Comment by pessimizer
3 hours ago
> A 2020 Cochrane meta-analysis of roughly 59,000 participants across 15 randomized controlled trials found that replacing saturated fat with polyunsaturated fat reduced combined cardiovascular events by 21%. Cardiologists note that the risk reduction from this dietary substitution is comparable to the benefits of statin medications. We don’t make a habit of telling statin patients to stop their medication because of something they heard on a podcast.
So what it found is a tiny difference, just like it did with statins, when all of the financing and an enormous amount of money was behind finding enough of a difference to justify the billions that get spent on statins and the category of marketing that relies on replacing saturated fat with unsaturated fat. Additionally, the reason he chooses to focus on "combined cardiovascular events" is because that's the only place that any supportive number could be found. Mortality? Nah. Quality of life? Nah.
Saturated fat vs. unsaturated fat was one of those things that seemed obvious when you looked at them naïvely, and made an intuitive guess about what their respective effects would be. The same as how we intuitively thought about salt's effect on blood pressure because of how cell walls work.
It is sick how much of medical "research" is being targeted towards justifying interventions with 50-100 year old origins and whose scientific foundations have completely disappeared in the interim, but that careers, fortunes, and entire segments of the economy now rely on.
Headline: "Intervention X doesn't work how we thought it does, but it still works!* (* based on study completed before we told you that the foundation for it had disappeared.)"
Nothing I love more than dumb emotional manipulation delivered as an argument from authority, from a site called statnews. Just give me the goddamn statistics, and if studies about specific claims haven't been made, give me a non-insidious reason why no one would have bothered to check in decades. Especially when the checking costs millions, and the industries are worth hundreds of billions.
I don't have an opinion on seed oils, other than that cheap ones destroy pans, countertops and appliances, and seem absolutely foul. Nutrition science is absolute garbage and mostly quackery, though. You might as well have a degree in old wives tales.
If you're interested in just the pure statistics and outcomes of scientific trials, I highly recommend https://nutritionfacts.org/. It's a non-profit charity featuring numerous ~5 min videos highlighting specific findings across scientific studies about nutrition, with sources read directly and linked.
"Nutrition science is absolute garbage, [so I'll base my position on something worse.]"
So, emotions and preferences?
Btw, statins show a big difference if you take them early. Even more for people who have genetically low lipids. People tend to only go on statins in middle/old age, especially after an adverse event, after decades of accumulated plaque build up which statins can't reverse.
Rosuvastatin costs $5/mo and lowers LDL/ApoB 45% in a few weeks. You should probably get on one if your genetics prevent you from getting under 100 LDL and 60 ApoB despite a high fiber plant-based diet. But something tells me that's not your diet either.
Yep. A friend’s a cardiologist who told me about attending a lecture on statins at a conference. The speaker asked how many doctors in the audience started taking statins even before having indications that they should take them. Nearly everyone in the audience raised their hand.
What that tells me is that people who do this for a living, who study the actual science, who make a career of this very specific thing, all believe in statins enough to self-medicate.
That didn’t make me seek them out. What it did do was make me say yes the moment my own doc raised the idea.