FROM: http://www.diseaseproof.com/archives/hurtful-food-saturated-fat-vs-polyunsaturat
ed-fat.html

Saturated fats are bad? Where is the evidence? I've been studying
nutrition since 1977 and have never found evidence that there is
evidence that saturated fats cause clogged arteries. Yes, I know.
Mainstream nutrition science has been telling us for 50 years to
consume less saturated fat and more unsaturated fat. Well, if
consensus of opinion is the proper test for truth, I'm in BIG trouble
because I've been consuming a diet high in saturated fat for about a
quarter century. This includes between two and three pounds of butter
a week plus cheese, yoghurt, cottege cheese, sour cream, beef, bacon,
and eggs. So why haven't my arteries clogged? Because I consume
adequate supportive nutrition. One can't consume bakery goods, chips,
soda pop, candy bars, and all those other manufactured foods and
expect to process saturated fat properly. Rather than go on and on
about this I'll let Dr. Roger J. Williams explain the matter.

Dave Brown

Book excerpt: (my thanks to Dr. Donald R. Davis, Jr. Ph.D. University
of Texas at Austin, for permission to use this material in my
Nutrition Education Project).

The following paragraphs are from pages 81-83 of Nutrition Against
Disease (1972) by Roger J. Williams, PhD. More information about Dr.
Williams and his work is available at www.doctoryourself.com. I
encourage you to read the references and notes. They are every bit as
interesting as the associated text. Dave Brown

No discussion of heart disease would be complete without mention of
the question of saturated fats. It has come to be almost an orthodox
position that if one wishes to protect oneself against heart disease,
one should avoid eating saturated (animal) fats. While this idea may
not be entirely in error, it is misleading in its emphasis. The
evidence shows that high fat consumption, when accompanied by plenty
of the essential nutrients which all the cells need, does not cause
atherosclerosis or heart disease.
Rats have been used extensively to study the effects of diet on
atherosclerosis. Under ordinary dietary conditions the inclusion of
saturated fats in their diet will consistently promote the deposition
of cholesterol in their arteries.(50) For 285 days rats were fed a
diet containing 61.6 percent animal fat, but highly superior with
respect to protein, mineral, and vitamin content, without producing
any pathological changes in the aorta or in the heart.(51) The animals
did, to be sure, become obese, as much as three to four times their
normal weight. Animals fed vegetable fats at the same level fared
essentially no better and no worse. These findings were based upon
extensive long-term experiments at Yale, using a total of 600 rats,
which were observed for as long as two years. There were no findings
suggestive that either high animal fat diets or high vegetable fat
diets were conducive under these conditions to atherosclerosis.
These animals represented an extreme condition, since 81 percent of
their energy came from fats. Their diets otherwise were extremely
good. The protein was of high quality (casin) and was kept at a high
level (20 percent); the vitamin levels were double those ordinarily
used in this laboratory. The Yale findings were corroborated almost a
decade later (1965) at Tufts University School of Medicine.(52)
That cardiovascular disease is not associated with high fat diets is
also shown by comparison study of matched groups of twenty-eight
railwaymen from North India and twenty-eight from Southern India.(53)
The consumption of fats, mostly of animal origin, was ten times higher
among the North Indians than the South Indians, but there were no
significant differences between their lipid and cholesterol levels.
Among the South Indian population, the incidence of heart disease is
said to be fifteen times as high as among the North Indians where the
fat content of the diet is ten times higher. Dietary factors are
doubtless very important in connection with the incidence of heart
disease, but fat is only one factor, and other dietary factors are
considerably more important.
This is also corroborated by a study of 400 Masai men in Tanganyika.
(54) In spite of the fact that the diet of these men is almost
exclusively milk and meat (consumption of whole blood is relatively
rare), both of which contain much fat and plenty of cholesterol, the
cholesterol levels in the blood of the Masai are extraordinarily low,
and there was "no evidence of arteriosclerotic heart disease." It
should be noted that a diet containing large quantities of meat is
free from "naked calories," and is certain to supply an assortment of
amino acids, minerals, and vitamins in liberal amounts. Though the
Masai have other health disorders - many of infective origin - they
probably escape heart disease because their body cells are furnished
with an environment that is adequate enough to protect their hearts
and blood vessels.
A corollary of the notion that saturated fats are archvillains is the
idea that one should eat substantial amounts of polyunsaturated fats.
(The phrase "polyunsaturated fatty acids" has become virtually
synonymous with "heart protection" in both popular and orthodox
medical thinking.) While everyone should have unsaturated fats in his
diet, their presence does not by any means afford adequate protection
against atherosclerosis and heart disease. The current consumption of
polyunsaturated fatty acids in the USA is higher than it has ever
been, yet this does not curb heart disease.(55) There are many reasons
on which to base our conclusion that other factors are far more
important.(56) When other deficiencies are eliminated, the amount of
unsaturated fat is of secondary importance. If there is plenty of
vitamin B6 in the diet, fat metabolism tends to take care of itself.
I have said a good deal about vitamin B6, but I do not mean to imply
that it is, by itself, the answer to heart disease. All the nutrients
contribute to the prevention of heart trouble.

References and notes:
50. Thomas, W.A., and Hartroft, W.S. "Myocardial infarction in rats
fed diets containing high fat, cholesterol, thiouracil, and sodium
cholate." Circulation, 19:65, 1959; Taylor, C. B., et al. "Fatal
myocardial infarction in rhesus monkeys with diet-induced hyper-
cholesterolemia." Circulation, 20;975, 1959.
In the above experiments, the investigators found that prolonged
feeding of butter or lard to rats resulted in hyperlipemia and finally
coronary thrombosis and myocardial infarction with lesions similar to
those found in human beings. The diets of these animals were regarded
as otherwise "normal" in respect to their intake of supplementary
vitamins, minerals, and amino acids. Other data, however (see
reference note 52 below) demonstrate that when fat and cholesterol (or
animal protein) are increased in the diet, certain nutrients
(particularly pyridoxine) must be increased above "average" or
"normal" requirements.

51. Barboriak, J.J., et al. "Influence of high-fat diets on growth and
development of obesity in the albino rat." J. Nutr., 64: 241, 1958.

52. Naimi, S., et al. "Cardiovascular lesions, blood lipids,
coagulation and fibrinolysis in butter-induced obesity in the rat." J.
Nutr., 86:325, 1965.
In this more recent study, Naimi and his colleagues were directly
interested in the effects of a high fat butter-induced obesity on the
cardiovascular system of seventeen male Wistar albino rats. Butter
constituted 65 percent of the total calories, with 20 percent protein
(casin) and generous vitamin and mineral supplements equal to if not
superior to those used in the above-mentioned Yale study.
Under the conditions of their experiment, these investigators found
that a high fat butter diet causing obesity in rats did not produce
changes in blood cholesterol nor result in cardiovascular lesions, as
other data had led them to expect. The authors note, "The absence of
such adverse changes, despite, the development of gross obesity in
these animals may be significant, since both obesity and animal fats
have been considered to be associated with lipemia and vascular
lesions. It may be suggested that other dietary factors might have
protected the experimental group against such changes. Yet, even if
this happens to be the case, it should not detract from the
significance of the fact that large amounts of saturated fat and
obesity are not necessarily associated with lipemia and vascular
lesions."
We are confident that other dietary factors did protect these rats,
and that only in the absence of sufficient supportive nutrients are
obesity and high fat and high cholesterol diets associated with
atherosclerosis and heart disease in the human population.

53. Malhotra, S.L., "Serum Lipids, dietary factors and ischemic heart
disease," Am. J. Clin. Nutr., 20:462, 1967.
See also Malhotra, S.L., "Geographical aspects of acute myocardial
infarction in India, with special reference to the pattern of diet and
eating." Brit. Heart J., 29:777, 1967.

54. Mann, G.V., et al. "Cardiovascular disease in the Masai." J.
Atheroscler. Res., 4:289, 1964.
In an extensive review of the various peoples of the earth who have
little or no atherosclerosis and are virtually free of heart disease,
Lowenstein found that the fat intake ranged from 21 grams per day to
as much as 355 grams per day (Lowenstein, F.W. Am. J. Clin. Nutr.,
15:175, 1964). In both the Somalis and the Samburus of East Africa,
the diet is from 60 to 65 percent fat (animal), and yet they are
nearly free from atherosclerosis and heart attacks. While it might be
argued that ethnic differences are involved here, population groups of
wide ethnic variation have been reported who subsist on high fat, high
cholesterol, high caloric diets while remaining virtually free of
coronary heart disease.
In the text we have mentioned the report of Mann and his colleagues of
the Masai tribe who subsist on a diet excessively high in butter fat
(and cholesterol), the fat constituting as much as 60 percent of the
total calories consumed, yet are virtually free of cardiovascular
disease. Gsell and Mayer report that the semiisolated peoples of the
Loetschental valley in the Valaisian Alps of Switzerland habitually
eat a diet high in saturated fat and cholesterol, high in calories,
but evidence low serum cholesterol values and little cardiovascular
disorders (Gsell, D., and Mayer, J. "Low blood cholesterol associated
with high calorie, high saturated fat intake in a Swiss Alpine village
population." Am. J. Clin. Nutr., 10:471, 1962).
Stout and his coworkers report that an Italian immigrant colony in
Roseta, Pennsylvania, consumes diets much richer than other Americans,
yet have less than half the incidence of coronary heart disease (J. A.
M. A., 188:845, 1964).
In a survey study of 27,000 Kenya East Indians, A. D. Charters and B.
P. Arya report (Lancet, 1:288, 1960) that the animal fat consumption
was relatively high among the Punjabi nonvegetarians and relatively
low among the vegetarian Gujeratis, but the percentage of heart
disease morbidity "is closely proportional to that of the population."
The statistics of their survey, conclude these investigators, suggest
that in the case of the East Indian population in Kenya, "the
ingestion of animal fats is not an important etiological factor" in
heart disease morbidity. Interestingly, besides their low animal fat
diet, the Gujerati vegetarians consume foods rich in polyunsaturated
oils, as groundnut, cottonseed, and simsim oils, yet were not
"protected from coronary occlusion by a high intake of unsaturated
fatty acids."
In an epidemiological study of coronary heart disease in a general
population of 106,000 Americans conducted over a one year period, W.J.
Zukel and his coworkers found the highly provocative fact that farmers
showed a much lower incidence of coronary heart disease than males of
other groups, in spite of the fact that there were no substantial
differences in their mean caloric intake or fat and cholesterol
consumption (Zukel, W. J., et al. Am. J. Pub. Health, 49:1630. 1959).
In an epidemiological study of two Polynesian island groups, Hunter
compared the diet, body build, blood pressure, and serum cholesterol
levels of the tradition-following Atiu and Mitiaro with the more
Europeanized Raroyongan Neighbors (Hunter, J.D. Fed. Proc., 21, Supp.
11:36, 1962). The Atiu-Mitiaro people live on a diet low in calories
and protein but rich in highly saturated coconut fat. Hunter found
that 25 percent of Rarotongans (males) suffered from hypertension as
compared to only 10 percent of the Atiu-Mitiaro males. While the serum
cholesterol levels of the saturated coconut fat-eating Atiu-Mitiaro
males were higher (as high as European males), Hunter was unable to
discover by electrocardiographic readings any tendency to coronary
heart disease.
Finally we turn to the early primitive Eskimo who subsisted almost
totally on an excessively high animal fat diet. In an early 1927 issue
of the Journal of the American Medical Association (May), in an
article titled "Health of a Carnivorous Race," Dr. William Thomas
reports that of 142 adults between the ages of forty and sixty who
were completely examined, he found no unusual signs of vascular or
renal morbidity, and all indications were that diseases of the
cardiovascular system were not prevalent among these people. This is
in agreement with other reports of scientists of the primitive Eskimo
(e.g. C. Lieb. J. A. M. A., July, 1926; V. Stefannsson, in his book
Cancer: Disease of Civilization, p. 76; I. M. Rabinowitch, Canad. Med.
Assoc. J., 31:487, 1936; W. Price, Nutrition and Physical
Degeneration. New York: Hoeber, 1939).
It is clear, therefore, that adult males of a widely differing ethnic
stock can subsist on a high fat, high cholesterol, high caloric diet,
and yet remain relatively free of cardiovascular disorders. Even if
prevailing views are to the contrary, I think that the evidence points
strongly toward the conclusion that the nutritional environment of the
body cells - involving minerals, amino acids, and vitamins - is
crucial, and that the amount of fat or cholesterol consumed is
relatively inconsequential.

55. Antar, M.A., et al. "Changes in retail market food supplies in the
United States . . . ." Am. J. Clin. Nutr., 14:169, 1964