A fat waste of time

If you google "good calories bad calories Gary Taubes", you will find the book, or you can also follow this link: http://www.amazon.com/Good-Calories-Bad-Gary-Taubes/dp/1400040787

My broader point is that the evidence is largely inconclusive, and you can find facts to support a variety of hypotheses. Yet the FSA is trying to present its advice on diet and nutrition as being the ultimate truth on the matter, which represents in my view a gross oversimplification of the scientific reality.

By the way, how do you account for the French paradox, or the success of carbohydrate-restricted diets (e.g., Atkins), if fat is so bad for us?

Not sure what frying cod has to do with this discussion though...

What I mean is that the diet-heart hypothesis has never been proven convincingly - on that I very much agree with Naomi's entry above, and her reference to Ancel Key's dodgy science. I also really really urge you to read "good calories, bad calories" to convince you that the "mountain of evidence" supporting the hypothesis is in fact rather flat...

Anyone who tries to argue that a high fat diet is beneficial is delusional. However I do agree with Naomi that the FSA and the food processing industry are intimate bedfellows. (One only needs to analyse the rise of HACCP to see how connected they are) A high fat diet is not the greatest threat to the health of society, what is more dangerous is the fact that this country is the largest consumer of ready meals in the world. If we tackle societies lack of respect for food then we would undoubtedly reap greater rewards than if we concentrate on arguing about specifics

The diet-heart hypothesis is so-called because it is still just that; a hypothesis. There is little or no evidence to suggest that eating saturated fat (or cholesterol) increases heart disease or that reducing it increases one's health or life span.

The hypothesis is based on one of the worst examples of science we have ever seen - and represents a clear example of the dangers of consensus in science.

Instead of eating nutrient-dense foods with the minimum of inteference by the food processing industry, saturated fat has become the enemy and our diets are becoming increasingly dominated by oxidised vegetable oils, grains extruded at high temperature, bulking agents, chemicals and synthetic vitamins and minerals.

Saturated fat and cholesterol are essential to the structure of every cell in our bodies and other important roles in our body chemistry, including the production of brain chemicals, hormones, the immune system and the absorption of calcium.

Surely history will judge the legion of 'health experts' and their low-fat advice harshly in future. It is difficult to understand how the theory of one man (Ancel Keys) became doctrine, to be repeated like a mantra by all who follow without ever asking the question: is this true?

One can only conclude that the powerful food-processing industry and FSA are intimate bed fellows and it is unlikely that the facts will ever be laid before us, enabling us to make reasoned decisions. Instead, the horrendous anxiety that has been created around what we eat will continue to grow and our health will continue to be devastated by mis-information and the medicalisation of our food.

I'm glad you're addressing this, and I'd be very interested to hear a refutation from you on the claims made in this article. I don't trust them.

But what you've posted here isn't a refutation, it's argument from authority, and thus not very much use. "Look at the evidence on the effects of the Western diet on cardiovascular disease." Well, that's what this article seems to be doing, and it seems to be saying that the evidence is very thin.

How do you respond to the article's claims that "“The whole premise that eating saturated fat would lead to heart disease is based on two old reports", for example? What other reports show conclusively that the relationship is causative, not merely correlated? Feel free to quote papers and references - I think that your audience here can cope with that.

I'd really love to hear a respected food scientist defending the conventional position, but in order for that to be of value, you do need to defend it, not just dismiss it offhand.

Really hoping you choose to do that!

(For anyone who's interested in the meantime, Wikipedia offers a brief overview of the pro and con research - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturated_fat )

What an oversimplification of the issue, which is shocking from a so-called "Chief Scientist"!

You give the impression that the scientific evidence is conclusive, which it is not, as explained beautifully in Gary Taubes' book "Good calories, bad calories".

You will probably dismiss the book as non-scientific, but top academic journals are full of articles that make clear that the evidence is, at a minimum, extremely ambiguous. See for instance Sylvan Lee Weinberg's review of this literature (Journal of the American College of Cardiology, 2004, 43: 731-733), which starts with the observation that "The low-fat "diet–heart hypothesis" has been controversial for nearly 100 years." and goes on to state that "The low-fat–high-carbohydrate diet [...] may well have played an unintended role in the current epidemics of obesity, lipid abnormalities, type II diabetes, and metabolic syndromes. This diet can no longer be defended by appeal to the authority of prestigious medical organizations or by rejecting clinical experience and a growing medical literature suggesting that the much-maligned low-carbohydrate–high-protein diet may have a salutary effect on the epidemics in question."

I believe that your entry in this blog confirms Taubes' theory that organisations like the FSA are "an enormous enterprise dedicated in theory to determining the relationship between diet, obesity, and disease, while dedicated in practice to convincing everyone involved, and the lay public, most of all, that the answers are already known and always have been - an enterprise, in other words, that purports to be a science and yet functions like a religion" (Good calories, bad calories, p. 451-2).

You should know that the answer to the question raised by the DT article is not known. Instead of treating consumers like kids, you should be honest about the limits of our knowledge, and the complexity of the underlying science. As Einstein allegedly said or wrote, "I agree to simplify as much as possible, but no further".