HEALTH MATTERS
Is Cholesterol
the Bad Guy?
Article from Sheehan Website
In 1952, physiologist Ancel Keys presented his diet-heart hypothesis that linked heart disease to fat intake. In his (in) famous 7 Countries Study, Keys confirmed his belief that animal fats contain cholesterol, and higher cholesterol was causing atherosclerosis in humans. Conclusion? Eating high fat diets causes heart disease and are ultimately dangerous for our health. The 7 countries that Keys studied clearly show an increase of rates of heart disease in correlation to increased consumption of fats.
There was one problem with the study. It was a 22-country study, and Keys cherry-picked the countries to verify his own misguided hypothesis that fats cause heart disease. When viewing the results of the 22 Country Study, there was no statistical significance of high fat consumption linked to heart disease. In fact, France, Switzerland, and Chile were outliers with high fat consumption and low rates of heart disease. Any experts who dared to disagree with his conclusion were silenced by the federal government and from professional peer pressure. Despite this fraudulent study, low fat diets became the cornerstone of America’s dietary guidelines for the past 70 years. In that time, the health of the
nation has drastically gotten worse, and it is now reported that over 70% of our population is overweight and over 40% is obese.
As you can see from the picture below, the 1990 Food Pyramid, devised by the USDA and based on the “high-fat = heart disease” hypotheses, promotes the consumption of sugar laden and high carbohydrate foods which massively increased weight gain and the prevalence of Type 2 Diabetes in the United States.
According to Dr. Ken Berry in his book, Lies My Doctor Told Me, once the cholesterol theory was officially accepted, everyone started to cash in on ways to lower the patient’s cholesterol