Fats and Oils
(An excerpt from my chapter on that subject in the book “How To Live The Healthiest Life” available from https://howtolivethehealthiestlife.com/)
You may have heard the old saying, “A lie is halfway round the world before the truth has got its boots on.” Well, never did that saying apply more than to the subject of fats.
The writer and social critic H.L. Mencken once wrote, “For every complicated problem there is a solution that is simple, direct, understandable and wrong.”
Lie: A high fat diet is bad for you, cutting back on fats will help you lose weight and reduce risk of cardiovascular disease.
Truth: Healthy fats are essential, a reduced carbohydrate intake will lose fat easier than a reduced fat intake.
Truth: “In Framingham, Massachusetts, the more saturated fat one ate, the more cholesterol one ate, the more calories one ate, the lower people’s serum cholesterol… we found that the people who ate the most saturated fat weighed the least and were the most physically active.” (William Castelli, director of The Framingham Study).
Truth: “The diet-heart hypothesis had been repeatedly shown to be wrong, and yet, for complicated reasons of pride, profit and prejudice, the hypothesis continues to be exploited by scientists, fund raising enterprises, food companies and even governmental agencies. The public is being deceived by the greatest health scam of the century.” (George Mann, MD, renowned researcher).
Truth: More Americans die each year from too little fat than die from breast cancer. An estimated 40,000 US women die each year from breast cancer and according to a recent Harvard study, 72,000-96,000 people a year are dying from too little omega 3 fatty acids in their diets.
Truth: The Mayo Clinic published a “smoking gun” report on fat. After following the diets of 937 seniors for nearly 4 years they made a shocking conclusion: seniors who ate MORE fat and fewer carbs had a 44% lower risk of ever developing dementia.
Truth: A National Health and Nutrition Survey found a HIGH-FAT, lower-carb diet is associated with faster brain processing speed, BETTER learning and STRONGER memory.
Truth: Red meat, cheese, eggs, whole milk, real butter are very high in choline that creates a super nutrient in the brain.
Truth: Coconut oil, high in MCT (Medium Chain Triglycerides, a type of VERY healthy fat), has been shown in clinical studies to improve symptoms of moderate Alzheimer’s in as little as 8 weeks!
The facts proclaim loudly that “low fat” is a scam/con/lie. It began with a Russian study in 1908 that fed protein-rich animal foods to rabbits who developed arterial plaques and cardiovascular disease. Researchers then found the same results with chickens, pigs, goats and guinea pigs.
All of these animals are herbivores that evolved eating nothing but plants. They are clearly not designed to eat meat. When fed meat and fat they get sick. That makes perfect sense. That data was then inappropriately extrapolated to humans.
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The Ancel Keys hypothesis
In the 1950s, Ancel Keys’ Seven Countries Study suggested a correlation between saturated fat intake and heart disease. His findings laid the foundation for dietary guidelines that demonized animal fats and promoted vegetable oils as a healthier alternative. However, the study was purely observational and could not establish causation.
Flawed science and cherry-picked data
Later reviews revealed that Keys selectively omitted data that did not support his hypothesis. Critics have pointed out major methodological flaws, including cherry-picked data and failure to account for confounding factors. This raised concerns that the war on saturated fat has been based on incomplete or misleading science.
The rose corn oil trial exposed the risks
As vegetable oil intake skyrocketed, so did rates of obesity, diabetes and heart disease. One of the first challenges to the mainstream narrative came in 1965 with the Rose Corn Oil Trial, which tested the effects of replacing dietary fats with corn oil. The trial found that consuming polyunsaturated fats (PUFAs) increased cardiac events and mortality in patients with pre-existing heart disease.
The safflower oil experiment
A similar pattern emerged in 1978 with the Sydney Diet Heart Study, which evaluated safflower oil, another omega-6-rich vegetable oil. Those who increased their safflower oil intake had higher all-cause mortality rates, including a significant rise in cardiovascular disease and coronary heart disease deaths.
These studies, along with decades of flawed dietary policies, reveal a troubling pattern — one where industry influence and weak science shaped public health recommendations, with devastating consequences.
From: https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2025/05/05/connecting-past-and-present-reclaim-health.asp
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The “fat is bad” lie really began to pick up traction with a 1976 Senate report, titled “Dietary Goals for the United States”. It was written by a journalist with no background in health, who was advised by a Harvard nutritionist who viewed dietary fat as the nutritional equivalent of smoking cigarettes. Very quickly taken up by many health organisations was the simple, if untrue, mantra, “eating fat makes you fat” and they promoted that a low fat diet was the way to prevent disease.
It was thoroughly debunked by 4 independent studies in the early 80’s which found that men on low or high fat diets had no change in weight or coronary risk. Dr. Walter Willett of Harvard is considered by many to be the dean of nutrition and health studies. He states, “the percentage of calories from fat in a diet has not been related to any important health outcome.”
Low fat is continuously promoted by Big Food because it is cheaper to replace with sugar the taste lost when they took out the fat. So we have blooming weight and diabetes problems from increasing consumption of high-fructose corn syrup or cane sugar rather than healthy coconut oil.
The rate of obesity in the US between the 1900’s and the 1960’s was stable at 12-14% of the population. Within 5 years of the “fat is bad” message hitting the press the obesity rate was 20%. Today it is over 25%! Two thirds of Americans are overweight or obese.
Despite everything you’ve been told, all fats are not bad. There are good and bad fats. Good fats are an essential part of a proper diet, bad fats are deadly. The brain particularly needs fat in the diet.
Some good fats are fatty fish like sardines, wild salmon and trout, grass fed meat fat, butter, lard, dripping, coconut oil, the oils in nuts, linseed and chia seeds.
Some bad fats are trans fats – hydrogenated vegetable oils, canola etc. and their replacement, intersterified fats. Oils are typically not very stable, they destabilise and go rancid quickly. To solidify them and extend the shelf life of commercial oils, processors add hydrogen. This makes them a trans fat. In a 26 year survey of 87,000 US women, of the group with an underlying coronary heart disease, those who ate the most trans fats were three times as likely to die of a cardiac arrest.
These studies, along with decades of flawed dietary policies, reveal a troubling pattern — one where industry influence and weak science shaped public health recommendations, with devastating consequences.
