For more than 20 years, there have been one or two medical commentators in newspapers, such as the Telegraph's great James Le Fanu, who have rejected the cholesterol theory of heart disease. Dr Le Fanu has always maintained that (most) people should stick to the boiled eggs and buttered soldiers for breakfast and avoided margarine as if their lives depended on it. But the mainstream view for 40 years, as dished out to the public in health campaigns and via the NHS has been – cut down saturated fat to lower your risk of cardiovascular disease. That has meant that butter, full-fat milk and cheese were ruthlessly demonised, while oil-based spreads and low-fat products flew off the shelves.
But this is changing – and if you doubt it, consider that we have a leading young cardiologist, Aseem Malhotra, writing in the British Medical Journal today, saying quite plainly: "If you have a choice between butter and margarine, have the butter every time."
The evidence is pretty persuasive. The essence of it is: recent studies have failed to support any significant association between saturated fat intake and cardiovascular risk. Indeed, saturated fat has actually been found to be protective – though it should come from natural sources, not processed food where it's mixed with harmful chemical additives.
Here is where the industry stepped in – replacing all that fat with sugar to provide a substitute kick. And did obesity decline in this period? It did not. In fact, over the past 30 years in the US, as the proportion of energy derived from fat in the diet fell from 40 per cent to 30 per cent, obesity rocketed. And there's increasing evidence that sugar could be an independent risk factor for the metabolic syndrome that was discussed in a blog the other day.
More on this story here.
Eddie
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