How Do Fatty Foods Affect Our Health. Oops

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#This study 40 years ago could have reshaped the American diet. But it was never fully published.

Peter Whoriskey, Washington Post, April 12, 2016

It was one of the largest, most rigorous experiments ever conducted on an important diet question: How do fatty foods affect our health? Yet it took more than 40 years — that is, until today — for a clear picture of the results to reach the public.

The fuller results appeared Tuesday in BMJ, a medical journal, featuring some never-before-published data. Collectively, the fuller results undermine the conventional wisdom regarding dietary fat that has persisted for decades and is still enshrined in influential publications such as the U.S. government’s Dietary Guidelines for Americans. But the long-belated saga of the Minnesota Coronary Experiment may also make a broader point about how science gets done: it suggests just how difficult it can be for new evidence to see the light of day when it contradicts widely held theories.

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The blue line represents the mortality rate of patients on the special cholesterol-lowering diet. The dashed red line represents the mortality rate of patients on the conventional diet. The take-away: people on the special diet were dying at a higher rate. (Source: BMJ)

For more information read the entire article at the Washington Post.

To read the original BMJ editorial upon which the Washington Post article is based.

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The fact—as Gary Taubes and others have pointed out—is that the low-fat orthodoxy is politics, not science. The evidence has always been there, but until recently was disparaged or simply ignored. It’s past time for reality to assert itself, but at least it is beginning to happen.

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There was a reason it was ignored and that was the influence the US department of agriculture had on other government agencies, including those supposed to take care of health issues. Considerations of Midwest farmers wanting to sell their corn and grain became the dominant driver with no consideration to the health of us citizens.