Let’s start from the beginning. You have been told for years that “saturated fat�?is very unhealthy �?by your teachers, by various “health gurus�?featured on TV news programs, etc. You are now a researcher and you want to look into this claim. You are able to get funding for an experiment, and now you need to consider an experimental design. You decide to use food questionnaires, because it is so common in nutritional studies to do so, and you select a group of healthy adults in their 40s. You will study the “diseases�?they are afflicted with in ten years time, and then try to correlate it with the food they ate, as determined by their answers on the questionnaires. Perhaps they have agreed to fill out the questionnaires every two years, so that you can determine if they have made major changes. Most researchers do not even do this much, actually.
Now let’s get to the results. You find that those who ate more “saturated fat�?had more colon cancer, type II, diabetes, and more “heart disease.�? Of course, you decide what a “statistically significant�?difference is, or else others in your discipline have already decided upon this, and so you must conform to these standards. Here is where things get “tricky.�? The question I ask here is, how was this determination made (and we are assuming that the questionnaires are accurate, which is a big leap of faith, according to studies of this research tool)? There are several possibilities: One is that certain foods are considered “saturated fat,�?such as lard, which is actually only about 39% saturated, and so a decision is made about how many servings of “saturated fat�?per week classifies a person as someone who consumes a lot or a little “saturated fat.�? In this kind of study, the actual amount of saturated fatty acids is not determined, nor is the cooking technique considered.
Another way of determining who ate the most “saturated fat�?involves figuring out how much saturated fatty acids were consumed. In some cases, those who consumed the most saturated fatty acids also consumed the most polyunsaturated fatty acids and cholesterol, and also cooked the food containing these molecules at high temperature while exposed to air. Thus, one would have to study these, and perhaps other factors, as independent variables before the claim that “saturated fat�?causes such-and-such a disease could be made. And yet this is often not the case, though it is an obvious violation of the basic precepts of the scientific method.
Lastly, the researcher might have found that the only variable that appears to be causative is the amount of saturated fatty acids consumed. This was the case in a study of Alzheimer’s Disease, for example. Now let us think about what is actually being eaten by the people, assuming that the questionnaires were accurate. The subjects were people on “typical�?American diets. None were eating large amounts of coconut, for example. In addition, even if some were eating large amounts of butter, for example, we are not told if they ate the butter raw, or cooked it (which would oxidize the cholesterol in it, unlike margarine, which does not contain cholesterol). In general, food that contains the highest levels of saturated fatty acids also contain the most cholesterol, the notable exception being eggs, which don’t contain many fatty acids of any type, relative to other high protein foods Americans usually eat. Using a control group that used a fat source such as coconut oil, which contains no cholesterol, would be necessary for this kind of study to meet the standards of the scientific, along with other taking other possibly relevant factors into account. For example, it is also generally true that the food that contains the most saturated fatty acids are also very rich in iron, again unlike coconut oil. It is also possible that food that contains the most saturated fatty acids is more likely to be cooked at high temperatures while exposed to air, which would make the unsaturated fatty acids, cholesterol, and iron in it into a very dangerous concoction. The saturated fatty acids, though, would pose no immediate biochemical hazard. And as I am trying to make clear here, until the research is conducted properly, there is no reason to fear saturated fatty acids at this point. Rather, the “findings�?suggesting that “saturated fat�?is unhealthy are based upon poorly conducted and misinterpreted studies, such as I’ve described above.
None of this excuses the researcher from being unfamiliar with various studies of those who eat large amounts of coconut product, as well as the raw demographic data, compiled by the World Health Organization and other agencies. If the researcher had done some research of the literature (with an open mind) he or she would realize that something is amiss, and hopefully design a new experiment in a more intelligent way, and in a way that is consistent with the scientific method. To date, there are few studies that demonstrate that the researchers have come to this realization.
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