Too Much Fat Is Still Bad For Your Health
Dietary guidelines haven’t shifted much in 40 years. Stop drinking butter
There’s a wonderful myth that has permeated society. It plays into something that we all really want to believe, something that sounds wonderful because it simplifies so many of our bad choices. It allows us to order a side of bacon without feeling the least bit guilty, because everyone knows that it’s ok.
I’m talking, of course, about the idea that fat is good for you.
And recent headlines have done nothing but support the mass delight in fatty foods. According to news sources from around the globe, a new study published in the Lancet — a prestigious medical journal — demonstrates definitively that fat is good for us and carbs are bad.
Nutritionists and health coaches worldwide are celebrating the news as we speak.
People you made Pete Evans happy.
The Big Fatty Study
The study that everyone has gone nuts for is is an offshoot of the Prospective Urban and Rural Epidemiological (PURE) study, so named because public health people love acronyms. Basically, the researchers took a very large sample of 135,000 people, followed them over 10 years, and looked at whether their consumption of fats and carbs was related to how healthy they were at the end of the study.
As usual, it was a really great piece of research. The researchers had a massive sample, took into account a mind-boggling number of factors, and ended up with some really interesting findings. Not only that, but they used a representative worldwide sample, which means that their findings are applicable no matter which country you find yourself needing a fatty fix in.
Basically, they found that eating more fat makes you (slightly) healthier, whereas eating more carbs makes you (slightly) less healthy. In fact, the higher your daily intake of fat — up to 35% of total calories — the less likely you were to die. The precise inverse was true of carbs, with increasing amounts of carb intake being associated with increasing risks of death. This is what’s known as a biological gradient, which is where a higher exposure — in this case eating more of things — leads to a higher effect. It generally means that the relationship has a stronger scientific basis, which makes these results even more fascinating.
In other words, fat isn’t bad for you, but carbs are.
And so, journalists around the globe rushed to report that fat is — shocker — great for your health and you should eat way more of it. Scoff some butter, it’s good for you!
Sadly, the truth is a bit harder to swallow.
The Fatty Truth
The first thing to note is that virtually every headline got it wrong.
This was observational research. I’ve written about this again and again and again (I would keep going with agains but seriously just read my other blogs). What this means is that the researchers were not looking at causation, they were looking at association. It’s virtually impossible to tell purely from this study whether a high intake of fat causes better health, because there are simply too many factors to account for even after the researchers did their fancy analysis.
Or, to quote the scientists who did the goddam study:
Anyone who drew a definite conclusion — i.e. that fat is great for you — based on this research was simply wrong. There is a large body of literature with a lot of debate that talks about exactly how much fat we should and shouldn’t eat. This study adds to that significantly, but it’s not the be-all and end-all of dietary research.
It’s also worth noting that the absolute risk reduction from eating more fats was really, really small. Everyone reported a relative risk reduction of 23%, because it sounds really significant, but in absolute terms people who ate loads of fat were only 0.9% less likely to die than people who ate none. This is still important from a population perspective — 0.9% of a country is a lot of people — but at an individual level it’s virtually meaningless. You aren’t going to change your entire lifestyle for a less than 1% chance of seeing a benefit.
The last major thing that virtually every journalist got wrong is an idea that has permeated society for years. It’s the thought that eating less carbs, especially sugars and heavily-processed food, has only been identified as bad for you in the last decade or so. “Look!” these articles cry, “What the scientists have been telling us is wrong! Carbs and sugars aren’t great for our health after all”.
But you know what?
Dietary guidelines haven’t shifted much in over four decades. In fact, the lead researcher on this study described his recommendations as “good old-fashioned advice”, because it is essentially the same thing that health professionals have been saying for donkey’s years.
What this research mainly means is that you don’t have to feel guilty for eating a bit of fat. That’s no reason to add fat to your diet — too much is always going to be bad for you — but if you have the occasional chocolate mousse you shouldn’t worry all that much.
The Oily Bottom Line
Dietary advice is at its heart pretty simple. Whilst it may be incredibly difficult to change your diet, the basic idea hasn’t changed in a long time. Eat more fruit and veg, try and avoid processed foods, and if you do eat meat try for mostly lean cuts like chicken breast.
The reporting on this study was wrong, but mostly because we as a society ask insane things of dietary advice. We want something that both allows us to chow down on MacDonald’s every day AND stay healthy.
Sadly, it just doesn’t work that way.
There will never be a new study that proves that unhealthy food is good for you. It just won’t happen. We’ve known for decades what the ideal diet looks like and that advice is unlikely to change.
Eat food, not too much, mostly plants. Get an adequate amount of exercise.
And stop worrying about fad diets.
They don’t work anyway.
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