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Go Ahead, Drink Bacon Grease for Breakfast

By Christopher Wanjek
LiveScience’s Bad Medicine Columnist
posted: 13 March 2006
7:30 am ET

Two very big and very expensive health studies were published in February to the glee of people everywhere who enjoy drinking bacon grease for breakfast. Maybe you saw the reprints in Cynicism Today. Both studies had a "cheesesteak does your body good" feel to them.

One study found that a low-fat diet didn't reduce the risk of cancer or heart attacks. The other found that taking calcium supplements did more harm than good. This was the kind of back-to-back, one-two punch my hefty coworker had been waiting to deliver to me; and as soon as he caught his breath from the 25-meter walk to my office, boy, did he let me have it.

The low-fat study was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Dr. Michael Thun, director of epidemiological research at the American Cancer Society, called it "the Rolls-Royce of studies." Perhaps he was talking about the sticker price, $415 million, which is astoundingly high for a health study. But lift up the hood on that baby, and you'll see the study as the engine of a Dodge Dart.

The main problem with the low-fat study was that it didn't study a low-fat diet. Oops. A low-fat diet recommends only 20 to 25 grams of fat per day, which would be about 10 to 15 percent of a 2,000-calorie diet. The subjects, all women, couldn't reach the modest study goal of 20 percent. They tried, but they ended up with 24 to 29 percent of their calories from fat. The researchers compared these ladies to a control group at the 35-percent fat level. And they found no difference? Amazing!

This was an eight-year study of women over 50, another gross limitation. Whether or not cancer or heart problems develop during this tiny window after 50 years of undocumented lifestyle is inconsequential. And the study didn't differentiate among fats now known to be healthy, such as those with omega-3 fatty acids, and unhealthy fats, such as the aforementioned bacon grease.

''These studies are revolutionary,'' said Dr. Jules Hirsch of Rockefeller University in a New York Times article. Well, they're revolutionary in the fact that we spent a lot of money and learned nothing about a low-fat diet. You may think a low-fat diet is bunk, and maybe it is, but this study provides no insight.

The calcium study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, found that popping calcium tablets didn't prevent broken bones but instead led to kidney stones. What the calcium study reveals is that grand American philosophy: If something is good for you, then even more of it must be better.

We see this with megadoses of vitamins, even though an excess of vitamin C can cause health problems. We see this with the recommendation to drink more tea because of antioxidants, with no regard for the fact that tannins in tea interfere with iron absorption.

Of course excess calcium causes kidney stones; kidney stones are made of calcium. The truth about osteoporosis, or weak bones, is that animal protein leaches calcium from bones. Because the American diet is high in animal protein, Americans require two to three times more calcium than other cultures do. The trick is to minimize leaching through exercise and less animal protein, and to start early in life.

Unfortunately the combined force of these two study results, widely published, has left many of us thinking that diet doesn't matter. If you think diet is inconsequential, than I offer this little venture: You do want you want, and I'll exercise and eat healthy foods in moderation. And we'll race to age 100. Ready? Go.

Cheesesand - I've been frying my (infrequent) cheese sandwiches in bacon grease. Should I stop?

Oh, I note the author repeats the myth that animal protein causes osteoporosis. I guess I'll keep on with the bacon grease.

Let the spin begin!

Mostly what the WHI study proved is that it is virtually impossible to keep your fat under 25 grams, even with tons of motivation, hand-holding and education.

Yeah, that's what they are trying to spin -- if the diet had been sufficiently low fat, it would have helped. Oh, BS. Other than some highly dedicated people, few can maintain that kind of a diet.

The other spin is that now it's not fat, it's just saturated and trans fat that are the issue. While most agree trans fats are unhealthy, there is as much evidence (that is, none) that eating less saturated fat would result in less cancer or heart disease, much less weight loss. They spin, but the facts are painfully, slowly dripping through.

Absolutely not! That sounds delicious, in fact.

Dean Ornish would be proud of that article.

My boyfriend and I have this running joke when people give an initial response to something and then days or weeks later they have this carefully crafted answer. We always laugh about how people sit in these board rooms trying to come up with the perfect answer so that someone or something else will get the blame and they are vindicated. This article is totally one of those board room conjured articles.

Everyone knows 20-25% is some magical number where those who stay within that range have perfect health. A few points over and its utter disaster! I mean, how dare anyone look at this massive study and give it any validation at all! You might as well all go kill yourselves drinking gallons of bacon grease a day! A tad hyperbolic? nah.


Yanno, if it was 19% fat they would have complained that the fat was too low, if it was exactly 20-25% they would have said the ratio of "good fats" to "bad fats" wasn't correct. No matter what, unless the results were exactly what they wanted to hear they would have found a million reasons to invalidate it. If at 24-29% fat they would have found the results they wanted, they would be all singing the praises of this study.

[QUOTE=kyrasdad]Yeah, that's what they are trying to spin -- if the diet had been suffiently low fat, it would have helped. Oh, BS. Other than some highly dedicated people, few can maintain that kind of a diet.

It seems painfully obvious to me that if the vast majority of people have trouble staying on a low fat diet, it must be because humans are not meant to eat a low fat diet. Ya think? LOL

Well that makes sense, but it doesn't support highly profitable grain based food industries or religion (cough, Ornish) masquerading as nutrition, so they will continue to spin it that way.

They have been stung, but they have lots of money and lots of true believers.

What I'd love to see is a scientifically valid, longterm, low carb study by a neutral source. Much of what we see now is spin by various industries, too few subjects, too short term. The low fat study might not be perfect, but it's much closer to right than anything else we've seen so far.

Compared to what? Hey, granted it's no worse than the standard American diet, but does that translate to "beneficial" or "healthy? I think not.

Almost every study out there investigating a low-fat diet has flaws, confounding variable AND clear data showing negative impacts on health, like decreasing HDL or worsening TC/HDL ratios.....when that happens, ya know what the researchers conclude often? Oh, the LDL decreased and they'll gloss over the drop in HDL or worse ratios!

Add to that most studies investigating low-fat diets aren't level 1 evidence (the gold-standard for evidence based medicine) and are at best level 2 (not well controlled) or level 3 (nothing more than observation speculation)......

To go in the same vein as what is being said, it is absolutely mind-numbing that the main justification given to the poor results of that study is that fat intake was not lowered enough.

Why? Because this argument effectively proves that fat intake doesn't have a causal relationship relationship to the studied diseases (Breast cancer, colon cancer and CVD).

If fat had a role on the appearance of the said diseases, then reducing its intake from 40% to 28% will have some beneficial results on the disease rates of the treatment groups.

Maybe not the anticipated full results, but some results nonetheless.
Especially in 25000 women over 8 years.

It's called a dose-response relationship.
A factor that is the cause of a disease must show a dose-response relationship.
If you reduce the intake of the causal agent in a studied population, there will be a trend showing a reduction in the rates of the disease in the overall studied population, especially if the population is large enough (it was) and followed for long enough (it was also).


There is no magic treshold at which lowering fat intake will prove beneficial.

Saying otherwise is showing a lack of understanding of basic scientific principles.

To support my contention, when you look at some low carb studies, benefits have been shown in a dose-response manner, ie you see some benefits when replacing a 60% carb, 20% fat diet with a 40% carb, 40% fat diet, and you see more benefits when going lower on carbs.

Here are some studies that replaced a 60% carb, 20% fat diet with a 40% carb, 40% fat diet in T2 diabetics:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/...9&dopt=Citation

http://care.diabetesjournals.org/cg...bstract/18/1/10

Of course, the benefits get greater as carbs are restricted further.

That reinforces the suspicions about carbs' causal role in the diseases studied (diabetes in the above references).

But nowhere in the low-fat litterature do you find an explanation of why low fat diets never show such dose-response effects upon fat lowering.

Instead, you get justifications about fat being 'still too high' and the study 'not having been long enough'.

Concerning the duration of the study, let me tell you this, if it requires more than 8 years to see benefits of a dietary intervention in a 25000 person cohort, then you are in fact better off doing nothing.

The factor you are studying has no influence on the diseases you are looking at.

I'm thinking that's a fairly small percentage of even the low carb population....not that the rest of us weren't happy to read the results of those studies.
Now, coconut oil...that's another matter.

Their egos and careers will not allow them to admit the low fat diet is colossally stupid.
The facts are plain to see that fat is as essential a nutrient as protein. Consuming adequate dietary fat is as necessary to human life as oxygen. Restricting fat aggressively is psychologically and physically unhealthy as trying to breathe in small shallow breaths a "low oxygen" diet.

We now know a fat diet is basically the same as low nutrition diet. Fat is probably the most important nutrient right with protein. Slowly this will die, as will the most vocal supporters die off from public view. They will be forced to slowly crawl into the shadows and convert their extreme views to more a mainstream package (i.e. focus on "bad fat"), or else fade into obscurity.