beautiful simplicity of the first formulations. A yet more jarring discovery was that the labels “saturated,” “monounsaturated,” and “polyunsaturated” were inadequate to indicate different fatty acids’ roles in triggering or protecting against atherosclerosis. Certain saturated fatty acids in milk and meat didn’t seem to raise blood cholesterol levels. Certain monounsaturates appeared to be desirable, others quite the opposite. As for polyunsaturates, they turned out to come in several molecular configurations that now are thought to play dramatically different roles in cell chemistry and plaque formation.
Epidemiologists surveying twentieth-century mortality figures further weakened the Keysian argument by failing to agree on whether there had ever been an “epidemic” of fatal heart disease, as opposed to statistical shifts during a period of increasing longevity and decreasing likelihood of dying from diseases of childhood or youth before cardiac conditions had had time to manifest themselves. Another embarrassment surfaced in the early 1990s, when the authorities had to do a highly public about-face on blanket recommendations of shortenings and margarines. Far from being beneficial, it developed, the partially hydrogenated vegetable oils responsible for these test-tube wonders contained possibly atherogenictrans fatty acids in hugely greater amounts than plainbutter. The turn of the twenty-first century saw a far worse setback: The general lean-and-trim diet blueprint to which the antisaturated fat agenda belonged was thrown into disarray when a vocal wing of dietary specialists denounced low-calorie, low-fat alternatives to such traditional full-fat foods as milk, butter, and cream as factors in a rising national tide of obesity and diabetes.
By the mid-1990s some rebellious types were heretically celebrating a return to steak. A few years later red meat and eggs—early victims of nutritional McCarthyism—were getting a small, grudging rehabilitation from the self-constituted food police. Not so butter and full-fat milk, though they happen to have a striking piece of negative evidence on their side. As shown byUSDA and census statistics, consumption of both whole milk and butter was steadily declining during the 1950s and ’60s while the number of fatal heart attacks rose—along with decreasing use of animal fats overall and increasing use of vegetable oils. Yet to this day theAmerican Heart Assciation—which readily accepts money from manufacturers in return for putting AHA approval stickers on products like Cocoa Puffs breakfast cereal and Smart Balance De Luxe Microwave Popcorn—still inveighs against milk with the milkfat that is simply part of the nature of milk. And the shakiest tenets of the Keysian party line continue to inspire tinhorn politicos like the school-district administratorswho have succeeded in getting whole milk banned from public schools in both Los Angeles and New York City. Probably most people who think of themselves as nutrition-savvy would be astonished to learn that evidence of whole milk’s being a ticket to an early grave is conspicuous by its absence.
How did a good and useful food come to be buried in such misunderstanding? For one answer we can look to well-meaning authorities on nutrition and disease who have spent fifty-plus years repeatedly issuing blanket dietary recommendations for the whole population without waiting to think through many ifs, ands, or buts that have had to be inserted piecemeal at erratic intervals. Their pronouncements, as rehashed by a corps of food and health journalists, have reached most of us as a series of disjointed bulletins compared to which the blind men’s reports on the elephant were marvels of coherence.
Add an endless chorus of commercial persuasions to buy more and more (for obvious reasons, never less) of this or that value-addedniche product targeted to real, imaginary, or highly misrepresented needs and deficiencies,
Epidemiologists surveying twentieth-century mortality figures further weakened the Keysian argument by failing to agree on whether there had ever been an “epidemic” of fatal heart disease, as opposed to statistical shifts during a period of increasing longevity and decreasing likelihood of dying from diseases of childhood or youth before cardiac conditions had had time to manifest themselves. Another embarrassment surfaced in the early 1990s, when the authorities had to do a highly public about-face on blanket recommendations of shortenings and margarines. Far from being beneficial, it developed, the partially hydrogenated vegetable oils responsible for these test-tube wonders contained possibly atherogenictrans fatty acids in hugely greater amounts than plainbutter. The turn of the twenty-first century saw a far worse setback: The general lean-and-trim diet blueprint to which the antisaturated fat agenda belonged was thrown into disarray when a vocal wing of dietary specialists denounced low-calorie, low-fat alternatives to such traditional full-fat foods as milk, butter, and cream as factors in a rising national tide of obesity and diabetes.
By the mid-1990s some rebellious types were heretically celebrating a return to steak. A few years later red meat and eggs—early victims of nutritional McCarthyism—were getting a small, grudging rehabilitation from the self-constituted food police. Not so butter and full-fat milk, though they happen to have a striking piece of negative evidence on their side. As shown byUSDA and census statistics, consumption of both whole milk and butter was steadily declining during the 1950s and ’60s while the number of fatal heart attacks rose—along with decreasing use of animal fats overall and increasing use of vegetable oils. Yet to this day theAmerican Heart Assciation—which readily accepts money from manufacturers in return for putting AHA approval stickers on products like Cocoa Puffs breakfast cereal and Smart Balance De Luxe Microwave Popcorn—still inveighs against milk with the milkfat that is simply part of the nature of milk. And the shakiest tenets of the Keysian party line continue to inspire tinhorn politicos like the school-district administratorswho have succeeded in getting whole milk banned from public schools in both Los Angeles and New York City. Probably most people who think of themselves as nutrition-savvy would be astonished to learn that evidence of whole milk’s being a ticket to an early grave is conspicuous by its absence.
How did a good and useful food come to be buried in such misunderstanding? For one answer we can look to well-meaning authorities on nutrition and disease who have spent fifty-plus years repeatedly issuing blanket dietary recommendations for the whole population without waiting to think through many ifs, ands, or buts that have had to be inserted piecemeal at erratic intervals. Their pronouncements, as rehashed by a corps of food and health journalists, have reached most of us as a series of disjointed bulletins compared to which the blind men’s reports on the elephant were marvels of coherence.
Add an endless chorus of commercial persuasions to buy more and more (for obvious reasons, never less) of this or that value-addedniche product targeted to real, imaginary, or highly misrepresented needs and deficiencies,
Similar Books
