"BOLD Indeed: Beef Lowers Cholesterol?"
Imagine you worked in the now defunct Twinkie division
of Hostess Foods and wanted to take the tobacco industry tact
of not just downplaying the risk of your product,
but actually promoting it as healthy.
How would you do that?
Well, your first problem is it has 2 1/2 grams of saturated fat,
so that's going to raise cholesterol,
the #1 risk factor of our #1 killer heart disease.
How are we going to get around that?
Well, what if you designed a study
in which you took a bunch of people eating
your arch-rival Little Debbie Cloud Cakes?
Now they only have 1 gram each.
So what if you took a group of people eating
5 Cloud Cakes a day— 5 grams of saturated fat
and then cut that saturated fat intake in half
by switching them to eating 1 Twinkie a day?
What would happen to their cholesterol levels?
Cutting saturated fat consumption in half?
Their cholesterol would go down.
So technically they went from zero Twinkies a day
to one Twinkie a day and their cholesterol went down.
You publish it and crank out a press release:
"New research shows that eating a Twinkie a day"
"can be good for heart health by improving cholesterol levels."
The media takes your press release, runs with it:
"Consumers can eat a Twinkie every day"
"if they choose and feel confident that science"
"supports Twinkies healthy benefits,"
"which now include cholesterol- lowering effects"!
Twinkies, you just proved with science,
have cholesterol-lowering effects.
Too outlandish a scenario...?
Check it out.
This study, bought and paid for by the beef industry,
added beef to people’s diets.
But at the same time removed so much
poultry, pork, fish, and cheese from their diet
that they halved their saturated fat intake
from 12% of their diet down to 6% of their diet.
So, of course their cholesterol went down!
If you diet goes from 12% saturated fat down to
6% saturated fat it doesn't matter if that 6% comes from
beef, chicken, lard, or Twinkies—
if you cut your total saturated fat in half,
your cholesterol will follow,
especially if you eat more fiber and vegetable protein, as they did here.
They conclude: "The results of the BOLD study"
standing for Beef in an Optimal Lean Diet—
"provide convincing evidence that lean beef"
"can be included in a heart- healthy diet that meets"
"current dietary recommendations"
"and reduces (cardiovascular disease) risk."
Crisco could be included.
Krispy Krème could be included,
as long as you cut your total saturated fat intake.
What they fail to mention is that risk would drop
even lower if you also dropped the beef,
as was pointed out by the Chair of Nutrition at Harvard,
who's previously pointed out that
plant sources of protein are preferable.
The subjects in this study went from
high risk of of dying from heart disease to
a high risk of dying from heart disease.
Remember, we need to get our LDL, bad cholesterol,
down to 50, 60, or 70 to become essentially heart attack proof,
and for most people that means eliminating
saturating animal fat and cholesterol intake completely.
This study is really just showing how bad
saturated fat is from ANY animal source.
Yes, based on saturated fat levels
lean beef is often better than chicken—and Twinkies,
but that's like touting the health benefits of Coca-Cola
because it has less sugar than Pepsi—
it does, 16 spoonfuls of sugar per bottle instead of 15.
Doesn't mean we wouldn't be better not consuming soda at all. Right?
Reminds me of this study – Cheese intake lowers cholesterol…
compared to butter!
Yet, here's the release...
Right?...That's how they ended up
with the "cholesterol-lowering effects of beef".
If you cut out enough poultry, pork, fish, and cheese
from your diet, you could get cholesterol-lowering effects
from nearly anything...