Nexus - 0602 - New Times Magazine-pages

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nourished healthy population groups for thousands of years, and, stifled by denying funding to the ‘unbelievers’. This meeting will also like butter, competes with hydrogenated fats because it can review the data and expose the rascals." be used as a shortening. The rascals did their best to prevent the meeting from taking The following year, the Surgeon General's Report on Nutrition place. Funding promised by the Greenwall Foundation of New and Health emphasised the importance of making low-fat foods York City was later withdrawn, so Mann paid most of the bills. A more widely available. Project LEAN (Low-fat Eating for press release, sent as a dirty trick to speakers and participants, America Now)—sponsored by the J. Kaiser Family Foundation wrongly announced that the conference had been cancelled. and a host of establishment groups such as the American Heart Several speakers, including the prestigious Dr Roslyn Alfin-Slater Association, the American Dietetic Association, the American and Dr Peter Nixon of London, did in fact renege at the last Medical Association, the USDA, the National Cancer Institute, minute on their commitment to attend. Dr Eliot Corday of Los the Centers for Disease Control and the National Heart, Lung and Angeles cancelled after being told that his attendance would jeop- Blood Institute—announced a publicity campaign to "aggressively ardise future funding. promote foods low in saturated fat and cholesterol in order to The final pared-down roster included: Dr George Mann; Dr reduce the risk of heart disease and cancer". Mary Enig; Dr Victor Herbert; Dr Petr Skrabenek; Dr James The next year, Enig joined Frank McLaughlin, Director of the McCormick, a physician from Dublin; Dr William Stehbens from Center for Business and Public Policy at the University of New Zealand, who described the normal protective process of Maryland, in testimony before the National Food Processors arterial thickening at points of greatest stress and pressure; and Dr Association (NFPA). It was a closed conference for NFPA mem- Meyer Texon, an expert in the dynamics of blood flow. ers only. Enig and McLaughlin had been invited to give "a view Manz, in his presentation, blasted the system that had foisted from academia". Enig presented a number of slides and warned the diet/heart-disease dogma on a gullible public. "You will see," against singling out classes of fats and oils for special pejorative he said, "that many of our contributors are senior scientists. They labelling. A representative from Frito-Lay took umbrage at Enig's are so for a reason that has become painfully conspicuous as we slides which listed amounts of trans fats in Frito-Lay products. organised this meeting. Scientists who must go before review Enig offered to re-do the analyses if Frito-Lay were willing to panels for their research funding know well that to speak out, to fund the research. "If you'd talk different, you'd get money," he disagree with this false dogma of Diet/Heart, is a fatal error. They said. must comply or go unfunded. I could Enig urged the association to show a list of scientists who said to endorse accurate labelling of trans me, in effect, when I invited them to fats in all food items, but conference participate, 'I believe you are right, articipants—including representa- "l believe you are right, that the that the Diet/Heart hypothesis is tives from most of the major food Diet/Heart hypothesis is wrong, wrong, but I cannot join you because processing giants—preferred a poli- that would jeopardise my perks and cy of "voluntary labelling" that did but l cannot join you because funding.’ For me, that kind of hypo- not unnecessarily alert the public to that would jeopardise my critical response separates the scien- the presence of trans fats in their tists from the operators, the men from foods. To date, they have prevailed perks and funding." the boys." in preventing the inclusion of trans y the 1990s the operators had succeeded, by slick manipula- fats on nutrition labels. nig and the University of tion of the press and of scien- Hittzstin group were not alone in their efforts to bring tific research, in transforming America into a nation that was well their concerns about the effect of partially hydrogenated and truly oiled. Consumption of butter had bottomed out at about fats before the public. 5 grams per person per day, down from almost 18 grams at the Kummerow at the University of Illinois, blessed with indepen- turn of the century. Use of lard and tallow had been reduced by dent funding and an abundance of patience, carried out a number _ two-thirds. Margarine consumption had jumped from less than 2 of studies that indicated that trans fats increased the risk factors grams per person per day in 1909 to about 11 grams in 1960. associated with heart disease and that vegetable-oil-based fabri- Since then, consumption figures have changed little, remaining at cated foods such as Egg Beaters cannot support life.” about 11 grams per person per day—perhaps because knowledge George Mann, formerly with the Framingham project, pos- of margarine's dangers has been slowly seeping out to the public. sessed neither funding nor patience and in fact was very angry However, most of the trans fats in the current American diet with what he called the "Diet/Heart scam". His independent stud- come not from margarine but from shortening used in fried and ies of the Masai in Africa,” whose diet is extremely rich in cho- fabricated foods. American shortening consumption of 10 grams lesterol and saturated fat and who are virtually free of heart dis- per person per day held steady until the 1960s, although the con- ease, had convinced him that the lipid hypothesis was "the public tent of that shortening had changed from mostly lard, tallow and health diversion of this century...the greatest scam in the history coconut oil—all natural fats—to partially hydrogenated soybean of medicine".* oil. Then shortening consumption shot up and by 1993 had Mann resolved to bring the issue before the public by organis- tripled to over 30 grams per person per day. But the most dramat- ing a conference in Washington, DC, in November of 1991. ic overall change in the American diet was the huge increase in "Hundreds of millions of tax dollars are wasted by the bureaucra- the consumption of liquid vegetable oils, from slightly less than 2 cy and the self-interested Heart Association," he wrote in his invi- grams per person per day in 1909 to over 30 grams in 1993—a tation to participants. "Segments of the food industry play the fifteenfold increase. game for profits. Research on the true causes and prevention is The irony is that these trends have persisted concurrently with revelations about the dangers of polyunsaturates. Because "I believe you are right, that the Diet/Heart hypothesis is wrong, but I cannot join you because that would jeopardise my perks and funding." 38 + NEXUS FEBRUARY — MARCH 1999