6. J. Booyens, C. C. Louwrens, and I. E. Katzeff, "The Role of Unnatural Dietary Trans and Cis Unsaturated Fatty Acids in the Epidemiology of Coronary Artery Disease," Medical Hypotheses 25, no. 3 (1988): 175-82.
7. J. T. Anderson, F. Grande, and A. Keys, "Hydrogenated Fats in the Diet and Lipids in the Serum of Man," Journal of Nutrition 75 (1961): 388-94.
8. Nina Teicholz, "Heart Breaker," Gourmet, June 2004.
9. Ascherio et al., "Trans Fatty Acids and Coronary Heart Disease."
10. Food and Nutrition Board, Inst.i.tute of Medicine of the National Academies, National Academy of Sciences, "Letter Report on Dietary Reference Intakes for Trans Fatty Acids. Drawn from the Report on Dietary Reference Intakes for Energy, Carbohydrate, Fiber, Fat, Fatty Acids, Cholesterol, Protein, and Amino Acids," 2002, 4, 14.
11. www.bantransfats.com 12. The extraordinary advance of corn is well told in Michael Pollan, The Omnivore"s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (2006); Richard Manning, Against the Grain: How Agriculture Has Hijacked Civilization (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004); and Margaret Visser, Much Depends on Dinner: The Extraordinary History and Mythology, Allure and Obsessions, Perils and Taboos, of an Ordinary Meal (New York: Grove Press, 1986).
13. A. P. Simopoulos, "Omega-3 Fats in Wild Plants, Nuts and Seeds," Asia Pacific Journal of Clinical Nutrition 11 (2002): S163-73.
14. M. Wardlaw Gordon, J. S. Hampl, and R. A. DiSilvestro, Perspectives in Nutrition, 6th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2004), 184-85.
15. Ibid., 185.
16. P. Reaven, S. Parthasarathy, B. J. Gra.s.se, E. Miller, F. Almazan, F. H. Mattson, J.C. Khoo, D. Steinberg, and J. L. Witztum, "Feasibility of Using an Oleate-Rich Diet to Reduce the Susceptibility of Low-Density Lipoprotein to Oxidative Modification in Humans," American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 54, no. 4 (1991): 701-6.
17. Daniel Yam, Abraham Eliraz, and Elliot M. Berry, "Diet and Disease- the Israeli Paradox: Possible Dangers of a High Omega-6 Polyunsaturated Fatty Acid Diet," Israeli Journal of Medical Science 32, no. 11 (1996): 1134-43. See also more recent work by E. M. Berry and Gal Dubnov from the Department of Human Nutrition and Metabolism at Hada.s.sah Medical School of Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
18. I highly recommend Jo Robinson"s book, Pasture Perfect: The Far-Reaching Benefits of Choosing Meat, Eggs, and Dairy Products from Gra.s.s-Fed Animals (Vashon, WA: Vashon Island Press, 2004). Her Web site, www.eatwild.com, is frequently updated. There she writes, "If you were to inject a colony of rats with human cancer cells and then put some of the rats on a corn oil diet, some on a b.u.t.terfat diet, and some on a beef fat diet, the ones given the omega-6 rich corn oil would be afflicted with larger and more aggressive tumors" (October 2005). Many studies back this up.
19. C. Calabrese, S. Myer, S. Munson, P. Turet, and T. C. Birdsall, "A Cross-over Study of the Effect of a Single Oral Feeding of Medium Chain Triglyceride Oil vs. Canola Oil on Post-ingestion Plasma Triglyceride Levels in Healthy Men," Alternative Medicine Review 4, no. 1 (1999): 23-28.
8. Other Real Foods 1. F. B. Hu, M. J. Stampfer et al., "A Prospective Study of Egg Consumption and Risk of Cardiovascular Disease in Men and Women," Journal of the American Medical a.s.sociation 281, no. 15 (1999): 1387-94.
2. M. L. Slattery et al. "Carotenoids and Colon Cancer," American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 71 (2000): 575-82.
3. Felicity Lawrence, Not on the Label: What Really Goes into the Food on Your Plate (London: Penguin, 2004), 118.
4. See Susan Allport, The Primal Feast: Food, s.e.x, Foraging and Love (Lincoln, NE: iUniverse, 2003); Loren Cordain, The Paleo Diet: Lose Weight and Get Healthy Eating the Food You Were Designed to Eat (New York: John Wiley, 2002); and Richard Manning, Against the Grain: How Agriculture Has Hijacked Civilization (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004).
5. Commentary, "Consumption of High-Fructose Corn Syrup in Beverages May Play a Role in the Epidemic of Obesity," American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 79, no. 4 (2004): 537-43.
6. In The Primal Feast, Allport writes that one place where the rise of farming was not a.s.sociated with declining health was the Nile Valley, where people fermented grain.
7. H. S. Qin ["A study on the effect of fermented soybean in preventing iron deficiency anemia in children"] Zhonghua Yu Fang Yi Xue Za Zhi 23, no. 6 (1989): 352-54 (article in Chinese).
8. I. E. Liener, "Implications of Antinutritional Components in Soybean Foods," Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition 34, no. 1 (1994): 31-67; S. C. Sindhu and N. Khetarpaul, "Effect of Probiotic Fermentation on Antinutrients and In Vitro Protein and Starch Digestibilities of Indigenously Developed RWGT Food Mixture," Nutrition Health 16, no. 3 (2002): 173-81.
9. Liener, "Implications of Antinutritional Components in Soybean Foods."
10. A. P. Simopoulos, "The Importance of the Ratio of Omega-6/Omega-3 Essential Fatty Acids," Biomedicine and Pharmacotherapy 56, no. 8 (2002): 365-79.
11. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 71, no. 5 (2000): 1166-69.
12. See, for example, these studies on soy and menopause: S. K. Quella, C. L. Loprinzi, D. L. Barton, J. A. Knost, J. A. Sloan, B. I. LaVa.s.seur, D. Swan, K. R. Krupp, K. D. Miller, and P. J. Novotny, "Evaluation of Soy Phytoestrogens for the Treatment of Hot Flashes in Breast Cancer Survivors: A North Central Cancer Treatment Group Trial," Journal of Clinical Oncology 18, no. 5 (2000): 1068-74; D. C. Knight, J. B. Howes, J. A. Eden, L. G. Howes, "Effects on Menopausal Symptoms and Acceptability of Isoflavone-Containing Soy Powder Dietary Supplementation," Climacteric 4, no. 1 (2001): 13-18; C. L. Van Patten, I. A. Olivotto, G. K. Chambers, K. A. Gelmon, T. G. Hislop, E. Templeton, A. Wattie, and J. C. Prior, "Effect of Soy Phytoestrogens on Hot Flashes in Postmenopausal Women with Breast Cancer: A Randomized, Controlled Clinical Trial," Journal of Clinical Oncology 20, no. 6 (2002): 1449-55; and M. Penotti, E. Fabio, A. B. Modena, M. Rinaldi, U. Omodei, and P. Vigano, "Effect of Soy-Derived Isoflavones on Hot Flashes, Endometrial Thickness, and the Pulsatility Index of the Uterine and Cerebral Arteries, Fertility and Sterility 79, no. 5 (2003): 1112-17.
13. A. Ca.s.sidy, S. Bingham, and K. Setch.e.l.l, "Biological Effects of a Diet of Soy Protein Rich in Isoflavones on the Menstrual Cycle of Premenopausal Women," American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 60, no. 3 (1994): 333-40.
14. See, for example, these studies on soy and breast cancer: D. F. McMichael-Phillips, C. Harding, M. Morton, S. A. Roberts, A. Howell, C. S. Potten, and N. J. Bundred, "Effects of Soy-Protein Supplementation on Epithelial Proliferation in the Histologically Normal Human Breast," American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 68, no. 6 (1998): S1431-35; N. L. Petrakis, S. Barnes, E. B. King, J. Lowenstein, J. Wiencke, M. M. Lee, R. Miike, M. Kirk, and L. Coward, "Stimulatory Influence of Soy Protein Isolate on Breast Secretion in Pre- and Postmenopausal Women," Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers and Prevention 5, no. 10 (1996): 785-94; M. L. de Lemos, "Effects of Soy Phytoestrogens Genistein and Daidzein on Breast Cancer Growth," Annals of Pharmacotherapy 35, no. 9 (2001): 1118-21 (de Lemos found that low concentrations of soy phytoestrogens seem to promote the growth of breast tumors, while high concentrations appear to have a protective effect against breast tumor growth, so that "it is unclear whether tumor stimulation or inhibition would predominate in patients taking dietary soy supplements . . . Until long-term human studies are available, patients should be advised that the safety of taking large amounts of soy has not been established in this population and that other measures [e.g., lifestyle, diet, nonhormonal therapies] are available for controlling menopausal symptoms"); C. Y. Hsieh, R. C. Santell, S. Z. Haslam, and W G. Helferich, "Estrogenic Effects of Genistein on the Growth of Estrogen ReceptorPositive Human Breast Cancer (MCF-7) Cells In Vitro and In Vivo," Cancer Research 58, no. 17 (1998); 3833-38; C. D. Allred, K. F. Allred, Y. H. Ju, S. M. Virant, and W G. Helferich, "Soy Diets Containing Varying Amounts of Genistein Stimulate Growth of Estrogen-Dependent (MCF-7) Tumors in a Dose-Dependent Manner," Cancer Research 61, no. 13 (2001): 5045-50; and M. S. Kurzer, "Phytoestrogen Supplement Use by Women," Journal of Nutrition 133, no. 6 (2003): S1983-86.
15. John W. Erdman et al., "Not All Soy Products Are Created Equal: Caution Needed in Interpretation of Research Results," Journal of Nutrition 134 (May 2004): S1229-33.
16. M. J. Messina and C. L, Loprinzi, "Soy for Breast Cancer Survivors: A Critical Review of the Literature," Journal of Nutrition 131, no. 11 (2001): S3095-3108.
17. They include William Helferich, professor of nutrition at the University of Illinois ("Soy Processing Influences Growth of Estrogen-Dependent Breast Cancer Tumors in Mice," Carcinogenesis, published online May 6, 2004 at www.uiuc.edu); the American Cancer Society; and Barry Sears, The Soy Zone (New York: HarperCollins, 2000).
18. Dr. Susan Love commented on the Helferich study in Artemis, a newsletter of the Breast Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins, June 2004.
19. Bradley J. Wilc.o.x et al., The Okinawa Program (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2001), 114.
20. A. S. Sandberg, "Bioavailability of Minerals in Legumes," British Journal of Nutrition 88 (2002) Suppl. no. 3, 281-85.
21. A. M. Hutchins, J. L. Slavin, and J. W Lampe, "Urinary Isoflavonoid Phytoestrogen and Lignan Excretion After Consumption of Fermented and Unfermented Soy Products," Journal of the American Dietetic a.s.sociation 95, no. 5 (1995): 545-51.
22. The FDA specialists were D. M. Sheehan and D. R. Doerge. The letter included pages of citations supporting their view. (Dockets Management Branch [HFA-305], Food and Drug Administration, February 18, 1999.) 23. Y. Ishizuki, Y. Hirooka, Y. Murata, and K. Togashi, "The Effects on the Thyroid Gland of Soybeans Administered Experimentally in Healthy Subjects," Nippon Naibunpi Gakkai Za.s.shi 767, no. 5 (1991): 622-29.
24. Paper by Dr. Mike Fitzpatrick of New Zealand, "Soya Infant Formula: The Health Concerns," cited in Carol Simontacchi, The Crazy Makers: How the Food Industry Is Destroying Our Brains and Harming Our Children (New York: Jeremy Tarcher/Putnam, 2000), 75.
25. D. M. Sheehan, "Isoflavone Content of Breast Milk and Soy Formulas: Benefits and Risks" (letter), Clinical Chemistry 43, no. 5 (1997): 850-52.
26. Mary Enig and Sally Fallon, Eat Fat, Lose Fat (New York: Hudson Street Press, 2002), 97.
27. They include: the U.S. study MRFIT (a.n.a.lysis in 1997 and 1999), the Scottish Heart Health Study (1997), the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (1998), and a meta-a.n.a.lysis of many studies in the British Medical Journal (2002).
28. W C. Hillel et al, "Sodium Intake and Mortality in the NHANES II Follow-Up Study," American Journal of Medicine 119 (2006): 275.e7-275.el4.
29. Davide Gra.s.si, Cristina Lippi, Stefano Necozione, Giovambattista Desideri, and Claudio Ferri, "Short-Term Administration of Dark Chocolate Is Followed by a Significant Increase in Insulin Sensitivity and a Decrease in Blood Pressure in Healthy Persons," American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. 81 no. 3 (2005): 611-14.
9. Beyond Cholesterol 1. M. Muenke and M. M. Cohen Jr. "Genetic Approaches to Understanding Brain Development: Holoprosencephaly as a Model," Mental r.e.t.a.r.dation and Developmental Disabilities Research Reviews 6, no. 1 (2000): 15-21.
2. M. Wardlaw Gordon, J. S. Hampl, and R. A. DiSilvestro, Perspectives in Nutrition, 6th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2004), 194-96.
3. Anthony Colpo, "LDL Cholesterol: "Bad" Cholesterol, or Bad Science?" Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons 10, no. 3 (2005), 83-89.
4. J. S. Garrow, W P. T. James, and A. Ralph, Human Nutrition and Dietetics, 10th ed. (New York: Churchill Livingstone, 2002), 111.
5. "Fats and Cholesterol- the Good, the Bad, and the Healthy Diet," The Nutrition Source: Knowledge and Information for Healthy Eating, Harvard School of Public Health, June 16, 2003, available online at: www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource.
6. R. L. Duyff and the American Dietetic a.s.sociation, American Dietetic a.s.sociation Complete Food and Nutrition Guide, 2nd ed. (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley, 2002), 65.
7. Enig, Know Your Fats, 57.
8. A. P. Simopoulos, "Omega-3 Fatty Acids in Health and Disease and in Growth and Development," American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 54, no. 3 (1991): 449.
9. See McCully and McCully, The Heart Revolution, 42-44.
10. Theodore B. Van Itallie, "Ancel Keys: A Tribute," Nutrition and Metabolism, February 14, 2005.
11. Mary Enig, "Health and Nutritional Benefits from Coconut Oil: An Important Functional Food for the 21st Century," presented at the AVOC Lauric Oils Symposium, Ho Chi Min City, Vietnam, April 25, 1996.
12. Ravnkov, The Cholesterol Myths, 16-17.
13. Stephen Phinney"s letter about Keys appeared on www.nutritionandmetabolism.com on February 28, 2005. It was a response to Theodore B. Van Itallie, "Ancel Keys: A Tribute," in the February 14 issue of Nutrition and Metabolism.
14. Correspondence with the author, July 23, 2005.
15. These figures are from the American Heart a.s.sociation. Statistics vary, and there are many different cardiovascular diseases. The Centers for Disease Control says heart disease killed 696,000 people in 2002 and strokes killed 162,000.
16. Centers for Disease Control, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 48, no. 30 (1999): 649-56.
17. S. McCully, The h.o.m.ocysteine Revolution, 58.
18. R. J. Havlik and M. Feinleib, "Proceedings of the Conference on the Decline in Coronary Heart Disease Mortality, October 24-25, 1978," NIH Publication no. 79-1610, May 1979.
19. "Cholesterol and Coronary Heart Disease: Screening and Treatment," Effective Health Care (National Health Service Centre for Reviews and Dissemination) 4, no. 1 (1998): 1.
20. See three studies: K. C. Hayes, Canadian Journal of Cardiology 11 (1995): Suppl. G, 39-46; K. C. Hayes and P. Khosla, "Dietary Fatty Acid Thresholds and Cholesterolemia," FASEB Journal 6 (1992): 2600-2607; and K. Sundram, K. C. Hayes, and O. H. Siru, "Dietary Palmitic Acid Results in Lower Serum Cholesterol Than Does a Lauric-Myristic Acid Combination in Normolipemic Humans," American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 59, no. 4 (1994): 841-46.
21. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 74 (December 2001): 730-36.
22. D. B. Shestov et al., "Increased Risk of Coronary Heart Disease Death in Men with Low Total and Low-Density Lipoprotein Cholesterol in the Russian Lipid Research Clinics Prevalence Follow-up Study," Circulation (journal of the American Heart a.s.sociation) 88 (1993): 846-53.
23. Simopoulos, "Omega-3 Fats in Health and Disease and in Growth and Development," 458.
24. K. M. Anderson, W P. Castelli, and D. Levy, "Cholesterol and Mortality. Thirty years of Follow-up from the Framingham Study," Journal of the American Medical a.s.sociation 257, no. 16 (1987): 2176-80.
25. Enig, Know Your Fats, 78.
26. For current official guidelines, see the National Cholesterol Education Program at www.nhlbi.nih.gov/about/ncep. For a skeptical view, search for cholesterol at www.mercola.com.www.mercola.com.
27. Alex Berenson, "Lipitor or Generic? Billion-Dollar Battle Looms," New York Times, October 15, 2005.
28. N. Schupf et al., "Relationship Between Plasma Lipids and All-Cause Mortality in Non-Demented Elderly," Journal of the American Geriatrics Society 53 (2005): 219-229.
29. "OTC Statins: A Bad Decision for Public Health," editorial, Lancet 363, no. 9422 (2004).
30. International Coenzyme Q10 a.s.sociation to U.S. Food and Drug Administration, September 5, 2001. The International Coenzyme Q10 a.s.sociation, a body of scientists and medical professionals who conduct extensive research on coenzyme Q10, issued a letter to the FDA, noting that statins block the biosynthesis of coenzyme Q10. Ironically, coenzyme Q10 is critical for proper heart function, and the letter states that "although statin therapy has been shown to have benefits, the long-term response in ischemic heart disease may have been blunted due to the CoQ10 depleting effect" and cites several sources. See also Cordain, "Dietary Macronutrient Ratios and Their Effect on Biochemical Indicators of Risk for Heart Disease."
31. Talk by Peter Langsjoen, "CoQ10 Depletion: The Achilles" Heel of the Statin Crusade: A Review of Published Animal and Human Trials Showing Statin-Induced Coenzyme Q10 Depletion Resulting in Muscle Wasting and Heart Failure," Weston A. Price Foundation, annual conference, May 4, 2003, attended by the author. Langsjoen confirmed to the author that this was still his practice with heart patients in a talk on November 13, 2005 t.i.tled "The Clinical Implications of Statin-Induced Coenzyme Q10 Depletion" at the Weston A. Price Foundation Conference in Chantilly, Virginia. See also Peter Langsjoen, "Overview of the Use of CoQ10 in Cardiovascular Disease," Biofactors 9, nos. 2-3 (1999): 273-84.
32. Correspondence with the author, June 18, 2004. For more information from Barry Groves, see www.second-opinions.co.uk.
33. On June 21, 2004, Uffe Ravnskov provided the author with an English translation of a chapter t.i.tled "The Benefits of High Cholesterol" in the second German edition (2004) of The Cholesterol Myths. See also H. M. Krumholz, T. E. Seeman, S. S. Merrill, C. F. Mendes de Leon, V. Vaccarino, D. I. Silverman, R. Tsukahara, A. M. Ostfeld, and L. F. Berkman, "Lack of a.s.sociation Between Cholesterol and Coronary Heart Disease Mortality and Morbidity and All-Cause Mortality in Persons Older than 70 Years," Journal of the American Medical a.s.sociation 272, no. 17 (1994): 1335-40.
34. I. J. Schatz, K. Masaki, K. Yano, R. Chen, B. L. Rodriguez, and J. D. Curb, "Cholesterol and All-Cause Mortality in Elderly People from the Honolulu Heart Program: A Cohort Study," Lancet 358, no. 9279 (2001): 351-55.
35. O. Gatchev, L. Rastam, G. Lindberg, B. Gullberg, G. A. Eklund, and S. O. Isacsson, "Subarachnoid Hemorrhage, Cerebral Hemorrhage, and Serum Cholesterol Concentration in Men and Women," Annals of Epidemiology 3, no. 4 (1993): 403-9. See also D. R. Jacobs, "The Relationship Between Cholesterol and Stroke," Health Rep 6, no. 1 (1994): 87-93; and H. Iso, D. R. Jacobs Jr. D. Wentworth, J. D. Neaton, and J. D. Cohen, "Serum Cholesterol Levels and Six-Year Mortality from Stroke in 350,977 Men Screened for the Multiple Risk Factor Intervention Trial," New England Journal of Medicine 320, no. 14 (1989): 904-10.
36. New England Journal of Medicine 342 (2000): 836-43.
37. Scott Deron reports on the 2002 study in C-Reactive Protein. The 2005 study appeared in the Journal of the American Medical a.s.sociation 294, no. 3 (2005).
38. David J. A. Jenkins et al., "Direct Comparison of Dietary Portfolio of Cholesterol Lowering Foods with a Statin in Hypercholesterolemic Partic.i.p.ants," American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 81, no. 2 (2005): 380-87.
39. Two of McCully"s professors at Harvard were pioneers in the field of cholesterol metabolism. Louis K. Fieser was the Sheldon Emery Professor of Organic Chemistry at Harvard. He published the cla.s.sic method for purification of cholesterol. He and several students and colleagues first fed oxidized cholesterol to rabbits to produce atherosclerotic plaques. Konrad E. Bloch was professor of chemistry at Harvard and winner of the n.o.bel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1964. He and Fyodor Lynen won the n.o.bel Prize for working out the biosynthesis of cholesterol.
40. Interview with the author, May 20, 2004, New York City.
41. P. Reaven, S. Parthasarathy, B. J. Gra.s.se, E. Miller, F. Almazan, F. H. Mattson, J. C. Khoo, D. Steinberg, and J. L. Witztum, "Feasibility of Using an Oleate-Rich Diet to Reduce the Susceptibility of Low-Density Lipoprotein to Oxidative Modification in Humans," American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 54, no. 4 (1991): 701-6.