Big, fat unintended consequences
Physician, shut thy stupid mouth…
The Armchair General has a number of bug-bears, but the arrogance of the medical profession is one of those that just keeps niggling. I have long despised the BMA for their role in perverting the 1911 National Insurance Act (the law I consider to be one of the most damaging — economically and socially — in recent centuries); I have no doubt, given that the old place is no longer generally available, that I shall wax lyrical about it in this august venue at some point.
But that day is not today. Today I want to talk about fat and fatness, triggered by a Daily Telegraph article about how cheese and red meat are actually be good for you (via Timmy).
Eating red meat and cheese does not increase the chance of an early death, according to a landmark study.
Wow. That’s going to annoy all the right people…
The findings come after widespread claims by nutritionists that meat and dairy products increase the risk of heart attacks and harm long-term health.
You mean that they were lying? What’s that, pal — they were only pig-ignorant? How is that better, exactly…?
But a global study involving almost 150,000 people, the first of its kind, found the healthiest diet can include red meat and whole fats from animal sources.
People consuming a well-balanced range of foods, which also include vegetables, legumes, fruit and fish, were found to be 30 per cent less likely to die during the 10-year period covered by the Prospective Urban Rural Epidemiology (Pure) study than those on a poor diet.
Look, anyone who is not a monomaniac knows that a balanced diet includes all of these lovely things. Unfortunately, diet advice in the UK — and, indeed, throughout the West — has been dictated by monomaniacal medicos and pressure groups (largely made up of doctors).
Dr Andrew Mente, study lead author from McMaster University in Canada, said the results “have profound implications for diets globally”.
“It indicates that the biggest gains in avoiding premature cardiovascular disease and deaths globally is expected to occur by increasing the intake of healthy foods to a moderate degree,” he said.
“On this basis, current advice to restrict dairy, especially whole fat dairy, to very low amounts in populations globally is not necessary or appropriate.”
[…]
Dr Mente believes that the issue of cardiovascular disease and early mortality in society may not be due to overindulgence of meat, dairy or saturated fats but actually under-nutrition caused by people not eating enough key food groups.
He believes there is now evidence to suggest that dairy foods, especially whole-fat dairy, may be protective against hypertension and metabolic syndrome which are common drivers of cardiovascular disease.
As this paper at the US National Center for Biotechnology outlines, since the 1950s, when a very weak and, frankly, unsubstantiated case was made that saturated fats caused heart disease.
The idea that saturated fats cause heart disease, called the diet-heart hypothesis, was introduced in the 1950s, based on weak, associational evidence. Subsequent clinical trials attempting to substantiate this hypothesis could never establish a causal link. However, these clinical-trial data were largely ignored for decades, until journalists brought them to light about a decade ago. Subsequent reexaminations of this evidence by nutrition experts have now been published in >20 review papers, which have largely concluded that saturated fats have no effect on cardiovascular disease, cardiovascular mortality or total mortality.
It is, by the way, an interesting fact that the walls of the cells that make up your body are primarily built out of saturated fats: and the primary fat that makes up your cell walls is… wait for it… cholesterol. So, too little cholesterol equals weak cell walls.
Rabbit starvation
So, saturated fats are required by the body — but it gets a little more interesting than that. In order to feel sated, humans require both protein and saturated fat: that is what triggers the feeling of fullness. If you don’t have fat, then you can eat as much protein as you like but never feel full: this is known as “rabbit starvation”.1
It had this epithet because those who survived solely on very lean game meats — most notably Native Americans in woodland areas, whose primary diet in the winter months tended to be rabbits — were observed to continually gorge themselves without feeling full. They would then suffer severe diarrhea and, in extreme cases, die. Those who supplemented their diet with fattier meats — moose, whale, beaver, etc. — did not suffer the same problem.
But remember: in order to feel sated, you need protein and saturated fat. It’ll become relevant later…
Jay Rayner’s marbled bust
Now, sensible people like restaurant critic Jay Rayner have been extolling the virtues of fat — not least because it makes things taste delicious (seriously, a butter-saturated fry-up is far tastier to one done in oil) — but up until now they have largely been shouting into the void. As such, one cannot blame Mr Rayner for his little shout of glee at the recent news — indeed, this General salutes him!
But I am certainly getting a sense of what it feels like to be a fighter in a rag-tag rebel force whose cause has finally been recognised as virtuous. I am a one-time pariah who has been accepted back into the mainstream as a speaker of truth. I am the Luke Skywalker of food. Here's what's happened: after decades of conflict, of name-calling and bitterness and Gillian-bloody-McKeith and "lean" bacon – I mean, really! – the war on dietary fat is over. Fat, on whose behalf I fought so valiantly, is no longer the enemy. It is our friend. At last I may step out of the rhetorical forest and lay down my less than rhetorical steak knife.
Jay also references the problems that a lack of fat causes.
As fats came out of food, so the sugars went in. Between 1980 and 2011 diabetes levels in the US rose 157% as the population followed government advice and went face down in the carbs. Which not only gave us more calories, but also slowed down our metabolism and made us feel hungry.
Indeed. And, of course, unburned sugars get stored as fat — particularly around the waist. Whereas saturated fats — which are, by virtue of being saturated, quite expensive to burn or store in the body — tend to be excreted.
Mad food bans
Generally speaking, there are three things that make food tastier — (saturated) fat, salt, and sugar. For many decades, the medical profession has waged a war against fat (as discussed) and salt — c.f. fake charities such as Action on Salt — and, in recent decades, sugar (c.f. fake charities such as Action on Sugar. Who are literally exactly the same people as Action on Salt).
Nonetheless, the fucking stupid Tory government has passed legislation to ban or to severely restrict the advertising of foods High in Fat, Salt and/or Sugar (HFSS)2 — most of which comes in this October.
Following these consultations, the government introduced legislation to restrict the promotion of HFSS products by volume price (for example, ‘buy one get one free’) and location, both online and in store in England. (HFSS is otherwise known as ‘less healthy food and drink’ and is referred to as such in the nutrient profiling technical guidance 2011.) The restriction of HFSS products by location came into force on 1 October 2022. The restriction of HFSS products by volume price will come into force on 1 October 2023.
Now, my old colleague Chris Snowdon has written extensively (at the IEA and at his own blog) about the vast range of foods that are defined as HFSS, but here’s a small sample:
Policies that restrict ‘junk food’ will actually restrict HFSS food (high in fat, sugar and salt) as defined by the Nutrient Profiling Model which classifies a vast range of meals and products as ‘less healthy’. It takes no account of how food is eaten and in what quantities in the overall diet. HFSS food includes raisins, sultanas, most tinned fruit, most yoghurts, two-thirds of morning goods, nearly all cheese (including half-fat cheese), cream crackers, tomato soup, hummus, ham, pesto, cereal bars, olive bread, salami, many pasta sauces, butter, margarine and 25 per cent of sandwiches.
The bar set by the Nutrient Profiling Model is in the process of being raised even higher. Under the new system, some snacks recommended by the NHS as ‘smart swaps’ will become ‘junk food’, as will some of the ‘5-a-day’ recommended by Public Health England, including pure orange juice.
Chris also has a very timely post about the travails faced by Transport for London (TfL), which banned all HFSS advertising some years ago — which included much of their own!
Essentially, it’s all bonkers. And futile, and expensive (which neatly describes Sadiq Khan’s London — your jaundiced General thanks the heavens that he has escaped). Most of all, it is depressing: the state, egged on by doctors, is actively trying to make our lives less enjoyable by restricting our consumption of delicious foods.
And now at least one crucial pillar of that strategy has been swept away. Has the government decided to row back on its now scientifically incoherent strategy?
Has it fuck. As far as I know, it has not even acknowledged this study at all.
The obesity crisis
So, after the decades-long crusade against saturated fats, we have a population that has been repeatedly told that fat will kill us. So, many people eschewed fats in favour of salt and sugar. Which, apparently, are also bad for us.
But without saturated fats, remember, people are not going to feel sated. So, what is likely to happen? Well, just what did happen — never feeling full, people feel hungry throughout the day so eat continually through the day: a behaviour known as “snacking”…
Nutritionists believe many people are obese not because they binge on fatty main meals but because they indulge in constant grazing throughout the day without even realising it.
This pattern, dubbed “auto-eating”, involves resorting to snacks and treats at the slightest indication of hunger.
Or, rather, people always feel hungry because they have been told to avoid saturated fats. And they snack on chocolate bars and biscuits and small things that provide a pleasant sugary boost.
Combine this with an increasingly sedentary population — both at home and at work — and other comforts (such as central heating which leads to fewer calories being expended on maintaining body temperature), and…
BOOM! You have an obesity problem.
And now — nearly seventy years after some arrogant doctors used some extremely dodgy studies to enhance their reputations, we now know that what we were told about the harms associated with saturated fats was all absolute bollocks.
And so, once again, we can demonstrate another Crisis of Government Origin (COGO), ably assisted by the arrogant fuckers of the medical profession.
Unfortunately, the government legislation is already in place, and it will take at least three years for the fuck-nuggets in politics to catch up — if they ever do. After all, they are going to have to undo decades of medical advice, government food advice, leaflets, bus adverts, nutritionist training, and social conditioning.
Just another reason why governments should stay the hell out of our private lives. Such up — and fuck off.
Incidentally, this Wikipedia article used to be entitled “rabbit starvation” and was considerably longer, containing useful quotes from Victorian explorers and so on. It is now entitled “protein poisoning” which is not really an accurate picture of the condition: it is the lack of fat that causes the problem, not an excess of protein.
Many people will say, “this was all Boris Johnson’s idea” but it wasn’t: this food strategy was dreamed up by those utter bastards at Public Health England (PHE) — who were wanking on about where chocolate should be displayed in a supermarket rather than doing their actual jobs. Y’know, such as planning for pandemics — and Johnson just adopted some of it. Not to let the fat git off the hook, but this collection of utter arse was not solely his fault.