Consumer
Guide To Fats
How Do We Know Fat's a Problem?
and Can Fat be Healthy for you?
In 1908, scientists first observed that rabbits fed a diet
of meat, whole milk, and eggs developed fatty deposits on
the walls of their arteries that constricted the flow of blood.
Narrowing of the arteries by these fatty deposits is called
atherosclerosis. It is a slowly progressing disease that can
begin early in life but not show symptoms for many years.
In 1913, scientists identified the substance responsible
for the fatty deposits in the rabbits' arteries as cholesterol.
In 1916, Cornelius de Langen, a Dutch physician working
in Java, Indonesia, noticed that native Indonesians had much
lower rates of heart disease than Dutch colonists living on
the island. He reported this finding to a medical journal,
speculating that the Indonesians' healthy hearts were linked
with their low levels of blood cholesterol.
De Langen also noticed that both blood cholesterol levels
and rates of heart disease soared among Indonesians who abandoned
their native diet of mostly plant foods and ate a typical
Dutch diet containing a lot of meat and dairy products.
This was the first recorded suggestion that diet, cholesterol
levels, and heart disease were related in humans. But de Langen's
observations lay unnoticed in an obscure medical journal for
more than 40 years.
After World War II, medical researchers in Scandinavia noticed
that deaths from heart disease had declined dramatically during
the war, when food was rationed and meat, dairy products,
and eggs were scarce. At about the same time, other researchers
found that people
who suffered heart attacks had higher levels of blood cholesterol
than people who did not have heart attacks.
Since then, a large body of scientific evidence has been
gathered linking high blood cholesterol and a diet high in
animal fats with an elevated risk of heart attack.
In countries where the average person's blood cholesterol
level is less than 180 mg/dl, very few people develop atherosclerosis
or have heart attacks. In many countries where a lot of people
have blood cholesterol levels above 220 mg/dl, such as the
United States, heart disease is the leading cause of death.
High rates of heart disease are commonly found in countries
where the diet is heavy with meat and dairy products containing
a lot of saturated fats. However, high-fat diets and high
rates of heart disease don't inevitably go hand-in-hand.
Government Advice
Dietary guidelines endorsed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture
and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services advise
consumers to:
Reduce total dietary fat intake to 30 percent or less of
total calories.
Reduce saturated fat intake to less than 10 percent of calories.
Reduce cholesterol intake to less than 300 milligrams daily.
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