How We Got Deceived: The Real Origins of the Low-Fat, High-Carb Lie
For over 60 years, we’ve been told that saturated fat causes heart disease. That butter clogs arteries. That red meat is dangerous.
This idea didn’t come from good science.
It came from flawed data, industry funding, and government propaganda.
Let’s break it down.
It Started With Ancel Keys—and Bad Science
In the 1950s, American scientist Ancel Keys published the now-infamous Seven Countries Study, claiming to show a direct correlation between saturated fat intake and heart disease. But here's the problem:
He cherry-picked the countries included.
He excluded data that didn’t fit his hypothesis (like France, where people ate lots of saturated fat but had low rates of heart disease).
His conclusions were associational, not causal—and lacked biological mechanisms.
Despite this, Keys’ work was aggressively promoted. In 1961, he landed on the cover of TIME magazine, and The American Heart Association (AHA) adopted his theory—marking the beginning of the low-fat era.
The AHA, by the way, was receiving funding from Procter & Gamble, the manufacturer of Crisco (one of the first industrial seed oils). Yes, the very same institution that demonized butter was profiting from vegetable oil.
How Government Guidelines Were Hijacked
In 1977, Senator George McGovern’s Senate Select Committee published the first official U.S. Dietary Guidelines for Americans, recommending:
Reduced consumption of saturated fat and cholesterol
Increased intake of carbohydrates, especially whole grains
More use of vegetable oils
These guidelines shaped public policy, school lunches, hospital meals, and medical advice for decades.
But here’s what few people realize:
The committee was not composed of nutrition scientists. The guidelines were written based on political pressure, not sound science. Prominent researchers like Dr. John Yudkin, who warned of sugar’s dangers, were ignored—and eventually discredited.
This decision cemented a dogma that still drives our food system today.
What Replaced Saturated Fat? A Metabolic Disaster
When fat was removed from foods, it had to be replaced with something. That “something” was:
Sugar
Refined starch
Industrial seed oils (like soybean, canola, corn, and cottonseed)
The result?
The obesity rate in the U.S. doubled since 1980
Type 2 diabetes is now an epidemic—affecting over 37 million Americans
Heart disease remains the #1 cause of death, despite decades of low-fat messaging
All while the processed food and pharmaceutical industries flourished.
The Profit Machine Behind the Lie
This wasn’t just a mistake. It was a profitable shift.
Big Food: Got rich selling low-fat, high-sugar “health foods” and processed grains
Big Pharma: Made billions off statins, insulin, and blood pressure meds
USDA and AHA: Continued to receive industry funding from companies like Kellogg, PepsiCo, and General Mills
In 2016, a review in JAMA Internal Medicine revealed that in the 1960s, the Sugar Research Foundation (now the Sugar Association) paid scientists from Harvard University, including Dr. Mark Hegsted, to downplay sugar’s role in heart disease and shift the blame to fat.
That research became the foundation of national dietary policy.
Let that sink in.
The Science Was Always There—It Was Ignored
Recent, high-quality research paints a very different picture than the one we've been sold for decades:
The Framingham Heart Study (one of the most cited in nutrition science) eventually concluded that total cholesterol was not a reliable predictor of heart disease—a finding often ignored in mainstream messaging.
A 2010 meta-analysis in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (Siri-Tarino et al.) reviewed 21 studies and found no significant evidence that saturated fat increases the risk of coronary heart disease or cardiovascular disease.
The PURE study (2017), which included over 135,000 people from 18 countries, found that higher intake of saturated fat was associated with a lower risk of stroke—and no link between saturated fat and heart disease.
A 2016 review published in the journal BMJ Open by Ravnskov et al. looked at 19 studies involving 68,000 people aged 60 and older and found that people with the highest LDL cholesterol lived the longest.
The study concluded:
“High LDL-C is inversely associated with mortality in most people over 60 years.”
In other words: higher “bad” cholesterol = longer life.
Nina Teicholz, in The Big Fat Surprise, and Dr. Malcolm Kendrick, author of The Great Cholesterol Con, have both exposed how scientific dissent was suppressed and research that contradicted the lipid hypothesis was buried or ignored.
Despite this, the U.S. Dietary Guidelines continue to recommend limiting saturated fat to less than 10% of daily calories—a policy not supported by current evidence but heavily influenced by agricultural and pharmaceutical industries.
Fat Was Never the Problem
Saturated fats from animal sources—beef tallow, butter, suet, lard—are:
Stable (unlike polyunsaturated oils that oxidize easily)
Bioavailable
Critical for hormone production, brain health, and immune regulation
Your mitochondria thrive on fat. Your nervous system needs cholesterol. Your ancestors evolved on fat—not margarine.
We didn’t become inflamed, diabetic, and anxious from meat and butter.
We got here from processed carbs, seed oils, and lab-engineered food.
What Now?
If you've ever wondered why following the guidelines hasn’t made you healthier, now you know.
The system was built to make you a consumer of medicine, not a sovereign human in radiant health.
The good news?
You can opt out!
Eat real food.
Ditch the oils.
Embrace the fat.
And never take dietary advice from people who profit off your illness.
More truth is coming. I’m not done yet.
If this post shook something loose in you, you can:
→ Subscribe for free to get future truth bombs here
→ Support my work as a paid subscriber here
→ Or work with me 1-on-1 if you're ready to rebuild your health from the roots up