Canola - how about facts?

November 22, 2001

Greg wrote:

<< There was a control group which did not use canola and experienced normal

heart attack and death rates. In the canola group there were NO cardio

deaths and in fact the study was stopped after about 2 years and both groups

placed on the canola diet due to the strong result.

The lack of deaths and the use of canola were the only two significant

variations between the two groups. >>

You just make up stuff. The diets were very different, as the following two

excerpts show. The healthy diet was not called the " canola diet " as you have

called it; it was called the Mediterranean diet, and the research team

" counseled the other to eat a Mediterranean-type diet, with more bread,

cereals, legumes, beans, vegetables, fruits, and fish and less meat. "

The following excerpt is from the Yale-New Haven medical center's website at

http://www.ynhh.org/healthlink/cardiac/cardiac_7_99.html

<< The Lyon Diet Heart Study

The latest study, published in March in Circulation, the journal of the

American Heart Association, is a four-year follow-up of more than 600 men and

women in France who had experienced a first heart attack, which put them at

high risk for a second attack. About half the participants were advised to

eat a Mediterranean-style diet rich in fruits, vegetables, fish, cereals and

beans.

After 46 months of follow-up, the control subjects who ate a western diet and

the experimental subjects were examined. Body fat, blood pressure and blood

cholesterol levels were very similar, and about 18 percent of each group

smoked cigarettes. The group eating the Mediterranean diet had a 50-70

percent lower risk of mortality due to a reduction in coronary heart disease.

The control group averaged almost 34 percent of total calories from fat with

almost 12 percent from saturated fat compared with 30 percent fat calories

and 8 percent saturated fat calories in the other group's diet. The

individuals on the Mediterranean diet consumed more oleic and alpha-linolenic

fatty acids, the omega-3 fatty acids found in high amounts in canola, olive

and certain nut oils. The control group consumed more linoleic or omega-6

fatty acids found in soya and sunflower oils. Dietary fiber intake was about

three grams higher in the Mediterranean group than the control group

indicating a higher intake of antioxidants and B vitamins found in fruits and

vegetables, all of which may slow the arterial damage that precedes heart

disease.

>>

The following is from

0_01.html by Volume 291, Number 5513, Issue of 30 Mar 2001, pp. 2536-2545.

2001 by The American Association for the Advancement of Science.

http://people.bu.edu/sobieraj/nutrition/fat_science3_3

<< This interpretation--that the connection between diet and health far

transcends cholesterol--is also supported by the single most dramatic

diet-heart trial ever conducted: the Lyon Diet Heart Study, led by Michel de

Lorgeril of the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research

(INSERM) and published in Circulation in February 1999. The investigators

randomized 605 heart attack survivors, all on cholesterol-lowering drugs,

into two groups. They counseled one to eat an AHA " prudent diet, " very

similar to that recommended for all Americans. They counseled the other to

eat a Mediterranean-type diet, with more bread, cereals, legumes, beans,

vegetables, fruits, and fish and less meat.

Total fat and types of fat differed markedly in the two diets, but the HDL,

LDL, and total cholesterol levels in the two groups remained virtually

identical. Nonetheless, over 4 years of follow-up, the Mediterranean-diet

group had only 14 cardiac deaths and nonfatal heart attacks compared to 44

for the " Western-type " diet group. The likely explanation, wrote de Lorgeril

and his colleagues, is that the " protective effects [of the Mediterranean

diet] were not related to serum concentrations of total, LDL or HDL

cholesterol. "

Many researchers find the Lyon data so perplexing that they're left

questioning the methodology of the trial. Nonetheless, says NIH's Harlan, the

data " are very provocative. They do bring up the issue of whether if we look

only at cholesterol levels we aren't going to miss something very important. "

De Lorgeril believes the diet's protective effect comes primarily from

omega-3 fatty acids, found in seed oils, meat, cereals, green leafy

vegetables, and fish, and from antioxidant compounds, including vitamins,

trace elements, and flavonoids. He told Science that most researchers and

journalists in the field are prisoners of the " cholesterol paradigm. "

Although dietary fat and serum cholesterol " are obviously connected, " he

says, " the connection is not a robust one " when it comes to heart disease. >>

Kathy