About food and health - and nothing to do with Zambia

And now for something completely different -as I am due to return to civilisation!?in 3 weeks, I have been looking at the medical press and there is some medical research you probably will not hear on the TV or read about in the press, but which is really good news for those of us who like good food. 

http://annals.org/article.aspx?articleid=1846638&resultClick=3  This is a review done by Cambridge University and funded by the British Heart Foundation which was published in the American College of Physicians Journal - the Annals of Internal Medicine. (i.e. This is solid science not far out crazy stuff)

They collected results from numerous research projects into dietary fat intake and coronary heart disease (heart attacks and angina) involving over 600,000 patients in all. High animal fat intake was NOT associated with an increased risk. A high intake of trans fats or hydrogenated fatty acids - (fats that are artificially solidified by injecting hydrogen) that are found in margarine, and fast foods, was associated with an increased risk. 

So dairy farmers, and lovers of butter, cheese, cakes and baking (who does that leave out?)  can celebrate with a good conscience and no adverse effect on their health. Food factories churning out rubbish however, better get ready - because transfats should probably be banned universally - as they have been in many parts of the world. 

So why did we (both doctors and the public) get conned into the whole animal fats cause high cholesterol causes heart disease? Good question, and I do not think there is a simple answer. In the 50’s when Heart Attacks became common it was observed that diseased arteries contained lumps of cholesterol, and foods with a lot of cholesterol also tend to have a lot of saturated fats (carbon hydrogen chains with all the hydrogen slots filled up). But fatty acids and cholesterol are chemically completely unrelated, almost all of our cholesterol is produced by the liver and not dietary. It is extremely hard to reduce cholesterol in the blood by altering the diet. Also rising animal fat intake in the developed world has accompanied a massive decline in heart disease over the last 30 years. 

However, a simple story can ignore inconvenient truths, most clearly when many cholesterol reducing drugs were found to have no benefit, and the bandwagon really got going when the pharmaceutical industry (firstly Merck, and then Pfizer and Astra) did find that statin drugs prevented deaths after heart attacks, and then various nutriceutical companies started making Flora and Olivio etc. The market for statins alone is over $20 billion, so the simple Myth that eating fats turns into cholesterol which then clogs up your arteries has had powerful support from advertising (both to the public and doctors) and has limped on despite being scientifically shot to pieces.

There is more on this at http://drmalcolmkendrick.org/ - but meanwhile - could you send some ice cream and brie?