Saturated Fat Misinformation Spread by MAHA Critiqued

[00:00] The FDA commissioner, Dr. Marty Makary, he heads  the Food and Drug Administration in the United   States. He was appointed by RFK Jr. last year. He  just gave an interview on TV where he talks about   saturated fats and heart disease. We're going to  take a look. It's a very short video. I think it's  

[00:15] a great example of how not to communicate science  to the public. And guys, we're going to try to   stick to the facts. I ask that you help out. We're  not going to politicize this. It's incredibly   dangerous to politicize science. Facts are facts  regardless of which political party we like. Well,  

[00:32] sure we want to promote healthy fats, but you  know, we were encouraging as a medical field   people for decades to eat egg white, you know,  egg white only eggs. And if you think about that  

[00:45] recommendation, it was really based on the flawed  medical dogma of Dr. Ancel Keys in the 1960s and   it became medical group think. Three large  studies, gigantic studies, including two of  

[00:58] the largest databased uh uh studies in the history  of medicine tried to prove the association between   saturated fat intake and heart disease. And all  three failed to show that. Okay, we have dozens  

[01:12] of studies on saturated fat and heart disease,  not three. And even if we just look at randomized   controlled trials on this question, there's at  least 14 of those, not three. And when we put the   evidence together, what we call a meta-analysis,  and we do that rigorously, we see a lower risk of  

[01:30] heart disease events like heart attacks or strokes  when saturated fat is moderated. So that's the big   picture in this field. He doesn't mention any of  that. He wants to focus on specific studies. Okay,  

[01:42] let's see. Including the famous Minnesota heart  study that showed those who had the low-fat diet   in the randomized trial had higher rates of  heart attacks. Okay, there was no low-fat   group in Minnesota. One group was 39% fat. The  other was 38% fat. Identical. There's no low-fat  

[01:59] group. This isn't some footnote. This is on  top of the first page of the study. It's the   summary of the paper. So, he's on TV bringing  up a study that he's not familiar with. Maybe   he's never read it because the whole point of  the study is to test diets. He doesn't know  

[02:13] what diets they tested. Okay. He also said they  had higher rates of heart attacks. Same place,   top of the first page. They found no differences  in cardiovascular events, cardiovascular deaths,   or total mortality. Now, it's important to  understand this trial, the Minnesota trial,  

[02:28] was interrupted abruptly, long before it was  scheduled to end. So, they planned to run it   for 3 to four years because it takes a while for  things like heart attacks or deaths to develop and  

[02:41] accrue. It doesn't happen overnight. But they lost  almost all of their participants, more than 80% of   participants were lost. 75% lost in the first  year alone. So the trial was aborted and even  

[02:53] during that short follow-up, the participants were  in and out of the trial. During that period, they   were on and off the diets. So it's not surprising  that they didn't find a significant difference   between the groups. It's totally expected. And  there's more issues with this trial. For example,  

[03:07] there's a question with trans fats. This trial  took place in the 60s and 70s. A number of foods   had industrial trans fats, margarine, and other  processed foods. At the time, this wasn't well   understood. So, it's very possible that one of  the groups was eating more trans fats than the  

[03:21] other. Nobody knows for sure because there's no  quantification. Now, much later in the 2010s,   they published some additional data from notebooks  and from a thesis, including some autopsy reports  

[03:34] for a small subset of participants, about 1 to  2% of the total folks in the trial. Trial started   out with more than 9,000 people. Most of those  didn't die during the trial. Of those who died,  

[03:46] about 500 deaths. We don't have autopsy reports  for most. So, they got autopsy reports, they   recovered them for about 1.6% of the participants  in the trial. And what they found was in the  

[03:59] intervention group, 31 participants had at least  one heart attack detected in the autopsy. So,   this could have been a silent heart attack. And in  the control group it was 16 individuals. And these  

[04:12] folks for whom they recovered the autopsy data,  they had been in the trial for less than a year by   the time they died. So, interesting observation.  But is this even representative of the total  

[04:25] sample? Because they didn't see a difference in  cardiovascular events like heart attacks overall   when they looked at all the participants not just  this tiny sample. Was this caused by the oils they   were given in the trial? Was it caused by trans  fats in the trial? Was it even caused by foods  

[04:42] from the trial? Because they've been in the trial  for less than a year. Maybe it's a fluke. Maybe   these heart attacks happened before the trial  started. Nobody knows for sure. My point is,  

[04:54] you handpick one trial with massive issues. You  ignore the majority of the evidence in this field,   that goes in the opposite direction. Even within  this trial, you handpick one observation in a tiny  

[05:07] percentage of participants. You ignore most of  what the trial reported. You ignore that overall   there was no difference in cardiovascular events.  And based on this, you go on this rant that all  

[05:20] scientists are wrong. It's all dogma and group  think. My opinion, this is a perfect example of   how not to communicate science. This confuses the  public and this harms people. And that's because  

[05:32] when you eradicate fat, you replace it with  refined carbohydrates, which increase general   body inflammation. You don't have to. You can  eat unprocessed carbohydrates, but also nobody's  

[05:46] saying that you have to eradicate fats. Nobody  in professional nutrition nowadays is saying that   you have to eat a low-fat diet. We moved past that  many years ago, decades ago. These guys are stuck   in the past. This whole endeavor is a straw man  argument, right? It's like the fixation with the  

[06:02] pyramid. The pyramid was discontinued 15 years  ago. They're still going on and on about the   pyramid, the pyramid. Healthy fats are recommended  almost universally by professionals in nutrition   and they've been recommended for many years.  Extra virgin olive oil, fatty fish, seafood,  

[06:19] nuts and seeds, avocados. And the main irony  with this is this whole narrative of saturated   fat is misunderstood, was unfairly demonized,  they don't even believe that. They just put  

[06:31] out national dietary guidelines that they wrote  where they uphold the same limit we've always had,   under 10% of calories from saturated fat. Here  he is in the press conference just last week  

[06:43] announcing the guidelines. How much saturated fats  Americans should be consuming. I'm going to let   Marty take that since he wrote a book. Look, the  old the old dogma the 1960s when Eisenhower had  

[06:56] his heart attack and Anel Keys said it was the  saturated fat that's never been substantiated   and so that flawed research has become dogma  over the years and eventually the conversation   was sidelined. In this new guide guidance  we are telling young people, kids, schools,  

[07:15] you don't need to tiptoe around fat and dairy.  You don't need to push low-fat um uh milk to   kids. And we are maintaining the 10% of calories  as saturated fat in the guidance. Does that make  

[07:28] any sense to you? It's all flawed research.  It's all dogma. It's never been substantiated,   but we're upholding the same limit on saturated  fat we've always had. What? If you believe that   that gap is not based on good science, then why  are you recommending it to 300 million people?  

[07:46] Just because the guys before did? Just because  every country on the planet does? Isn't that   the definition of dogma and groupthink and being a  sheep? Exactly the thing they like to accuse other  

[07:59] people of doing? And if the science does support  that cap, as you said in your official document,   why are you telling people otherwise in  a press conference? Completely reckless,   right? Completely irresponsible, sending people  to an early grave. The truth is this narrative is  

[08:16] very popular. People want to hear that butter  is fine or even good for you. All scientists   are wrong. It's unfairly demonized. It's a very  popular rhetoric. But in an official document,  

[08:28] there's a lot more accountability. So there they  don't play these games. They go with the balance   of evidence and what most scientists are telling  them is a good idea, right? So in the future if   there's a lawsuit they can say "well we, we said  under 10% in the document", right? While at the  

[08:43] same time dog-whistling to the public that it's  all dogma, don't worry about it, just eat all   the butter you want. Do you see how dishonest  that is, to say one thing and do another in an   official document? This is how politicians behave.  It's got nothing to do with science or facts. If  

[09:00] you find this topic of saturated fat confusing,  we have a video covering all of the evidence and   practical takeaways. So, I'll link that right  here. Check it out. I'll see you in there.