This is only partially true…no pun intended! Partially hydrogenated oils are cheaper than using real animal lard or tropical oils. This is one of the reasons food processors started using them. And the soybean processing lobby spent millions lobbying the FDA back in the 60s-70s, this has been documented by Mary Enig. They had to con the health police into believing they were safe, which they did. But it is true that the Framingham study misinterpretations (as you document so well) had already started a demagoguery against saturated fat, so there was a search for an “alternative.”

Hi David–

Proctor & Gamble came up with Crisco in 1911 and advertised it as a safe, tastier alternative to the animal fats in use at the time. It’s use (along with that of other trans fats) exploded when the anti-saturated fat folks demanded an alternative.

Now these same anti-saturated fat pinheads are going after the trans fats that they, themselves, were in great measure responsible for afflicting us with.

Best–

MRE

It’s just another example of the “Big Lie” technique. People will believe a big lie over a little lie, and if repeated often enough, they will eventually believe that it’s true.

This is why I’ll never believe that “low-carb” will be accepted by the mainstream. I don’t care how many research studies come out proving what has already been proven by anthropologists and biochemists (that man developed for millions of years on a high-meat and/or all-meat diet). The idea that “saturated fat is bad” has been so ingrained in the psyche of the culture that no amount of truth will be able to overcome the Big Lie.

Hi Rob–

Let’s not give up hope. You can’t just prove the low-carb diet is better; you’ve got to overwhelm the opposition with data, which is starting to happen. I think we’ll see a major change within the next decade.

Keeping my fingers crossed.

MRE

Funny, though, that conservatives are more likely to be religious, and do not embrace evolutionary facts about animal domestication.

Hi Karen–

Strange, indeed. You wouldn’t think there would be a political bias in the idea of food choice, but there clearly is. Most conservatives tend to be meat eaters whereas most liberals lean in a vegetarian direction.

Best–

MRE

Hi Neal–

You’re right on point. I actually heard a prominent physician say after the salt-causes-hypertension theory had been debunked, We can’t tell people we were wrong about this because then they won’t believe us in the future. Which, of course, begs the question, if you’re telling them the wrong things why should they believe you.

It is a real scandal.

Best–

MRE

Some of it is gibberish but you’d expect that as he’s from Yorkshire and i should know as i’m too !

Do you know Marvin Harris work ? If not i think both yee and the Mrs would adore Our Kind by Harris..really wonderful

Hi Simon–

You’re correct about the link: some of it is informative, the rest gibberish.

I have read a number of Marvin Harris’s books including Our Kind. He is one of us.

Cheers–

MRE

Hi Kathy–

It does indeed boggle the mind.

Cheers–

MRE

Hi Gary–

Hmmm, typically what I’ve noticed is that there appears to be a bias in favor of saturated fats and of meat in general on the part of political conservatives and a tendency toward a more vegetarian diet in political liberals.

I don’t know if Tierney in this case is acting more as a corporate apologist or an anti-regulator. I suspect the latter. My worry, however, is his blithe acceptance of the saturated-fat-is-bad-for-you hypothesis as fact.

Cheers–

MRE