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| In 2014 Time Magazine reversed its position on dietary fat and CAD |
At the age of 64, after a morning playing golf, president Dwight D Eisenhower had his first heart attack. As Pulitzer Prize winning author Gary Taubes describes in his book “Good Calories, Bad Calories” Eisenhower’s heart attack “constituted a learning experience on coronary artery disease (CAD).” After the event, his doctors, considered the top experts in the field, gave the public a “lucid and authoritative description of the disease itself”, followed by twice-daily press conferences held on the president’s condition. Soon, most of America, particularly middle-aged men, became intently aware of dogma promoted by these “experts”: the notion that CAD is caused by eating foods high in fat and cholesterol.
Like much of the rest of the nation, Eisenhower began to avidly lower his fat and cholesterol intake. Yet this plan of attack was counterintuitive for Eisenhower who, before his heart attack, had none of these supposed risk factors connected with CAD. His blood pressure was only seldom elevated, his weight throughout his life remained around 172 pounds (considered optimal for his height). His total cholesterol was below normal – his last measurement before the attack was 165 mg/dl, a level that heart disease specialists today consider safe. He had even quit smoking six years earlier in 1949.
[you can read the rest of this fascinating paper here: Cholesterol, fat, and human metabolism: a microbiome-based paradigm shift ]
