Paradox, Shmaradox!

[MikePollard]

People reading here will probably be aware of the French Paradox. This so-called phenomenon comes about because the French east masses of saturated fat yet have the lowest rates of heart disease in Europe.

It strikes me that the doctors and researchers who cling to the notion and are baffled by it wouldn't recognise they'd been slapped in the face with a wet fish, having just been slapped in the face with a wet fish!

To illustrate this have a careful look at the graph. It's from Dr. Malcolm Kendrick's latest blog post. It's a reassurance that far from being a heart killer, the more you eat the better your chances. The poor folk of Georgia either have got the low-fat message or maybe butter etc is beyond their reach (or maybe both!).

[TheAwfulToad Ambassador]

Apparently the French are catching up with the rest of Europe in the heart disease stakes. Funnily enough, their Health ministry finally signed on to the "low fat" agenda, just a few years back. What a coincidence, eh?

I've seen some more comprehensive statistics suggesting that saturated fat simply doesn't correlate with anything. You can eat a little, or a lot, and it makes no difference to your cholesterol panel or to your life expectancy.

I don't want to accuse Kendrick of cherrypicking - because I've never seen him do that - but showing only 8 countries out of a potential 180 (or whatever it is this week) doesn't really give a complete picture.

[bigleg in reply to TheAwfulToad]

Personally I understood from the article that Dr Kendrick, in this illustration, simply used the Top 4 and Bottom 4 countries – but ran the figures for all countries there was data available in the referenced study on saturated fat intake and CHD deaths in males under 65 by country. This made the point perfectly for this discussion.

[TheAwfulToad Ambassador in reply to bigleg]

I do enjoy reading Kendrick's blog occasionally. He's like Victor Meldrew with a MBBS

I just checked the post that Mike was referring to and Kendrick does actually point out that you can't draw hard conclusions from those eight countries: it turns out, in context, that he's just saying the "saturated fat causes heart disease" hypothesis can't possibly be true, given those data points. Which is fair enough.

There's also this (which is the observation I was referring to above):

‘A meta-analysis of randomised trials suggested that a low dietary fat intake had little effect on the risk of ischaemic heart disease.’

By the way, thanks for flagging up this particular blog post, Mike. It's comedy gold. Or it would be, if the fallout from the nutritionism religion weren't having such wide-ranging consequences. I love this quote:

"... teleoanalysis provides the answer to questions that would be obtained from studies that have not been done and often, for ethical and financial reasons, could never be done.’"

In other words: "if we can't get the experimental results we want, we just make stuff up".

[TheAwfulToad Ambassador in reply to bigleg]

I've just been wasting my Saturday afternoon reading a load of Kendrick's posts about statins. Absolutely appalling stuff. If I didn't know better I'd think we'd all time-travelled back to the 16th century, when superstition and political power were the deciding factors in who was right and who was wrong.

[dinglebell]

Russia too. All those potatoes and bread, especially the poorer segments of society. They eat fat but it is with the carbohydrates.

We are lucky to have the choice.

Pity as a nation we are doing the same!