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We stated previously that by 1950 heart disease had dramatically increased. Public opinion had turned from saturated fats, which were replaced by polyunsaturated fats.
Reliable tests to measure the accumulation of cholesterol in the blood were developed as early as 1934. A mass of clinicians, politicians, and health reporters decided that saturated fat and high cholesterol blood levels were the cause of heart disease and that the low-fat diet was the solution.
By 1970, the belief that saturated fat causes heart disease was justified by a series of âexpert reportsâ from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Surgeon Generalâs Office, and the National Academy of Sciences. Many people will ask their doctors or go on the Internet for information. Unless one knows where to go, it is all slanted toward the cholesterol theory.
Dr. Paul Dudley White was the founder of cardiology, the study of the heart and its diseases. Dr. White graduated from medical school in 1910, when heart disease was hardly a factor.
As a young man he wrote that he had an interest in a rare new disease that was in the European medical literature. In 1921, 11 years after beginning his medical practice, he saw his first heart attack patient.
By the 1950âs when he served as President Dwight Eisenhowerâs physician, heart disease was the leading cause of death in the U.S. Later on in his career and as the nationâs leading authority on heart disease, he was asked about the saturated fat theory causing heart disease.
He reported that he could not justify this theory. You see, saturated fat had been a big part of manâs diet way before 1900 and was relatively constant. Even when people decreased it, heart disease kept reaching epidemic proportions.
