"Trans fatty acids are sufficiently similar to natural fats that the body readily incorporates them into the cell membrane; once there their altered chemical structure creates havoc with thousands of necessary chemical reactions—everything from energy provision to prostaglandin production," writes lipid biochemist, Mary Enig, PhD, and journalist, Sally Fallon Morell in a wonderful, eye-opening article about fats and heart disease titled The Oiling of America.
"But most of the trans isomers in modern hydrogenated fats are new to the human physiology and by the early 1970's a number of researchers had expressed concern about their presence in the American diet, noting that their increasing use had paralleled the increase in both heart disease and cancer," they note. Read the entire article | Email this article

A 1968 statement from the American Heart Association (AHA) noted that Partial hydrogenated vegetable oils contained trans fats rather than natural cis fats, but the statement was never distributed, and a researcher from Proctor and Gamble convinced the AHA's medical director to remove this statement before their recommendations were released to the public.

Lipid biochemist, Mary Enig, PhD, and journalist, Sally Fallon Morell write about this in a wonderful, eye-opening article about fats and heart disease titled The Oiling of America. Read the entire article | Email this article

"The 1968 International Atherosclerosis Project, in which over 22,000 corpses in 14 nations were cut open and examined for plaques in the arteries, showed the same degree of atheroma [ occlusions or plaque buildup in the arteries ] in all parts of the world—in populations that consumed large amounts of fatty animal products and those that were largely vegetarian, and in populations that suffered from a great deal of heart disease and in populations that had very little or none at all," writes lipid biochemist, Mary Enig, PhD, and journalist, Sally Fallon Morell in a wonderful, eye-opening article about fats and heart disease titled The Oiling of America. Read the entire article | Email this article

"[Myocardial infarction / heart attacks were] almost nonexistent in 1910 and caused no more than three thousand deaths per year in 1930," writes lipid biochemist, Mary Enig, PhD, and journalist, Sally Fallon Morell in a wonderful, eye-opening article about fats and heart disease titled The Oiling of America.

"By 1960, there were at least 500,000 [heart attack] deaths per year in the US," they continue.

"What life-style changes had caused this increase?" Read the entire article | Email this article

"The idea that saturated fats cause heart disease is completely wrong, but the statement has been “published” so many times over the last three or more decades that it is very difficult to convince people otherwise unless they are willing to take the time to read and learn what all the economic and political factors were that produced the anti-saturated fat agenda," lipid biochemist Mary Enig was quoted as saying in an interview when asked if saturated fat causes heart disease.

[This is part of an article written by Uffe Ravnskov, MD PhD, and is an excerpt from his book The Cholesterol Myths: Exposing the Fallacy That Saturated Fat and Cholesterol Cause Heart Disease.]

[Note: The book Fat and Cholesterol are Good for You is a shortened, simplified and updated version of Dr. Ravnskov's first book, "The Cholesterol Myths".] Read the entire article | Email this article