Hidden fat research uncovered!

From 1968 until 1973 Dr. Ivan Frantz Jr. of the University of Minnesota Medical School conducted a controlled clinical trial comparing diets containing saturated fats with those containing vegetable oils and no saturated fats. He hoped to prove that replacing saturated fat, such as butter and other animal fats, with corn oil would protect them against heart disease and lower their mortality. The research subjects lived in mental hospitals and a nursing home where diets can be strictly regulated. Half the subjects were fed meals rich in saturated fats from milk, cheese and beef; the others ate a diet where the fat consisted of corn oil. The result: the participants who ate the low saturated fat diet reduced their cholesterol by an average of 14 percent. Nevertheless, the low-saturated fat diet did not reduce mortality. In fact, the study showed the greater drop in cholesterol, the higher risk of death during the trial.

Even though this research was one of the largest controlled clinical trials ever conducted, the data were never fully analyzed or published. In fact, they’d been virtually hidden away and were only recently discovered in a dusty box by Dr. Frantz’s son (Frantz senior died in 2009). “My father definitely believed in reducing saturated fats,” he said, noting also that his father was probably startled by what seemed to be no benefit in replacing saturated fat with vegetable oil. In other words, the trial results were a disappointment.

While some nutritionists protest these findings, which have recently been published in the journal BMJ, plenty of other scientists find support for them. For example, one scientists analyzed four similar trials in which vegetable oils were substituted for animal fats. Those trials also failed to show any reduction in mortality from heart disease. In 2013, Dr. Christopher Ramsden, who is a medical investigator for the National Institutes of Health, discovered a similar trial that been carried out in Australia in the 1960s, but also had not been fully analyzed or published. Like the others, the results showed that those who replaced saturated fat with vegetable oils lowered their cholesterol, but were also more likely to die from a heart attack than the control group who ate more saturated fat.  “One would expect that the more you lowered cholesterol, the better the outcome. But in this case the opposite association was found. The greater degree of cholesterol-lowering was associated with a higher, rather than lower, risk of death.”

I love this. For a long time, I have believed that those who have instilled a fear of saturated fat and cholesterol have done us a terrible disservice. Because I get quite exercised about these topics, you can find more posts about them: one on why I refuse cholesterol checks and one on the misinformation about saturated fat.

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