Saturated fat has been vindicated by a majority of modern studies while polyunsaturated has been crucified. Selling us industrial vegetable oils as food was clever. That doesn't mean we should eat a aide of bacon a day, but avoiding whole unprocessed foods containing saturated fats for any reason other than calorie count is flawed. And dietary cholesterol does not correlate with ldl, nor does ldl strongly correlate with death.

The saturated/polyunsaturated issue to me points to the complexity of the science, not necessarily to anything nefarious.

Consider the response of both to heat. There's a good explanation for why polyunsaturated fats are more healthy when raw, but also good reasons to think that they're less healthy when heated to cooking temperature. But studies, and people, tend to ignore the distinction as if there's no chemical changes in response to 400F heat.

Add to this the fact that, for example, "sunflower oil" can vary wildly in it's actual lipid structure because of genetic variation, things get even more complicated.

Sure, there's manipulation in nutrition science, but it's not that different from other biomedical sciences. A lot of the confusion is that, but a lot of it is just random sampling variation, and problems people have with interpreting meta-analyses rather than individual studies; but some of it too is the actual inherent complexity of the topic.

I'm sorry, but I'm crying out wolf ... the American Heart Association basically told people to replace saturated fat with sugar.

This is a fact. Even now the recommendation is for people to eat refined carbohydrates in their daily diet because they are "fortified" with things like B vitamins or other nutrients which previously came from fatty meat.

I mean, OK, in 1950-1960 the field was new, mistakes were made, but to keep this going in 2018 is criminal.

They are criminals because people die of type 2 diabetes or of cardiovascular diseases that, surprise, are also caused by hyperinsulinemia (the result of all these refined carbohydrates) and they are side stepping the issue, probably because a lot of big companies (like Coca Cola) would lose a lot of money otherwise.

The result is that our children are being fed a diet that is making them obese — even if you protect your children at home, you can't protect them at school. Our children are getting sick, refined sugar should be declared a harmful drug and just like tobacco or alcohol, children should not be allowed to consume it.

Numerous direct intervention studies have shown the clear causal link between dietary saturated fat and blood cholesterol levels. You can obscure this fact by playing games with population meta studies because individual baseline levels vary a lot and are genetically determined.

https://nutritionfacts.org/video/the-saturated-fat-studies-s...

Anecdotally, I and several people I know have dramatically dropped our blood cholesterol levels by cutting this stuff out of our diets.

Why are you concerned with blood cholesterol as opposed to e.g. calcium scoring or actual inflammation markers you can measure almost as easily as a lipid panel? One does not spontaneously develop atherosclerosis from elevated blood cholesterol. That just doesn’t make sense from a metabolic perspective.

Elevated LDL is very highly correlated with heart disease. Studies that show that people born with genetically very low cholesterol levels are practically immune to heart disease reinforce this. The mechanism for this is well understood.

There are many studies confirming no link between high LDL and heart disease.

It’s a myth.

Meat industry smoke and mirrors siezed upon by people that want to feel good about eating thier bacon, unfortunately:

https://youtu.be/MsFWeC-DeLo

If what you say is true then why are people born with exceptionally low cholesterol levels basically immune to heart disease?

I don’t know from where you get your ideas, but as a matter of fact low LDL is associated with heart disease!

You could, you know, actually watch the video I linked.

I don't watch YouTube bullshit.

Start by reading this study:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28515068

He summarizes a bunch of peer review studies in that video instead of just choosing one that supports his point of view.

Consumption of sugar and sweeteners is definitely unhealthy but it also peaked in 1999:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/just-how-much-sugar-do-american...

What's exploded since then is chicken and cheese consumption.

The study I linked is one of the largest studies ever made on dietary fat and low fat dieting, done on 50,000 women, spanning 8 years, an incredibly expensive endeavor and cannot be easily dismissed.

This isn't just some random study among dozens of others. Most studies on nutrition are far smaller than that and far more superficial.

So random weirdos on YouTube that want to explain how fat makes you sick have to account for this particular study without invoking conspiracy theories (e.g. the "milk and diary industry", oh noes).

Invoking conspiracy theories without substantial proof is not how science works. Also his medical knowledge is obsolete ever since the 90s ;-)

> Consumption of sugar and sweeteners is definitely unhealthy

I'm unconvinced that anything is "definitely unhealthy", especially when lumping "sugar" (which sugar?) in with "sweeteners".

First, I want a credible mechanism of action (e.g. "Sugar, the bitter truth", on Youtube, since you seem to like Youtube videos), then I want credible studies, which we're terribly light on, before reaching any conclusions.

> but it also peaked in 1999:

Assuming obesity (after some delay, according to whatever theory this is) did not also peak, that merely refutes the theory that obesity is directly proportional to sugar consumption (in whatever way measurement methodology that article used).

AFAICT, that theory is a strawman.

A more nuanced theory would include all intake of fructose, to the exclusion of glucose (e.g. sucrose only counts half but HFCS is variable depending on formulation), with an accounting of absorption prevention by the presence of fiber (as in fruit).

An even more nuanced theory wouldn't depend on a simple linear proportional correspondence but would assume a minimum "safe" daily fructose dose above which obesity effects would be triggered. Perhaps, above that, the degree of obesity in the individuals suffering from it would follow a proportional curve, but the rate incidence in the population wouldn't be expected to go down until the rate of consumption fell below that minimum threshold for enough individuals.

Assuming that threshold corresponds to 40g of sucrose daily [1], all the numbers in the article are so far above it, a 15% drop fails to refute such a theory.

> On average, Americans’ total consumption of caloric sweeteners like refined cane sugar and high-fructose corn syrup is down

Most importantly, this kind of statistic would have to be considered suspect on its face, because it's unclear if fruit juices, a source of highly-concentrated, fiber-free fructose, are included. Is it considered a "sweetener" if it was there all along and almost everything else was removed? The body doesn't care, but the government statisticians might.

We need not look to chicken and cheese if "refined" sweeteners have just been swapped out for "natural" ones.

[1] the US RDA for all sugars is 50g, according to the article. A better estimate for the threshold, according to such a theory, would be pre-obesity US sugar consumption, such as from the 1950s.

There is no link between high cholesterol and heart disease, I.e. correlation is not causation.

If we are speaking of anecdotes, I eat a lot of fat, I’m on a keto diet and my cholesterol dropped to normal after I began keto.

And this is actually consistent with the claims of high fat proponents... that it’s insulin that triggers the metabolic syndrome, causing problems with LDL too, and insulin levels and resistance go up because of the sugars and the refined carbs in our diet.

Fats and protein also stimulate insulin release and a steak triggers a bigger insulin response than a bowl of white pasta. Check any chart of insulin responses to confirm this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insulin_index

Losing weight by any means will lower your cholesterol. But the typical high fat low carb keto diet has the highest mortality rate of any popular diet.

Protein stimulates insulin, but fat does not ;-)

This is why modern low-carbs diets are "high fat, moderate protein".

Also, this is NOT a war against all carbohydrates, but against refined carbohydrates, like sugar (corn syrup) or white flour. These refined carbohydrates in our daily diet have raised the insulin resistance of the population to the point that we have a type 2 diabetes and obesity epidemic on our hands and the problem is worse year by year.

N.B. our bodies can recover from insulin resistance, there are numerous reports of people with type 2 diabetes getting rid of their disease after a low carb diet. However it can take years for your metabolism to go back to normal and in the meantime things like potatoes (which otherwise are healthy and satiating) are unfortunately bad for you. Of course, you can blame refined carbs for damaging your body, and NOT potatoes.

> But the typical high fat low carb keto diet has the highest mortality rate of any popular diet.

That's a myth. Show me the evidence.

On the other hand, this is my favorite study: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28515068

He links seven studies showing increased mortality from keto diets here:

https://medium.com/thrive-global/the-skeleton-in-the-ketogen...

We agree that refined carbs are a bad idea but avoiding complex carbs is also a bad idea.

Plus you should at least consider that a diet high in animal products has a massively higher environmental footprint than a plant based diet. If everybody ate the way most keto proponents suggest we should then we as a planet and species would be screwed.

> Processed foods are bad for you.

This is really the key, and would do wonders for a majority of the population. Even if eggs and bacon is not ideal, switching out PopTarts/donuts for an egg and slice of bacon is a healthier alternative. Add some mushrooms and a tomato on the side and you have breakfast.

The other half of this equation is exercise. The benefits are enormous, yet few people do it consistently.

Yep. There's an effort called the True Health Initiative where they got a bunch of doctors to basically say "eat more vegetables".

http://www.truehealthinitiative.org/

https://www.foodnavigator-usa.com/Article/2016/11/08/David-K...

This is no less ideological than what you purport to oppose, which is the problem in a nutshell. In the absence of religion, most of us have become religious about little, largely inconsequential lifestyle choices, with food being the most common hill to die upon, and producing some of the most strident adherents. Beware anyone telling you what you should or should not eat, because they're invariably a charlatan pushing some agenda. Ideally, you'd make some experiments and see what your body tolerated the best, but it's far easier to just cargo cult onto the trendy or virtue-signalling diet trend.

As long as you're not trying to live on pixie sticks and cheetos, you're going to be okay.

Those stagements are pretty much consensus among educated (as opposed to self-propelled) nutrition experts. There is little controversy in saying such a thing.

Note however that the person said "centered around" not "should consist of". That allows for leeway in any direction.

Another discussion is that of dietary choices being "inconsequential": Food production has large consequences, and small individual choices can on a population level be far from inconsequential.

There are a mountain of studies supporting this kind of diet. And it's the diet the healthiest populations in the world eat. The only diet religion is people trying to somehow claim that stuffing yourself with butter and bacon is healthy.

Oh, there are certainly a multitude of diet religions out there. Paleos, vegans, vegetarians, pescatarians, non-celiac glutenphobes, ketos, the list goes on and on. Recently my mother-in-law read a book blaming all of the ills of the world on lectins that she took to heart, and wouldn't eat beans or tomatoes or grains for months.

The most aggravating thing about the diet religions is that nobody seems to be able to keep to themselves and practice quietly, they are compelled to evangelize and convert the heathen to the True Way. It's very tiresome when you have more important things to be concerned about than what you are putting down your gullet.