Diet and Fat: A Severe Case of Mistaken Consensus

[Guest guest]

October 9, 2007

 

Diet and Fat: A Severe Case of Mistaken Consensus

 

By JOHN TIERNEY

In 1988, the surgeon general, C. Everett Koop, proclaimed ice cream

to a be public-health menace right up there with cigarettes. Alluding

to his office’s famous 1964 report on the perils of smoking, Dr. Koop

announced that the American diet was a problem of “comparable”

magnitude, chiefly because of the high-fat foods that were causing

coronary heart disease and other deadly ailments.

 

He introduced his report with these words: “The depth of the science

base underlying its findings is even more impressive than that for

tobacco and health in 1964.”

 

That was a ludicrous statement, as Gary Taubes demonstrates in his

new book meticulously debunking diet myths, “Good Calories, Bad

Calories” (Knopf, 2007). The notion that fatty foods shorten your

life began as a hypothesis based on dubious assumptions and data;

when scientists tried to confirm it they failed repeatedly. The

evidence against Häagen-Dazs was nothing like the evidence against

Marlboros.

 

It may seem bizarre that a surgeon general could go so wrong. After

all, wasn’t it his job to express the scientific consensus? But that

was the problem. Dr. Koop was expressing the consensus. He, like the

architects of the federal “food pyramid” telling Americans what to

eat, went wrong by listening to everyone else. He was caught in what

social scientists call a cascade.

 

We like to think that people improve their judgment by putting their

minds together, and sometimes they do. The studio audience at “Who

Wants to Be a Millionaire” usually votes for the right answer. But

suppose, instead of the audience members voting silently in unison,

they voted out loud one after another. And suppose the first person

gets it wrong.

 

If the second person isn’t sure of the answer, he’s liable to go

along with the first person’s guess. By then, even if the third

person suspects another answer is right, she’s more liable to go

along just because she assumes the first two together know more than

she does. Thus begins an “informational cascade” as one person after

another assumes that the rest can’t all be wrong.

 

Because of this effect, groups are surprisingly prone to reach

mistaken conclusions even when most of the people started out knowing

better, according to the economists Sushil Bikhchandani, David

Hirshleifer and Ivo Welch. If, say, 60 percent of a group’s members

have been given information pointing them to the right answer (while

the rest have information pointing to the wrong answer), there is

still about a one-in-three chance that the group will cascade to a

mistaken consensus.

 

Cascades are especially common in medicine as doctors take their cues

from others, leading them to overdiagnose some faddish ailments

(called bandwagon diseases) and overprescribe certain treatments

(like the tonsillectomies once popular for children). Unable to keep

up with the volume of research, doctors look for guidance from an

expert — or at least someone who sounds confident.

 

In the case of fatty foods, that confident voice belonged to Ancel

Keys, a prominent diet researcher a half-century ago (the K-rations

in World War II were said to be named after him). He became convinced

in the 1950s that Americans were suffering from a new epidemic of

heart disease because they were eating more fat than their ancestors.

 

There were two glaring problems with this theory, as Mr. Taubes, a

correspondent for Science magazine, explains in his book. First, it

wasn’t clear that traditional diets were especially lean. Nineteenth-

century Americans consumed huge amounts of meat; the percentage of

fat in the diet of ancient hunter-gatherers, according to the best

estimate today, was as high or higher than the ratio in the modern

Western diet.

 

Second, there wasn’t really a new epidemic of heart disease. Yes,

more cases were being reported, but not because people were in worse

health. It was mainly because they were living longer and were more

likely to see a doctor who diagnosed the symptoms.

 

To bolster his theory, Dr. Keys in 1953 compared diets and heart

disease rates in the United States, Japan and four other countries.

Sure enough, more fat correlated with more disease (America topped

the list). But critics at the time noted that if Dr. Keys had

analyzed all 22 countries for which data were available, he would not

have found a correlation. (And, as Mr. Taubes notes, no one would

have puzzled over the so-called French Paradox of foie-gras

connoisseurs with healthy hearts.)

 

The evidence that dietary fat correlates with heart disease “does not

stand up to critical examination,” the American Heart Association

concluded in 1957. But three years later the association changed

position — not because of new data, Mr. Taubes writes, but because

Dr. Keys and an ally were on the committee issuing the new report. It

asserted that “the best scientific evidence of the time” warranted a

lower-fat diet for people at high risk of heart disease.

 

The association’s report was big news and put Dr. Keys, who died in

2004, on the cover of Time magazine. The magazine devoted four pages

to the topic — and just one paragraph noting that Dr. Keys’s diet

advice was “still questioned by some researchers.” That set the tone

for decades of news media coverage. Journalists and their audiences

were looking for clear guidance, not scientific ambiguity.

 

After the fat-is-bad theory became popular wisdom, the cascade

accelerated in the 1970s when a committee led by Senator George

McGovern issued a report advising Americans to lower their risk of

heart disease by eating less fat. “McGovern’s staff were virtually

unaware of the existence of any scientific controversy,” Mr. Taubes

writes, and the committee’s report was written by a nonscientist

“relying almost exclusively on a single Harvard nutritionist, Mark

Hegsted.”

 

That report impressed another nonscientist, Carol Tucker Foreman, an

assistant agriculture secretary, who hired Dr. Hegsted to draw up a

set of national dietary guidelines. The Department of Agriculture’s

advice against eating too much fat was issued in 1980 and would later

be incorporated in its “food pyramid.”

 

Meanwhile, there still wasn’t good evidence to warrant recommending a

low-fat diet for all Americans, as the National Academy of Sciences

noted in a report shortly after the U.S.D.A. guidelines were issued.

But the report’s authors were promptly excoriated on Capitol Hill and

in the news media for denying a danger that had already been

proclaimed by the American Heart Association, the McGovern committee

and the U.S.D.A.

 

The scientists, despite their impressive credentials, were accused of

bias because some of them had done research financed by the food

industry. And so the informational cascade morphed into what the

economist Timur Kuran calls a reputational cascade, in which it

becomes a career risk for dissidents to question the popular wisdom.

 

With skeptical scientists ostracized, the public debate and research

agenda became dominated by the fat-is-bad school. Later the National

Institutes of Health would hold a “consensus conference” that

concluded there was “no doubt” that low-fat diets “will afford

significant protection against coronary heart disease” for every

American over the age of 2. The American Cancer Society and the

surgeon general recommended a low-fat diet to prevent cancer.

 

But when the theories were tested in clinical trials, the evidence

kept turning up negative. As Mr. Taubes notes, the most rigorous meta-

analysis of the clinical trials of low-fat diets, published in 2001

by the Cochrane Collaboration, concluded that they had no significant

effect on mortality.

 

Mr. Taubes argues that the low-fat recommendations, besides being

unjustified, may well have harmed Americans by encouraging them to

switch to carbohydrates, which he believes cause obesity and disease.

He acknowledges that that hypothesis is unproved, and that the low-

carb diet fad could turn out to be another mistaken cascade. The

problem, he says, is that the low-carb hypothesis hasn’t been

seriously studied because it couldn’t be reconciled with the low-fat

dogma.

 

Mr. Taubes told me he especially admired the iconoclasm of Dr. Edward

H. Ahrens Jr., a lipids researcher who spoke out against the McGovern

committee’s report. Mr. McGovern subsequently asked him at a hearing

to reconcile his skepticism with a survey showing that the low-fat

recommendations were endorsed by 92 percent of “the world’s leading

doctors.”

 

“Senator McGovern, I recognize the disadvantage of being in the

minority,” Dr. Ahrens replied. Then he pointed out that most of the

doctors in the survey were relying on secondhand knowledge because

they didn’t work in this field themselves.

 

“This is a matter,” he continued, “of such enormous social, economic

and medical importance that it must be evaluated with our eyes

completely open. Thus I would hate to see this issue settled by

anything that smacks of a Gallup poll.” Or a cascade.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/09/science/09tier.html?

ex=1192766400 & en=e39b1763d08e4229 & ei=5070 & emc=eta1

Caldecott, Dip. Cl.H, RH(AHG)

Ayurvedic practitioner, Medical Herbalist

203 - 1750 East 10th Ave

Vancouver, BC V5N 5K4 CANADA

web: http//:www.toddcaldecott.com

email: todd

tel: (1)778.896.8894

fax: (1)866.703.2792

[Guest guest]

And, is there any mention of exercise, or the lack thereof, as we've

become more " civilized? "

 

 

Patti Garland

Ayurvedic Chef and LifeStyle Coach

Bliss Kitchen

http://www.BlissKitchen.com

(760) 902-7020

________________________________-

Diet and Fat: A Severe Case of Mistaken Consensus

 

By JOHN TIERNEY

[Guest guest]

hello

pls tell me what's the concusion. that high saturated fat diet is not

dangerouse for heat and vassels? it's hard for me to believe, but i'll do it if

i get a good explanation.

still, icecream is poison, not only for providing fats and carbohidrates at

a temperature that is inhibiting the digestion, but also as a source of " E " -s:

" identically natural flavoure, identicaly natural coloure " and so on...

 

__-

Diet and Fat: A Severe Case of Mistaken Consensus

 

By JOHN TIERNEY

[Guest guest]

Thats easy - I make my own ice-cream - with fruit, fresh lemon juice, egg

and cream or soy milk - the ice-cream soon melts anyway!

 

Jane

 

_______________________

 

icecream is poison, not only for providing fats and

carbohidrates at a temperature that is inhibiting the digestion, but also as a

source of " E " -s: " identically natural flavoure, identicaly natural coloure " and

so on...

[Guest guest]

jane, I want to start making my own ice cream as well. I am an ice cream

addict. mango ice cream sounds awesome. how about some mint ice cream too.

then there is some chocolate ice cream but that would be with really rich

Belgium, how can you go wrong. we will need ayurvedic doctors to give us the

best recipe for some good ice cream that doesn't kill you but actually may

balance you??

 

Raja G. Gursahani

*: 314.761.3134 (Clovis, CA)

*: rajagursahani(atgmail.com)

[Guest guest]

the article was discussing the predominant mythos that " fat is bad " ,

and is not a commentary on the benefits of exercise or other

healthful interventions - it is a targeted argument to refute bad and

misleading science

 

it may be hard for people to accept because they have been

brainwashed that fat is bad

 

however, humans have preferentially eaten and selected fatty foods

throughout their human evolution

in hinduism, fat is associated with the goddess lakshmi, the goddess

of abundance

 

good quality fat is good for health

this includes both saturated and unsaturated fats - we need both

 

the " low-fat " dictum has been a public health disaster, and if you

look at the statistics, has only increased the incidence of heart

disease, cancer and diabetes

 

for vegetarians, fat is the single-biggest helpful food to lower the

GI of otherwise high-carb foods

and among fats, there is a reason why ayurveda considers saturated/

cholesterol-rich GHEE as a kind of nectar

 

this should not be lightly dismissed by advocates of vegan-style

cuisine that claim the mantle of ayurveda

 

Caldecott

todd

www.toddcaldecott.com

 

_______________________________

And, is there any mention of exercise, or the lack thereof, as we've

become more " civilized? "

[Guest guest]

hi criiii dum (sorry, what is your name exactly?)

 

the evidence is there if you choose to look for it

a good primer is: http://www.westonaprice.org/knowyourfats/index.html

they have several articles that establish the basic facts, but more

detailed " scientific " data can also be forwarded, if req'd

 

also, here is another gary taube article called " what if it's all

been a big fat lie "

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?

res=9F04E2D61F3EF934A35754C0A9649C8B63 & sec=health

 

as far as ice cream goes, i don't think anyone could reasonably say

its a 'healthy' food, particularly when most ice cream on the market

doesn't even contain cream but industrially modified milk

ingredients, and is loaded with sugar, stabilizers, preservatives and

artificial flavors

 

however, organic cream is a wonderfully nutritious food, and as per

ayurveda doesn't have the same injunctions as milk does, so you can

occasionally eat fresh strawberries and cream and be happy

 

at home we have an ice cream machine and couple times a year we pull

it out and make ice cream, with 33% cream and egg yolks

last time we made a strawberry, vanilla, rose flavor that was incredible

 

it took a liter of cream and a dozen egg yolks, which may explain why

nobody could eat more than one small bowl

it was _completely_ satisfying

 

happy and content

this is the energy of fat

Caldecott

todd

www.toddcaldecott.com

 

_____

still, icecream is poison, not only for providing fats and

carbohidrates at a temperature that is inhibiting the digestion,

but also as a source of " E " -s: " identically natural flavoure,

identicaly natural coloure " and so on...

[Guest guest]

Dearest

 

I agree with your argument about needing fats in our diet. Believe

me, I go through a lot of ghee in my household. My comment is to the

point that so much of modern science isolates situations and tries to

make a point without telling the whole story. Like maybe we could

handle more fat in our diets in times past, but with the use of all

our modern conveniences (like cars, washing machines, grocery stores,

etc.) we are more sedentary. I've got to imagine that this has some

impact on maybe the amount of fat that we are now able to consume and

stay healthy? What do you think? Or am I really missing the point

here?!!!

 

Blissfully yours,

 

Patti Garland

Ayurvedic Chef and LifeStyle Coach, Bliss Kitchen

http://www.BlissKitchen.com

_________

............it may be hard for people to accept because they have been

brainwashed that fat is bad

 

however, humans have preferentially eaten and selected fatty foods

throughout their human evolution

in hinduism, fat is associated with the goddess lakshmi, the goddess

of abundance............

[Guest guest]

hi patti

 

i try to avoid reducing a complex situation to a single argument, but

sometimes we need to isolate a discrete aspect of a problem, analyze

it, and then re-integrate it back into the whole

 

this is simple logic, to examine flawed premises, and as such, this

is what i am endeavoring to do

 

best...

Caldecott

todd

www.toddcaldecott.com

 

___

 

I agree with your argument about needing fats in our diet. Believe

me, I go through a lot of ghee in my household. My comment is to the

point that so much of modern science isolates situations and tries to

make a point without telling the whole story.

[Guest guest]

I had a chuckle this morning as I was reading the October issue of LA

Yoga Ayurveda and Health. There's an ad with this title: " What the

world has been waiting for: The Red Wine Molecule in Supplement Form.

Get the same healthful benefits of red wine without all the calories

and preservatives. Feel better... Live healthier... Make money... "

 

Patti Garland

Ayurvedic Chef and LifeStyle Coach

Bliss Kitchen

http://www.BlissKitchen.com

(760) 902-7020

 

______________________________

 

i try to avoid reducing a complex situation to a single argument, but

sometimes we need to isolate a discrete aspect of a problem, analyze

it, and then re-integrate it back into the whole

[Guest guest]

Patti - this is SO helpful to you - I mean eventually you will be able to

just put a capsule on the plates in your Bliss Kitchen - you won't need to

cook at all!

 

Jane

 

_______________

" What the

world has been waiting for: The Red Wine Molecule in Supplement Form.

Get the same healthful benefits of red wine without all the calories

and preservatives. Feel better... Live healthier... Make money... "

[Guest guest]

u can preserve fresh grapes juice by adding some Armoracia Rusticana

(horseradish i think), i was told by someone that u can keep it like this for 10

years without turning into wine or vinegar. she added 10 grams of this spice to

1 liter and after a year was fresh and not having strange taste from this root.

one of her teachers in api-phyto-therapy, who is using a lot this juice, has a

long experience in preserving it for long time without adding artificial stuff.

i guess everybody knows the benefits of fresh grapes juice...unfortunately till

now we only had it in autumn.

________________

" What the world has been waiting for: The Red Wine Molecule in Supplement Form.

Get the same healthful benefits of red wine without all the calories

and preservatives............

[Guest guest]

hi

 

thanks for links

 

my name is cristina, i am usually called cri

 

just this week i met 4 people lacto-vegetarian and practising some hatha yoga

with high colesterol . they thought that not eating meat and doing few nauli or

uddhiana will allow them to eat 10 eggs omlet few times a week, and , of course,

especially in night

 

i have a kind of " fobia " for fat food, but is only because i was forced to eat

fat as a child. this is one of the reasons why i'm now confronting with vata

disturbances: dry skin, craking joints. i know there is a manner to eat healthy

fats. actually most of people with high colesterol and tri-glicerides have also

low essential fat acids, from which the famouse omega 3 it's just one example.

 

we have to consider too many aspects here: what kind of fats and in wich

proportions, the sources (some of them are not really easy to obtain) , personal

prakriti and vikriti, jatara agni, ama and the state of agnis, especially in

meda dhatu, life stile, effort, and so on... most of people think it's too

complicated and give up.in my coutry there are very bad eating habbits, using a

lot of animal fat, fried food and so on. this is why first place is taken by far

by the cardio-vascular mortality and morbidity.

 

when i tell them what kind of fat they should avoid, they say: " then there is

nothing left for me to eat " , " better give me some pills " .

i guess this is why this " paranoia about fats " it's necessary, cause will make

some of them to eat closer to healthy food. because of this " paranoia " the great

majority will give up on some of the satutated fats sources, but keep most of

them, as being part of " the few pleasures of life " . it's pittifull that " the

pleasures of life " are reduced to unhealthy food, alcohol, cigarettes, coffe...

 

 

____________________________

the evidence is there if you choose to look for it

a good primer is: http://www.westonaprice.org/ knowyourfats/ index.html

they have several articles that establish the basic facts, but more

detailed " scientific " data can also be forwarded, if req'd

 

also, here is another gary taube article called " what if it's all

been a big fat lie "

http://query. nytimes.com/ gst/fullpage. html?

res=9F04E2D61F3EF93 4A35754C0A9649C8 B63 & sec=health

[Guest guest]

and I think it's probably best that it be left that way!!!

 

Patti Garland

Ayurvedic Chef and LifeStyle Coach

Bliss Kitchen

http://www.BlissKitchen.com

(760) 902-7020

 

 

 

On Oct 14, 2007, at 1:14 AM, criiii dum wrote:

 

unfortunately till now we only had it in autumn.

[Guest guest]

as yes, resveratrol

 

this is what we do, isolate an aspect from the whole such that it

takes on more importance than its original source

 

but in order to solve this problem, we have to be able to deflate the

false thinking behind it

 

 

grapes are a good example, from which we can get resveratrol, as well

as grape seed extract and grape seed oil

 

my thesis would be, maybe is it better to just eat seeded grapes,

instead of buying all these extracts and then eating only seedless

grapes

 

one thing is, its not as easy to eat as many grapes when you eat the

seeds too, so it places a limit on mass grape consumption (which are

high in sugar)

 

in addition, you get all the benefits of eating the seeds, which

contain the antioxidants and EFAs

 

which brings me to grape seed oil, which many people mistakenly think

is a great cooking oil

 

actually, its a relatively new oil that has no traditional basis, and

is really just a by-product of the massive wine industry, like

resveratrol

 

as you might have noticed, grape (raisin) seeds have a very low lipid

content, and as such the oil must be extracted by chemical solvents,

deodorizing by distilling at high temperatures, followed by bleaching

and alkali refining - otherwise, the oil is a thick dark viscous

substance that is most unpalatable, and not even close to the light

green of commercial grape seed oil

 

this method of processing of course, same as for canola, destroys

integrity of the linoleic acid (LA) in the oil, and thus compares

unfavorably with other cold-pressed oils that are derived from seeds

with a much higher lipid content, like flax, hemp, etc

 

in additional, there is marked loss of valuable constituents in grape

seed oil after refinement, such as beta-carotene

 

the big deception of grape seed oil is that apparently it is healthy

for you because it contains LA, but it can be simultaneously used for

high heat cooking - hopefully now, we can see that this is a lot of

nonsense

 

but unless you can break these things down clearly, people will

continue to think that grape seed oil is a wonderful oil

 

fat is an extremely vital substance to the body, but even with our

new knowledge of things like EFAs, we are still susceptible to the

ploys of marketers who don't even know the basics of food chemistry

 

Caldecott, Dip. Cl.H, RH(AHG)

Ayurvedic practitioner, Medical Herbalist

203 - 1750 East 10th Ave

Vancouver, BC V5N 5K4 CANADA

web: http//:www.toddcaldecott.com

email: todd

tel: (1)778.896.8894

fax: (1)866.703.2792

 

 

_________________

 

I had a chuckle this morning as I was reading the October issue of LA

Yoga Ayurveda and Health. There's an ad with this title: " What the

world has been waiting for: The Red Wine Molecule in Supplement Form.

Get the same healthful benefits of red wine without all the calories

and preservatives. Feel better... Live healthier... Make money... "

[Guest guest]

There's something for everyone out there. We live in an abundant

universe for sure!!!

 

Have a good one, Jane.

 

Patti Garland

Ayurvedic Chef and LifeStyle Coach

Bliss Kitchen

http://www.BlissKitchen.com

________

........I mean eventually you will be able to just put a capsule on the plates in

your Bliss Kitchen - you won't need to cook at all!