The Health Benefits of Saturated Fat – a tweetorial.
The prematurely naturalized theory about the health benefits of lower dietary SFA consumption was constructed in the absence of, or without knowledge of, the following research. 1/n Not comprehensive: each link points to a large field of research.
In each case, the evidence for benefit is higher-quality than for harm, and often there's zero evidence for harm. I begin with class effects of all (mixed) SFA, moving to specific classes or specific SFAs. 2/n

An excellent paper on the antiviral properties of selenite. Although blood increased concentrations of Se can be achieved with various pharmacological preparations, only one chemical form (sodium selenite) can offer a true protection. 1/n
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P… Sodium selenite, but not selenate, can oxidize thiol groups in the virus protein disulfide isomerase rendering it unable to penetrate the healthy cell membrane. In this way selenite inhibits the entrance of viruses into the healthy cells and abolish their infectivity. 2/n

Public health epidemiology reality check, NCD branch.
Here is Rod Jackson's argument against low-carb in @NewshubBreaking @NewshubNZ . He's never studied it clinically, of course. n/1
newshub.co.nz/home/lifestyle… And here is the million-author paper Rod "cites" which he designed with 3 others. Can you find evidence to support his diet claims? Can you find hard evidence on diet trends? How did unsupported diet claims pass peer review? @nature @NatureNews @nature 2/n
academic.oup.com/ije/article/49…

Important review - but I'll be checking references for what seem to be flawed statements in this thread. First up, that "carbohydrates, sugars, and saturated fat were increased" in processed food in NHANES (Martínez Steele et al. 2017).
1/n

https://twitter.com/puddleg/status/1272978009692057600

Is this true? Only a little - Martínez Steele et al. 2017 says
"there were significant increases in carbohydrates (from 46.5% to 53.4%), added sugars (7.7% to 19.2%), and saturated fats (10.1% to 10.9%)." 2/n
link.springer.com/article/10.118…

I can't find the tweet to H/T its sender, but yesterday someone pointed out that Mauritius is an a country-sized diet heart experiment, replacing palm oil with soy oil since 1987. 1/2
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/88985… The results are not all that supportive of the diet-heart hypothesis, to put it mildly.

"Over 1981–2004 the proportion of circulatory disease mortality rose from 44% to 49% in males, and from 46% to 57% in females." 2/2

bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.11…

Thread - Harvard epidemiologists want us to eat wholegrain fibre to reduce the risk of hepatocellular cancer. Correspondent points out this is small effect thrown up by multiple comparisons.
jamanetwork.com/journals/jamao… Harvard epidemiologists strongly suggest we eat more polyunsaturated fat from seed oils and limit saturated fat. Mechanistically this is a well-understood risk factor for liver disease, so what is the association with HCC? 2/n

When the legend becomes fact, print the legend - Roland Emmirich's new film of Midway looks excellent, but this screen shot of the SBD attack on Soryu from the trailer illustrates the power of myth. @johnzahorik
Note the "planes crowding the flight deck". 1/n That the USN divebombers attacked the Japanese carriers when planes were changing armament loads on the flight decks is legend - but the IJN didn't do that, and it would have made no sense, as the carriers were also flying combat air patrols so needed to land zeros on and off.

Here's a thread on the concept of "causality" used in the LDL cholesterol argument, explaining why people end up at cross-purposes.
I will use the example of the recent Waiho bridge collapse. 1/-
radionz.co.nz/news/national/… This bridge, a multi-span Bailey bridge for the engineers out there, collapsed when its supports were wrecked by rocks (and ice) driven downstream by a flood, caused by a truly massive rainfall dump. Collision with the rock was the direct "cause" of failure. 2/-

Jim Mann's new study, feeding a high soybean oil (40% fat) diet to Chinese. Worsens microbial diversity or something. But anyone here could tell him soybean oil is no bueno. Commensal bacteria can only metabolise SFAs, not PUFAs.
radionz.co.nz/national/progr… Listening to this gives you a good idea of how willing the old guard are to misrepresent our diets in order to still be able to criticise them.
It's as if Mann's a lawyer, not a doctor. He's gone well beyond trying to convince the Chinese to cut back on Amazonian soybean oil.