Unfortunately, the data in this survey did not accurately reflect the traditional diets of Mediterranean peoples because Keys's study was carried out right after World War II, when there was strict food rationing, and during Lent, when Catholics often practice abstinence from meat. 

In addition, close examination of the data Keys used shows that he chose to publish information that suited his theory and omit data that did not.

In Keys’s published chart you can see that he used the heart disease death rates from only six countries of the 22 in his survey. He selected those six countries because their data supported his theory that saturated fats cause heart disease. In science that’s called “cherry picking the data''. Looking back at the original chart you can see that when you include data from all 22 countries there is no clear pattern. Keys was only able to create a pattern by selecting the countries from the data set that supported his theory that saturated fats cause heart disease. 

Beginning in 1948, influential doctor and researcher Jeremiah Stamler authored over 400 papers pushing the idea that a low-fat, low-cholesterol diet would reduce heart disease. In 1963 he collaborated with Mazola®, manufacturer of corn oil and margarine, to write the book Your Heart Has Nine Lives, which encouraged people to substitute vegetable oils for butter and other “artery clogging” saturated fats. 

Stamler continued to promote his ideas even after receiving physical evidence to the contrary from the reputable International Atherosclerosis Foundation (IAF), which demonstrated from biopsies that dietary fats have no connection to heart disease. In the IAF study 22,000 corpses from 14 nations were examined for the level of fatty plaques in their arteries. The study noted no difference in fatty deposits between populations who ate fatty meat and those who ate a largely vegetarian diet. The amount of saturated fat in the diet made absolutely no difference in evidence of heart disease. That’s like . . . zero, none, nada, zip!

Dr. Fredrick Stare, head of Harvard University’s Nutrition Department for over 40 years, joined the chorus of voices insisting that saturated fats and cholesterol cause heart disease. In a popular syndicated column in 1969, he wrote that people should reduce their intake of saturated fats and cholesterol and substitute processed liquid oils. He once stated this: “To my knowledge, I’ve never heard of too much polyunsaturated fat for man.” Now that was a totally unsubstantiated statement! 

In the early 1960s research was beginning to point to sugar as a contributor to heart disease. Interestingly, this same Doctor Stare quoted above was one of three medical experts paid by the sugar industry in 1967 to promote and publish the idea that dietary fat, rather than sugar, was the cause of heart disease. Once the bought-and-paid-for article was published and approved by the sugar industry, the debate died down. Sugar got the rap for tooth decay—fair enough; and saturated fats got blamed for heart disease—dead wrong. Starting from this fallacy an entire new food industry was born to sell you low-fat foods and sugar substitutes, an industry which has served to make us fatter and sicker and die younger every year!

You can read more about the sugar industry’s efforts to focus blame for heart disease on saturated fats in a November 2016 article in the Journal of the American Medical Association entitled “Sugar Industry and Coronary Heart Disease: A Historical Analysis of Internal Industry Documents”. Caught red-handed with their hands in the cookie jar! In 1961 several leading researchers, including Keys, along with doctors Stamler, Stare, and Irving Page, wrote the American Heart Association’s revised dietary guidelines, which recommended reduction of total fats and cholesterol and increased amounts of polyunsaturated fats in the diet. In 1968 the AHA restricted the recommended intake of dietary cholesterol from 600 milligrams to 300 milligrams per day and reduced total fat intake to 30-35%, with saturated fats comprising only half of that intake.

Even while these anti-fat recommendations were being authorized for the American people, another voice with good, hard evidence contradicting these conclusions was not being heard. Dr. Michael Debakey, the famous heart surgeon, co-authored a 1964 study covering 1700 patients that showed no definite correlation between cholesterol levels and coronary artery disease. At the same time, the American people were being told to stop eating saturated fats and cholesterol. Yet another instance of a large, well-designed study by a renowned physician sitting ignored in a basement somewhere!

A solid body of scientific evidence was growing that disproved the Lipid Hypothesis. Yet at the same time a pattern was developing of prominent medical professionals and medical organizations, such as the American Heart Association, disseminating nutrition advice to the public based on faulty science. Of course the flawed science has been backed by the industrial food complex, which profits from selling us cheap imitations of real food.

Our nation’s health has suffered tremendously over the last seven decades from the medical establishment’s support of the questionable/unproven Lipid Hypothesis. We have witnessed and experienced an explosive growth in obesity, diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, and a growing list of other chronic illnesses—all in the name of cheaper food production.

In the early years of the controversy about the cause of the rising epidemic of heart disease, the American Medical Association (AMA) did not at first go along with the theory that saturated fats and cholesterol were responsible for the rise in heart disease. Certain voices within the American Medical Association spoke out against the low-fat, low-cholesterol diet as not only foolish and futile, but possibly dangerous. But by 1971 the AMA had begun to change their tune and accept the guidelines promoted by the American Heart Association. Other organizations such as the American Dietetic Association (ADA), the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI), and the National Academy of Science (NAS) all fell in line and accepted these nutrition guidelines as the absolute truth for promoting health and reducing heart disease—even though absolute proof that lowering cholesterol reduces heart disease still does not exist.

Many other names and stories lie along the path of this convoluted tale of how we came to believe that eating saturated fat causes heart disease. The long and sordid history of this “illusion of knowledge” is laid out in Nina Teicholz’s book The Big FAT Surprise, which fully documents the medical experts, conferences, and government organizations who helped concoct and perpetuate this epic public-health disaster. Sally Fallon recounts some of this history in Nourishing Fats: Why We Need Animal Fats for Health and Happiness. Her YouTube talk "The Oiling of America" gives an in-depth account of the link between the food manufacturing industry and this false nutrition narrative.

Both Teicholz and Fallon document the disaster of revolving door policies whereby Food and Drug Administration (FDA) officials move on to work in the private sector and lobbyists for corporations move into government. We the American people end up with dietary recommendations from government organizations we should be able to trust that are, in fact, written by lobbyists for the manufactured food and oil industries. 

Dr. Mary Enig stands tall among the scientists who noted the inaccuracies and misuse of data in medical reports and studies. She focused in particular on the McGovern Committee, a 1973-1977 Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Health Needs. Their report urged Americans to reduce their saturated fat consumption to no more than 10% of calories and daily cholesterol intake to 300mg a day. Despite Dr. Enig’s efforts to right the wrong information, the McGovern report recommended increasing the consumption of vegetable oils, especially in the form of partially hydrogenated margarines and shortenings. 

Another opposing voice was Dr. Fred Kummerow, a professor of food technology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who advocated for a return to traditional foods. His research in the early 1970s showed that trans fats in partially hydrogenated vegetable oils caused increased rates of heart disease in pigs. 

When Dr. Kummerow’s research began to show negative health effects of trans fats in the diet, an idea counter to the current belief system, he was ousted from his committees at the American Heart Association and denied research funding from various organizations. He continued researching trans fats for decades and never gave up. At the age of 98 he was still publishing research papers and pressuring the FDA to ban trans fats from our food supply. His efforts seem to have finally paid off as trans fats had been largely removed from the food supply by 2019—that’s only three years ago that the government finally cut back the amount of trans fats allowed in our food! 

Like many other researchers who tried to sound the alarm about processed oils and trans fats, both Dr. Enig and Dr. Kummerow were ignored, isolated, and labeled “nutso” by others in their fields. Research funding was denied, professional positions were taken away, and their ability to publish their data in important journals was restricted. The unspoken culture of the medical establishment was: You’re not saying what we want you to say, therefore you cannot say it. Going against the prevailing beliefs in science and medicine was just not allowed! Stay tuned for more history of the debate over the value of fats and how things might be starting to change. 

This is Dr. DeLaney reminding you to eat real food!