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A reader, “rj,” sends a link to an article in Men’s Health (“What if bad fat isn’t so bad”), and asks about: “The supposed inconclusive evidence for sat fat being the culprit in atherosclerosis. Personally, I couldn’t find any credentials of the author but nevertheless would be much interested in your thoughts on the matter.”

My thoughts: As I keep saying, nutrition science is complicated and this article, by an excellent science journalist, is the latest in a series by excellent science journalists (see, for example, the recent books by Gary Taubes and Michael Pollan) to point out the inconsistencies in data on saturated fat and heart disease risk. Let me make several quick points: (1) All fats–no exceptions–are mixtures of saturated, unsaturated, and polyunsaturated fatty acids (2) Saturated fats occur in greater proportions in animal fats–meat and dairy foods, (3) Some epidemiologic evidence–but not all–suggests that people who eat a lot of meat and dairy foods have a higher risk of heart disease than people who eat a lot of fruit and vegetables (this is correlation, not causation), (4) The same clinical studies that show how trans fats do bad things to blood cholesterol levels also show that saturated fat does too, although not as much (But: people take in a lot more saturated fat than trans fat), and (5) Saturated fat is a single nutrient and the studies reviewed and discussed by the journalists take saturated fat out of its dietary context.

Out-of-context studies of single nutrients are exceedingly difficult to interpret. At the moment, today’s dietary (not single nutrient) advice is the same as it has been for the last fifty years. As I put it in What to Eat, “Eat less, move more, eat plenty of fruits and vegetables, and don’t eat too much junk food.” Michael Pollan gives exactly the same advice: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” Do this, and you really don’t need to give a thought to single nutrients.

I discuss the politics of diet and disease recommendations in my book, Food Politics (now out in a new, expanded edition), and this particular question in “Ask Marion” on Eating Liberally.

Does this help at all? Thanks for asking.

Thanks to Joel Moskowitz of UC Berkeley’s Center for Family and Community Health for sending this link to Daryl Cagle’s slide show of cartoons about childhood obesity. I’m not sure. Are they funny…?

The FDA has produced electronic posters giving the nutrient content of raw fruits, raw vegetables, and cooked seafood (purchased raw). Why? I’m guessing because real foods don’t come with Nutrition Facts labels and you have to go to the USDA’s nutrient composition data base to find out what the details are. You can download the posters in small, medium, large, and extra-large, or just in text format. If you care about which fruit or vegetable has the most of any one nutrient, here’s an easy way to find out. Have fun with them!

They’ve just agreed to remove the trans fats. So now their donuts will be “Trans fat-free.” Progress? I wonder what the new frying oil will be….

The latest “Let’s Ask Marion” on Eating Liberally is up, this one on those advertisements for Coca-Cola “pomegranate-blueberry” (with hardly any of each) drinks posted earlier and which agency in the federal government regulates such things.

Here is an example of how crazy our food system is.  Starbucks, according to the Chicago Tribune, is in trouble.  Why?  “while overall revenue and earnings continued to increase at rates better than 20 percent in its fiscal 2007 fourth quarter [which sounds pretty good to me]…there was a 1 percent slip in average transactions per store in the United States [oops].”  That’s all it takes for Wall Street to start predicting doom, apparently.

A comment on the previous post about chocolate asks why chocolate manufacturers think they have to put health claims on candy.  The simple answer is that health claims are the only things that sell food these days.  And chocolate candy is in trouble–you aren’t eating enough of it to keep these corporations growing fast enough.  And on top of all that, the companies are all being sued for price fixing which, alas, is illegal. Health claims are an “eat more” marketing strategy.  I think health claims–all of them–should be illegal.  That isn’t going to happen but we could make our displeasure with such misleading marketing known to the companies.

Thanks to Kerry Trueman for sharp eyed reading of the latest in banana advertising (do bananas need this?). Check the sticker she found on a Chiquita banana. Aren’t you happy to know this? Haven’t you been buying enough bananas lately? Here it is: