Experts Say Vegetable Oil May Not Be As Healthful As We Thought

The American Heart Association, U.S. Dietary Guidelines and most doctors and nutritionists say that if you eat more "healthy fats" from vegetable and seed oils and less "bad fats" from red meat and dairy products, you're on your way to better cardiovascular health.  It turns out that may not be supported by the highest standards of scientific evidence. A new analysis of never-before-published trial data from the 1960s and '70s pokes holes at the notion that we can stave off heart attack and stroke by eating more polyunsaturated fat (the "healthy" kind). Instead, it suggests that some people who eat more of this fat from vegetable and and seed oils -- specifically, those that are high in omega-6 fatty acids — actually have a higher risk of death than those who have a diet high in saturated fat.  The study's findings were never published in full, perhaps because they went against the emerging and increasingly popular hypothesis that saturated fat in foods like red meat and dairy causes cholesterol levels in blood to rise, increasing the risk of cardiovascular disease and death. This hypothesis, called the Lipid Hypothesis, is currently a generally accepted piece of conventional wisdom in the nutrition science community. With help from the son of one of the original investigators, two researchers recently unearthed and re-analyzed the previously unpublished data. What they found contradicts the Lipid Hypothesis, and could change the way we view "healthy...
Source: Science - The Huffington Post - Category: Science Source Type: news