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FlowerPower wrote:Patty, I haven't seen any of Jeff's DVDs, but I have read through a lot of his posts on this site. I've also read Dr. Esselstyn's book on heart disease and Dr. McDougall's Starch Solution. I've even read The China Study. I just don't know how this article fits with everything else as far as the health effects of fat go...and it's a topic that I end up having to debate at home. It seemed to dismiss fat as an issue completely. I'm afraid I'm reading it wrong or missing something.
It is clear to me that referring to saturated fat as a main cause of heart disease (and cancer) has been a diversion of epic proportions. It is far more important to focus on the avoidance of animal-based foods—and concocted ‘foods’ of plant parts—in favor of whole plant-based foods naturally low in fat and protein.
In my experience, this more wholistic (‘w’ intended) understanding of diet, health and disease is best illustrated by the remarkable demonstrations of Esselstyn[38] and Ornish[45] showing that advanced heart disease can be reversed by whole foods, not be changes in single nutrients like saturated fat (actually cured when the diet is maintained). Esselstyn’s findings are especially telling with his 26-year follow-up findings (reported in the film, Forks Over Knives) and his new much anticipated report[46] involving a much larger number of subjects. These findings involve whole foods and do not depend on selective treatment of individual risk factors and events of the heart disease process.
Is saturated fat the chief cause (or even a major contributing cause) of heart disease? The answer is, “No”, not only because of the lack of published empirical evidence of adverse effects of saturated fats but also because it was mostly a moot question from the beginning.
FlowerPower wrote:why the admonitions to avoid oils?
T. Colin Campbell (in that article, in really big letters) wrote:Dietary decisions should be made within the nutrient profile framework of plant-based foods and in the context of whole, intact foods, appropriately low in fat and protein but rich in antioxidants and complex carbohydrates.
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