

Intake of saturated fat not associated with an increased risk of heart disease - bokonist
http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/abstract/ajcn.2009.27725v1

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acangiano
Read "Good calories, Bad calories" for more surprising, yet scientifically
valid, results.

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nova
Taubes deserves a Nobel-level award just for that book.

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nunb
Absolutely. If Nobel's were worth anything, he deserves one. I don't know what
category it'd fit under though: he should get an award for being an
outstanding educator, the conscience of science etc. AFAIK, there's none such.

He did get one for science writing, though that doesn't really highlight the
absolutely fantastic job he's done in pointing out how science fails, and
tying together threads that specialized (and NIH funded) researchers have no
incentive in doing.

NIH needs to set up an educater/conscience medal just for this guy imho.

I really hope he expands that book into a site where he could make available
his original interview audio etc.

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frossie
Okay:

1\. I hope everyone realises that reading one abstract online does not
constitute medical advice, or even the true state of scientific knowledge on
the field.

2\. If regardless you _do_ intend to base your life decisions based on
something you read on-line, I direct you to the publications of the Cochrane
Collaboration - the gold standard in meta-analyses and as close as you can get
to the final word on the current state of the publication field.

In this particular case, the relevant Cochrane reports seem [I am not a doctor
nor do I play one on HN] to say two things:

1\. Dietary changes do affect your cardiovascular risk

2\. But they have to be maintained for long periods (> 2 years) and the vast
majority of people are not compliant so in practice they are ineffective.

<http://www.cochrane.org/reviews/en/ab002137.html>

<http://www.cochrane.org/reviews/en/ab002128.html>

etc.

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gregwebs
Cochrane is good, but not infallible.

If you read farther down in your first link: There was no significant effect
on total mortality. Do you care if you have reduced your risk of CVD death, if
risk of other deaths increase?

The second review is pretty much worthless for the point at hand as it is just
determining if dietary advice affects risk factors (and the main benefit
found- total LDL reduction- is not a good risk factor anyways).

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frossie
_Do you care if you have reduced your risk of CVD death, if risk of other
deaths increase?_

I might if I have a family history of heart disease. I might if I have
confounding factors for CVD (like being on oral contraceptives). The point is,
this is why people have doctors who went to medical school. Dr Google doesn't
know about your particular situation.

Moreover, if I may channel badscience.net for a minute, I think the whole
"science says don't eat butter! science says butter is okay!" ping pong
reporting undermines public understanding of the scientific process. While
this complaint is usually addressed at traditional media, we are in fact being
complicit by submitting/upvoting these kind of stories, since we are
essentially meta-publishing them.

I do actually agree with you about the fact that total mortality is the most
appropriate indicator for people to take to heart, and I do agree that there
is a lot of evidence that points to the fact that cholesterol levels are not
as correlated with mortality as people who sell you statins will have you
think. But that is beside my point.

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gregwebs
I am glad we are very like-minded, but I will continue to focus on the few
differences:

    
    
      The point is, this is why people have doctors who went to medical school.
    

The average doctor knows very little about nutrition and exercise. They are
lucky to spend a week's worth of time on it in medical school and generally
just repeat what they have been told on the subject. Following your doctor's
advice on these issues is a sure way to ruin your health.

~~~
frossie
_Following your doctor's advice on these issues is a sure way to ruin your
health._

I actually don't agree with that. While I am willing to believe that the
average doctor's understanding of nutrition is incomplete, I doubt the average
punter's is any better.

Most people I personally know that "self-medicate" with advice they found on
the Internet or read from some popular pseudo-science book seem to be engaging
in magical thinking, and/or doing a great job ruining their own health by
themselves. Perhaps you run with a more informed crowd.

~~~
gregwebs
I agree that this is a big problem. However, there aren't just 2 alternatives:
your doctor's pseudo science or somebody else. Another alternative is to not
listen to any advice at all and just eat what you want. America might actually
be much healthier today if the government (including through doctors) never
started pushing their nutritional advice on us.

I do agree that taking responsibility for your own health is a difficult, time
consuming task that may be highly wasted if one can't distinguish between
valid and invalid information. I wish I could figure out a way to help people
with this process. If I show someone scientifically dense information their
eyes glaze over.

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gregwebs
Thank you for linking to the actual study and not an awful news report of it!

That being said, here is a blogger that I think is adding some value to the
discussion of it. [http://blog.cholesterol-and-health.com/2010/01/saturated-
fat...](http://blog.cholesterol-and-health.com/2010/01/saturated-fat-is-not-
associated-with.html)

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neopanz
The National Dairy Council: sounds like an official, government-backed
organization. It turns out to be a brand owned solely by the American Dairy
Association. Always this tangential choice of words that don't quite hide,
don't quite tell the truth. Wrap this in a seemingly serious research paper,
and you've got yourself a new "fact" that the average Joe sure can't debunk.

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nfnaaron
"Supported by the National Dairy Council ..."

Doesn't make the research invalid, but it does make me go "hmmm."

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gregwebs
Also supported by the NIH. Why is it that Dairy is a conflict of interest, and
the NIH isn't? These researchers may have trouble every getting an NIH grant
again. People don't realize the kind of influence that our government funded
research system has on the outcome- it is perhaps the main reason why the
result of this study might be surprising to someone.

Overall the dairy industry would probably greatly benefit from a recognition
that saturated fat is healthy. However, the economics of Dairy with
fat/saturated fat is actually kind of strange. On the one hand, dairy ends up
getting demonized. But on the other hand everybody buys low-fat milk and low-
fat cottage cheese. This lets the re-use the most valuable part of the milk
(cream) at low costs for butter, ice cream, etc. Even though those foods have
been demonized too, people will always want to eat ice cream.

~~~
nfnaaron
"Also supported by the NIH. Why is it that Dairy is a conflict of interest,
and the NIH isn't?"

Because "Overall the dairy industry would probably greatly benefit from a
recognition that saturated fat is healthy."

Again, I'm not saying the research is invalid. It would benefit everyone to
accurately know what's healthy, what's not, and what doesn't matter so much.

And yes, of course, an industry that sells saturated fat should know as much
about saturated fat as possible. But this is the world, and it makes sense to
treat such a study and its participants with healthy skepticism.

