OPINION: A view of healthy eating during Heart Month

February has been American Heart Month. Is it just me or does anyone else find it peculiar that, after many decades of heart disease research, scientists have yet to develop a proper narrative explaining what causes arteries to clog? Since the 1950s, the scientific consensus has been that saturated fats are the culprit. Google “artery clogging saturated fat” and you’ll see what I mean.

In truth, saturated fat consumption has gradually declined over the past century. Meanwhile, heart disease has become the number one killer in almost every country in the world. One exception is the population residing on the Island of Kitava, one of the Trobriand Islands in Papua New Guinea’s archipelago. Interestingly, saturated fat consumption was high (almost 20 percent of energy intake) and 80 percent of the adults were daily smokers when scientists first studied the population (Google “Kitava Study”). Yet researchers found no heart disease among the Kitavans.

In addition, cholesterol levels were high enough to be considered lethal in other countries. Clearly, both smoking and saturated fat intake are not THE major causes of heart attack.

So what is causing the problem? I’d say it is dietary advice to replace saturated fats with seed oils rich in omega-6 linoleic acid. When the government first issued this recommendation in the 1970s, the thinking was that lowering total cholesterol by any means would prevent arteries from clogging and thus prevent heart attack. Since polyunsaturated seed oils lower total cholesterol, they were considered healthy.

Well, the food manufacturing industry happily reconfigured the food supply to fit the recommended dietary pattern. Traditional culinary and baking fats such as lard, beef tallow, butter, and coconut oil were replaced with Crisco (crystallized cottonseed oil), soybean oil, corn oil, sunflower oil, safflower oil, peanut oil, and canola oil. Butter was replaced by trans fat-laden margarine. And here’s what happened:

“It is especially disconcerting that in the United States, mean triglyceride levels have risen since 1976, in concert with the growing epidemic of obesity, insulin resistance (IR), and type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). In contrast, mean low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) levels have receded.” (Excerpt from a 2011 American Heart Association Scientific Statement on Triglycerides and Cardiovascular Disease)

Can anybody explain what happened? Here’s what University of California Riverside researcher Frances Sladek says. “The incidence of obesity in the U.S. has increased from 15 percent to 35 percent in the last 40 years and is expected to rise to 42 percent by 2030. Paralleling this increase in obesity are a number of dietary changes, most pronounced of which is a >1000 fold increase in consumption of soybean oil from 0.01 to11.6 kg/yr/capita from 1909-1999: soybean oil consists of 50-60 percent linoleic acid (LA), so the energy intake from LA has increased from 2 percent to >7 percent/day. LA is an essential fatty acid and a precursor to arachidonic acid, which is linked to inflammation, a key player in obesity, diabetes, cancer, etc.

Another component of the American diet that has increased substantially in the last four decades is fructose, primarily in the form of high fructose corn syrup in processed foods and sodas. The roles of both LA and fructose in the current obesity epidemic are under intense scrutiny but are not well understood and seldom compared side-by-side (Google “Frances Sladek linoleic acid”).

To learn more about these matters, Google “Stephen Guyenet The American Diet.” The 16-minute video will likely make you wonder, “Who is pulling the strings?” Likely answer — the edible oils industry.

David Brown is a resident of Kalispell.