We have reached a time when doctors, who have no experience in research, let alone nutritional research, are parroting dangerous and tragically flawed theories about subjects that they are unqualified to discuss.
Recently Dr. Dean Ornish addressed the Canola Council of Canada convention in San Francisco, Ornish stated that “consumers need to believe that switching to healthy foods like canola oil, and away from unhealthy foods like saturated fats will make their lives more enjoyable, not just longer.”
Ornish is a heart surgeon, not a nutritionist, and has been in the forefront of the promotion of the flawed philosophy originating in the 1950s that saturated fats are the cause of heart disease.
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Ornish is among a group of American doctors who advocated that diets should not include more than 10 per cent fat, which fueled the refined carbohydrate craze over the last four decades and coincided with the alarming increase in obesity and diabetes across North America. They failed to realize that by reducing fat to 10 per cent of daily diets, it increased the intake of refined carbohydrates which are the true cause of obesity, diabetes and heart disease.
In his book, “Fats that Heal and Fats that Kill,” Udo Erasmus, a lipid chemist, explains the process of converting vegetable oils to “white oils, which are the equivalent of refined white sugar.” Erasmus explains that during processing, canola oil loses most of its protein, fibre, minerals, vitamins, lecithin and phytosterols. Also some essential fatty acids are destroyed. In addition, processing introduces toxic molecules resulting from the breakdown and alteration of fatty acids.
All this, so that a formerly healthy natural oil will sit on a supermarket shelf for days without becoming rancid. Cold pressed oils on the other hand are nutritious, but fragile. Vegetable oils must never be used for frying, since toxic proteins are formed. Erasmus places butter as the preferred choice for use when frying foods. Many nutritionists have documented the rise in the use of refined vegetable oils and margarines as the cause, along with refined carbohydrates, of the obesity and diabetes epidemic.
In “Good Calories, Bad Calories,” Gary Taubes, an investigative science journalist, summarized over 2,000 research papers, and 600 interviews with scientists. Taubes’ investigation going back to the mid-1850s led him to the conclusion that saturated fats do not cause heart disease, but rather the inclusion of such fats prevents obesity and most of the “diseases” of modern society.
In March 2010, the Journal of the American Society of Clinical Nutrition published the results of a meta-analysis – an exhaustive study of all research – the same thing Gary Taubes did. The Journal reached the conclusion that saturated fats do not cause heart disease.
We have reached a time when doctors, who have no experience in research, let alone nutritional research, are parroting dangerous and tragically flawed theories about subjects that they are unqualified to discuss. Taubes quotes an interview with an admitting room doctor in a large U.S. hospital, who commented that “if nutrition was important, we would have learned about it in medical school.”
Taubes’ showed that refined carbohydrates and vegetable oils have created the cholesterol “disease” industry by increasing LDL, or bad cholesterol, whereas saturated fats from meat, eggs, cheese, butter and whole milk actually lower LDL cholesterol. Also, and this is the tragedy of our culture: meat, eggs, cheese, whole milk and the total absence of carbohydrates has been the only diet which has caused massive and permanent weight loss among all the research subjects.
The animal industry has always been strangely silent about stating the obvious, that saturated fats are maligned. I have waited for years for the CCA, Alberta Beef Producers, the Beef Information Center and Alberta Lamb Producers to defend our animal products against such blatant misinformation. But to no avail.
Aren’t the check-offs we pay as producers, intended to promote and protect our respective industries? The reason I will request a refund of our lamb check-offs will be because Alberta Lamb has failed to expose the damning of saturated fats.
It’s time we quit placing those with MD degrees on a god-like pedestal, started using our brains, observed the ancient truths about food, and countered the lies.
