The 1970’s Health Guard Dog That Didn’t Bark

By Brian Cates

For over 100 years, they’ve known that seed oils will drop you into an early grave. I went over this in my recent column here.

They’ve known all along, even as it was happening over the past 50 years, exactly what was causing the massive explosion of what author Daniel Trever refers to as “diabesity” in the United States.

It is a legitimate question why harmful and toxic seed oils were allowed to increase throughout the modern US food industry, even though many nations abroad do not allow US-produced food into their countries. Local food industries in many countries cannot put seed oils, additives, preservatives, and other chemicals into their products.

Now, I just came across another stunning piece of evidence demonstrating that decades ago, it was known that seed oils were not only not healthier than animal fats, but the data pointed in the opposite direction. That animal fats were healthier than the seed oils introduced into almost every new product that US Big Food corporations made.

Evidence demonstrates that the international medical science community in the US and abroad was acquiring all of this real-world data from clinical trials BACK IN THE LATE 1960S AND EARLY 1970S.

In the book Unholy Trinity by Daniel Trevor, I came across this highlighted passage and immediately went to the cited paper and read it.

This clinical trial showed the widely accepted belief that seed oils and the linoleic acid they break down into after ingestion were healthier than animal-based saturated fats was wrong.

If it were true that seed oils were healthier, the clinical trial would have shown that Cardiovascular Disease [CVD] and heart problems decreased in the trial participants. The death rate among the men should have trended downward.

Instead, over the seven years of the trial, the scientists observed the rate of death caused by CVD and heart issues increased. The hoped-for and expected reduction of heart issues and the death rate did not materialize.

Here is the published paper from the Sydney Diet Heart Study from 1966-1973:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23386268

Here’s what the scientists were forced to say based on the data they saw once this 7-year clinical trial ended. Note what I underlined.

After reading that study, and a similar one simultaneously being conducted in the US in Minnesota from 1968-1973, a big question immediately arose in my mind:

Why didn’t our federal medical/health ‘experts’ talk about this in the 1970’s? Why didn’t they widely publicize these findings even as the widespread myth that seed oils/linoleic acid were ‘healthier’ to cook with and eat than animal fats continued to be taught to the public?

Was there still time to challenge the ‘seed oils are healthier than animal fats’ myth and reverse the trend? To prevent 50+ years of ever-increasing amounts of unhealthy and toxic amounts of seed oils being added to thousands of Big Food’s new products?

Why was the public continually encouraged to cook and ingest the ‘healthier’ seed oils when medical science and research were trending in the other direction?

This clinical trial was conducted from 1966-1973. That was a LONG TIME AGO. It’s 2024. 1973 was 51 years ago. For 50 years, Americans have been strongly encouraged to cut animal fats out of their diet and replace them with ‘healthy’ seed oils.

So we’re confronted with medical science research on this subject, all trending in ONE DIRECTION. At the same time, the public continued to be assured that swapping to seed oils/linoleic acid from animal fats was **essential to their heart health**.

When this was known to be NOT TRUE.

How could this be just an honest mistake?

The scientists conducting these Australia and Minnesota clinical trials SAY they were trying to prove seed oils were healthier: that swapping out the animal fats in the diet for seed oils in this clinical trial would REDUCE the death rate.

Instead, during the trial, the death rate increased by 62%. In a trial conducted from 1966-1973.

So they knew. There’s no mystery here. There’s no suspense. They had scientifically gathered data from a randomized control trial that the claim that increasing consumption/use of seed oils in the daily diet **reduced** cardiac events and cardiovascular disease was invalid. When the death rate of the men involved in the study shot up by 62%, that SHOULD HAVE been widely publicized and led to the end of the myth that these seed oils and their linoleic acid were ‘heart healthy.’

They watched the death rate shoot up and realized the data showed that not only was the seed oil/linoleic acid/Omega 6 not helping these men, but it was also causing new cardiac events.

And they kept their mouths shut about this.

You look how they didn’t sound the alarm even as data like this accumulated, and you have a ‘Sherlock Holmes moment’ about the dog who didn’t bark.

This should have been barked out LOUDLY back in 1973. “Oh hey folks, looks like we got that wrong. These seed oils are unhealthy for you; they do not help your heart. They seem to cause inflammation and cause cardiac issues, the opposite of what we hoped to find. We must get all these seed oils out of everybody’s food stat!”

But they didn’t do that, did they? And so now we have a very legitimate question to ask:

Why did they keep their mouths shut as they watched the amount of seed oils Americans consume skyrocket over the past 50 years?

So…file this under “Stuff It Would Have Been Awful Nice To Know Back In The 1970s!”

This disturbing new evidence, coupled with the fact that medical scientists were well aware as far back as 1918 from extensive animal testing that feeding developing rats, cows, horses, and birds seed oil rather than animal fats, stunted growth, shortened life, and led to chronic and crippling illnesses.

It is becoming clear from what I’m learning as I dig into this subject that a vast reformation of the federal government’s medical science and health agencies will be of paramount importance. And the sooner this much-needed reform begins the better.