I just read Dr. Mercola’s critique of the principal studies on which our “healthy diet” advice is based, The Cholesterol Myths that May be Harming Your Health. It would seem that there’s a lot of misleading information being promulgated.
To start with, Dr. Ancel Keys cherry-picked his cases for the Seven Countries Study back in 1953 when he told us that higher fat intake correlated to higher rates of coronary heart disease. Had he used data from all 22 countries that had data available, no correlation between dietary fats and coronary heart disease would have been found.
Analysis of the Framingham Study showed that lower blood cholesterol levels were associated with a lower cardiac risk. What they did not tell us was that the same study determined that the more cholesterol and saturated fat people ate, the lower their blood cholesterol levels. And yet we were told to lower our cholesterol and saturated fat intakes.
And finally, while the “MrFit” Study did show a marginal decrease in coronary heart disease for those who ate a low-saturated fat and low-cholesterol diet, there was an increased all-cause mortality rate for those who followed such a diet with an increase in deaths from cancer, brain hemorrhage, suicide, and violent death.