A sample from the book on: Unsaturated Fat
In 1956, according to Enig and Fallon,460 the American Heart Association (AHA) put on a televised fund-raiser. To avoid myocardial infarction, all but one of the panelists agreed with the AHA in recommending a diet of corn oil, margarine (up to 35-45 percent trans fatty acids), chicken, and cold cereal to replace butter, lard, beef and eggs.
The AHA didn’t pick their panelists very well. One of them, Dr. Dudly White, kept his own council and was unafraid to voice an adversary opinion. He pointed out that heart disease in the form of myocardial infarction (MI) didn’t exist in 1900 when egg consumption was three times what it was in 1956 and when corn oil was unavailable. The AHA pressed him to support the recommended edible oil diet. He replied, “See here, I began my practice as a cardiologist in 1921 and I never saw an MI patient until 1928. Back in the MI-free days before 1920, the fats were butter and lard and I think that we would all benefit from the kind of diet that we had at a time when no one had ever heard the word corn oil.”460
