I'll just leave this here https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25198208
So... heart disease can be attributed almost entirely to eating meat? That result seems too good to be true.
As a meat-eater I think the most stupid strawmen vegans hit me with is the belief that I only eat meat. I think very few people advocate "only eating meat" (e.g. recent 0carb hype, which I think is clearly pseudoscience). You can still eat plants but supplement your diet with meat to get more protein and healthy fats. You can still get 75% of your calories from plants but still eat meat. Also, there will be a huge difference between highly processed meat (bacon, salami etc) and unprocessed, grass-fed meat. Studies like this simply ignore all these factors.
Indians have one of the highest rates of heart attacks even though a significant population is purely vegetarian.
I think science has to be focused on biology and science, not social surveys and asking questions to a small bunch of uncontrolled strangers.
Just college kids and mechanical turk penny vacuums
So probably a little predictable
Wait, what's that?
"Participants
This report reviews the outcomes of 198 consecutive nonsmoking patients with multiple comorbidities of hyperlipidemia (n=161), hypertension (n=60), and diabetes (n=23) who voluntarily asked for counseling in plantbased nutrition for disease treatment. These self-selected participants requested consultation after learning about the program through the Internet, the media, prior scientific publications, the senior author’s book (CBE Jr), other authors’ supportive comments, or word of mouth.2,13 A preliminary 25- to 30-minute telephone conversation established disease presentation and severity by eliciting reports of symptoms, history of MI, stress test and angiogram results, interventions undertaken, family history, lipid profile, and the presence of comorbid chronic conditions. In these calls, we outlined the program, established rapport, and documented the need for additional patient information. The Cleveland Clinic Institutional Review Board determined that these were acceptable outcome measurements to evaluate the nutrition program."
"Baseline characteristics of participants are shown in Table 1. (Two patients from the original group of 200 were lost to follow-up.) The remaining 198 participants for whom data were available had CVD, were mostly men (91%), averaged 62.9 years of age, and were followed for an average of 44.2 months (3.7 years). "
Ghee could be part of the cause of that, but I have no idea what to think of saturated fat any more.
Most such research simply monitor the participants' diets through a questionnaire or some indirect mechanism. It's not a scientific, reproducible approach.
I am making a meta-point that such research has started to affect more and more of what we think of as science which is extremely disturbing.
The harder scientific work would be to analyze the effect of specific foods with how the heart works over a much longer epriod of time. Granted that there isn't a way to track or pursue this line of inquiry yet, but taking shortcuts isn't science IMO.
If it's the study I've seen, the improvement can be largely attributed to a tremendous drop in both calories and fat. Instead of their idea of a balanced diet being a bacon double cheeseburger in each hand with a gallon of ice cream for desert, it became rice and legumes and veggies. They shot for keeping fats to no more than 10 percent. They invited participants to dinners so they could experience good tasting, healthy gourmet meals and not feel like this was about deprivation.
Participants dropped tons of weight without trying and without having to try to control themselves. They could eat all they wanted every day and not get enough calories to remain clinically obese.
Downvoters: Please just read the paper.
SFA is now believed to play a much smaller role in CHD than was previously believed while that of sugar, whole grains, and cereal fiber have moved in the opposite direction.
Which is not the same thing as no correlation.
I'm sure it's vastly more complicated than just fat content, but the stuff I've seen indicated that one study of a vegetarian diet as post cardiac therapy explicitly set a goal of keeping fat content down to 10%. Prior to being put on a vegetarian diet, the typical diet of participants was much, much fattier. Participants were just blown away at being able to eat all they wanted for the first time in their lives and lose weight without even trying.
My personal experience: I dropped several dress sizes without intending to by completely ignoring both calories and fat percentage and focusing on consuming nutritionally dense foods to redress known nutrient deficiencies.
So I have absolutely no doubt that it's vastly more complicated. But I tend to get a lot of flak for talking about what I think about diet, the gut biome, medical stuff, etc. So I really wasn't looking to get into that.
I was only looking to add a little more information about such studies. The main takeaway as I understand it: they stopped being obese. There are people who eat meat who are not obese.
Anecdotal, but this is me at the moment on keto. For the first time in my life (I have been obese since 5) I am not ravenously hungry all the time, to the point where I can just eat one meal a day without much struggle. I eat as much as I want now, the only difference is I don't want much at all. Oh, and I can't eat many carbs.
many heart diseases have nothing to do with blood chemistry.
source: i have valves turning to shit and never had a problem with blockages or high cholesterol.