A member of the PL Google Group sent me this article from Bicycling Magazine. The article discusses a research review whose authors concluded that eating a diet that contains whole foods rich in saturated fats won’t increase your risk for cardiovascular disease. The Google Group member has been following a whole food plant-based (WFPB) diet for years and he is able to identify BS nutrition articles. He just wanted to bring this article to my attention. My concern is that many bicyclists without knowledge of the heart-healthy benefits of a low fat WFPB, will be steered down the wrong nutritional path.
In the age of Google searches, you don’t have to be a dietitian to quickly figure out that the author is full of crap. Her statement about lutein and zeaxanthin being difficult to get in the diet without eggs is laughable. If you want to know the best way to get these nutrients along with countless other phytonutrients, I recommend watching this video by Dr. Michael Greger.
The author of the article states:
” It’s true that eating saturated fatty acids like stearic, palmitic, myristic, and lauric acids—which are found in full-fat dairy, meat, eggs, and other fat-rich foods—increases levels of undesirable low-density lipoprotein (LDL)-cholesterol, but in most people, it doesn’t increase this kind of “bad” cholesterol.
Specifically, saturated fat doesn’t generally increase levels of small, dense LDL cholesterol, which raises your risk for heart disease, but rather increases levels of larger, more bouyant LDL particles, which are not related to increase risk.”
Perhaps the author should talk to Cardiologist William Roberts from Baylor University. He believes that lowering LDL cholesterol (large and fluffy and small/dense) is the most important thing a non-smoking cardiac patient can do.
Or perhaps she can talk to Nobel Prize winning researcher Michael Brown. Anyone who is undecided about the importance of LDL levels in relation to coronary artery disease, should watch this presentation by Brown. If you don’t have time to watch the whole video, I suggest you watch the summary PowerPoint slide at 1:03:19.
As always, I think it is most important to take a wholistic view of nutrition and health. Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn takes this approach with his cardiac patients. He tries to get his patients’ LDL numbers below 85, but he believes that anyone consuming a low fat WFPB diet should be fine with LDLs at 90-105. What’s important is to stop eating foods that injure arterial epithelium which leads to vascular disease. These foods are animal foods, extracted oils and added sugars.
I didn’t have to dig too deep into this review before my BS antennae went crazy. I recognized two authors known for their history of participating in nutrition research while having multiple conflicts of interests (COI). One is Jeff S. Volek who I briefly mentioned in an earlier article. The other is Ronald Krauss who Dr. John McDougall unendearingly calls Dr. Lard.
For this Review, Volek and Krauss (along with other authors) disclosed potential conflicts of interests (COIs).
Jeff S. Volek: Research funding from foundations (Lotte & John Hecht Memorial Foundation) and industry (Metagenics, National Dairy Council/Dutch Dairy Organization, Malaysian Palm Board, Pruvit Ventures). Royalties for books on ketogenic diets. Scientific advisory board for Virta Health, UCAN, Advancing Ketogenic Therapies, Cook Keto, Axcess Global and Atkins Nutritionals. Equity in PangeaKeto. Founder, chief science officer, and equity in Virta Health.
Ronald M. Krauss: Research funding from Dairy Management. Scientific Advisory Board for Virta Health and Day Two. Licensed patent for method of lipoprotein particle measurement.
Tweet: The health effects of dietary saturated fatty acids can vary among individuals, and depend on the food source and overall dietary pattern
As Keto Diet advocates and promoters, it is in their financial interest that the new dietary guidelines eliminate saturated fat restrictions. A funding source or conflict of interest does not automatically imply that the researchers are biased. However, it does warrant increased skepticism toward their conclusions.
Adam Tzur has created a research collaboration platform called Sci-Fit and from what I can tell, is keto-friendly or at least not keto-unfriendly. Even so, Sci-Fit has done a deep dive into Keto Science researchers. If you’d like more information to help determine the likelihood that Jeff Volek is biased, I suggest this link to a Sci-fit article “How Keto Scientists Connect to Keto Companies”.
The Non-Profit, “Non-Partisan” Nutrition Educational Organization
The results of the research review were presented by the authors during a workshop called “Saturated Fat and Health: A Nutrient or Food Approach?” held in February 2020 in Washington, DC. The workshop was funded by the Nutrition Coalition – a non-profit non-partisan educational organization whose primary goal is ensuring that US nutrition policy is based on rigorous scientific evidence.
The organization sounds quite legit – right?
Well, not so much.
Its Executive Director is Nina Teicholz. She is the author of “The Big Fat Surprise”. This book’s subtitle is “Why Butter, Meat and Cheese belong in a Healthy Diet”. Hmm. I wonder why it’s an international bestseller.
If you are inclined to give Teicholz the benefit of the doubt and want to buy her book, I suggest you check out this article and this article before you do so. They are written by some nutrition researcher named Seth who does a brilliant deep dive into her book.
The Nutrition Coalition’s Director of its Scientific Council is Dr. Sarah Hallberg. In her transparency statement, she reveals that she is an employee of Virta Health. Virta Health uses a carbohydrate-restriction approach to combat Type 2 Diabetes. Both Jeff Volek and Ronald Krauss are on its advisory board.
For a non-partisan organization, The Nutrition Coalition seems quite partisan.
T. Colin Campbell on Saturated Fat Restriction
In his books and articles, T. Colin Campbell believes that dietary guidelines shouldn’t restrict saturated fat or any single nutrition component. The only reason saturated fat was listed as a restriction in the early 1980s is because the meat and dairy industries had a conniption when the initial dietary committee wanted to specifically restrict meat and dairy. The committee capitulated to industry and political pressure and compromised to limiting saturated fat and dietary cholesterol. This made the guidelines very unclear to most Americans.
Campbell states that animal protein has a much greater association to heart disease than saturated fat, but he concedes there are likely multiple components in animal foods that adversely affect our arteries. He is all for eliminating the saturated fat restriction, but unlike the Nutrition Coalition, he would replace that restriction with the limitation/restriction of meat, dairy, eggs and added oils. You can read more about his views on saturated fat in this article and this more recent article. You may also want to check out his book “The Low-Carb Fraud”.
Final Thought
My final thought includes this tip. Whenever you hear or read nutritional advice from a mainstream media source —- ignore it. That includes any nutrition advice in Bicycling Magazines. The author of the Chocolate Study showed how easy it is to get pure nonsense published or aired as nutrition science.
E Excerpt from Laurie Endicott Thomas’s amazing book Thin Diabetes – Fat Diabetes by clicking here!
Awesome job reviewing and summarizing the BS falsehoods in the article for us, Dom. Thank you for doing that as we all very much appreciate the time you take to do reviews like this.