The Dairy and Meat Industry again and again.

RON KRAUSS
Tofu.  It was just a mixed diet all together.  In that setting, with carbohydrate intake kept moderately low, saturated  fat did not raise Apo-B.  It didn’t raise the number of LDL particles.  It didn’t increase inflammatory markers either.  It didn’t raise any of the really meaningful basis of heart disease risk.

So that was an interesting study which showed that eating more saturated fat does not increase heart disease risk.  But then, there’s that newer study you’ve done that involves saturated fat and red meat.  And it’s a fascinating study because of some clues it gives about how health may be affected by both saturated fat and red meat.  Right now there’s a great deal of concern that eating red meat may be dangerous for people’s health.  But the question is why.  In your recent study,  you hint at a reason why. 

RON KRAUSS
We published a paper this past fall in the Journal of Nutrition, in which we reported the results of the study that we carried out as a followup to the one we just discussed.  Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I have to say that the first study was funded the National Dairy Council, and we used dairy fat and dairy products liberally in that study, since they’re high in saturated fats.  The second, more recent study was funded by the National Cattleman’s Beef Association because they felt, and frankly we felt at the time, based on the evidence we had, that feeding a high saturated fat and low carbohydrate intake would have the same benefit on a high beef diet as as on a mixed protein diet, and bottom line is that when we did the study, we found out that was not the case.

So using what you learned from your 2006 study of a mixed-protein diet and high saturated fats, in this new study, you kept carbohydrates somewhat low, and fats somewhat higher, just as you did in 2006.  Really, the main difference was that this time, you didn’t feed a variety of protein sources.  Your test subjects just ate lots and lots of beef.  And this time, you found that “healthy” blood work depended not only on what kind of protein people ate, but what kind of fat the people WITH the protein.  So if you get out your Sherlock Holmes hat and pipe, what were the clues and what did they mean?