Posted on 04/30/2016 4:16:08 AM PDT by rellimpank
In the second half of the 20th century, conventional wisdom in the medical community held that overconsumption of saturated fats — the kind found in milk, cheese, meats and butter — was dangerous. And so, between 1968 and 1973, a well-planned, well-executed study involving more than 9,000 patients was performed to test this widely accepted relationship between diet and heart disease.
The results of the Minnesota Coronary Experiment were notable for two reasons. First, the findings contradicted much of what was believed at the time: The study demonstrated that people who ate a diet rich in saturated fats did not go on to have more heart disease than those who ate a diet rich in polyunsaturated fat from vegetable oil.
Second, and perhaps more important, these iconoclastic findings went unpublished until 1989 and then saw the light of day only in an obscure medical journal with few readers. One of the principal investigators told a science journalist that he sat on the results for 16 years and didn't publish because "we were just so disappointed in the way they turned out."
The long-forgotten study was revisited with a recent analysis of the original data and published this month by the National Institutes of Health in the prestigious, and well-read, British Medical Journal.
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
I eat the Scardale diet, low fat low carbs and high protein with lots of veggies and cook with olive oil. Lost 92 but have put back on 20. Easier for me to lose it than to maintain a certain weight.
A foreshadowing of AGW/Climate change “science.”
I knew four of the authors. One, Lael Gatewood, sat on my doctoral committee. None of them struck me as timid or cowards - now I have to find out who among them it was that was quoted.
This was a beautifully-designed study - though I’m not certain about an IRB’s reaction today. The paper’s first section describes the ethical considerations.
It was a 4.5-year long study, double-blinded, and with open enrollment. Further, it did not rely on diary entries for food intake data. The subjects were institutionalized in six state mental hospitals and one nursing home. The dietary control was rigorous as to what - I don’t recall anything about amount but total caloric intake must have been sufficient in any pt who completed the study.
Voluntary participation was near 100% during the dietary intervention phase, which began in November,1968. IMHO, even the analyses were near-perfect.
I wish I knew what made the authors sit on this between 1973/1974 and 1989. Analyses alone would have taken the better part of two years and the authors were expecting significance to develop only after two years on the diets..
Gatewood and I talked a bit about this on several occasions before I left the Dept. of Lab Medicine for industry in 1980.
The complete 1989 paper is available, free, from:
http://atvb.ahajournals.org/content/9/1/129.full.pdf+html
I have to disagree with the reference to an ‘obscure journal.’ “Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology” is still going strong in 2016.
One of the principal investigators told a science journalist that he sat on the results for 16 years and didn’t publish because “we were just so disappointed in the way they turned out.”
I was thinking maybe some kind of PETA idiot.
More likely that he had a job that he rather enjoyed and wished to keep it.
Unfortunately astrophysics and cosmology are plagued by the institutional science problem in a big way as well. The number of hotfixes necessary to maintain the “Big Bang” paradigm long ago exceeded what would be proper for a valid hypothesis. We’ve gotten to the point where allegedly serious people take theories like “dark matter” not only seriously, but as a given.
I love me some carbs. My wife is a great baker. But when I decided enough is enough, all I have to do is follow the Taubes/Atkins formula and the weight just falls off. I did this in January, and lost about 15 pounds in just over two weeks. Everyone noticed.
I’m 65, and thank God have NO diseases and take NO meds of any kind. I have a little arthritis in the knees due to years of teaching aerobics on a cement floor.
Very similar.
The guy who started all the meat/fat/cholesterol hysteria (forget his name) packed the board of the National Heart Institute (or whatever the group is called) and worked to get the standards changed with the McGovern Committee (1977) that flipped the “food pyramid” to have 40% more carbs and 40% less meats/fats. This is PRECISELY why we have the obesity epidemic today.
Too many Paneras.
Thanks for background commentary and link. Apparently socialism and its fellow travelers have had a negative effect on the practice of science.
Everyone should read what KD has to say on this, pretty informative and good!
Todays Post
https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=231358
And this is from earlier
The medical industry doesn’t want you to read this.
Nor does the food industry.
But you should read it, and let it sink in.
https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=231343
I strongly encourage reading it and all links he provides.
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