Cholesterol-Heart Hypothesis

The Cholesterol-Heart Hypothesis in a nut shell is the idea that when we eat saturated fats and cholesterol, the cholesterol enters our blood stream and attaches to the sides of our arteries and slowly giving us atherosclerosis and heart disease. Foods that are laden with cholesterol include red meats, eggs, cake, ice cream, and macaroni and cheese. This makes sense right? You eat heavy cholesterol laden foods and your blood serum levels go up.



A guy name Ansel Keyes in the 1960s and 1970s was able to convince a large portion of the United States that this was true. He did this by going from country to country and looking at their diets versus the frequency of heart disease. His reports show a direct correlation between heart disease and consumption of saturated fats. For a visual representation of his findings, please refer to the above video. Unfortunately to get the perfect graph that he boasted, he had to omit certain countries including the United Kingdom, Norway, and Holland that eat high amounts of saturated fat but somehow avoid the high levels of heart disease that countries like the United States, Canada, and Australia are plagued with. Whats a shame is that Ansel Keyes research has spurred the United States to shun saturated fat when in truth it should be embraced.

Saturated fat is not the devil. Here is a link that chronicles an exceptional amount of research from various institutions that completely destroys the cholesterol-heart hypothesis. My favorite was a study performed by the University of Connecticut over a 12 week time span. Overweight men and overweight women were placed on either a low carb or a low fat diet. In the end, those on a low carb diet lowered their total cholesterol and triglyceride levels more than those on the low fat diet. Many other studies have proven that the link between heart disease and cholesterol is bunk. Unfortunately, the United States still needs to catch up on their readings.