This, we’re told, is Keys’ cherry-picked graph:Īnd this, we’re told, is the graph with all 22 countries and a diminished fat-and-heart-disease association:Īnd this, we’re told, is the man who ruined the world: Other big-hitters in the nutrition blogosphere have repeated this version as well, dismissing the Seven Countries Study as manipulated bias, and claiming Keys’ theory fell apart once some discarded countries were added back in-making it all the more troubling that the study became so influential. …And we all know Wikipedia would never lead us astray. The results of what later became known as the “Seven Countries Study” appeared to show that serum cholesterol was strongly related to coronary heart disease mortality both at the population and at the individual level. Despite the fact that 22 countries provided statistics, Keys cherry-picked the data from the 7 countries which supported his theory that animal fat was the main cause of coronary heart disease in order to publicize his opinions. Keys collected data on deaths from coronary heart disease and fat consumption from 22 countries.
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Full disclosure would have made a great deal of difference.ĭitto for the page on Ancel Keys himself: The study began with a great many more countries … but Keys deleted the countries whose results did not match his pre-conceived conclusions, leaving him with only Japan, Italy, Great Britain, Australia, Canada and the US. But in many cases, Keys’ infamous cherry-picking is attributed to his Seven Countries Study, a landmark project that helped sculpt our common beliefs about fat. Even the Seven Countries Study page on Wikipedia-the first hit when you Google “Seven Countries Study”-says that Keys shamelessly erased the data he didn’t like: BURN! BUUUUUURN!ĭepending on who tells the story, some of the details (and wishes for eternal hellfire) may differ. Keys was a fraud, and he’s the reason my mom made me eat skim milk and Corn Chex for breakfast instead of delicious bacon and eggs. But the truth was that he started out with 22 countries and just tossed out the ones that didn’t fit his hypothesis! When other researchers analyzed his data using all the original countries, the link between fat and heart disease totally vanished. He published a study about different countries that made it look like heart disease was associated with fat intake. Once upon a time, a scientist named Ancel Keys did an awful thing. I’m talking about the late, great Ancel Keys, and his equally late (but maybe not as great) role in the history of heart disease research. The oft-repeated tale goes something like this:
And by that, I mean I’m about to challenge a story that’s been so well-circulated among paleo, low carb, and real-food communities that most of us have filed it away in a little brain-folder called “Things We Never Have to Question Because They’re So Ridiculously True.” This is one of those “gotta bust me some myths no matter where they come from” blog posts. The anonymous videomaker “Plant Positive” highlighted some important misconceptions about Keys and his research that I’d like to broadcast to a larger audience, but didn’t address some equally important points tangled in the Keys saga, and likewise made some arguments I believe are incomplete or misleading. This blog post is an attempt to address those misconceptions in a more balanced and thorough way, and provide a broader context for how we view the infamous Mr.
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(Note: This post was inspired by the “ Ancel Keys” section in a recent series of paleo-challenging YouTube videos, which I may critique in the future.