A little over a year ago the Journal of the American College of Cardiology published a study that purportedly showed what a terrible health risk saturated fat is. I guess because of all the interest generated by the recent bogus red meat/colon cancer study, some news services decided to recycle this old study and pass it off as new.

Today’s headline in HealthDay is:

Saturated Fat: Even a Little Splurge May Be Too Much

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Just read through the August issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, which was chocked full of good articles. I’ll be kept in blogging fodder for several days just from the contents of this one issue.

The paper I want to discuss today is one that I find hilarious. It’s a report of the Hamburg Burger Trial and I find it hilarious because the results were so different than what the researchers expected. In fact, they mention how surprised they were to get these results. The only reason they should have been surprised is that they are either ignorant or stupid – or both.

If I gave most readers of this blog the same data the authors of the study had, the blog readers would not have been surprised. They would have expected exactly the outcome that resulted. Which makes the readers of this blog a whole lot smarter than the long list of scientists who authored this paper.

Here’s the setup.

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Researchers at my alma mater the University of Arkansas reportedly have developed a healthful trans fat. I figured that it wouldn’t take long. Money quote:

By juggling the molecular structure of soy oil, the team of scientists have developed a substance that is rich in conjugated linoleic acid.Andrew Proctor, professor of food science, and graduate student Vishal Jain claim that studies have shown that CLA can give the immune system a boost.

The two scientists have now used the converted oil to produce potato chips that contain high concentrations of CLA.

“It is still important to have a low fat diet and we do not propose increasing the fat intake, but a few chips will provide needed CLA,” said Proctor. [Italics in the original]

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Just got the December issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (AJCN), which prints a letter debate on the harmful effects (or lack thereof) of saturated fats. I’m going to print the debate in its entirety below so that you can listen in. I want to you see first hand the narrow mindedness of a true believer of the lipid hypothesis.

The inspiration for this debate came from an editorial written by Martijn Katan about a paper published last May by Ronald Krauss and his group. (I wrote a fairly extensive post on this same paper as soon as it came out.) Katan is a fervent advocate of the lipid hypothesis who writes editorials espousing it whenever he gets the chance. Since these editorials seem always to advance the same issues despite any evidence to the contrary I’ve begun referring to them as the Katanic Verses.

A taste of this (typical) Katanic Verse: Read more »

MD and I had a great time at the ASBP (American Society of Bariatric Physicians) meeting.  We ran into a lot of old friends and met some new ones.  And the Robert C. Atkins Memorial Lecture went off without a hitch.  Thanks to all of you who wished me well.

I was amazed at the change in the types of material presented at this meeting compared to that MD and I saw the last time we attended in the late 1980s.  During our early years at the ASBP everyone was pretty much deep into the low-fat movement.  All the lectures were from practitioners telling the attendees how to implement low-fat diets or, worse yet, how to implement low-fat diets and give diet pills.  Since MD and I were using low-carb very successfully in our practice at the time, we didn’t see any real need to drop the $300 or $400 each on membership fees and the money to attend meetings only to be presented with information and ideology in which we didn’t subscribe.  How things have changed.

I found myself in front of the attendees debating the merits of the minor differences between different low-carb plans.  Ron Rosedale, M.D., our former partner, agreed on virtually everything  except the amount of protein necessary–I argued for more; he argued for less.  He was, of course, wrong, but we didn’t let that interfere with our good time.

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