By Richard Tardif
Those of us of a certain age who lived through the science and the media’s anxiety over heart attacks in the mid to late 1900s, and those who were not even born, but are alive today, have the infamous and controversial Seven Countries Study to thank for today’s obesity epidemic. The study’s conclusion, authored and researched mainly by Ancel Keys, was that populations consuming large amounts of saturated fats in meat and dairy had high levels of heart disease, while those eating more grains, fish, nuts and vegetables did not. It was the smallest possible cause, and at first, it seemed logical.
While the study has its supporters and its opponents to this day, what grew out of this unchallenged study was the low-fat diet craze(trans fats, high fructose corn syrup, and sugar), the cholesterol wars, a diet, health and fitness industry that is anything but, and in the end, a long list of diseases related to diet seemingly out of control. And obesity.
What prompted the study to begin with was the alarming concern in the number of fatal heart attacks experienced by middle aged men in America, something Harvard-trained physiologist Ancel Keys, the main author of the study, thought was related to diet, in particular the consumption of saturated fats (Eggs, bacon, milk, meat, chicken, anything fatty).
To prove his theory, Keys first tested 286 middle-aged businessmen and found high levels of cholesterol in their blood. He soon concluded that this buildup of cholesterol was the main culprit in the businessmen’s heart attacks. Keys later traveled around the world with a team of research colleagues from The University of Minnesota in the late 1950s, collecting data.
He returned to America after also examining the data of nearly 13,0000 men in their 40s and 50s across 22 countries from different regions of the world. When he presented his case, using only seven countries from the initial study, his explanation concurred with his belief that saturated fat was the culprit to why most middle-aged men were dying from heart attacks. We should eat less of it. A. Lot. Less.
The media loved it. The New York Times reported,
“…that specialists from around the world “agreed that high-fat diets, which are characteristic of rich nations, may be the scourge of Western civilization. The diets were linked with hardening and degeneration of the arteries.”
Keys, as was much of the popular media, was criticized for not referring to studies like Yerushalamy and Hilleboe’s data in 1957 from 22 countriesshowing a weaker relationship between total fat consumption and heart disease. Nevertheless, fat continued to be vilified. A Newsweek report, headlining, Fat’s the Villainwas flat out macabre. Things just seemed to fall into place for Keys and one of his followers, Dr. Paul Dudley White, considered one of America’s most prominent cardiologist.
On September 24, 1955, 64-year-old president Dwight Eisenhower suffered a heart attack. DR. White was asked to make his house calls in the treatment of the President. He held twice-daily press conferences with updates on the President’s health. White had used the press, to say, and write his own piece that, “the disease that had become the great American epidemic.”
The media just kept coming.
Keys later told Time Magazine in 1961 that “being overweight isn’t so much of a health problem as most people think. Worrying about it can easily miss the real problem,” which was heart and artery problems caused by high-serum cholesterol.
It was from these studies came the “Diet-Heart Hypothesis,” – which states that people should eat less cholesterol and saturated fat to reduce cholesterol and reduce heart attacks. With a world fearing death from heart attack the Seven Countries Study was attractive evidence and as a precursor to shaping American nutrition guidelines. So, we began what was to become a hotly argued issue that would become the basis for America’s first guidelines targeting saturated fat, which over time was homogenously adopted worldwide, including in Canada, of which many are still believed, followed and prevalent today.
By the time Keys made the cover of Time magazineon January 13, 1961, representatives of the American Heart Association had already announced on national television that a diet including butter, lard, eggs, and beef would cause heart disease. Now somewhat of a science nutrition celebrity, Key’s stabbed the last rib eye right in its fat, and Westerners were fully introduced to the idea saturated fats were clogging their arteries and eventually leading to heart disease.
In the Time magazine article, Keys is paraphrased as stating,
“Americans eat too much fat. With meat, milk, butter and ice cream, the calorie-heavy US diet is 40 percent fat, mostly saturated fat—the insidious kind…that increases blood cholesterol, damages arteries, and leads to coronary disease.”
Time labelled him “Mr. Cholesterol!” and quoted his advice to cut insidious dietary fat from 40 percent of total calories down to 15 percent. Keys would later recommend a cut to a mere four percent. The article focused on Key’s personal and academic history, something that lent to his growing authority. “People should know the facts,” he said. “Then, if they want to eat themselves to death, let them.”
Fair enough!
Americans were ushered into the depths of the Diet-Heart Hypothesis, and began to eat themselves to death by cutting fat and eating from the more low-fat items, most produced increasingly with trans fats, and tons of sugar for taste, a one-two-combination. And many of us did eat ourselves to death or near death because of scientific posturing, political know-it-all swagger and media bias.
An alien spying in on us would shake their head, or heads.
Key’s research was contrary to a century of German research advising minimum consumption of carbohydrates, yet somehow Key’s research went unchallenged, which is unheard of in the research circle founded on support, refute, or validateany hypothesis. It was unchallenged so much so that a growing body of scientific evidence, and the media’s obsession over saturated fats in the 1960s and 1970s called for an all-out attack on the fat-and-cholesterol-rich American diet, unilaterally advising an increase in carbohydrates, led by the American Heart Association, to curb the epidemic of coronary heart disease.
In my opinion, this study was a turning point in human nutrition and not a turning toward new horizons. Period. Bring out the critics.
But! Maybe the slackness of the Internet fact checking has it all wrong.
See this 2017 Study on how Keys was unduly discredited.
Next time: Why health reporters should read Jane Brody
Richard Tardif is a personal fitness trainer, health & fitness author, speaker and an award-winning journalist. Richard’s first book Stop the Denial: A Case for Embracing the Truth About Fitness, challenges, surprises, and inspires you to embrace a fitness lifestyle that will work in achieving your individual goals.
