Saturday, October 2, 2010

The Good News on Saturated Fat

Must be that time of year when all the long held myths concerning health and nutrition are held up for scrutiny. About time, many people believe that saturated fat is bad. That is bollocks. You need saturated fat. This obsession with the terror of saturated fat is what drove many people to avoid eggs and dairy products. This in spite of good literature showing that eggs are an excellent food and FULL FAT dairy is good for you, albeit keeping in mind total fat intake and the balance of fatty acid intake.

Thus, from the news article ...
A recent meta-analysis of epidemiological and intervention studies of milk fat conducted by Peter Elwood, DSc, MD, FRCP, FFPHM, DUniv, Hon DSc, Honorary Professor at the School of Medicine, Cardiff University, found that milk and dairy consumption actually was associated with a decrease in CVD risk.
The above has been known for years. What many people don't realise is that dairy products contain a very beneficial fatty acid - conjugated linoleic acid.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

have enjoyed going through your older posts - thanks. the following link may be of interest:

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/counterpoint/stories/2010/3020322.htm

has particular emphasis on announcement/reporting of medical findings...something to keep in mind i think.

also, elsewhere you deride the views of dale atrens (it was actually something of his i was looking for when i found your site) - have you read his "the power of pleasure" - you may find he was ahead of the game!

again, interesting site, thanks.

John said...

Hey Anon,

Thanks for the link, I was thinking about that over the weekend and came to the conclusion that a sole voice of authority is just about the most dangerous invention of humanity. We tend to think of intelligence and expertise as being contained within an individual but in truth these are distributed phenomena that are contained within cultures.

Experts are useful creatures but are prone to become captive to their own sub-culture. If that culture is too closed the experts can be ivory tower twits. Happens often enough.

Thus I love to point out to people that I will only tolerate appeals to authority when I am very ignorant about the subject in question and even then I tend to follow up on whatever the authority figure claimed to be true. This is tiresome but it is necessary. I even check my own memory recalls on occasion, which is a good discipline because you tend to be more careful with memory when you know you're going to check it occasionally.

Dale Atrens was attacking a straw man. Nonetheless there is a great deal wrong with the foundations of modern neuroscience. Most neuroscientists are aware of this, unfortunately they are not the ways who get the attention of the press. The press junkies were Atren's target but I got the impression he thought all neuroscientists were like that.

The reporting of medical news, and particularly nutrition, is disastrous.

Thanks,


John.