Tag Archive for: vegan diet

Cost vs. Benefit for Saturated Fat

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In Tuesday’s Memo, I suggested that I don’t like speaking in absolutes when it comes to health recommendations; I’ve seen too many exceptions. What about our Michigan cardiologist? Was he correct? Yes and no, but mostly no.

He implied in the interview that the source of saturated fat is animal products. That isn’t true. In fact, someone could be a vegan and still over-consume saturated fats from using vegetable oils. Palm oil, vegetable oil, even almonds and other nuts that contain monounsaturated and polyunsaturated oils also contain saturated fats. My point is that even without any animal products such as cheese or milk, you can still get a lot of saturated fat in a vegan diet.

He was also overstating the positive effects of lowering saturated fat intake. I read the abstract; it said that it would take 56 people lowering their saturated fat intake for two years to prevent a single cardiac event. Further, the review did not show any reduction in mortality. To me, it raised a lot of questions that may have been answered but not reported.

Should we lower our saturated fat intake? Probably, but it’s going to take a lot more answers to swing the cost to benefit ratio in favor of giving up animal products for the potential benefits we may get.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Reference: Cochrane Library. https://doi.org/10.1002/14651858.CD011737.pub2

“Give Up Meat or Else!”

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“Animal Foods Conclusively Cause Heart Disease!” was the title in my news feed that attracted my attention. I had to check it out, because I’m not a fan of absolute statements in the health field; too often, some facts have to be ignored to make definitive statements such as that true. Was this any different?

A cardiologist from Michigan was interviewed in response to a recently published paper in the Cochrane Review. The review updated the information related to saturated fat intake and the rate of cardiovascular disease and mortality. After reading the paper, that’s the response the doctor gave to an interviewer from the Plant Based News. He suggested that the review conclusively shows that reducing saturated fat intake will result in a 21% decrease in CVD events. The implication is that most saturated fat comes from animal products: if we really buckle down and reduce our saturated fat consumption more, we can reduce events even further.

He makes the connection between animal products and saturated fat. But is that correct? It would mean that vegans, who consume no animal products, are protected from cardiovascular disease. Is that true? I’ll let you know on Thursday

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet