Confused by T. Colin Campbell article

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Confused by T. Colin Campbell article

Postby FlowerPower » Mon Apr 21, 2014 2:11 pm

Help! I'm relatively new to this WOE and had finally embraced the NO OIL aspect of this lifestyle. I gave up meat and dairy a year ago, but, I'm ashamed to admit, I've continued to eat my share (and maybe yours too) of chips and French fries. I thought I had finally gotten through to myself that low fat was as important as the no animal products, then I read this article:

http://nutritionstudies.org/fallacious- ... rated-fat/

In it, Dr. Campbell says that protein is the real issue with heart disease, not fat. If this is the case, why the admonitions to avoid oils? Is it just for weight control? I had thought that saturated fat and cholesterol were factors contributing to heart disease. Now I'm just confused.

I apologize in advance if this has already been covered somewhere. I'm really trying to understand how to make the healthiest choices for myself and my family. The fat/oil issue the one remaining sticking point in our household (I've gotten everyone on board now with no meat and dairy). I'm the only one in the house who needs to lose weight. If I need to avoid fat/oil for that reason, but they don't, I don't want to be telling them it's bad for their health when it isn't.

Thank you in advance for any help you can give.
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Re: Confused by T. Colin Campbell article

Postby waingapu » Mon Apr 21, 2014 2:24 pm

Wow,

You know, after brushing over the article I went back to the top to check the date.... thinking it may possibly have been April 1st.

Seriously I did that, but saw it was actually April 18th, 2014, so not a April Fools day joke.

I will re-read this, but it strikes me as unusual. I'd better read it again to determine its true meaning.

Wondering about oils, walnuts, etc.
Last edited by waingapu on Mon Apr 21, 2014 2:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Confused by T. Colin Campbell article

Postby patty » Mon Apr 21, 2014 2:30 pm

I didn't read the whole article, but what I did read, Dr. Campbell is saying is No to Animal products or products concocted from parts of animals as all oil/fat you need is in whole intact plants. In essence he is saying keep it simple and whole:) Have you watched Jeff Novicks dvds on fat and oil? They are excellent.

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Re: Confused by T. Colin Campbell article

Postby FlowerPower » Mon Apr 21, 2014 2:37 pm

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.
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Re: Confused by T. Colin Campbell article

Postby Joseph65 » Mon Apr 21, 2014 2:39 pm

His focus was on saturated fat only. He never mentions omega six oils as bad or good. I have to admit that lines like this: "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." HOWEVER, it's just bit tough to suck down saturated fat without the animal protein that generally come along with it....the exception being coconut products. This all plays into my personal theory that saturated fat in and of itself can't be bad if Mom feeds it to us in her breast milk AND we convert every single excess starch, sugar and protein calorie into saturated fat...which we then "eat" throughout our normal daily activity and sleep. The idea that we are giving ourselves heart disease is sort of counter intuitive.
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Re: Confused by T. Colin Campbell article

Postby eXtremE » Mon Apr 21, 2014 3:02 pm

Good grief! ImageWho to believe...what to believe? All the experts say something a little different.


LOL
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Re: Confused by T. Colin Campbell article

Postby patty » Mon Apr 21, 2014 3:12 pm

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.


Stay with Jeff. And I highly recommend watching his dvds. They are actually great to share with your family. And any questions you or they have you can take them right to Jeff:) That is why Dr. McDougall supports his view, because he puts it in away that can't be denied:) Oh and you can make fries and chips without oil. Dr. Campbell is saying no to fat an oil unless it is whole intact plants.

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Re: Confused by T. Colin Campbell article

Postby dteresa » Mon Apr 21, 2014 4:52 pm

First of all this is not out of the blue. While I do not have the book with me I do remember reading somewhere in the China Study that protein shows a much better correlation with heart disease than fat. I think there might be a graph that shows the points in more of a straight line using protein than using fat.

However, what has to be reconciled is the fact that, even among those on this group, higher fats mean higher cholesterol even without the animal protein. And Dr. Esselstyn mentions one of his patients who swore he was eating exactly on plan yet it turned out upon further questioning that the man was using olive oil. Thus his angina.

If fat is only guilty by association with animal protein then fat is harmless. Even saturated fat.
If, as dr. Campbell seems to be saying, fat has nothing to do with artery blockages then bring on the butter. And the olive oil. And the coconut oil. Why not?

On the other hand, I will have to revisit healthylongevity and plantpositive because I could have sworn both of them implicated fat in heart disease and use what they consider well done studies to show the connection.

Does Jimmy Moore finally get it right? Is the answer a diet of 85% (harmless) fat and only about 15% animal protein. Do his really high cholesterol and LDL numbers not predict blocked arteries?

And finally one has to ask--if you do eschew all fats except maybe for some flax and chia seeds and, weight permitting, some nuts, does this mean that this is a bad choice. In other words. If sat fat isn't bad for you, is it bad or good for you to NOT eat any fats with your plant diet?

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Re: Confused by T. Colin Campbell article

Postby FlowerPower » Mon Apr 21, 2014 5:19 pm

Thank you, everyone! I feel a bit better now about my confusion. I'll continue to look into Jeff's stuff. I know I had read about Dr. E's patient and the oil...I started looking into this WOE because of angina. It went away when I cut out meat and dairy, but had started to come back (less severely) when I was eating junk (chips). I talked myself into believing that since it had gone away, I didn't need to be strict about the oils. I had just started back with a new commitment to my health (and weight loss) when I read this article. LOL. And, honestly, I did come away thinking, If saturated fat isn't the bad guy, how can oil be a problem.

I really appreciate the wisdom of all of you here--and your willingness to share it! I'll keep reading (and do some re-reading!).
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Re: Confused by T. Colin Campbell article

Postby eXtremE » Mon Apr 21, 2014 5:36 pm

Whatever you were doing bf to make the angina go away, I say keep doing it. :)
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Re: Confused by T. Colin Campbell article

Postby EvanG » Mon Apr 21, 2014 6:17 pm

Campbell isn't saying that eating lots of saturated fat is benign.

He is saying that (1) it is difficult to separate the effect of the fat and protein in animal food (2) most of the evidence is even more damning towards protein than fat as the primary culprit (3) blaming it on either fat or protein alone is a fools errand (moot point).

Both excess fat and protein exist at high levels in animal food, so it is pointless to lay blame on one or the other. For that matter, there are other metabolites such as choline in the animal food that may be important and the impact on gut microbes might be important. The take-away message should be to eat less animal food.

With his endless drumbeat on wholism, Campbell is saying that when scientists focus on one thing at a time, they tend to make up oversimple mechanisms that turn out to be wrong or misleading. In this article, he is showing that the focus on saturated fat fits into that category - misleading at the very least. There are many problems that this causes. One is that nutritionists start doing things like recommending skim milk or low-fat cheese sticks. These might be worse than the original high fat version if the protein is the problem.

This phrase seems to me to be what was driving this article.
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.


With regard to adding oil to a whole food plant based diet, this article still indicates this would be a bad move because the oils are empty calories that would displace helpful whole plant foods. He also shows support for the Ornish and Esselstyn approach as proven good diets
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.


This quote seemed the most provocative and also unclear.
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.

I think that the emphasis is on the question being moot. He doesn't say that saturated fat has been proven to be benign, just that it hasn't been proven to be a major cause of heart disease.

I recall Campbell saying that the original McGovern report put more of the blame on animal foods, but that the meat industry got the senate to replace animal foods with a bigger emphasis on saturated fat. This article seems to highlight the folly of that decision. Dr. Greger talks about some of this here: http://nutritionfacts.org/video/the-mcgovern-report/
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Re: Confused by T. Colin Campbell article

Postby FlowerPower » Mon Apr 21, 2014 6:46 pm

Thanks for such a thoughtful reply, EvanG. I do understand Dr. Campbell's wanting to get away from the reductionist arguments and where he's coming from on that point. I'll check out the link about the McGovern report.

It really is that one comment about saturated fat not being a major contributor to heart disease that I"m having trouble with. And I admit, the fault is probably my own, but it's hard to reason around. I thought fats/oils were unhealthy not just because they were empty calories, but because they did play a role in heart health. Dr. Esselstyn's strict plan for people with heart disease seemed to support that view. This article just threw me for a loop on that one issue.

My husband and I both have heart disease in our families. He, however, is the same size he was in high school and has been eating the SAD until recently (no high blood pressure, low cholesterol). Of the two of us, he's the one who loves to cook (hence the discussions about the use of oils and other higher fat vegan ingredients). My argument until now had been that those things aren't heart healthy. I'm the one who needs to lose weight and who developed angina. He eats nuts and avocados regularly, but has agreed to not use oil in cooking for my sake. The issue does still come up, though, and I just want to be able to discuss it intelligently with him.
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Re: Confused by T. Colin Campbell article

Postby landog » Mon Apr 21, 2014 7:39 pm

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.

Oil is NOT a whole, intact food, NOT low in fat, NOT rich in antioxidants and NOT a complex carbohydrate.

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Re: Confused by T. Colin Campbell article

Postby petero » Mon Apr 21, 2014 10:01 pm

Et tu, Colin? Suddenly I don't like the guy as much. Few people are going to base their diets around coconuts and nuts, so he gets away with a moot point for WFPB folks. I take it there's a book to sell.

Yet there must be some mechanism or reason why these animal foods are worse. Is it really the protein? I doubt it. Citing studies from 1926 isn't particularly convincing. I'd like to "Minger" his article by looking up some research but I don't care enough to do it. Ok, I care a little. The important thing is that Esselstyn and Ornish (and Gould, who allows some low fat/fat-free animal products) don't achieve their results with high fat diets and I will continue to avoid high fat foods, plant or otherwise.
It's easy to be a naive idealist. It's easy to be a cynical realist. It's quite another thing to have no illusions and still hold the inner flame. -- Marie-Louise von Franz
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Re: Confused by T. Colin Campbell article

Postby ulialen » Tue Apr 22, 2014 2:20 am

I think you have not understood what campbell have written in this article.

First of all, look at this phrase:
"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."

That means that you have to eat "whole, intact" plant based food. That exclude: meat, cheese, eggs,fish, all types of vegetable oils (because they are not whole and intact foods) and all type of vegetables food that high elaborated (for example many foods like creams derived by soy).
He also say "low in fat and protein but rich in antioxidants and complex carbohydrates". That is the same "nutritional thinking" of Mcdougall, esselstyn and jeff.
So no difference in what foods they suggest us to eat.

The difference is another. The difference is the explanation that campbell give about this choise of foods.
He say that the culprit is the animal protein and not the saturated fat and with animal protein he means animal food.
Animal food is the culprit.
As he observed animal food are rich in animal protein and animal fat, So it is very easy to confound an effect due to animal protein with an effect due to animal fat.
Obviously this argument remain inside of the class of whole foods and not elaborated food: elaborated food are just found as not healthy in many articles and in a whoolistic vision.

So he want to say that the error is to make experiments that are focused on single micronutrient or macronutrient.
That according to him is an error: experiment have to be focused not on fat or protein but on food and see which food promote health and which food promote disease.
According to him is not possible to examine the real effect of fat because to make that you have to isolate the fat from the other compound of the food and in this manner you havent no more a real, whole food. But you obtain an elaborated food.
And if you analize the articles that consider the real food, the culprit is the animal food.
And if you eliminate animal food (or animal protein that is the same thing) from the whole intact range of food options, you immidiatly remove all the bad effect of also the saturated fat. And that is useful to him to suggest that it have no sense to make article that watch only to a single nutrient.
And according to me, he is right. And he is suggesting to eat in the same manner of Mcdougall, esselstyn and Jeff.
I see no contradiction.
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