Ashley Lucas, PHD Weight Loss
3-30-21

Over the last 7 years, I’ve created thousands of meal plans for clients in my clinics to combat a plethora of maladies such as chronic diarrhea, constipation, heartburn, joint pain, autoimmune conditions, weight gain, and much more. One aspect that each meal plan has in common is a foundation based upon eating plenty of healthy dietary fat. While the amount and type of fat prescribed varies according to each individual, for the majority of our clients, our suggestions call for a fairly significant increase in dietary fat consumption compared to their baseline. The reason why we commonly see a deficit in dietary fat intake is because as a society, we fear fat.

Our fear of dietary fat has stemmed from the 1960s when the Seven Countries Study was published by researcher Ancel Keys. He tracked dietary fat consumption and heart disease in various nations (22 to be exact). It was called the seven countries studies because it was only in 7, out of the 22 he studied, that he saw an increase in heart disease from increased fat consumption. He conveniently omitted the data from the other 15 countries that didn’t support his hypothesis. If he had included that data, the significance of his findings would have been completely demolished. Since his inaccurate findings did support the expectations of many in the scientific community of those times, it was adopted as a part of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. His faulty conclusions made it onto the front cover of Time magazine and, as a result, our fear of dietary fat has made history.

From that point forward our truly unfounded fear of consuming fat calories grew as did our rates of obesity and inflammation. One published study after another attempted to support this diet-heart hypothesis however the vast majority weakly stood on poor research designs or the findings were completely unsupportive of the argument that fat is “bad” for you. Many of these studies weren’t publicized and if they were, inaccurate headlines were pushed in the media to support the agenda that dietary fat is unhealthy. For example, a study published in 2012 went so far as to conclude that eggs are nearly as bad for you as cigarettes. “Egg Yolks Almost As Bad As Smoking” was the headline that went viral. If you were to take a deeper peek under the “hood” of this eye-catching story line you would see that this was a poorly controlled observational study conducted by researchers who had ties to the statin industry. The researchers in this study quizzed a group of middle-aged and elderly stroke patients about their lifelong history of egg consumption and smoking history. Ummmm…. Do you remember what you ate last Wednesday? If you do, your memory is much better than mine! We could actually stop our investigation right there, but let’s go on. Those study participants who ate the most eggs (and had the highest rates of carotid plaque buildup) were the oldest (on average about 70 years old compared to the 55 year olds who didn’t eat as many eggs), smoked the most, and had the highest rate of diabetes. These are all factors that significantly influence arterial hardening and cardiovascular disease- egg eating aside. The researchers also couldn’t control for waist circumference or exercise – two of the main risk factors that predict atherosclerosis of the carotid arterial wall. And the researchers didn’t take into consideration any other aspect of the participants’ dietary intake. For example, most folks who eat eggs usually sop them up with pancakes made with highly processed vegetable oils covered in sugar and enjoy them with a side of Omega-6 filled processed meat products. Perhaps it could have been these other foods and/or maybe age, smoking, diabetes, larger waist circumference, minimal exercise, and heightened stress levels that caused the arterial hardening? Maybe, just maybe the poor old egg was actually the good guy.
Despite knowing all of this, accepting the fact that dietary fat is healthy is difficult for many of us. It’s a huge shift in mindset and our belief system- two things we don’t like to change. I invite you to get a little bit uncomfortable and to start questioning what you believe. Challenge yourself to be radically open-minded, accept that we likely don’t know much about nutrition, and consider that the messages we’ve been told might be very far from the truth. This can be frustrating and often anger-provoking, but the sooner we can open our eyes and ears, the faster we can become advocates for our own health and have the freedom to experience better health and longevity.