UK Food Standards Agency shows its ignorance

Part Two: Saturated fats and heart disease

This is not a recent finding: No study has ever shown that saturated fats block arteries.

Way back in 1970, and after 22 years research, the world’s longest running study into diet and heart disease, the Framingham Heart Study, which had cut saturated fats, found no correlation. They said in their conclusions: “There is, in short, no suggestion of any relation between diet and the subsequent development of CHD in the study group.’[4] No finding since has changed that view.

If heart disease really did result from eating saturated fats – as we are told – it would be reasonable to expect to find more heart disease in the 19th century when the fats we ate were all from animal sources; and we could have expected a decrease in heart disease with the introduction of vegetable-based margarines and consequential reduction in intakes of butter and other animal fats in the early 20th century. Yet the reverse is true.

It’s true that the results of some early studies of fats and coronary thrombosis suggested that individual saturated fatty acids were likely to cause blood platelets to clump together and form clots (thromboses). But these studies were conducted in vitro (in glass dishes), a method now known to give entirely the wrong results. For example, an in vitro study from 1962 reported that the saturated fatty acid, stearic acid, found widely in animal fats, considerably shortened the time needed for a clot to form whereas unsaturated fatty acids had almost no such effect.[5] In the model used, other saturated fatty acids commonly found in animal fats also increased clot formation. But contradictory results from other studies meant that results taken together were inconclusive. In 1996 a study looked at this whole vexed question by testing individual saturated fatty acids in vivo – in real, live people.[6] It showed the exact opposite of what had been observed in the laboratory studies: the saturated fats suspected of increasing the risk of a blood clot actually reduced the risk of clotting.

Another worry about saturated fats, that they might contribute to heart disease by adversely affecting blood cholesterol subfractions (HDL and LDL), has also been shown to be unwarranted. A study, presented at the Canadian Institute of Food Science and Technology’s conference in June 2001 found that 112 grams (4 ounces) of beef eaten twice daily raised neither total nor LDL cholesterol any more than diets that were primarily of chicken, beans and pulses.[7] But it showed that saturated fats had benefits such as lowering stress hormone levels and improving blood flow.

In 1983 a multi-year British study, the WHO European Collaborative Trial in the Multifactorial Prevention of Coronary Heart Disease (CHD), involving 18,210 men aged between 40 and 59, showed clearly that men who switched from saturated butter and animal fats to ‘healthy’ polyunsaturated margarines and vegetable oils had twice the death rate of those who continued to eat their ‘unhealthy’ saturated fat diet - even though the men on the saturated fat diet also continued to smoke.[8] Despite this, the authors perversely reported that: ‘There was no clear effect on hard CHD endpoints (coronary deaths and myocardial infarction) or on all-causes mortality.’

The waters were muddied still further when they continued: ‘However, there was a 36% reduction in the rate at which intervention subjects reported ill with other CHD (principally angina) during the study, and at the end fewer intervention men gave positive responses to a self-administered questionnaire on angina and chest pain.’ So was there some benefit? Apparently not. The authors say: ‘These apparent benefits were not substantiated by electrocardiographic evidence, suggesting that participation in a heart disease prevention campaign may bias reporting of symptoms.’ Ultimately, they ignored their own findings and presented a politically correct conclusion, saying: ‘The implication for public health policy in the UK is that a preventive programme such as we evaluated in this trial is probably effective . . .’

Scientists at the Wynn Institute for Metabolic Research, London, compared the fatty-acid composition of artery blockages. What they found was a high proportion of both omega-3 and omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids and of monounsaturated fatty acids; what they did not find was saturated fatty acids. They suggested that ‘current trends favouring increased intake of polyunsaturated fatty acids should be reconsidered.’[9]

Ten years later two further studies published simultaneously in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition reinforced the findings that saturated fats actually protected against heart disease. The first found that a so-called ‘healthy’ carbohydrate-based diet increased the rate at which older women’s arteries degenerated and that increasing intakes of saturated fat actually slowed down the progress of their atherosclerosis.[10] The second study found what its authors called a ‘paradox’ when they showed ‘that a high-fat, high-saturated fat diet is associated with diminished coronary artery disease progression in women with the metabolic syndrome, a condition that is epidemic in the United States.’[11]

What about people who have already had a heart attack?

People who have had a heart attack are obviously at higher risk. They are invariably told by their doctors to cut out butter and use polyunsaturated margarines instead. But, as long ago as 1965 patients who had already had one heart attack were assigned to one of three study groups. These were given polyunsaturated corn oil, monounsaturated olive oil or saturated animal fats respectively. Blood cholesterol levels were lowered by an average of 30% in the polyunsaturated group, while there was no change in the other two groups. At first sight, therefore, it seemed that men in the polyunsaturated group had the best chance of survival. However, at the end of the trial only 52% of the polyunsaturated group were still alive and free of a second heart attack. Those in the monounsaturated group fared little better: 57% survived and had had no further attack. The saturated animal fats group fared the best with 75% surviving and without a further attack.[12] So yet again, saturated fat turns out to be the healthiest.

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