France we never would have heard of him.  So France is a problem for this theory and to explain it, they just call it a "conundrum" or "paradox." Again with the science, if you have a confounding fact, you have to explain it or change your theory.  In this case they labeled it and ignored it.

It is true that the US had the most heart attacks.  We were in the best shape economically of all the countries post WWII and ate more fat.  Here is another cute fact: while it is true that we had more heart attacks, we also had better markers for all the other diseases!  So if you were willing to accept a heart attack, you could avoid or delay the onset of everything else.

Where did the heart attacks come from?  In those days there were a lot of smokers in US.  Smoking doesn't help your heart health.

Back to Dr. Keyes.  He, to his credit, took his theory, got some backers and ran all the way to the goal line with.  He made the cover of Time!  He affected the first wave of federal dietary guidelines.  I'm not sure, but he might never have looked at another fish.

Senator McGovern empaneled a committee and looked into diet and health.  There is a famous video clip of McGovern telling a scientist who said that we don't know the answer to diet and health.  The clip is McGovern saying that he didn't have to luxury of being able to wait for the true story.

The American Heart Association was new and they embraced Dr. Keyes and help push the narrative.  They wanted funding and backing Keyes turned into a gravy train that is running to this day.

Keyes determined the "correct" diet for Americans.  There was no basis for any of his numbers, he just made them up.  There was no experimental data for this position.  Interestingly there was a lot of evidence that refuted this theory.  There were published studies that went to the 1890s and onward that found no problems with saturated fat or any fat consumption and health.  A group of scientists did speak up, and they were fighting the good fight with all the data and the truth, but lost in the court of public opinion.   McGovern's committee came up with dietary guidelines, these were passed to other federal stakeholders and were modified.  McGovern thought that 5 servings of grains a day would be fine, but it was 7 to 11 when it came back.

And the first food pyramid was dully published and sent out to schools and became the authority to which all dietary advice must be bent.  The guidelines are reviewed every five years and while they are started to change, they are fairly intact to this day.

I can remember going to the library in 1980 or so and looking at a bunch of diet books.  I was looking for a better way to eat.  Probably wanted to lose a few pounds, etc.  I went through about seven books and they all said the same thing: low fat, high carbs, grains and breads are fine.

Some of you will remember when all of the food industry started to push their low fat foods.  As much of the fat as possible was removed.  A big problem showed up immediately.  If something is low fat, it frequently doesn't taste very good.  No one wants to eat it and if you are in the business this is a problem.  But good old American know how found the answer and that was sugar.  So we swapped out fat for sugar and carbs.  Americans swapped the fat intake/calories for carbs.  The amount of protean is about the same.  We were good little citizens and towed the line. 

One of things about fat is that when it is metabolized, it produces chemicals that make you feel full.  Think of it as being self-limiting.  This is not true for carbs.  You can eat too much and only want more.  Fruit has this feature as a survival mechanism.  Animals will eat as much as they can get and then eventually spread seeds.  It is in fruit's interest to have developed this mechanism.

So the feds ran with this food pyramid.  How has the general heath of Americans been this last forty years?  Well, one might suggest that it could be better.  We are very fat and 9% diabetic and I'm not sure that heart disease has gotten better either.

I think it costs about $400,000 per diabetic patient.  Note that about 30% of us are prediabetic...  Other countries are in this same boat.  Australia is right there with us.  This cannot end well if things stay the same.

So government made a very bad decision and to this day have not admitted to it, nor fixed their advice.  The American Heart Association is still pushing Keyes' stuff.

Try this quote from Wikipeadia about Keyes:

"In particular, he hypothesized that dietary saturated fat causes cardiovascular heart disease and should be avoided. Modern dietary recommendations by health organizations, systematic reviews, and national health agencies corroborate this."

Note the wonderful circular logic of this: "modern recommendations ... corroborate this."  Of course Keyes helped write these recommendations.  Sheesh.  Of course there are very powerful institutions blocking any changes to this.  To wit, the sugar industry, the soft/sport drink guys, etc.



There has been modern research that proves that fat is not the problem, but carbs are.  I saw a talk yesterday and the researcher was pretty sure that his data showed that fructose is an especially bad actor and there is a chemical radical released when metabolized from it that really helps cancers get on with their business.  So don't think that fruit is going to save you.

Kids are showing up with fatty liver issues.  Normally this is a disease of drinkers, but not nine year olds.  Kill the sugar, usually ingested via soft and sport drinks, and you can fix this is a matter of weeks.

So as soon as government makes a decision, then industry adopts to it and soon have a vested interest in keeping it going.  Look at wind farms and solar panels, they are not cleaner, only work when the weather is proper, never at night if you are a solar panel -- don't ask about clouds and dust and solar eclipses and grid problems - this good green stuff!  And it is, but that is federal and state money being sent to some developers.  The food industry is tightly connected to high sugar, low fat.  Changes may come, but it will be slow and there will be impediments to any changes.

So what is the answer to this type of things?  I might suggest that the federal government not get involved in making these decisions.  You eat what you want.  Set up your own schools.  Let private companies develop energy sources - if they are profitable, great, if not then we will not take a long, long, expensive bath.


One could write books about this and some have!  There are interesting stories worth looking into.  The Atkin's diet and others are banging on the door a bit and some doctors have embraced the low carb diets for themselves and their patients.  I find it convincing and they have data to prove their points.   The dietary guidelines are being modified, but very slowly.  There is a lot of damage to repair, but wonderfully a lot of folks respond and get better is a very short time with a dietary change.  Maybe we will see the day when products are advertised as "Low Carb, High Fat!"  Until then we'll always have bacon.

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There are a lot of interesting talks by researchers on this subject.  I've watched a bunch on YouTube.  Search for HFLC or "low carbs down under" and you'll find a bunch.  See the talks by Phinney and Dr. Ali, Dr. Unwin.