A heretical view of the American Heart Association's nutritional dogma [abstract]

ABSTRACT

The dogma is as follows no more than 33 percent of the calories in the diet should come from fat, and of those no more than 33 percent should come from saturated fat. Because of the saturated fats in eggs and butter, both of these foods are unsuitable. Diets that do not conform to these standards raise serum cholesterol levels and thereby promote coronary heart disease (CHD). However, serum cholesterol is not correlated with dietary cholestorol. diet or drug regimes that reduce serum cholesterol do not reduce mortality. Blood lipoprotein a, the best single predictor of CHD, correlates not at all with fat in the diet but inversely with ascorbic acid. Low-fat diets do not protect against CHD type 2. In practice, they are almost always high-carbohydrate, and often high-sucrose diets. Such diets promote obesity, Type-2 diabetes mellitus, and the production of advanced glycosylation end-products, which in turn promote hypertension and CHD. Because of the need for essential fatty acids, all diets should include unsaturated fatty acids. However, as quantities rise above optimum the unsaturated acids promote greater free radical damage and require increasing amounts of oil-soluble anti-oxidants to counteract this effect. Eggs are excellent food, containing, in addition to protein, carbohydrate, fat and all the vitamins, minerals and essential fatty acids needed to produce a chicken. They do not promot CHD. Nutritionally, butter is much better than margarine which contains large amounts of trans fatty acids, that interfere with the metabolism of essential fatty acids, raise low density lipoprotein and triglycerides and lower high density lipoprotein. The best is a low-carbohydrate diet with little sucrose and adequate levels of vitamins, minerals and essential fatty acids. (AU)