Remember how over much of the past few decades there was a broad consensus among doctors and the entire medical profession that foods high in saturated fats, like butter, chicken and eggs, boosted cholesterol and thus increased the risk of dangerous heart disease. Instead, the doctors told us, we should focus on a low-fat, high-carb diet. Avoid eggs, they advised us.
The result: tens of millions of heart attacks, premature deaths, and tens of millions of people with Type II diabetes. It is turning out to be one of the greatest scientific blunders (if not flat out frauds) of human history.
Fortunately doctors are finally beginning to back off from the egg-avoidance insanity.
Image: www.eggs.ca/nutrition/
The latest anecdote showing that the low-fat, high-carb diet is bogus comes with the news of Emma Morano, who today turned 117 today. She is thought to be the oldest person on the planet. A key to her long life, the BBC reports here, has been her daily intake of three eggs per day.
Ms Morano’s longevity, she admits, is partly down to genetics – her mother reached 91 and several sisters reached their centenary – and partly, she says, down to a rather unusual diet of three eggs – two raw – each day for more than 90 years.”
100,000 eggs consumed over lifetime
Three eggs a day over 90 years comes out to be 98,550 eggs. Add another couple thousand eggs for the earlier years and you easily get over 100,000 eggs consumed during her long life.
That’s a lot of cholesterol! And cholesterol that the quack doctors and their consensus said was killing millions of us and that we should consume sparingly. Obviously Ms. Morano’s health paid no attention to the consensus medical science, and did splendidly.
“Negligent” vegans
And then there are vegans, fanatics who vehemently claim we should not eat any animal-based foods at all and so make the consumption of nutritious eggs taboo. Fortunately not only Emma Morano has had the good sense to ignore “consensus” medical advice, but also some Italian politicians are getting serious about it, too. For example, according to treehugger.com here, Italian MP Elvira Savino is proposing jailing parents who force their children to follow a vegan diet. Savino believes that parents “should be prosecuted for imposing such ‘reckless and dangerous eating behavior’ on children 16 and under.”
Why? Treehugger reported:
Savino proposed the new law after learning about several recent and disturbing incidents involving negligent parents and inadequate nutrition for young children. In one case, a one-year-old boy in Milan, raised on a strict vegan diet and weighing only 5 kg (11 pounds) when taken from his parents, had to undergo emergency heart surgery; his calcium levels were at the lowest necessary to survive. Another toddler from Genoa spent days in pediatric care in a hospital due to vitamin deficiencies as a result of a vegan diet. Last year, a mother was ordered by an Italian court to cook meat for her 12-year-old son after his father complained that a vegan diet was stunting his growth.”
Many of us believe in Darwinism, but please do leave the kids out of it! If you wish to make your self ill thinking it’ll make you healthy and at the same time save the planet, be my guest. But don’t go imposing your dangerous nonsense on others.
Personally I changed my diet a couple of years ago and eggs have since become a major part of my nutrition. I now eat roughly 10-15 eggs per week. My blood values and overall health have improved immensely.
And now I might even boost that number, given the result we see from Senora Morano.
I stopped earing most grains and drastically increased eating eggs and animal fats. Lost weight big time and never felt better. My doctor doesn’t believe me.
I did the same, and it worked for me as well. Too many doctors are mere drug and therapy dealers on behalf of the pharma kingpins.
There is a also a more benign, though still very damaging factor, at least in the U.S. but probably true elsewhere in the developed countries.
The doctors I know simply don’t have the time to follow all the relevant research *) and they go with “consensus” and broad recommendations, especially if it’s backed by the government. Given their liability risk it is also quite understandable. The probability that a doctor gets successfully sued for following the official recommendations is negligible and even practitioners who may have doubts about the effectiveness of a drug usually don’t think of it as truly harmful, given the regulatory compliance and legal liability issues that must be resolved for each product. Only if the physicians see a clear individual negative reaction will they discontinue it and try a different drug, usually based on official recommendations, too.
Their approach to dietary guidelines is much the same—they go with official consensus. That’s how I experienced getting some questionable guidance even from doctors I considered competent and that’s how various government-backed interest groups prevail in the broad medicinal and nutritional field.
The food pyramid was bunk. Limiting carbs and increasing meats, eggs and animal fats has worked for me. Avoiding bad beer is part of it, too. Life’s too short to drink bad beer.
———-
*) And even if the doctors read some studies, they usually go with the abstract and the conclusions, rather than delving into the statistical detail. The drug companies employ statistical specialists and most doctors don’t understand the methods anyway.
I did exactly the same thing. Went low carb high fat 2,5 years ago because my doctor wanted me to use statins due to a lightly elevated cholesterol. I never looked back and feel great, bloodwork is normal too!
Should have been bloody obvious from the start. Oldest living people in Europe? France, Symbol of france, chicken, who keeps the most chickens in Europe france. who eats the most eggs you guessed!
The cholesterol scam has huge parallels with the climate scam. An attractive hypothesis with cherry picked data to get it started. Careers built on it, national governing bodies corrupted, a huge industry created, sceptics vilified, data adjusted and huge hypothesis creep as more and more evidence came to light that each new hypothesis was false.
An interesting thing to note for our current circumstances was that as the scam collapsed the believers got more and more shrill. First two eggs a week were OK then one then,”there is no safe level of saturated fat “.
Now that it is proven a scam there are still millions of “expert” nutritionists still pedalling the old myths – my vet recently warned against feeding my dog too much chloresterol!
Get a new vet – quickly!
Excellent post. I too changed my diet and eggs are a daily thing with me now (2 to 4 for breakfast or lunch), meat and cheese being the other main thing and some green veg. I avoid starches (potatoes, bread and pasta) as they make me bloated and slow and I don’t like that. I avoid a lot of packet foods too.
I also switched from wines to scotch, getting rid of additives, and have never felt better.
I had chronic arthritis in both knees – constant pain – which has COMPLETELY healed up. I’m back into exercising again – including weights. I’m almost 60 and feeling the best I have in YEARS. 100% it’s because of dietary change and eggs are a big part of that.
I recommend Lagavulin 16 y.o.
Ooh, nice! I’ve been enjoying Glenfiddich. 🙂
I’m doing an egg a day. For me, this had two noteworthy effects. More muscles, and never a day off work – probably due to the zinc contained in eggs boosting the immune system efficiency. I travel 900 miles a week in trains and buses and subways so I’m always surrounded by sneezing and coughing people. Can’t touch me. I do top up the zinc with Zinc histidine tablets but only when I feel a cold approaching.
Of course all the health authorities will tell you that having a health diet, lots of exercise, and never overdo noxious drugs and never smoke ensures a long life.
Right?
Maria Capovilla (116 years, 347 days) (smoker) (Ecuador)
Christian Mortensen (115 years, 252 days (smoker) (USA)
Jeanne Calment (122 years, 164 days) (smoker) (France)
Eunice Sanborn (114 years, 195 days) (smoker) (USA)
Yukichi Chuganji (114 years, 189 days (smoker) (Japan)
Charlotte Benkner (114 years, 180 days) (smoker) (USA)
Emiliano Mercado del Toro (115 years, 156 days) (smoker) (Puerto Rico)
Jeralean Talley (115 years, 17 days) (still living) (smoker) (USA)
Ramona Trinidad Iglesias Jordan (114 years, 272 days) (smoker) (Puerto Rico)
Walter Breuning (114 years, 205 days) (smoker) (USA)
Just think how much longer they could have lived if they just said no!
It’s all in the genes!
While I’m more than ready to listen (and have been following some recommendations from this blog) to this sort of medical science as the world of food research melts down, shouldn’t we take the outlier anecdotal situations with a grain of salt? (Pun not intended, but relished….that pun also not intended…..English is weird.)
She is not an outlier: She is the perfect average representative of ALL 117 year olds. Doesn’t get more representative than that.
Talk to her about anything and you have a 100% “sample”. That’s why I like the CET data- longest running and well kept.
I for one know when to yield to absolute mathematical clarity.
“Italian MP Elvira Savino is proposing jailing parents who force their children to follow a vegan diet.” I don’t believe that children should be the property of the State – but some protection by the State should be in order. We should worry about where to draw the line, not about which bathroom to use.
Warmunists produce Talking-Cat-warning-of-end-of-the-world-Clickbait videos in hopes of returning to their long gone media stranglehold position.
http://www.focus.de/wissen/videos/umweltkampagnen-katze-warnt-vor-klimawandel_vid_14317.html
Ah, this was a propaganda attempt for the Marokko junket.
Scottish medical skeptic Dr. Malcolm Kendrick has written a book called The Great Cholesterol Con and has a blog that you will enjoy. https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/
Didn’t know about him
Thanks.
Will Marc Morano inherit
the longevity gene as well,
and be able to plague the
globalists for another fifty
or sixty years. Elites must
be quaking at the very notion !
I’ve recently read that scrambled eggs should be avoided, as described here.
Don’t know if it’s true, but I like mine over easy anyway, so no problem there.
Cheers I’m having omelets today.
I’ll let you know how it goes — if I survive!
Hey I survived…
… and to prove it here I am!
(It’s a very old joke…)
LOL – Hurray!
I like omelets myself, partly because you can personalize their taste with onion, garlic, jalapeno, cheese of your choice, or just about any other thing you like.
And it isn’t omelets that are the biggest problem, but scrambled (also tasty if done right), so I’m not going to deprive myself of something so good. Just cut back a bit, …maybe.
Also, I’m thinking that adding some Vitamin C crystals might be all that’s needed to mitigated the problem.
Oh, another thing. Cholesterol is itself an anti-oxidant, so if what you are eating is already oxidized, it can’t protect you from inflammation. Maybe it’s a secondary rather than a direct effect.
In any case, I can’t tell you how relieved I am to hear you survived. 😉
Apparently 75% of medical research is not reproducible.
I think Donna Lafromboise has an article about this.
I would not get too worried.
http://nofrakkingconsensus.blogspot.com/
I would ignore EVERYTHING “Dr” mercola says about ANYTHING, most of all health and food.
I ate lots of eggs.
I eat lots of eggs.
I will eat lots more eggs.
After all, look how good they are for chickens!
I often scramble eggs and put cheese on top.
I do not use “high temperatures” although I’ve not read of the oxidation issue. A slow cooking and melting of cheese is my preferred way.
Regarding: … negligent parents and inadequate nutrition for young children.
Many years ago a family with two young boys invited us to dinner. In place of butter they had mixed yellow squash (I think) with something and made a “spread” for bread, or whatever. The entire meal was a vegan mess. We learned the ages of the 2 boys and they were small for the ages. Today I would have suggested they investigate their lifestyle and offered to send a public health nurse for a visit. I did not know then what I know now.
Much more recently a young boy came home one day and informed his mother he no longer wanted to eat meat. I don’t know why. She is a technician in a medical clinic and began a rushed education on how to meet the nutritional needs of her growing son. She had the smarts and they had the money to do this. If a family isn’t well above average on both smarts and money the vegan thing can go wrong in a hurry.
I do not know how old that boy is, but my elder brother was long ago eyewitness to a slaughter in a butchery in our village and refused to eat meat since that day. My parents told him that besides meat from the butcher there also existed meat-from-the-tree as they called it. He believed it and our family consumed since then fake vegetarian meat.
One thing I find amusing is how they try so hard to make the fake stuff look like the real thing.
http://freefromharm.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Vegan-sausage-and-sunnyside-ups-e1406831262409.jpg
Subconsciously they know that’s what they SHOULD be eating.
I posted earlier, but forgot to add that I eat most of my eggs fried (it’s easier and faster). In BUTTER. We do not have cooking oil in this house. Butter tastes much better too and is better for you.
It was this site that taught me the dangers of oil. Thank you for that. Apologies, I don’t have the link, but it was a video shown: “Oiling of America” I believe.
Hi Pierre, interesting post – Thank you.
I have a question about your obviously successful new diet: Did you quit with omega-6-rich plant oil as well, and if yes, could this explain a part of your returned health? There are some voices claiming that too much plant oil could produce more inflammations in the human body. How do you think about this theory?
Greetings, GT
I avoid omega 6 plant based oils, e.g. sunflower, canola, safflower, cottonseed etc. but not fanatically. I’m timid with cold pressed olive oil. I eat quite a bit of fat in the form of butter, meat and dairy products like yoghurt, curd, etc. Avoid frying at high temps. Optimum omega 3/6 ratio is below 1:3. Right now for average American it’s something like 1:30! Also it’s important to eat berries, veggies and fiber.
I have posted about this before. You can read section 10.13 in this CRC publication on food toxicity to see why I try to educate people about them. It’s short. I can’t imagine anyone using either canola or cottonseed oil again after reading it.
http://tinyurl.com/h3lv5h9
I used to eat them, but they now make me quite ill, even at low doses, so I’m particularly aware of how potentially dangerous they might be to others. (I got sick on them before I read anything about the toxins they contain.)
I use olive oil for cold salads only. Butter, unprocessed coconut oil and occasionally roasted almond are what I cook with.
Hi Pierre and yonason,
thank you for your advice. I too think that eating like humans did in the millions of years during their evolution should be the most sensible approach to a healthy diet. This means, eating much more vegetable oil, sugar and starch than was avaible before the modern civilisation, can’t be a very good idea because our bodies are not naturally designed for such a diet.
Best regards, GT
Note that the study cited in the book you link to is 56 years old and involved rats fed 50% to 70% of their caloric intake as rapeseed oil. Rape is high in erucic acid, the chemical of interest.
In the early 1960s, Canadian plant breeders isolated single lines free of erucic acid and began programs to develop “double low” varieties. Thus, Canola Oil is a specialty bred plant, a (genetically) modified organism, that by 1979 had less than 2% erucic acid, and that is now down to between 0.5-1.0%. At this level it is not considered harmful.
Both the Mayo Clinic and Snopes dot com agree it is not toxic in this way.
You may have other reasons for not wanting to eat it.
If you continue reading, only one sentence away, you find:
“Subsequent studies have shown that even an intake of 4 energy percent in the form of erucic acid can lead to certain morphological defects”
It’s a poison. Most people may be able to tolerate it, but not all do. The small amounts that block heart mitochondrial metabolism will probably not even be noticed by young healthy people; but the older you get, the less stress you can tolerate. And if the damage it does is cumulative, stopping it once you notice symptoms may be too late. I’m not telling you what to do, just giving you information so you can make an informed decision.
In the case of the Cottonseed Oil, at least one of the toxins it contains is a known carcinogen. From what I read in the Yudkin book on white sugar I was reminded that the Delaney clause forbids the use of anything that causes cancer in humans or animals to be used in our food. By that criteria, cottonseed oil should be forbidden. But the cotton mafia is powerful, and probably got a waiver.
[…] Sur le web. […]
50 Years Ago, Sugar Industry Quietly Paid Scientists To Point Blame At Fat
In the 1960s, the sugar industry funded research that downplayed the risks of sugar and highlighted the hazards of fat, according to a newly published article in JAMA Internal Medicine.
The article draws on internal documents to show that an industry group called the Sugar Research Foundation wanted to “refute” concerns about sugar’s possible role in heart disease. The SRF then sponsored research by Harvard scientists that did just that. The result was published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1967, with no disclosure of the sugar industry funding.
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/13/493739074/50-years-ago-sugar-industry-quietly-paid-scientists-to-point-blame-at-fat
Even Ancel Keyes recognized that dietary cholesterol was not a factor (Human Atherosclerosis and the Diet, 1952). He stated in that paper that
“No animal species close to man in metabolic habitus has been shown to be susceptible to the induction of atherosclerosis by cholesterol feeding. The nearest approach to metabolic comparability is the dog which requires extensive thyroid damage as well as tremendous amounts of dietary cholesterol before positive effects can be elicited. Moreover, even in the favorite species for such experimentation, the herbivorous rabbit, the necessary concentration of cholesterol in the diet is fantastically high in comparison with actual human diets. The actual range of daily intakes of cholesterol provided by real human diets is from zero to perhaps 1000 mg, but the vast majority of human diets seldom average as much as 700 mg. The cholesterol levels in the diets used to induce atherosclerosis in animals range from 0.5 to 5 per cent by weight of the dry food, the most popular level being 2 per cent. This means something like 1000 to 10,000 mg. of cholesterol per 1000 Calories of food, the 2 per cent cholesterol level being equivalent to about 4000 mg. per 1000 Calories if 30 per cent of the calories are derived from fats. We should have to provide some 10,000 to 15,000 mg. of cholesterol daily to a man to be comparable. Moreover, there is reason to believe that man has a greater power of cholesterol regulation than does the rabbit or the chicken. From the animal experiments alone the most reasonable conclusion would be that the cholesterol content of human diets is unimportant in human atherosclerosis.”