If there is a key issue for us, it is to turn around the current nutritional pyramid in which carbohydrates have the leading role, and in which fats do not occupy the place they deserve. The food industry has been denouncing the consumption of fats for years, and warning about a false link with cardiovascular diseases. And, if there is something that wins that race, it is sugar and carbohydrates .

It is difficult to turn this around. For years, different studies that have influenced this same idea have been silenced or downplayed, and others that demonized fats have been helped to finance. The industry has grown up around the empire of sugar and other additives, and it’s difficult to make a grocery purchase free of refined white powder. However, from time to time research pops up that shed some light. The last one was carried out by the scientist, an expert in heart disease at the University of Florida , David Diamond, accompanied by five other cardiologists.

Cardiologists are clear about it

The text, published in the British Medical Journal , not only delves into the fact that saturated fats do not increase bad cholesterol or damage our heart, but also provides an approach different. The elimination of simple carbohydrates from our diet is beneficial to prevent cardiovascular diseases. And Diamond’s is not the only recent investigation in this regard. In the Journal of the American College of Cardiology emphasizes what we mentioned at the beginning: the hoax of fats that has survived over time. The text indicates that the recommendation not to consume saturated fat has persisted despite the fact that there is evidence that is not a correct theory .

Diamond and his team throw up another new idea that hints at the power and interests behind some theories that have been repeated and promoted over time. He assures that it has been very profitable to link cholesterol level with heart disease . In this sense, the study provides data on people with hypercholesterolemia who, thanks to abandoning sugar consumption as well as tobacco consumption, do not develop heart disease. So why have you put so much effort into the evil role of cholesterol? Diamond clarifies that the industry is very good economically to market products that help lower it , with the underlying message that cholesterol is very harmful to cardiovascular health.

What the industry has been trying to silence for years

These are the most recent studies, but if we go back five years, we find a relevant event to turn the myths that the industry has developed around fats. In 2015, the American Medical Association forced the US government to modify its recommendations to limit the consumption of saturated fat. And to that, the publications in The New York Times on pressure from the Sugar Association to fund publications promoting one main idea: fats are bad. And of course, if we do not give fat to our body, what is left for us to obtain energy (although much less lasting)? Yes, products with sugar and refined flours.

And if we continue traveling back in time, we already find publications by experts who tried to shed light on the great lie that has been built around fats. Cases like that of Dr. Yudkin, the most relevant nutritionist in the United Kingdom in years 50 and 60, was humiliated and ostracized by all the powerful machinery at the service of the sugar industry due to its fight against sugar and low-fat diets. Instead, a voice was given, also in the early 1950s, to a researcher from the University of Minnesota, Ancel Keys, funded by the fledgling sugar lobby. Keys was beginning to propagate a theory of his own according to which he believed that fat consumption was directly related to cardiovascular disease.

There is one aspect that is scientific evidence that cannot be refuted: the only essential micronutrient our body needs are fats, and not carbohydrates. Fats are essential for vital functions to develop correctly, on top of that they fill us up, provide us with proteins and lasting energy. With the simple carbohydrates that the food industry has promoted so much, we only get our bodies to suffer constant sugar spikes.

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