Henry Blackburn on Ancel Keys
I'm going to make an exception to the general rule here of not blogging on articles in the media. This is an important read and I don't want those who don't interact with me on social media to miss this.
Long time colleague of Ancel Keys, or A. Ben as I have nicknamed him (affectionately!) here, Henry Blackburn has apparently had enough of the Big Fat Smear Campaign masquerading about as "science journalism".
In defense of U research: The Ancel Keys legacy
 |
| The renowned scientist has become the target of a high-fat “smear” campaign. |
It begins:
(The article Blackburn is referring to is here: Chocolate milk in the schools and other products of expert opinion)
Recently, a number of writers identifying themselves as “health-science journalists” have been calling on Americans to “end the war on fat” as they promote a high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet (“Chocolate milk in the schools and other products of expert opinion,” June 22). What’s puzzling is that they draw attention to their arguments by using personal attacks on one of Minnesota’s premier scientists, Ancel Keys.
Keys was a University of Minnesota physiologist who spent most of his career conducting wide-ranging studies on the relationship of lifestyle — especially the foods we eat — to heart disease. He worked at the university from the late 1930s until his death at age 100 in 2004, and he carried out classic experiments of diet effects on blood-cholesterol levels in the laboratory and of diet associations with heart attacks among cultures with contrasting traditional eating patterns. “Contrasting” is the operative word here. ...Read on. It ends with:
In addition to finding — and exploiting for profit — a common villain in Keys, these writers use a number of devices to promote what Nina Teicholz, author of “The Big Fat Surprise,” advocates as a return to “tallow and lard.” Innuendo, distortions and accusations may be good for media attention and book sales, but they can do real damage — not only to the reputation of a pioneering researcher, but to public understanding of the scientific method and the evolving science of nutrition. It’s time to end the war on Ancel Keys.Teicholz tweeted recently that she will be correcting errors in her book for the paperback version. She even tweeted that she has read the "gratuitously mean spirited" critiques by Seth and myself and that she believes some fair points have been made. While I doubt she'll do much to correct her many transgressions as this would effectively gut her book, I do hope she'll reconsider her smears of Keys in future interviews and perhaps any newer editions of her book.
(The article Blackburn is referring to is here: Chocolate milk in the schools and other products of expert opinion)
Comments
"Lucas Sjostrom, a graduate from the University of Minnesota who has a degree in animal science with an industry emphasis, has joined the magazine as an associate editor. He grew up on a 100-cow dairy farm in southern Minnesota.
He spent two summers working with Land O’Lakes subsidiaries as an intern in both their seed sales division and chemical adjuvant and micronutrient unit. Sjostrom spent a semester in Washington, D.C., as a policy intern on the House Agriculture Committee.
After college, he spent nearly two years with the national Holstein Association, leading their public policy efforts on behalf of U.S.dairy farmers. He played a key role in placing members on USDA committees and formulation of a dairy bill."
http://www.dairyherd.com/blogs/Sjostrom-Nutrition-science-serves-a-big-fat-lie--Part-1-264562011.html?view=all
http://www.dairyherd.com/blogs/Sjostrom-Fat-wont-make-you-fat--Part-2-264890781.html?view=all
http://www.dairyherd.com/blogs/Sjostrom-The-sad-state-of-science--part-3-265153921.html?view=all
ALWAYS check the credentials and motives of people writing criticisms of other people.
Epidemiology: Misunderstood? Misused?
"The plethora of The-Only-Diet Book-You-Will-Ever-Need publications widely available in sales outlets, each with its own version of the “correct” nutritional philosophy, is testimony to the confusion suffered by the general public. The reason is elegantly described by Taubes:
…600,000 articles – along with several tens of thousands of diet books are the noise generated by a dysfunctional research establishment. Because the nutrition research community has failed to establish reliable, unambiguous knowledge about the environmental triggers of obesity and diabetes, it has opened the door to a diversity of opinions on the subject, of hypotheses about cause, cure and prevention, many of which cannot be refuted by the existing evidence.
This indictment is harsh, but deserved. Witness to the fact is the massive human feeding experiment foisted on the American public decades ago. It has caused untold suffering and needless deaths from the chronic inflammatory diseases it created. This nutritional debacle was chronicled by Garry Taubes a decade ago and updated more recently by Nina Teicholz.
In brief, shortly after World War II, when the medical community became concerned about the rising attack rates of heart diseases, Ancel Keys came forth with an epic epidemiological study indicating that diets high in fat were the cause of the heart problems1. Keys’ thesis became known as the lipid hypothesis and his study became an
almost immediate textbook example of how not to conduct an epidemiological study: it did not include all available pertinent data; it selected data that supported its thesis; and it claimed a cause-effect relationship where there was only a mere association2.
Well before the advent of Keys and his associates on the scene, epidemiology had developed as a well-matured discipline of inestimable value in the study and causation of infectious diseases. Despite Keys’ blatant misapplication of epidemiology, his peers supported him wholeheartedly. They validated Keys’ arguments with innumerable studies
using equally flawed epidemiology. Only a few scientists called attention to his misuse of accepted epidemiologic methods. In less than two decades, Keys’ lipid hypothesis became official national policy."
"It is important to note that the wholesale adoption of bogus epidemiology by the nutrition community is the linchpin of the current so-called heart-healthy diet. If sound nutritional science is not able to dislodge the linchpin, the massive human feeding experiment foisted on the American public decades ago will continue to take its toll."
I've got some bad news for you. See http://nigeepoo.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/diet-and-coronary-thrombosis-hypothesis.html
John Yudkin's sugar hypothesis of heart disease was actually John Yudkin's total fat, fat %E, animal protein, sugar and annual income hypothesis of heart disease.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1890262/pdf/rcgpresnews00012-0065.pdf
Atherosclerosis—the Case Against Protein
"Yudkin, who carried out an epidemiological survey for the year 1952 involving 15 countries, recorded that animal protein gave at least as good a correlation as both animal and total fat, not only in the different countries examined, but also in the occupational class survey for the United Kingdom. Hilleboe carried out two surveys, one for 12 countries in 1950-52, and another for 22 in 1957. In both it was recorded that animal protein gave a significantly better correlation than fat intake. Here, the work of Keys was strongly criticized as, in his survey, which only covered six countries, he had described an apparent almost exact correlation between fat intake and the mortality rate from atherosclerosis-a correlation which broke down completely when the survey was extended to cover the larger field of 22 countries."
"Since this report was first published, all patients who suffered from or were suspected to be, suffering from atherosclerosis have been advised to maintain a diet low in animal and high in vegetable protein, in short mainly a lacto-vegetarian diet, about one pint of unheated milk being allowed for all purposes. They were also advised to maintain a high intake of vitamin C in the form of either fruit juices or in tablet form, 25-50mg. thrice daily. After this regime had been maintained for a period varying from 6-8 weeks, depending on the severity and on the progress of the case, small helpings of animal protein of low vitamin B12 content were permitted, e.g., bacon, ham, white fish, veal and an occasional egg; the necessity to maintain a high intake of vegetable protein, e.g., pulses and cereals, was again stressed. As a result, not only has coronary thrombosis become a comparative rarity-only one case, proved by electrocardiogram, has occurred during the last two years-a menopausal patient, who, through a misunderstanding, had been consuming considerable quantitites of chicken-but all patients who have maintained the above regime have either improved considerably, or, if their symptoms and signs have been longstanding, have shown no sign of deteriorating. It is emphasized that, if the patient showed any sign of suffering from any other additional pathological condition(s), e.g., myxoedema, thyrotoxicosis, vitamin deficiency, etc., such condition(s) were also corrected as far as possible."
"An epidemiological survey covering 14 countries, and an examination of various food trends have both produced strong evidence suggesting that (a) an increased intake of heat treated animal protein and (b), in some countries, a decreased intake of vegetable protein, may both have played an important part in causing the present increase in the incidence of atherosclerosis."
Yudkin was not surprisingly influential in the UK .People didn't dismiss his ideas and research that easily The conditions in the two countries were different and he had a lot of support . (and let's face it the Brits don't necessarily want to believe that anything the 'yanks's say is right!)
To 'settle' the matter more research was done replicating Yudkins research design. These failed to replicate his findings.
Yudkin & Morland : Sugar intake and Myocardial Infarction 1967
http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/20/5/503.full.pdf+html
Burns Cox, Doll & Ball: Sugar intake and Myocardial Infarction 1969 .
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC487524/
Howell and Wilson; Dietary Sugar and Ischaemic Heart disease 1969
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1983968/
Yudkin's reply to Howell and Wilson 1969
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1629462/pdf/brmedj02053-0076c.pdf
Yudkins next paper was more nuanced and suggested that sucrose only had an effect on insulin levels and hence the development of arterial disease in susceptible people. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2466141/pdf/postmedj00369-0036.pdf
The UK's medical research council's commission into the matter reported that
'The sugar consumption of men with myocardial infarction was compared with that of matched controls in four different centres. The average sugar consumption was slightly greater in the patients with myocardial infarction than among the controls, but the differences were not statistically significant. Findings in one centre suggest that the slightly higher sugar intake in patients with myocardial infarction were likely to have been due to an association between the consumption of sugar and the smoking of cigarettes' http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(70)92239-7/abstract
and it wasn't until after this report that Key's published his paper about Sucrose/Yudkin http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/heartofthematter/download/SUCROSEINTHEDIETANDCORONARYHEARTDISEASEKeysYudkin.pdf
You must realise that scientific research was much less specialised 50 years ago than it is now. That's is why many old papers are easier for a layperson to read.
Modern researchers are only writing papers for colleagues who work in the same extremely narrow and highly specialised research field. Outsiders are literally incapable of understanding their work properly.
It's funny because back then scientists were trained in science and they weren't necessarily supposed to be great communicators -- and yet they were. Nowadays a science education includes more and more "core" how to be a conscientious citizen of the world with an appreciation for the poetry of outer upper Podunk, and yet fewer and fewer are capable of communicating their message.
"As
a result, says Lustig, there was a concerted campaign by the food
industry and several scientists to discredit Yudkin's work."
Food industry >> Ancel Keys.
"The
British Sugar Bureau put out a press release dismissing Yudkin's claims
as "emotional assertions" and the World Sugar Research Organisation
described his book as "science fiction"."
These
organisation were created in order to disseminate pro-sugar propaganda
& muddy the scientific waters, an idea of Edward Bernays.
See http://vimeo.com/67977038 , for more information on Bernays.
various food trends have both produced strong evidence suggesting that
(a) an increased intake of heat treated animal protein and (b), in some
countries, a decreased intake of vegetable protein, may both have played
an important part in causing the present increase in the incidence of
atherosclerosis."
See http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/heartofthematter/download/Yudkinssugartheory.pdf
"...putting down all the information available from international statistics, I found that...the best relationship of all existed between the rise in the number of reported coronary deaths in the UK and the rise in the number of radio and television sets." [John Yudkin. Pure, White and Deadly (1972) Penguin; p.86]
Then, affluence → eating more meat, poultry, fish, eggs, cheese, fat, sugar etc. More cars, radios & TV meant moving less. CHD is multi-factorial. No single factor causes it.
Now, poverty → eating more heavily-subsidised crap-in-a-bag/box/bottle, instead of produce.
Whatever the recommendations, the food industry will always use them as an opportunity to increase profits.
Look at all of the low-carb crap-in-a-bag/box/bottle that was about, when the Atkins diet was all the rage.
But as the cheerleaders outnumber the critics, you should expect to be bashed here if you bash señor Keys for any lack of empirical rigor [speaking as an occaisional Keys-basher myself--at least with regard to the suspect campaign to demonize dairy fat--although I am in accord with his fondness for pasta & garlic & tomatoes & basil & red wine...]
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db117.pdf
"The percentage of adults consuming a diet low in saturated fat increased from 25% to 41% from the late 1970s through 1988–1994."
CAD is a multivariate disease. Just because Keys did not foresee the current obesity epidemic, which also has multiple contributing factors, doesn't mean Keys was on the wrong track.
Since when do we expect pioneers to break ground AND solve the complete puzzle?
Is she talking about herself?
https://twitter.com/bigfatsurprise/status/490893283732623360
Nina Teicholz
@bigfatsurprise
Ideas, anyone? what advice for rectifying hypothyroid from very low carb or prolonged ketosis? If insulin too low - poor T4 to T3 conv. Tx
LUSTIG: Keys won the battle. Yudkin was thrown under the bus. And …
NARRATOR: In what way was he thrown under the bus?
LUSTIG: Well, he was discredited by numerous societies basically saying that he did not have the data to make his claims about the importance of sugar.
What's the matter with this science thing, having to have DATA! Sheesh!!!
The food industry has been manipulating the masses for yonks. People didn't buy the crap because they thought it was healthy - the food industry health-washed the crap.
Also: The plural of anecdote is not data.
Nobody is arguing that there is no connection between T2D and CHD. You are making strawman arguments.
http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/28/7/764.long
"Comparison of the mortality rates due to coronary heart disease in different countries
reveals great differences (7, 8). Although variations in diet are widely accepted as being
contributory to this variation in risk, no comprehensive study of dietary characteristics
is available. Among the dietary factors which have been associated in international
epidemiologic studies with increased risk of coronary heart disease are large amounts of
fat (7- 10) and sucrose (1 1). Large amounts of dietary fiber (12, 13) have been associated with decreased risk. The average diet consumed in the United States, being high in fat (14), is also high in sucrose because fat and sucrose in diets have a high positive correlation (15). As there is a physiological limit to the amount of food that can be consumed regularly, a diet containing large amounts of fat and sucrose must of necessity contain only a small amount of unrefined carbohydrate, such as cereals, nuts and legumes. These latter foods contain relatively large amounts of fiber (12). Thus the diet habitually consumed in the United States and typical of those diets associated with high
risk of coronary heart disease, can be partially characterized as being high in fat and
sucrose and low in vegetable fiber.
Cereals, nuts and legumes, foods consumed more commonly in the parts of the world where risk of coronary heart disease is low, contain relatively large amounts of phytic acid (16, 17). Phytic acid (myo-inositol hexaphosphate) is a naturally occurring chelating agent which decreases the absorption of zinc from the intestinal tract of animals (18). No data on the absorption of copper were presented, but at alkaline pH in vitro (19) the copper complex with sodium phytate is soluble whereas the zinc complex is insoluble. Thus in theory the phytic acid in diets low in fat and sucrose and high in fiber may have the protective effect of decreasing the ratio of zinc to copper absorbed from the intestinal tract. The fiber in these diets may also have a similar effect on the ratio of zinc to copper as fiber has been reported to substantially decrease the absorption of zinc by man (20).
The prediction that phytic acid decreases the ratio of zinc to copper absorbed from the
intestinal tract has been verified (21, 22). In the latter experiment (22) the concentration
of cholesterol in the plasma of rats fed sodium phytate was decreased. It is likely that diets high in fat and sucrose and low in fiber contain zinc and copper in amounts that correspond to a high ratio. Seventy-one foods from the United States were examined (23); a positive association was found between the amount of fat and the ratio of zinc to copper (P < 0.001). Thus diets associated with high risk of coronary heart disease are likely to contain zinc and copper in a high ratio and to be low in phytic acid and fiber, chelating agents likely to be protective against a high ratio. Conversely diets associated with a low risk of coronary heart disease are likely to have a low ratio of zinc to copper and to contain protective substances as well."
In a later review, Keys again addressed Yudkin’s claims regarding sugar intake and coronary heart disease in international comparisons:4
In regard to international comparisons, there are countries with a high per capita consumption of sugar and of saturated fats; those countries tend to have high CHD death rates. And there are countries with low per capita sugar and saturated fat intakes; these have low CHD rates. When all these countries are put together, statistical calculation naturally shows CHD mortality is correlated with both sugar and fat intake. However, partial correlation analysis shows that when sugar is held constant, CHD is highly correlated with per capita saturated fats in the diet but when fat is constant there is no significant correlation between sugar in the diet and the CHD incidence rate. It should be noted, too, that Yudkin carefully avoids mentioning the fact that 2 countries with the highest per capita sugar consumption, Cuba and Venezuela, suffer low CHD mortality; it is notable that the dietary intake of estimated fats is low in both Cuba and Venezuela.
Another flaw in Yudkin’s hypothesis about sugar and coronary heart disease that Plant Positive addressed was the contradictory evidence from animal experiments of atherosclerosis. When diets rich in dietary cholesterol and saturated fat, such as egg yolks are used to induce atherosclerosis in non-human primates, the atherosclerosis process has actually been reversed when these atherogenic components are replaced with chow very rich in sugar.5 6 This does not suggest that sugar should be considered a heart healthy food, but does emphasize the fact that sugar alone cannot induce atherosclerosis in the absence of dietary cholesterol and elevated blood cholesterol, and therefore cannot not explain the coronary heart disease epidemic.
http://healthylongevity.blogspot.com/2012/12/plant-positive-strikes-back-nutrition.html?m=1
References:
4. Coronary heart disease--the global picture.
Ancel Keys
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/1103902/
5. Evidence of regression of atherosclerosis in primates and man
Mark L. Armstrong
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2496395/
6. The dietary prevention of coronary heart disease: dietary cholesterol and fat.
W. E. Connor
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2425963/
I gotta get me a copy of Michael Moss's Sugar, Salt, Fat from the library.
Early atherosclerotic plaques in vessel wall regress completely when cholesterol levels are lowered
"Early but not advanced forms of atherosclerotic plaques in the vessel wall disappear when the levels of 'bad' cholesterol are lowered, according to a study in mice. The findings indicate that preventative cholesterol-lowering treatment could prevent more advanced, clinically relevant plaque to develop. Almost half of all deaths worldwide are caused by strokes and heart attacks. The main underlying cause is atherosclerosis, where fat accumulates in the blood vessel walls in the so-called plaques. Atherosclerosis is a progressive disease where advanced and unstable plaques develop over time. When these plaques burst a blood clot is created, which in turn could cause stroke or heart attack, depending on how and where the blood clot is formed."
http://www.plosgenetics.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pgen.1004201#s3
Plasma Cholesterol–Induced Lesion Networks Activated before Regression of Early, Mature, and Advanced Atherosclerosis
Welcome to the website from Robert Hoenselaar, dietitian and research journalist.
"In 1953, Ancel Keys showed that coronary heart disease mortality was more prevalent in countries with a high fat consumption [1]. Though this correlation was based on an analysis of merely 6 countries, it led to the advice to consume less fat. This was followed by the advice to consume less saturated fat, using data from The Seven Countries Study
[2]. Even in 2005, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) included data from The Seven Countries study in the evidence to justify the advice to consume less saturated fat [3].
Study design
I linked per capita (per person) availability of animal fat to the burden of cardiovascular diseases (CVD), including data from 170 countries. Data regarding availability of animal fat is provided by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) [4]. Data regarding the burden of CVD is provided by the World Health Organization (WHO) [5].
The burden of CVD is expressed in DALYs. The measure DALY combines:
Years of life lost to premature mortality and
Years of life lost due to time lived in states of less than full health
DALY’s are measured per 100,000. E.g., we see a DALY for cardiovascular diseases of 1,525 in 2004. This means that 1,525 per 100,000 years of life were lost to premature mortality from cardiovascular diseases or from living with cardiovascular diseases in
the year 2004. Global data about DALYs is only available for the year 2004.
We can clearly see that the highest burden of cardiovascular diseases can be found in countries with the lowest availability of animal fats. The Pearson Correlation was significant (P = 0.01).
The reason for the large discrepancy is not clear to me. Several explanations are possible:
Keys examined saturated fats. I examined animal fats. This seems the most unlikely explanation.
The much larger number of countries, I included.
Keys examined coronary heart diseases. I examined CVD, which includes a larger number of diseases.
Keys examined mortality. I examined the burden of diseases. Which does not only include mortality, but also the amount of years lost due to time lived in a state of less than full health because of CVD.
Keys used disease prevalence data unadjusted for age. This does not take into account the fact that heart disease prevalence in some countries may have been higher just because the population lived longer. The DALY data I included was adjusted for age.
Changes in animal fat/saturated fat intake and/or CVD/heart disease occurring over time.
This means that Keys’ data is dismissed. The age-adjusted DALY data
for CVD including a larger number amount of countries is just much more
“reliable”.
Does this mean that animal fats are cardio-protective? No it doesn’t. Ecological comparisons are not able to show any causal effects. The IOM knows this. But because of a lack of studies showing any evidence for an association between saturated fats and cardiovascular diseases, data from the Seven Countries Studies was included in their report anyway. They could always point the finger to that study.
Conclusion
Some decades ago, Ancel Keys showed that coronary heart disease mortality was more prevalent in countries with high intakes of saturated fat. This “correlation” was based on data from only 7 countries. I now show that the highest burden of cardiovascular diseases is found in countries with the lowest intake of animal fats. I based my results on data from 170 countries."
Someone on here put a link to it in their comment.
http://canceranddiet.nl/cardiovascular_disease/dietary-fat.html
http://canceranddiet.nl/cardiovascular_disease/saturated-fat.html
http://canceranddiet.nl/cardiovascular_disease/randomized-saturated-polyunsaturated-fat.html
haven't had red meat in two decades and incorrectly think their risk of
heart disease is very low because they've been led to believe that
saturated fat is the cause of heart disease'
I read this sentence twice and wondered where the sense of it lies.
'Plenty' (how many)
'haven't had red meat in two decades' (how many? where is this stated?)
'incorrectly think their risk of heart disease is very low' (your opinion? you're their doctor?)
'they've been led to believe that saturated fat is the cause of heart disease') 'Because they've been led to believe that saturated fat...'
Was that last an if-then statement? If so, what's the if part of it?
Plenty of people are walking around right now with nice bellies....because they have been led to believe that saturated fat...'
They haven't had read meat in two decades .... because they have been led to believe that saturated fat...'
'They incorrectly think their risk of heart disease is very low.. because they've been led to believe that saturated fat...'
I think that you mean to say that at two of the above statements are true (they might be, or not). But the fat bellies part leads me to ask again, how many people are there and are you really their doctor?
I'm guessing you're quite successful in your very very large medical practice.
Unless I'm thoroughly confused.
The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat & Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet Since he cites only my book (albeit at the end), one could assume that these accusations are directed at my work. He calls portrayals of Keys' dietary work "false and misleading." This is untrue. 1. That Keys rejected hundreds of dietary surveys can easily be seen in his reported, published numbers (Kromhout et. al, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 1989, 49, page 891--this is the most detailed analysis of diet for the Seven Countries Study). And 2. I write that one of the three dietary surveys on Crete was conducted during Lent, not all of them. Other matters: I describe the reasons for the selection of countries in the same way that Blackburn does (I merely add that none of the 7 countries challenged the diet-heart hypothesis and therefore could be seen as an example of selection bias). I also identify his study conclusion in the same way (that low animal fat consumption was linked to lower risk of heart attacks) However, I add that this association did not hold up in follow-up analyses and also that it was only an association that did not prove causation. I never imply that Keys alone was responsible for the endurance of this hypothesis (I describe at length how his idea was institutionalized). My point is that Keys launched this hypothesis in 1961; after that, many other actors were involved in the following 50+ years.
Here's the study she mentioned
http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/49/5/889.full.pdf+html
Food consumption patterns in the 1960's in seven countries
Read and decide if NT is right.
Opportunism by the food industry was rampant then as it is now. Anyone who doesn't think the meat/dairy/egg boards are behind the current sugar causes heart disease, not saturated fat media blitz is naïve. Throw in Atkins, too, while you're at it.
Follow the money.
SO - what causes insulin resistance? What causes metabolic syndrome? Does saturated fat consumption have any effect on these? Why would they cause heart disease?
"Here's a page or so (p163-4) from John Yudkin's book "Pure White and Deadly", 1972 edition. Yudkin begins the chapter with an apology for talking about such uncomfortable disagreements in public. But he liked the truth.
This quote covers opinion from Prof John Yudkin and Dr Meyer Friedman. You can hear their dislike of Keys. Keys was the architect of what has become the current world obesity epidemic and never one to let the truth get in the way of a good idea, as with his six nations "fat causes heart disease" study. Unfortunately Meyer's listof those easily misleddid not include gullible politicians who set food policy. Keys was a very successful politico, with intense conviction of his own correctness. Fine if he had been right, which he
wasn't.
Yudkin begins:
I have already mentioned Dr Ancel Keys and his pioneer work in relation to diet and heart disease. A year or so ago he wrote a memorandum which he sent to a large number of scientists working in this field and which with very few changes has now been published in a medical journal 'Atherosclerosis'. It consists entirely of a strong criticism - I nearly said virulent criticism - of the work I have published from time to time on the theory that sugar is the main dietary factor involved in causing heart disease.
The publication contains a number of quite incorrect and unjustified statements; for instance; that we had never tested our method for measuring sugar intake; that no one eats the amounts of sugar that we and others have used in our experiments; that it was absurd of me in 1957 to use intemational statistics of 41 countries as evidence for the
relationship between sugar and heart disease (exactly the same statistics that Dr Keys had previously used for only 6 selected countries to show the relationship between fat and heart disease).
He ends by triumphantly pointing out that both sugar and fat intakes are related to heart disease, but that the cause must be fat, not sugar, because he had just found in 1970 that fat intake and sugar intake are themselves closely linked. You will remember my own discussion of this link in Chapter 5, based on the fact that, as far back as 1964, I had shown this relationship to exist between fat intake and sugar intake. Let me thereforequote from a recently published book Pathogenesis Of Coronary Artery Disease written by Dr Meyer Friedman, another distinguished worker in this field:
"It is sad, for example, to observe that essentially honourable investigators omit published data (including some of their own data obtained earlier) which refute or call into question their contemporary data and the interpretations they have made of them. It is even sadder to observe how these same observers eagerly and indiscriminately collect studies (no matter how poorly or incompletely performed) supporting their respective hypotheses but peruse with the most "nit-picking" and distrustfuI eye other studies which tend to subvert the interpretive verity of their own. But this is not really a very important cause of our present confusion because only a few investigators indulge in these practices and their foibles are quite well known to their scientific peers. They essentially succeed in
misleading only themselves and those physicians and laymen who can not be expected to know of the self-imposed enslavement of these investigators to their respective concepts"
Hmm, Friedman on Keys sounds like Ravnskov on Keys' modern followers.
Plus ça change (plus c'est la même chose)
Peter"
I don't disagree that people without T2D genetics, tobacco use, hypertension, or familial hyperlipidemia are at low risk (not no risk) for CHD. That's not a controversial point and yes, they are not statistically likely to benefit from sat fat restriction (or carb restriction for that matter). OTOH, the genetics for T2D are very widely spread, ranging from 1 in 3 to 1 in 2 by population and there is yet no screening test.
No one is making the claim that sat fat causes diabetes or obesity.
"Seventy-one foods from the United States were examined (23); a
positive association was found between the amount of fat and the ratio
of zinc to copper (P < 0.001)."
In other words, the problem with fat is that foods high in fat are low in copper. This is well supported by data and therefore not bullshit.
One of Charles Grashow's many interesting finds tells us that "Yudkin, who carried out an epidemiological survey for the year 1952
involving 15 countries, recorded that animal protein gave at least as
good a correlation [with atherosclerosis] as both animal and total fat."
So meat and dairy are both implicated in cardiovascular disease. Both have a high zinc-copper ratio. I expect you know that zinc and copper antagonise one another. Klevay found that a high zinc-copper ratio caused hypercholesterolemia and cardiovascular disease in lab animals.
If you have other problems with Klevay's work, please say so. I have never come across any criticisms of it, and Stephan Guyenet says this about it.
http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.co.uk/2010/04/copper-and-cardiovascular-disease.html
If your problem is with phytic acid, here's what Don Matesz says.
http://donmatesz.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/phytate-facts.html
Foods high in fat are low in a lot of things. Carbs just for example... Trying to deduce whatever causal association out of that is BS so long as you can't describe a plausible pathomechanism. This IS POSSIBLE for fat, or to be more precise for saturated fatty acids, or to be EVEN MORE pricise, especially for myristic acid.
It is at the same time not possible to prove any cardiovascular consequences of a lack of copper. If anything the opposite is true!
http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/151/12/1182
Considering the antagonistic and competitive uptake relationship between copper and zinc. What are your thoughts on this extreme plant-based diets where copper is known to quite effectively upstage zinc in the nutrition supply department. Are there any problems associated with the *other* side of this balance?
Also, as I understand it, organ meats actually have a very high copper to iron and zinc ratio, higher than most plant-options, granted, we're dealing with non-haem iron, but high copper nonetheless.
Leslie M. Klevay, M.D., S.D. in Hyg.
Am J Clin Nutr July 1975 vol. 28 no. 7 764-774
"The ratio of zinc to copper has been associated with the risk of coronary heart disease. Because this association with risk is closer
than for any other agent EXCEPT, PERHAPS, CHOLESTEROL, the ratio of zinc to copper may be the preponderant factor in the etiology of coronary heart disease."
SO - it still comes back to cholesterol!
Evelyn, among others, does so regularly. On the internet. Right here at this website. Alas, I'm not able to include your own recent contributions in this category.
Jumping to conclusions [see above] can later prove to have been unwise. [LEAPING to them can't be any better].
"The authors of the study report receiving support and funding from Kraft Foods, Kellogg Company, Coca-Cola Company, World Sugar Research Organisation, Almond Board of California and Con Agra, among other companies."
Should we not listen because they receive funding from Big AG and Corporate America?
From the American Institute for Cancer Research
http://www.aicr.org/reduce-your-cancer-risk/recommendations-for-cancer-prevention/recommendations_04_plant_based.html
"Eat more of a variety of vegetables, fruits, whole grains and legumes such as beans.
Basing our diets on plant foods (like vegetables, fruits, whole grains and legumes such as beans), which contain fiber and other nutrients, can reduce our risk of cancer.
For good health, AICR recommends that we base all of our meals on plant foods. When preparing a meal, aim to fill at least two-thirds of your plate with vegetables, fruits, whole grains and beans."
http://www.shealtiel.com/shealtiel/thereunions/cretan_diet.pdf
"In 1948, the Greek government, willing to improve the health of its citizens using the tools of western medicine, asked the Rockefeller Foundation, which manages and finances scientific activities with the epidemiologist Leland Allbaugh, to organize a large epidemiological study of the inhabitants of Crete in order to improve their health. The purpose of the study was to discover how “developed country knowledge could best serve underdeveloped regions such as Crete”
The diet habits of every 1 for 150 households were carefully studied and recorded, using the work of numerous benevolent Red Cross workers."
Sample Survey of Crete, Form Ia, Seven-day Diet. Greece: Food Balance Sheet for
Greece, 1948-1949. Ministry of Agriculture and Ministry of Coordination. Athens. United States: Food Balance Sheets, 1950 Supplement. FAO. Washington, April 1950.
http://www.staff.uni-giessen.de/~gk1728/downloads/EUB%20A%20Trichopoulou.pdf
The Rockefeller Report I
"olives, cereal grains, pulses, fruit, wild greens
and herbs, together with limited quantities of
goat meat and milk, game, and fish consist the
basic Cretan foods... no meal was complete
without bread . .. Olives and olive oil
contributed heavily to the energy intake ...
The Rockefeller Report II
"the food consumption levels were surprisingly
good. On the whole, their food pattern and food
habits were extremely well adapted to their natural
and economic resources as well as their needs".
"only one out of six of the interviewed families
judged the typical diet to be satisfactory“
“meat (72%), rice, fish, pasta, butter, and cheese: foods most desired to improve their diets
food seemed literally to be 'swimming' in oil"
http://www.fishhall.org.uk/Global/Med%20Diet%20Conference%20Presentations/9%20Dr%20Artemis%20Simopoulos.pdf
Question for the group - can anyone dig up more information on the Rockefeller Report by Leland Allbaugh?
So every internet crank's argument needs to be addressed de novo?
This guy just uses a hodge-podge of data. He doesn't explain his methods and there's no peer-review so no one else has looked at his work to even determine whether he made an arithmetic error. He doesn't say how he corrected for data quality between countries, life expectancies or confounding factors (cigarette consumption, HIV burden, poverty, parasite burden, etc.). In fact, he doesn't give us any idea about his statistical methods at all. He just stirs together a bunch of estimates that are wildly different in their quality and says "my data set was bigger, so I win." Why should anyone take that seriously? This is UN diplomat with a money problem level of work.
You are of course entitled to your opinions.
But do not be upset if they don't happen to carry universal weight.
JobzCorner
Obesity researchers everywhere! Drop everything and address the claims from supplement salesman Mark Sisson who tells us weight gain is "all about insulin".
Well apparently vegetarians are not normally zinc deficient.
https://www.mja.com.au/open/2012/1/2/zinc-and-vegetarian-diets
Lots of people think copper overload is very common, and the copper researchers try to explain that this is because blood copper rises during inflammation. Copper rises and zinc falls, and people think their inflammatory disorder is caused by copper overload and zinc deficiency. Since this gives them the excuse to eat even more meat and dairy, I don't see this situation changing any time soon.
Copper overload isn't a problem like iron overload is, because copper is quite easily excreted (in the bile) unlike iron.
Of course it's possible to prove cardiovascular consequences of copper deficiency. You just look at the heart and arteries of copper deficient rats. What's the problem?
There is indeed a 'plausible pathomechanism', and I can describe it to you if you like. I don't mind if you call it bullshit.
Your "interpretation" of data and publications can be called different than whishful thinking at best. You are making a fool of yourself by such a margin that it's not even funny anymore.
atherogenesis or is a marker of inflammation associated with atherosclerosis remains to be established.'
They call it a 'marker' of inflammation. They may not realise it's there for a purpose: copper gets released into the blood during inflammation because it's needed for tissue repair.
"Digging out all the information he needs to exonerate whole grains and legumes takes a lifetime. I know, I’ve spent a lifetime (well, 30 years) doing it.
Regards
Jane Karlsson PhD
Oxford, UK "
BTW - the bashing of Keys continues
http://www.fathead-movie.com/index.php/2014/07/22/ancel-keys-had-a-tiny-one/
This is the study Fat Head references
http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/49/5/889.long
Food consumption patterns in the 1960s in seven countries. Kromhout,
Keys, Aravanis et al. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition,
1989;49:889-894
Are you open to the possibility that someone could end up with a zinc deficiency? Accepting the idea that most are able to excrete excess copper, that might still create the odd exception where zinc balance is lost.
This is how Colpo began his post.
'Recently, I received an
email from one Jane Karlsson, PhD, vigorously asserting that whole
grains were wonderfully healthy foods that could immensely benefit
humankind.'
This is not true. I said nothing of the kind. There wasn't anything I could do, because he had blocked all further emails from me and doesn't allow comments. I just had to hope people would read the conversation and see I hadn't said it. I suspect they didn't, because it was very long and very boring. So all they know about me is that I said something rather silly about whole grains. Colpo is very clever.
This isn't about you or me, this thread is about Ancel Keys and the people who criticize him. You think that this particular "study" is "fantastic". Why? I think it is "nonsense" and I stated why. Poor quality raw data (the WHO criticizes its own data), massaged with unknown statistical methods, and no attention to possible confounders does not produce useful information. Can you explain to me what you see in this study that causes it to rise to the level of "fantastic"?
Stella--we are closer than you think: I also remember that New Yorker cartoon. [fantastic, wasn't it?!!]
"Ancel Keys Had A Tiny One"
http://www.fathead-movie.com/index.php/2014/07/22/ancel-keys-had-a-tiny-one/
Tom's such a comedian!
Saturated fat and cardiovascular disease: the discrepancy between the scientific literature and dietary advice.
Hoenselaar R
Department of Nutrition and Dietetics, High School of Arnhem and Nijmegen, Nijmegen, The Netherlands. rhoenselaar@hotmail.com
"It turns out before Keys arrived on Crete he had been preceded by another epidemiologist, named Leland G. Allbaugh, who was employed by the Rockefeller Foundation in New York to improve its understanding of "underdevelopment." Crete was selected for its pre-industrialized economy, which had suffered gravely during the war. Allbaugh, seeking to understand the human toll of these recent hardships, conducted a thorough study of the Cretan diet, and like Keys, found that their fare "consisted chiefly of foods of vegetable origin, with cereals, vegetables, fruits, and olive oil predominating," with only "small amounts" of meat, fish, and eggs. Yet far from adoring this perfect example of the Mediterranean Diet, Allbaugh reveals a startling reality: the Cretans were openly miserable with their daily fare. "We are hungry most of the time," said one. When asked how their diet could be improved, "Meat alone or with cereal was mentioned as a 'favorite food' by 72% of the families questioned." They had evidently eaten more meat before the war and were now suffering without it."
Question - how much meat had they eaten before the war? NT offers no documentation to prove her statement.
Here's a concept: Less is bad and more is bad. See http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/16218/title/Challenging-Dose-Response-Dogma/
Now, have a group hug and get on with life! :-D
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15693281
If you keep labouring a point, you'll either be ignored, or written-off as a crank. Just trying to be helpful.
Cardiovascular Disease from Copper Deficiency—A History
Leslie M. Klevay
J. Nutr.
February 1, 2000vol. 130 no. 2 489S-492S
"The copper deficiency theory on the etiology and pathophysiology of ischemic heart disease has been developed in a series of papers over two decades; the most important or recent include Klevay 1990a, 1990b, 1998 and 2000). The theory has evolved, has been modified and has attempted to incorporate newer concepts and findings such as aspirin, beer, homocysteine, iron overload and oxidative damage. It is offered as the simplest and most general explanation of ischemic heart disease, the leading cause of death in the industrialized world."
http://www.freewebs.com/stopped_our_statins/IHD-%20Deficiency%20Disease.pdf
SCHEMIC HEART DISEASE AS DEFICIENCY DISEASE
"The concept that ischemic heart disease is a disease of intoxication is tenable no longer. Too much negative data have accumulated, only some of which are mentioned here. Also excessive amounts of the wrong type of fat cannot explain newer facts about heart disease risk such as fetal programming or the effect of low paraoxonase. Just as cholesterol was an important focus for heart disease as
intoxication, homocysteine can become an excellent focus for a paradigm shift to heart disease as deficiency because supplementation with several nutrients can alter homocysteine metabolism, decrease its plasmaconcentration and, presumably, decrease risk."
'Statins normalize vascular lysyl oxidase down-regulation induced by proatherogenic risk factors'
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19406911
Just type the following keyboard characters:-
semi-colon, hyphen, close parenthesis
It should look like this:-
;-)
Or are you joking again? I can't tell!
OK, I did it. It looks really boring. I don't think I'll use it much.
I can't discern "tone" from text on a screen. Can you?
Or were you bluffing? I never know.
Anyway, I've got some "nuts" that need "roasting".
Evelyn know what this means :-D
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