bdmetronews desk॥ You’ve probably put saturated fat on your list of deadly dietary sins. We’ve long been told that it increases our levels of “bad” LDL cholesterol, putting us at risk for deadly heart disease. But could an unanalyzed study conducted more than 40 years ago have challenged our current views on saturated fat’s mortality risk?
That’s the question some have been asking after a reevaluation of data taken from the Minnesota Coronary Experiment was published Tuesday in the BMJ. Christopher Ramsden, a medical investigator at the National Institutes of Health, heard about the Minnesota Coronary Experiment (MCE) a few years back during his hunt to study the effect of linoleic acid, found in seed oils, on the body. The MCE’s controlled clinical trial involved more than 9,000 men and women from state mental hospitals and a nursing home.
Between 1968 and 1973, researchers fed half of the participants diets high in saturated fats found in milk, cheese, and other animal products. The remaining men and women were given diets nearly devoid of saturated fat, with corn oil in its place. Corn oil is an unsaturated fat found in a lot of the processed snack foods on store shelves today.
The researchers aimed to show that the polyunsaturated fats found in vegetable oils would help ward off heart disease and lead to lower mortality rates. However, as Ramsden discovered, the full results of the study were never revealed. He reached out to the University of Minnesota to see if he could access this information.
by yahoo
