Fat

[gianetta]

I was wrong.  Like most of the planet, I bought it hook, line, and sinker when respected institutions like the AHA told us that saturated fats are killing us and increases in dietary fat in general are causing the obesity epidemic.

They said that they had decades of research supporting their position.  It turns out that what they actually had were

Comments

[baronalejandro]

Interesting. I'd love to know how this translates for advice in modern healthy eating for normal people.

[dominyk]

Check out Mark's Daily Apple
http://www.marksdailyapple.com/

[nej28]

Yeah, I pretty much have stopped listening all that low fat crap a while back. Just do a balanced diet, avoid foods made of things things that I can't identify, and eat in moderation. I think that just being a healthy weight, exercise, and eat whole food and you are good. Not always, but it is defiantly a huge step in the right direction.

Off to eat bacon. ;)

[gianetta]

I quit eating low fat while a while ago, and was vaguely aware that most of the old research was wrong, but I'd been under the impression that they HAD real research that said that fat was bad, but that better research had since proven it incorrect. It turns out that they knew or should have known better all along. Taubes doesn't present a single new idea - these are things that they knew in the 50s and 60s, and that gained increasing evidence over the past 50 years. It didn't fit with Ancel Keys' view of the world, so it was smacked down.

[skeagsidhe]

Many years of epidemiology training and research have made me SUPER-critical of research. I love me some data, but you can bet I'll be reading the original paper and scanning it very closlely for design, measurement, selection bias, generalizability, agendas (though, oh, do I know that one from both sides!) and general credibility before making any decisions. What you just wrote really comes as no surprise. The tough part about all this is that public accounts of things like this (and poor reporting thereof) decrease trust in science in general, which leads to dismissal of scientific evidence and non-evidence-grounded decision making, which is a huge problem too. It's a no-win, and the people who put out bad science need a kick

[gianetta]

I hear you, but in this case, we would have been smarter (and thinner and healthier) if we had not trusted in 'science' to tell us how to avoid a heart attack. The f'ers knew that there was research out there showing they might be wrong, and instead of looking into it, they ridiculed it to the point that one of the guys' names became a joke in the field. I'm sure you feel my pain when I say that I almost put the book through the wall a couple of times when I read some of this cr@p.

[skeagsidhe]

As an aside, next time we're in the same area, a discussion about medical research over a couple beers eith you and Adam could be really, really interesting, given shared/divergent backgrounds and the various jobs we wound up in.

[gianetta]

We should get into the same location at some point and do so.