Tag Archives: diet

No reason at all to limit saturated fat in the diet according to the largest most comprehensive review

Posted on by Laura Knight-Jadczyk
Reply

Mainstream science is finally admitting they got it all wrong – but millions upon millions of people are suffering the consequences of corrupt/junk science. Maybe some consequences would teach them to be more careful and not use humanity as a big experiment.

No reason at all to limit saturated fat in the diet according to the largest most comprehensive review

Conventional nutritional advice varies a bit depending on who you ask, but there are a few constants. One is the importance of limiting saturated fat in favour of polyunsaturated fat. Most Governments, doctors and dieticians would therefore have us eschew foods such as red meat, dairy products and butter in favour of vegetable oils, oily fish and margarine.

This week saw the publication of the largest and most comprehensive review to assess the relationship between specific dietary fats and heart health, as well as the evidence for the supposed benefits of supplementing the diet with polyunsaturated fats [1]. The study was carried out by researchers from the University of Cambridge and MedicalResearchCouncil,University of Oxford, Imperial College London, University of Bristol, Erasmus University Medical Centre and Harvard School of Public Health, and was partly funded by the British Heart Foundation.

The study brought together two types of evidence:

1. Epidemiological evidence

Evidence where associations between different fats in the diet and risk of heart disease were assessed.

This sort of evidence itself came in two types:

a. studies where associations between dietary intake of specific fats and heart disease were assessed

b. studies where associations between body levels of specific fats (e.g. as measured in the blood) and heart disease were assessed

2. Randomised controlled trials

Where individuals were treated with specific dietary fats to see what effect this had on heart disease risk over time.

45 epidemiological and 27 randomised controlled trials were pooled in this review. The total number of subjects involved in these studies was more than 650,000.

Here’s a summary of the results:

Epidemiological studies of dietary fat and heart disease risk:

Saturated fats – No association

Monounsaturated fats – No association

Omega-3 fats – No association

Omega-6 fats – No association

Trans fatty acids – Increased risk

Epidemiological studies of body levels of specific fats and heart disease risk:

Saturated fat – No association other than one specific type of saturated fat (margaric acid) that was associated with reduced risk

Monounsaturated fat – No association

Omega-3 fats – Reduced risk

Omega-6 fats – No association other than arachidonic acid (found in meat, eggs and dairy products) which was associated with reduced risk

Trans fatty acids – No association

Randomised controlled trials of supplementation with:

Alpha-linolenic acid (a type of omega-3 fat found in plants including flaxseed/linseed) – No reduction in risk

Omgea-3 fats such as those found in oily fish – No reduction in risk

Omega-6 fats such as those found in vegetable oils – No reduction in risk

The authors of the review conclude:

…the pattern of findings from this analysis did not yield clearly supportive evidence for current cardiovascular guidelines that encourage high consumption of polyunsaturated fatty acids and low consumption of saturated fats. Nutritional guidelines on fatty acids and cardiovascular guidelines may require reappraisal to reflect the current evidence.

Should we be surprised?

You’re a vegetarian. Have you lost your mind?

Posted on by Laura Knight-Jadczyk
3

Interestingly, the study doesn’t say that vegetarianism causes mental health problems. But in all but two studies done in the past, vegetarianism has been linked with higher rates of depression, anxiety, and particularly eating disorders (bingeing, restricting, and purging behaviors) which may suggest that mental disorders cause vegetarianism which then makes the mental disorders worse.

You’re a vegetarian. Have you lost your mind?

Entirely vegan diets are unknown among traditional human cultures. Back in the early part of the 19th century, dentist and explorer Weston Price went looking for vegans, but found only cannibals*. Since vegan diets in nature provide no vitamin B12 and very little in the way of usable long chain omega3 fatty acids, it is not surprising that humans have continued to eat animals and animal-derived products. Nowadays one can obtain algae-derived DHA (the major long chain omega3 fatty acid present in the brain) and supplement B12. That wasn’t possible until a few years ago, and there’s little evidence that supplementation with DHA alone is helpful for the brain.

We have been encouraged to eat more plants and less animals. Various writers have suggested it is healthier for our bodies and our planet. I have no objections to a mostly plant-based diet as long as attention is paid to protein requirements and micronutrition. However, since little things in animal products (some essential like B12, some that can be created in our bodies but perhaps not in the amounts we need, such as creatine) seem to be very important for the brain, it’s interesting to look at the literature on vegetarian diets and mental health. Here is the latest (and the best) observational study: Vegetarian diet and mental disorders: results from a representative community survey. …

And when the researchers went down the line of depressive disorders, anxiety disorders, somatoform disorders (things like body dysmorphic disorder, health anxiety and hypochondriasis), and eating disorders, the mostly vegetarian were more likely to be afflicted, and the strict vegetarian even more likely.** The full blown eating disorder diagnoses were rare enough, however, that the researchers didn’t compute the odds ratios, as they felt the dataset was not robust enough to be fair. Compared to the general population, the vegetarians were more likely to have mental disorders, and compared to the sex and education and population and age matched controls, the risk of mental disorders in vegetarians really shot up, with odds ratios hovering around 2 fold increased risk, some as high as 3 fold.

The Iron Elephant: What You Should Know about the Dangers of Excess Body Iron

Posted on by Laura Knight-Jadczyk
Reply

The Iron Elephant: What You Should Know about the Dangers of Excess Body Iron

I just finished it. EVERYBODY SHOULD READ THIS BOOK!!!

The take-home lesson from this is that there has been some genetic modification of some sort, so there is a downside to the Paleo diet for many people. This book is hugely interesting especially in view of all the conditions that iron overload can cause or assist in manifesting. No wonder doctors and Big Pharma doesn’t want to go there. People not knowing about it are sick and need drugs, not the simple expedient of giving blood regularly. Avoiding iron-rich foods isn’t really feasible; the best thing is to just get your levels checked intelligently (that is, you’ll probably need to know more than the doctor since most doctors know ZIP about this matter) and then donate blood regularly.

Paleo food: Staying Healthy in a GMO world

Posted on by Laura Knight-Jadczyk
2

A serious topic, but we have a bit of fun with it.

SOTT Talk Radio

Remember how we were told to eat all our veggies when we were younger because they were good for us? Is that really true? This week we’re going to take a look at the myth of the ‘balanced diet’ as promoted by the USDA and other state agencies. Mass cultivation of grains and vegetables has had devastating consequences for the planet’s biosphere, not least the one billion-plus people who go hungry daily, a top soil exhausted of the basic nutrients for growing crops, and a mechanized global food industry that poisons the environment at every stage of production.

GMOs are promoted by Big Agribusiness as the answer to global food shortages, but independent studies indicate that genetically modified food is not fit for human or animal consumption. GMOs are already prevalent in the food supply so is it too late to stop Monsanto’s world takeover? And is there really a food shortage to begin with? If Goldman Sachs and other market predators can pocket $400 million in 2012 alone from betting against the price of food, then commodity prices are clearly distorted. So what is the real outlook for  food supply and demand?

People who seek healthy options appear to be hemmed in on all sides, but perhaps if we look to the past, we can find a way out? Our ancestors survived Ice Ages on paleo diets that were high in meat and saturated fats, and distinctly low on carbs. Tens of thousands of people experimenting with ‘going paleo’ have reported excellent health results – results that the Big Agribusiness and Big Pharma-sponsored scientific establishment said should not have happened.

But they did, and now, on the eve of global civilization’s collapse – due in large part to its addiction to increasingly refined carbs – word is getting around that saturated fat is where it’s at.