Though research repeatedly shows that vegetable oils, otherwise known as seed oils, are harmful when cooked, dietary guidelines and health organizations continue to promote polyunsaturated vegetable fats over animal fats.
1. Bureaucracy Versus Science
The anti-saturated fat nutrition recommendation comes from the late American Heart Association (AHA) researcher and physiologist Ancel Keys’ Diet-Heart Hypothesis, originally put forward in the 1950s. Keys’ original assumption was that fat, which raised blood cholesterol levels, caused coronary heart disease. He later narrowed the fat type to saturated fat.While the hypothesis remains unproven, the anti-saturated fat recommendation has transformed over the decades from a diet recommendation to health dogma and national policy.
Congressional backing of the diet was the final nail in the coffin, Teicholz argued in her New York Times bestseller, “The Big Fat Surprise.”
The 1977 Dietary Goals for the United States, authored by a Senate select committee, followed the AHA’s guidance to reduce total and saturated fat intake, and began nationalizing the low-fat, low-cholesterol diet.
With this, the hypothesis and dietary recommendation was taken “out of the realm of science and into the world of politics and government,” Teicholz wrote. From there, the bureaucracy took over and the machine of government turned dogma into policy and programs.
Bureaucratic powers, however, are antithetical to scientific reasoning, Teicholz wrote.
Good science requires skepticism to survive and involves challenging preconceived hypotheses and conclusions to get closer to the truth. Bureaucracies, however, are designed to execute on rules and guidelines, not challenge them.
2. Financial Incentives
A sizeable financial empire spanning the food and pharmaceutical industries has been built on the Diet-Heart Hypothesis. Teicholz said this is a significant reason why many researchers, health organizations, and the industry resist considering that animal fats may not be that harmful.Vegetable oils have been with the AHA since the association’s rise to prominence. Founded in 1924 at the outset of the coronary heart disease epidemic, the AHA remained a fringe and underfunded research organization for decades.
Then, in 1948, things changed.
“Procter & Gamble (P&G) designated the group to receive all the funds from its ‘Truth or Consequences’ contest on the radio,” Teicholz wrote, citing AHA’s official history. The funds totaled over $1.4 million, equivalent to over $18 million today.
According to the AHA’s official history book, titled “Fighting for Life” by William W. Moore, AHA’s director from 1972 to 1980, P&G executives presented the check at a luncheon, and “suddenly the coffers were filled, and there were funds available for research, public health progress, and development of local groups—all the stuff that dreams are made of!”
It was this check that launched the organization.
P&G was the first company to sell hydrogenated seed oil as food. Its product Crisco was initially made from hydrogenated cottonseed oil.
Big Pharma’s Take
Over the decades, the pharmaceutical industry has also made billions of dollars selling drugs that lower LDL cholesterol, deemed “bad cholesterol” and the primary cause of coronary heart disease. Animal fat increases all cholesterol levels, including LDL, while vegetable oils decrease cholesterol levels.“The biggest blockbuster drug of all time are LDL cholesterol-lowering medications: statins,” Teicholz said. “Saturated fat has to remain the boogeyman because saturated fats tend to raise your LDL cholesterol, so that was always part of the assumption of why saturated fats are bad.”
Funding from nonpharmaceutical corporations made up almost 18 percent of AHA’s funding that same year, totaling over $157 million. While the AHA provides the names of all its pharmaceutical benefactors, the organization declined to give names of the other corporations and donation values.
3. Egos and Established Notions Are Hard to Challenge
Over half a century, the belief that saturated fat is bad for the heart has become a dogma among doctors and nutritionists. Therefore, arguments that contradict the Keys’ Diet-Heart Hypothesis are met with extreme resistance.Researchers and journalists who publicly challenge this dogma have been subject to attacks and backlash.
“I’ve been called a ‘wingnut living in my mother’s basement’ by a Yale scientist,” Teicholz told The Epoch Times over a video call.
This response is not new. As far back as the hypothesis’ inception, some researchers whose work challenged Keys’ lost their academic careers. For example, the late Dr. George Mann from Vanderbilt University, a professor and biochemist who challenged the Diet-Heart Hypothesis, told Teicholz that his research path cost him his NIH funding and entrance to reputable journals for publication.
Keys himself openly dismissed and criticized those who put forth other causes for heart disease. While one may interpret Keys’ actions as one of a guilty researcher trying to hide his deceit, Teicholz said she found no evidence of this.
“I think that Ancel Keys, the author of the Diet-Heart Hypothesis, genuinely believed that saturated fats in food was the probable cause ... I have no evidence to suggest otherwise,” she said.
Mann was also the associate director of the Framingham Heart Study from 1948 to 1955. Initiated in 1948, the large ongoing study investigates epidemiology and risk factors for cardiovascular disease.
The war over nutrition is like a “bumper car version of science,” said Teicholz.