Ancel Keys made no assumptions or statements about saturated fat in his 7 countries study. What he found was that people with more Omega-3 or alpha linolenic acid in their diet, supposedly derived from fish, had far less heart disease and lived longer on average. These people were from Crete, where they exercise/walk a whole lot, get lots of sun, and eat a great deal of Tuna which is rich in Brain and blood vessel selenium. Their meat is also does not contain antibiotics, hormones, or much insecticide, as it is grass fed. Even their vegetables had Omega-3 in them. And they used purslane commonly and grew their own gardens. A very similar dietary pattern and agriculture, seafood harvesint is found among a mountain dwelling Island people of Okinawa where they live the longest of any group in the world on average. All in all it helps to live on an island, eat seafood, grow your own presumably organic garden, get a lot of sun, walk a lot, eat little and eschew salt.
The reason we know it is diet is when these people come to the US and start eating our food, their HD and mortality figures soon match ours. This is enough of a control group for the penny to drop. Diet matters.
There also is ample evidence that less food/calories really matters too. Not many clinical studies, but widespread observation of wartime disease rates. just about every wartime population saw a general health increase. Two things happened in these instances, less food in general and far less meat.
It is relatively easy to come up with pro meat anything goes, lets return to our bad diet. But something is causing our epidemic heart disease and cancer rates. |
