- Dr Mosley used to believe all saturated fats were bad for us
- So he ditched beef, full fat milk and butter
- They were thought to cause weight gain and heart attacks
- But new studies have revealed this isn’t the case
- There’s a stronger link between sugar consumption and heart disease
- Eggs are a prime example of how we got it wrong on fats
- People were advised to eat just one a week in the Eighties
- But now regular consumption is encouraged as they are high in protein
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Milk, cheese, butter, cream – in fact all saturated fats – are bad for you. Or so I believed ever since my days as a medical student nearly 30 years ago.
During that time I assured friends and family that saturated fat would clog their arteries as surely as lard down a drain. So, too, would it make them pile on the pounds.
Recently, however, I have been forced to do a U-turn. It is time to apologise for all that useless advice I’ve been dishing out about fat.
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Go ahead: New studies have found that saturated fats, found in butter, don’t cause heart disease
New studies have not only failed to find a convincing link between saturated fat and heart disease, they have shattered other long-held anti-fat beliefs, too.
We now have compelling evidence that low-fat diets rarely work and that eating the right kind of fat is not only good for your heart but may also help you lose weight.
So why the sudden change? And what is making us fat?
The roots of our current confusion lie in a paper by an American scientist called Ancel Keys in 1953. It covered the increasingly common problem of clogged arteries.
Keys included a simple graph comparing fat consumption and deaths from heart disease in men from six different countries. Americans, who ate a lot of fat, were far more likely to have a heart attack than the Japanese, who ate little fat. Case solved. Or was it?
Other scientists began wondering why Keys chose to focus on just six countries when he had access to data for 22. If places like France and Germany were included the link between heart disease and fat consumption became much weaker. These were, after all, countries with high fat consumption, but relatively modest rates of heart disease.
Change of diet: Dr Mosley now eats more oily fish, Greek yoghurt and eggs
In fact, as a renowned British scientist called John Yudkin pointed out, there was actually a much stronger link between sugar consumption and heart disease.
Professor Yudkin argued that sugar was behind the rise in heart disease ravaging the West. He also pointed to another dangerous trend emerging in Fifties Britain: the close relationship between the number of televisions being bought and fatal heart attacks.
Buying a TV in the Fifties was a sign that you were affluent, but it also meant you’d spend a lot more time sitting down. This research was among the first to highlight the dangers of a sedentary lifestyle.
But Yudkin’s warnings about sugar were denounced by a fellow scientist as ‘nothing more than scientific fraud’. He was, as one of his colleagues colourfully put it, ‘thrown under a bus’.
Meanwhile, the war on fat gradually gained momentum, to the extent that by the time I reached medical school in the Eighties, there was no mention of Yudkin’s findings.
People were cutting down on dairy products and switching to sugary carbohydrates and vegetable oils.
This, it turns out, was a mistake. To turn vegetable oil into margarine, manufacturers used a process called hydrogenation (gas pumped through oil at high temperature), which produces trans fats. These are the Darth Vader of the fat world: good fats turned bad.
Unlike saturated fats, there is clear evidence that trans fats damage your heart. They were found in most shop-bought biscuits and cakes until they were removed in 2007.
Which was a bit late in the day for me. As a student I took the advice that saturated fats – not hydrogenated fats – were the enemy very seriously. I was slim and I did a lot of exercise, but I also ate butter and burgers. With a family history of heart disease, strokes and a father who’d just been diagnosed diabetic, I told myself it was time to act. I persuaded my father to go on a low-fat diet. He lost a little weight, but soon gave up.
Reluctantly, I said goodbye to beef, switched to skimmed milk and avoided yoghurt with any hint of fat. It made for a much duller diet, but at least I was healthier. Or was I? Well, no. I kept this up for the next few decades – and the results? I put on over two stone, despite regular exercise. My cholesterol soared past the healthy range and two years ago I discovered I was borderline diabetic.
While I didn’t look fat, I’d piled on the pounds in the worst place possible: tucked away in my abdomen, coating internal organs.
My response was to exercise more but it had little effect. I was eating less fat, but compensating with starchy pasta and potatoes. What I hadn’t appreciated is the way these foods act on your body. A boiled potato will push your blood glucose up almost as fast as a tablespoon of sugar, since it is rapidly digested.
Ironically, we now know that if you eat that potato with butter, the fat will slow absorption and the blood sugar peak will be less extreme.
Rapid spikes in glucose force your pancreas to pump out insulin, which drives it back down, but can leave you hungry again a few hours later.
Carbohydrates are also less satiating than fat or protein. So you eat more and the weight creeps up.
Back on the menu: Eggs are now celebrated for their protein content while adding butter to potatoes can prevent a spike in blood sugar levels
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Simon,
West Midlands, United Kingdom,
moments ago
So will you be compensating all those people who took your advice before, via the proceeds of your new book, which we now are supposed to believe!
EggLover,
Shropshire, United Kingdom,
moments ago
The Swedish health service have adopted the high fat – low carb diet and now recommend it to the country as the best way to eat. Clever those Swedes…always first to change. It’ll be another 30 years for our decrepit NHS!!
Squirtle,
Darlington, United Kingdom,
moments ago
“We should be feasting on fat†this doctor should be sacked…wow
Phoebe2,
Durban,
11 minutes ago
Abot 50 years ago I read ‘Refined sugar is the curse of civilization’ and I have never forgotten this!
Jim Baggie,
of Bromham, United Kingdom,
11 minutes ago
I have absolutely no scientific research to back me up but I believe over-use of motor cars, television, sedentary work patterns, overly large portions encouraged by eating at pub restaurants and the availability of cheap, tasty but processed food from supermarkets have led to the obesity and diabetes crisis. We could perhaps try and live as we did in the sixties, but quite honestly, when you look at lifestyles then, it isn’t that attractive an era. Mind you, our politicians seem to be working quite hard to get the majority of us back to those days. Poor but honest, mainly because there was nothing worth nicking.
pete3000,
newquay, United Kingdom,
16 minutes ago
Good article, really shoddy headline. Nowhere in it does he say “feast†on fats, quite the contrary.
kat,
mayo Ireland,
18 minutes ago
Go away please
Sambuca,
Ireland,
19 minutes ago
And this is why I ignore all these reports in what we are suppose to eat and what we are not, I eat what I want, plenty of fruit veg and meat n the odd treat food and I’m fine.
Lou,
Maidenhead,
19 minutes ago
Man is the only animal that drinks milk after weaning. Processed milk products are even more unnatural leading to clogged arteries. This is another load of hogwash, I have lost 12 Kgs by cutting out dairy completely following a heart attack. My cholesterol has dropped from 8 to 4, and that is down to nil milk products.
Dr Evil,
Evil Towers, United Kingdom,
22 minutes ago
Don’t forget that beer is a food too.
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