How Ancel Keys Brainwashed the Masses Into Fearing Meat (He’s Wrong)

Ancel Keys

On September 26th 1955, America’s President Eisenhower had a heart attack.

The same day, stock markets plummeted over 6%, losing $14 billion in the worst day for markets since WW2.

President Eisenhower, despite being a war-hero and having access to the world’s best doctors, was still vulnerable to the vicissitudes of heart disease.

From 1900 to the 1950s, coronary heart disease skyrocketed in the US. Fear pervaded America, and President Eisenhower’s heart attack epitomized the crisis.

Enter Ancel Keys

“Middle-aged men, seemingly healthy, were dropping dead,” wrote biochemist Ancel Keys. Americans needed a solution, and Ancel Keys was the knight in shining armor.

Or so the world thought…

In 1952, Keys presented the diet-heart hypothesis that linked heart disease to fat intake. His hypothesis is why we fear eating fat to this day. Since his initial “findings”, avoiding fat has become synonymous with a healthy diet.

Americans have dutifully followed Keys’ advice to their own peril. Chronic disease has skyrocketed around the world as refined carbohydrates and cancer causing polyunsaturated fats have replaced saturated fats .

Ancel Keys essentially gave a pass to all other factors leading to chronic disease. Most Americans’ daily exercise consists of squeezing ketchup on their fries.

Yet, hundreds of millions have been spent trying to confirm Keys’ diet heart hypothesis to convince themselves of the shitty diet they’ve adopted today.

Digging a little deeper, research ends up producing results that disprove the hypothesis.

Shocking, right?

To this day, the anti-fat gospel is still the most recommended diet in all nutritional recommendations.

And the USDA has done absolutely nothing to clear the damage caused by Keys’ hypothesis.

In 2010, the USDA released their updated guidelines, still recommending 45% of calories from carbs and minimal animal/saturated fats:

USDA guidelines recommending 45% of calories coming from carbs

The food pyramid is simply moronic. It has been an absolute disaster – the BIGGEST public health crisis of the last 50 years.

Before we go further, if you’re interested in getting to the best health of your life with the carnivore diet, sign up below for my 14 day getting started guide.

How Ancel Keys Brainwashed Us

The idea that saturated fat is unhealthy is so ingrained in our culture that many forget that it started as just an idea.

The biologist who came up with the theory, Keys, first targeted cholesterol as the culprit for coronary heart disease. He found that arterial plaques contain cholesterol, and since animal fats also contain cholesterol, he claimed that cholesterol causes heart disease.

Keys spent the 1950s trying to prove his theory, but ended up finding that no matter how much dietary cholesterol he fed volunteers, the level in their blood was unchanged.

“The evidence – both from experiments and from field surveys – indicates that cholesterol content, per se, of all natural diets has no significant effect on either the cholesterol level or the development of atherosclerosis in man.”

Still interested in cholesterol as the root cause, Keys aimed his sights elsewhere.

To silence the doubters, Keys interviewed 12,700 middle aged men in Italy, Greece, Yugoslavia, Finland, the Netherlands, Japan, and the United States and measured key health information.

This is the infamous Seven Countries Study.

The results showed vastly different rates of heart attacks between countries.

7 Countries Study showing deaths increase as fat consumption increase

But most importantly, it uncovered the correlation he sought between saturated fat and heart disease. In the chart above, as calories from fat increase, deaths from heart disease also increase.

Keys concluded from the above:

“Whether or not cholesterol etc., are involved, it must be concluded that dietary fat somehow is associated with cardiac diseases mortality, at least in middle age”

America was in need of an answer, and the results were celebrated.

Ancel Keys on the cover of Times Magazine

But Keys’ conclusion would turn out to be incorrect and dishonest.

In 1957, Perushalmy and Hilleboe presented a more comprehensive study with more countries included.

How Ancel Keys Cherry-Picked the 7 Countries Study

France, Switzerland and Chile were outliers with high fat consumption but low instances of heart disease – all left out of Keys’ study. With all twenty-two countries included, there was no longer any statistical significance.

Not only did Keys cherry pick seven countries, he bypassed one of the most important scientific notions: correlation is not equal to causation.

Analogy on popsicles and sunburns

This study isn’t a randomized trial, which means that its claim that high fat causes heart disease isn’t necessarily causal. The relationship can be caused by other reasons.

For example, imagine observing that everybody that lived in a large New York City apartment was wealthy, and then concluding that buying the apartment made people rich. The causation is backwards.

Without controlling for other factors and randomizing participants, you can’t make causal claims. At best, these types of studies are used to generate hypotheses that are more rigorously tested.  

Because of how expensive the gold standard for studies is – a randomized controlled trial – the dietary community was forced to rely on circumstantial evidence.

The study was also sloppy in its methods. Only 3.9% of the subjects were consulted on the kind of food they ate. In the US, the food sample was taken only on a one day period .

One of the most troubling errors was that one of the studies in Greece was conducted during fasting season, when people consumed much fewer animal products.

This is like taking the US diet sample on Halloween and concluding that eating 17 candy bars before bed was responsible for 100% of our adverse health effects. You cannot conclude that it’s our typical diet, and that it’s responsible for all adverse effects over a 20 year period.

Despite these factors, Keys’ study has been cited over 1 million times, and it would go on to become the cornerstone of dietary guidance. It’s also why people are repulsed when they see you guzzle down a plate of steak and bacon.

Basically, the conclusion was as follows:

  1. Coronary heart disease tends to be related to cholesterol.
  2. Cholesterol tends to be related to saturated fat.
  3. Thus, coronary heart disease is related to saturated fat.

This shouldn’t have gotten a passing grade in a high school science class, let alone direct our country’s nutritional approach.

The hypothesis that saturated fat causes heart disease became accepted as truth before it was rigorously tested. We were in a public health crisis and the public demanded certainty.

By 1961, the American Heart Association recommended that butter should be replaced with polyunsaturated seed oils, and that animal fats should be avoided. The aim was to lower cholesterol levels.

1961 American Heart Association recommendation to fight heart disease is polyunsaturated oil

Then, in 1970, in the first explicit government statement on the issue, the Senate-backed USDA released the food pyramid.

Ancel Keys killed saturated fat. The nail was in the coffin.

What Really Destroys Your Health?

In the early 1900s, an evil genius at Procter and Gamble came up with the idea to use cotton seeds — a toxic waste product — and turn them into a cooking oil.

P&G used cottonseed oil for candles and soap, but later discovered that they could hydrogenate the oil into a solid that resembled animal fats.

Behold…Crisco.

According to Jason Fung:

“Crisco was skillfully marketed as a cheaper alternative to lard. In 1911, Proctor & Gamble launched a brilliant campaign to put Crisco into every American household. They produced a recipe book, all of which use Crisco, of course, and gave it away for free. This was unheard of, at the time.”

Crisco was adeptly marketed as a more versatile butter. It could be used for frying, baking and cooking. It could be stored at room temperature. They even claimed it was easier to digest and healthier too.

The AHA got behind the health claims in the early 1960s, recommending Crisco and other unsaturated seed oils because of their ability to lower cholesterol.

Throughout the 1900s, Crisco and other cottonseed oils consumption skyrocketed.

Chart showing consumption of shortening increasing over time

The P&G alchemy of toxic byproducts into an ostensibly healthy cooking product was indeed too good to be true. Hydrogenation created “trans-fats” which studies indicate doubled the risk of heart disease for every 2% consumed . Meanwhile, American’s were consuming upwards of 10kg a day.

Some estimates are that trans fats were responsible for 100,000 deaths . The number is likely higher if you count all the second and third order effects. The AHA, an entity that we still trust today, was basically recommending that people consume poison.

This is the backdrop that led to the Eisenhower heart attack. Heart disease was rampant, but instead of blaming it on this new food manufactured from cheap toxic byproducts, the government decided to blame it on a product we’ve been eating for millions of years.

What happened was the following:

  • Step 1: Get everybody to eat vegetable oils, Crisco and Margarine
  • Step 2: Massive heart disease increase
  • Step 3: Blame it on natural fats, and tell people to eat MORE vegetable oils (Crisco)
  • Step 4: Pharma, doctors and CPG profit. All of us lose

And the new guidelines only increased the severity of this trend.

How Did This Disaster Happen? Corruption.

This wasn’t a simple mistake. There’s been a decades long collaboration between the AHA, Big Food and Big Pharma that all culminated in these disastrous and criminal recommendations.

The process was littered with corruption.

BIG CPG + P&G financing AHA

The AHA, one of the primary proponents of the diet-heart hypothesis, was launched from a $17m donation by Procter and Gamble — the manufacturers of Crisco.

How Procter & Gamble funded the American Heart Association

Of course they came to the conclusion that polyunsaturated vegetable oils are healthier than natural fats. Procter and Gamble would go on to make BILLIONS, despite killing 100s of thousands of people.

Today, the reach goes even further. All the promoters of high carb diets are funded by corporations. Corporations that are interested in maintaining the status quo. Because a lazy, obese, and unhealthy population is much easier to make money off of.

Disgusting.

Promoters of High-Carb Diets Funded by Corporate Interests

Ten companies now control the entire world’s nutrition. Together they are worth greater than $1 Trillion.

Each and every one of them can only survive so long as people are blind to the fact that seed oils and sugar are killing them.

Each and every one of these corrupt money grabbing institutions are liquidating people’s health and stashing it in their bank accounts.

Graph showing 10 companies control the entire world's nutrition

Kellogg & Seventh Day Adventist Church

There were also explicit religious motivations behind the criticism of animal products. Cereal was part of Kellog’s initiative to reduce masturbating and sexual desire.

Cereal was part of Kellog's initiative to reduce masturbating and sexual desire

Reducing meat intake and cholesterol hurts sex hormone production. This is why we have the least masculine men in history today.

This is a direct and explicit consequence of the shift to eating garbage.

Processed food is INHUMANE. It’s the fastest way to kill off our population, which it looks like these people are trying to do.

Harvard “Scientists”

Just three years ago it was discovered that the sugar industry paid the Harvard scientists consulting on the dietary guidelines to shift the heart health blame away from sugar.

The newly released documents show that the Sugar Research Foundation paid three Harvard Scientists ~$50,000 each to publish a paper shifting the blame from sugar to fat. The studies were published in the New England Journal of Medicine — a prestigious journal — and were pivotal in the USDA guidelines

Mark Hegstead, one of the scientists who was paid off by the sugar industry, would later become the head of nutrition at the USDA, where he helped with early stages of the food pyramid.

Absolutely appalling.

The Real Research Has Been Buried

One of the most comprehensive studies on heart disease was COMPLETELY buried.

Data from the Minnesota Coronary Experiment was unearthed in 2017 after 40 years of sitting dormant.

Ancel Keys, the progenitor of the diet-heart hypothesis, was the lead on the study. It was one of the most comprehensive to date: randomized, controlled and 9,400 participants.

Subjects were in mental health institutions or nursing homes, which helped to ensure the dietary guidelines were followed to a tee for 56 months.

The control group continued to eat a diet high in saturated fats and animal fats. The intervention group ate a serum cholesterol lowering diet that replaced saturated fat with vegetable oils (from corn oil and corn oil polyunsaturated margarine).

Results:

  • The intervention group had a 14% reduction in cholesterol
  • But this didn’t reduce death rate. There was a 22% HIGHER risk of death for each 30 mg/dL reduction in cholesterol
Abstract of unpublished data from Minnesota Coronary Experiment

Remember, the diet-heart hypothesis is that “animal fats leads to increased cholesterol which leads increased death. But no step in the chain was ever proven. Cholesterol was lowered on this study and death rates went up.

This should have been the nail in the coffin for the diet-heart-hypothesis, but it was completely buried.

Why did death rates increase?

  • Vegetable oils reduce LDL cholesterol, but increase their potential for oxidation.
  • Until about 100 years ago we would have consumed about 2-3% of calories from linoleic acid. By the time, this diet began, this increased to 8%. This shock had devastating consequences
  • Linoleic acid intake increases oxidized linoleic acid derivatives which are implicated in the pathogenesis of a number of diseases

Only partial data was presented from this study, following its completion in 1973.

It’s absolutely criminal that the government still pushed the diet-heart-hypothesis and the Food Pyramid following these results.

The Sydney Heart health study was also swept under the rug. It was supposed to support the AHA’s hypothesis but ended up revealing the disastrous consequences of seed oils.

The group that replaced saturated fat with vegetable oils had a 62% HIGHER death rate despite lowering their cholesterol.

Well that backfired…

Sydney Diet Heart Study showing that intervention group had higher rates of death than the control group

Disastrous Health Consequences Ensued

The consequences of this shift in nutrition recommendations have been disastrous.

  • Over 60% of people in the US have diabetes or pre diabetes
  • Only 12% of people are metabolically healthy
  • Over $1.7tn is spent on chronic disease annually
  • Addiction to comfort is at all time highs

It’s no coincidence that the largest increase in obesity in human history was right after the USDA told us what to eat.

From 1975 to 2018 obesity TRIPLED worldwide: 2bn adults are now obese

Rise in US Overweight and Obesity Coincides with Beginning of Dietary Guidelines

These corrupt forces have destroyed our health. When carbohydrates, grains and seed oils were elevated to a dietary staple our health was traded in exchange for profits for big pharma and big cpg.

Ultimately it was really these carbohydrates and seed oils that have caused chronic disease and weight loss issues, NOT animal products and saturated fat.

I’m here to propose a counter-solution. One that I will prove is very beneficial to your health.

Your health has been liquidated and put in the pockets of pharma & cpg execs

It’s time to take back control.

Take Back Control of Your Health With the Carnivore Diet

You’ve been brainwashed into believing steak is bad for you. 

Corruption, epidemological studies (i.e. astrology) and ingrained industry interests have all collaborated to destroy your health.

Everything you’ve been told about red meat is the exact opposite. Red meat is the healthiest food you can eat. Steak and beef liver have every nutrient you need in their most bioavailable form.

Humans are carnivores and food is information. If you feed yourself what you have evolved to eat you will thrive. If you shock your body with new and processed sludge, your body will revolt.

The choice is yours. The carnivore diet will give you back control of your health.

We’ve talked about a lot here, and I really hope that you get a lot out of this article. It wasn’t easy for me to learn all this information – it took me years to learn about these things and improve my own health.

It doesn’t have to take that long for you. If you want to continue this journey and start improving your health, check out the 14-Day Carnivore Diet Shopping List + Meal Guide I prepared for you by clicking the button below.

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