Everything You Know About Fat Is Contradictory

In the history of societal tolerance of dietary fat, we left off at 2015, when an unrepentant Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) was still shaking its head over saturated fat (the kind in meat and dairy products). “The Saturated Fat Studies: Buttering Up the Public,” written by Michael Greger, M.D., was published that year.

Dr. Greger talked about a systematic review and meta-analysis which had “concluded that current evidence does not clearly support cardiovascular guidelines that encourage cutting down on saturated fat.” In other words, the trend had shifted to the approval of saturated fat. At the same time, the elimination of animal fats was entrenched as the focus of chronic disease prevention programs all over the world.

But the CSPI labeled promotion of this type of fat as a ploy engaged by the global dairy cabal to increase its sales. The campaign to stop saturated fat acceptance had already gathered a lot of momentum. But the dairy industry was not sleeping. Big Animal Fat “set up a major, well-funded campaign to come up with proof that saturated fat does not cause heart disease.”

Allegedly, they only picked scientists already favorable to their cause, and lined them up for numerous public speaking about the virtues of saturated fat, which worked. Their mission was to characterize the dairy industry’s chief problem as “[n]egative messages and intense pressure to reduce saturated fats by governments and non-governmental organizations.”

Bad news for the Bigs

Dr. Greger noted that…

The top contributors of cholesterol-raising saturated fat are cheese, ice cream, more cheese, chicken, then non-ice cream desserts like cake and pie, and then pork.

Meanwhile, the most impressive authorities in the U.S. and Europe still recommended less and less animal fat. Making it only 10% of the average person’s caloric intake would be good, but a smaller ratio would be better. The American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology recommended that it should comprise only 5% or 6% of calories.

In a followup article, Dr. Greger emphasized that many studies from everywhere proved that eating saturated fat makes a person’s blood cholesterol rise, with generally bad results, such as “cardiovascular events like heart attack.” Still, admittedly, people have different setpoints and might consume the same amount of dietary fat yet have different cholesterol levels and a different number of heart attacks.

Nevertheless, he wrote:

But while our genetics may be different, our biology is the same, meaning the rise and drop in cholesterol is the same for everyone… All I can say with certainty is that if you eat less, your cholesterol will likely improve.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “The Saturated Fat Studies: Buttering Up the Public,” NutritionFacts.org, 2015, modified 2019
Source: “The Saturated Fat Studies: Set Up to Fail,” NutritionFacts.org, 2015
Image by Northwest Retail/CC BY-SA 2.0

Everything You Know About Fat Is Wrong, Maybe

Mary G. Enig, Ph.D., FACN, CNS, author of Know Your Fats, a primer on the biochemistry of dietary fats, is described in her bio as an expert of international renown in the field of lipid chemistry, with many other professional accomplishments. In 2003 she wrote about the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) and the “sordid history” of its campaign against saturated fat, saying the organization…

[…] provides the classic example of chutzpah, like when the child who murders his parents pleads for mercy in court because he is an orphan! In this case, the crime is the complete ruination of the food supply with the replacement of healthy traditional saturated fats with partially hydrogenated soybean oil…

Healthy traditional fats, Dr. Enig said, had almost completely disappeared from the food supply, and the substitution came to be held responsible for “ever-increasing rates of cancer, heart disease, infertility, impotence, asthma, allergies, learning disabilities, bone problems, digestive disorders, diabetes and obesity.”

In 1984, CSPI got serious about pressuring fast-food establishments to forswear beef fat and tropical oils, insisting on hydrogenated oils instead. In 1987 the organization’s newsletter published a piece by Elaine Blume, which claimed the hydrogenated oils posed no serious threat to the health of humans. She explained why manufacturers had to hydrogenate vegetable oils to prevent them from becoming rancid while in storage or during the frying process.

In 1988 a CSPI publication…

[…] defended trans fatty acids and partially hydrogenated vegetable oils and called for pejorative labeling of “saturated” fats.

This caused Dr. Enig to suggest that the authors were “completely ignorant (or pretended to be ignorant) of lipid science.” The fast-food chains were still under attack as holdouts who would not relinquish their beef fat or palm oil. But by the time 1990 rolled around, CSPI was forced to reassess its position, and its director published “Trans in Trouble” which admitted that it was difficult to reconcile the group’s stand with the understandings gained from more recent research.

Dr. Enig says,

In May, 1991, I wrote a letter to the editor of Nutrition Action, outlining and correcting Ms. Liebman’s numerous errors, including her claim that consumption of trans fatty acids in the US typically ranged from 4 to 7 grams per day. By 1991, many Americans eating processed foods were consuming over 50 grams of trans fats per day.

A couple of years later, CSPI publicly scolded the fast-food industry for adopting the use of partially hydrogenated vegetable oils like the CSPI had told them to do. The author details the many “lies, false innuendoes, and cover-ups” in the far-reaching deception that had been orchestrated by the saturated fat haters.

But despite having paused to scold fast food for its departure from a saturated fat agenda, in 2015 CSPI had apparently returned to its traditional resistance against saturated fat, and castigated school lunch programs for accepting butter and bacon as healthful substances to feed to children.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “The Tragic Legacy of Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI),” WestonAPrice.org, 01/06/03
Image by Ted Eytan/CC BY-SA 2.0

Homeostasis — a Word and a Paradox

Along with the internet came the ability of anyone to invent or define a word, and pretty much make it stick. In order to see what the original behavioralists were talking about, we go back in time to 1900, when Charles R. Richet wrote,

The living system is stable… [I]t must be in order not to be destroyed, dissolved or disintegrated by colossal forces, often adverse, which surround it. By an apparent contradiction, it maintains its stability only if it is excitable and capable of modifying itself according to external stimuli and adjusting its response to the stimulation. In a sense, it is stable because it is modifiable — the slight instability is the necessary condition for the true stability of the organism.

To express this concept of an organism in constant interaction with a world in which change might be the only constant, Walter Cannon coined the word homeostasis. The root words were Greek for “similar” and “standing still,” and what he meant was not staying the same, but staying similar. Since then, some have misread homeostasis to mean unchanging or even stagnant, but no. It describes the self-regulating processes a biological system uses to maintain stability, adjusting all the while to changing environmental conditions.

A balancing act

In a very recent and extremely thorough exploration of the basic concept of homeostasis, George E. Billman (of Ohio State University’s Department of Physiology and Cell Biology) says it is “the complex interaction of multiple feedback systems that can be modified by higher control centers,” and that homeostasis has become…

[…] the central unifying concept of physiology and is defined as a self-regulating process by which an organism can maintain internal stability while adjusting to changing external conditions.

He goes into more detail and reaffirms Cannon’s thoughts:

[…] This hierarchical control and feedback redundancy results in a finer level of control and a greater flexibility that enables the organism to adapt to changing environmental conditions.

[…] Homeostasis is not static and unvarying; it is a dynamic process that can change internal conditions as required to survive external challenges.

So, we are talking about two things: internal stability within a range of values (like the vital signs of temperature, pulse rate and blood pressure being “within normal limits”) and the self-regulatory goal-seeking behavior known as the “coordinated dynamic response that maintains this internal stability.” Billman expresses the wish to see greater emphasis placed on traditional integrated, holistic approaches to healing, and closer adherence to the ideas of those who “gave birth to physiology as an intellectual discipline.” He writes,

The disruption of homeostatic mechanisms is what leads to disease, and effective therapy must be directed toward re-establishing these homeostatic conditions, working with rather than against nature.

Everybody, and literally every body, is out there trying to maintain balance while satisfying their drives and avoiding a terrible fall. The photo on this page, where two people are on a tightrope at the same time, is illustrative of society. Each person strives to maximize their own wins and minimize their own losses, while not allowing someone else’s mistakes to throw them off the wire.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Homeostasis: The Underappreciated and Far Too Often Ignored Central Organizing Principle of Physiology,” Frontiersin.org/articles, 03/10/20
Image by wht_wolf9653/CC BY-SA 2.0

Drive-Reduction Theory — It’s Complicated

In the area of drive-reduction theory, people seem to have different ideas about definitions.

One source says,

Understand — “physiological need” means something without which you, or the species will die. So it’s a pretty short list — food, water, temperature regulation, sleep, air, and sex. Essentially, this theory says that all human behavior connects to getting one of those needs met.

So apparently, drives are in everybody, all the time. That in itself is a bit difficult to deal with, because a study with no control group has a problem. Instructure.com says a drive is a “motivation, desire or interest to behave or act in a certain manner, often to meet a need.” This might be an unworkably broad definition, as it seems to include everything in life.

An uncredited writer at CommunicationTheory.org says,

Throughout the decades, the Drive Theory has gone through various changes. It has also garnered a lot of critique… “Drive” is an “appetitive internal force”…

[I]n his later works, Freud reduced the emphasis on drives. He said that since the nature of drives is changeable, other factors such as social situations had an important role to play as well.

According to one authority on drive-reduction theory, the term refers to “a diverse set of motivational theories in psychology,” which does seem to be the case.

A primary drive is innate and inextricably hooked into the body. A secondary drive, for something like excessive wealth accumulation, is the kind that can be planted in someone’s head, and it seems as if there should be a whole different set of rules. It might be fair to say that a secondary drive is one that can be addressed by therapy, whereas no amount of therapy would stop the need for water, and that pretty much defines a primary drive.

Dr. Pretlow says,

Displacement activity is rechanneling of overflow energy from conflicted or thwarted drives into another drive…

Displacement activity permits the resolution of conflict between two antagonistic drives by acting as an outlet through which overflow energy can be discharged…

Displacement activity is an innate, hard-wired, instinctual, automatic biobehavioral mechanism…

Displacement activity stems from situations of major opposing or thwarted behavioral drives, e.g. fight or flight…

On that last point, some authorities identify additional reactions that rank right up there with fight or flight. If so, that would make things very complicated. Also, it seems as if not everyone is on the same page when it comes to the difference between a drive and the means of satisfying a drive. If the meta-drive is to reduce tension and return to a neutral state of homeostasis, then it seems like a lot of responses, other than fight or flight, could qualify as means to reduce the drive.

(To be continued…)

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Drive-Reduction,” Instructure.com, undated
Source: “Drive Theory,” CommunicationTheory.org, undated
Image by Doug Kerr/CC BY-SA 2.0