, 20 tweets, 8 min read Read on Twitter
1/20 In rebuttal Drs Willett and Hu of @HarvardChanSPH continue to press Harvard’s plant-based anti-meat agenda. Was not always so at @HarvardChanSPH. May 1952 edition of Postgraduate Medicine carried an Editorial – Comments on Cholesterol – by Harvard’s Hegsted, Mann and Stare
@HarvardChanSPH 2/20 ‘…it should be pointed out that when exhaustive statistical analysis is required to show the correlation between two variables, such as lipoprotein level and atherosclerosis, it usually means that there are many other variables …’
@HarvardChanSPH 3/20 ‘whose effects are unknown or uncontrolled and that such correlations are of relatively LITTLE VALUE for predictive purposes. The fact that one may be able to show statistically significant correlation between two variables…’
@HarvardChanSPH 4/20 ‘may have relatively little to do with cause and effect. The wide range in the data presented to date does not lead one to place much reliance…’
@HarvardChanSPH 5/20 ‘on the lipoprotein determination for predicting the likelihood of the development or presence of atherosclerosis’.
@HarvardChanSPH 6/20 ‘It may seem logical for many individuals that IF – and we emphasize the if – one can show a relation between high serum cholesterol or lipoprotein values and atherosclerosis…’
@HarvardChanSPH 7/20 ‘then low cholesterol diets are automatically desirable. A consideration of what we now know will not support that logic. It was once thought that if you wanted to fatten a hog you should feed a high fat diet'.
@HarvardChanSPH 8/20 ‘It has been known for a long time that the fat in a hog is largely made from the carbohydrate and that the fat in the diet is not directly deposited in the body. The situation with regard to cholesterol appears similar’.
@HarvardChanSPH 9/20 ‘Cholesterol is made in the body from smaller fragments, including acetic acid, which in turn arise from sugar, fat and protein….this fact alone makes it obvious that low cholesterol diets may have no effect on the cholesterol content of the body’.
@HarvardChanSPH 10/20 ‘Further, evidence indicates that low cholesterol diets do not decrease the cholesterol content of the serum. Keys was unable to show a relationship between dietary and blood cholesterol in normal men over a wide intake of cholesterol’.
@HarvardChanSPH 11/20 ‘There seems to be a prevalent idea that cholesterol is a wholly undesirable substance…it is an essential constituent of all animal tissues and undoubtedly plays an important role in the function of all cells’.
@HarvardChanSPH 12/20 ‘To eliminate cholesterol from the diet means the elimination of animal foods from the diet – meats, milk, eggs, etc.’
@HarvardChanSPH 13/20 ‘These are the protective foods which nutritionists have clearly shown are essential for an adequate diet, unless very careful dietary control is managed with vitamin, mineral and protein supplements’.
@HarvardChanSPH 14/20 ‘The proposition that low cholesterol diets be used as a preventive for the development of atherosclerosis would mean that animal foods be omitted from our diets’.
@HarvardChanSPH 15/20 ‘This is equivalent to the negation of practically all the nutrition science has taught us in the past. Such a course might well be disastrous’ [as has proved to be the case – my addition].
@HarvardChanSPH 16/20 ‘Anyone inclined toward this teaching should seriously consider the very slight evidence upon which it is based and be mindful of the greater damage which he might do’. [Unfortunately this sensible warning was never heeded and not by Drs Willett and Hu].
@HarvardChanSPH 17/20 ‘We only wish to emphasize the dangers of such (low cholesterol) diets when not adequately devised. The use of therapeutic diets (for atherosclerotic patients) is an entirely different matter from the recommendation…’
@HarvardChanSPH 18/20 ‘of diets for widespread us for the possible prevention of disease. The latter implies changes in the general dietary patterns for everyone’.
@HarvardChanSPH 19/20 ‘...while nutrition undoubtedly plays an important role in the etiology of atherosclerosis, there is insufficient evidence as yet to define this role with any degree of exactness’.
@HarvardChanSPH 20/20 ‘There certainly is no evidence that meatless, milkless, eggless diets should be recommended as desirable to the general public’.
D.M. Hegsted, G.V. Mann and F.J. Stare. Harvard School of Public Health @HarvardChanSPH May 1952
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