OK, so that clip did not really say saturated fat is good for you, did it? Nope, that clip only showed you why people believe saturated fat is bad for you. Next is a piece from an article that appeared in Men's Health, back on December 13, 2007. The author of this article was Nina Teicholz.
Suppose you were forced to live on a diet of red meat and whole milk. A diet that, all told, was at least 60 percent fat — about half of it saturated. If your first thoughts are of statins and stents, you may want to consider the curious case of the Masai, a nomadic tribe in Kenya and Tanzania.
In the 1960s, a Vanderbilt University scientist named George Mann, M.D., found that Masai men consumed this very diet (supplemented with blood from the cattle they herded). Yet these nomads, who were also very lean, had some of the lowest levels of cholesterol ever measured and were virtually free of heart disease.
Scientists, confused by the finding, argued that the tribe must have certain genetic protections against developing high cholesterol. But when British researchers monitored a group of Masai men who moved to Nairobi and began consuming a more modern diet, they discovered that the men's cholesterol subsequently skyrocketed.
Similar observations were made of the Samburu — another Kenyan tribe — as well as the Fulani of Nigeria. While the findings from these cultures seem to contradict the fact that eating saturated fat leads to heart disease, it may surprise you to know that this "fact" isn't a fact at all. It is, more accurately, a hypothesis from the 1950s that's never been proved.
You can read the full article here. It will be well worth your time, believe me. But let's go back a bit further in time. I'm sure you all have heard of the Atkins diet. It is an LCHF diet, almost identical to Banting. So, if the above was true, why didn't Dr. Robert Atkins convince the people of it back in '72, when he released his book? The answer is hidden in an article written by Gary Taubes. It was published in The New York Times on July 7, 2002. Here is a small part of it:
When Atkins first published his ''Diet Revolution'' in 1972, Americans were just coming to terms with the proposition that fat -- particularly the saturated fat of meat and dairy products -- was the primary nutritional evil in the American diet. Atkins managed to sell millions of copies of a book promising that we would lose weight eating steak, eggs and butter to our heart's desire, because it was the carbohydrates, the pasta, rice, bagels and sugar, that caused obesity and even heart disease. Fat, he said, was harmless.
Atkins allowed his readers to eat ''truly luxurious foods without limit,'' as he put it, ''lobster with butter sauce, steak with béarnaise sauce . . . bacon cheeseburgers,'' but allowed no starches or refined carbohydrates, which means no sugars or anything made from flour. Atkins banned even fruit juices, and permitted only a modicum of vegetables, although the latter were negotiable as the diet progressed.
Atkins was by no means the first to get rich pushing a high-fat diet that restricted carbohydrates, but he popularized it to an extent that the American Medical Association considered it a potential threat to our health. The A.M.A. attacked Atkins's diet as a ''bizarre regimen'' that advocated ''an unlimited intake of saturated fats and cholesterol-rich foods,'' and Atkins even had to defend his diet in Congressional hearings.
The American Congress had decided saturated fat is bad for you, and they even went so far as to have Congressional hearings against those who refused to step in line. Just how scientific is that? Even today scientists are ridiculed for going against the low-fat idea. Just look at how the media portrays our own Tim Noakes, one of the most qualified in his field in the world.
However, the science world is changing. Scientists have more and more problems convincing the people to stay on the low-fat diet. Experiments that are being done to prove saturated fat is bad for humans keep on proving otherwise, and more and more scientists are switching over. Go do your own search on the internet for studies on LCHF. You will find many showing you the advantages of going high fat, and not a single one that can prove any link between high fat and heart disease.
And finally, I want to leave you with this image of the cover of the June 2014 issue of Time Magazine:
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