Day 252 - 20 May 96 - Page 22


     
     1        not the same thing as a public relations agent.
     2
     3   Q.   Right.  When you were talking about recommendations about
     4        diet and heart disease, cardiovascular disease, whatever,
     5        and how that changed over time, the advice with regard to
     6        saturated fat has remained consistent has it not?
     7        A.   Yes, it has.  If I could expand on that just a little
     8        bit.  People tend to talk about saturated fat and
     9        polyunsaturated fat.  There is a very simplistic way of
    10        looking at fats.  For example, animal fats in general tend
    11        to be more saturated than vegetable fat but the composition
    12        of mutton fat is really quite different from cow fat, which
    13        is different from pig fat, which is different from poultry
    14        fat, and now one looks much more closely at the composition
    15        of fats, and although there is a high proportion of
    16        saturated fatty acids that make up, say, cow fat, more than
    17        sixty percent of the fatty acid that makes up the fat of a
    18        dairy cow or a beef cow either have no effect at all on the
    19        blood cholesterol level or actually reduce it.  So that one
    20        is looking at specific components of saturated fat, which
    21        may or may not have an effect on blood cholesterol.  So,
    22        generally, to talk about the saturated fats and unsaturated
    23        fats is really very vague. It is like talking about animal
    24        fats and plant fats.  One really cannot generalise.
    25
    26   Q.   Right.  But the effect of eating fat, the fat of a dairy
    27        cow or a beef cow, overall, irrespective of whether
    28        specific components affect it in a different way, its
    29        overall effect is to raise the blood cholesterol level?
    30        A.   That would seem to be so if one looks at the data in
    31        the report on cardiovascular disease.  Countries that have
    32        a high consumption of, say, dairy products and animal fats
    33        tend to have higher blood cholesterols, but this is not
    34        uniform and it certainly does not exactly match mortality.
    35        I mean, we have mentioned earlier the French paradox, and
    36        there the fats simply do not hold as far as fat and heart
    37        disease are concerned.  What this indicates is not that
    38        saturated fat has have no effect at all, it indicates that
    39        there are many, many factors that interact to cause
    40        cardiovascular disease of which saturated fat is one.
    41
    42   Q.   Consistent advice has been that a high consumption of
    43        saturated fats increases the risk of heart disease.  Is
    44        that not right?
    45        A.  That is so, yes.  That has been consistent for probably
    46        thirty years.  Not simply a high consumption, a diet that
    47        is high in fat consumed over a lifetime is more likely to
    48        cause heart disease than one that is low in saturated fat.
    49
    50   Q.   And, as you say in your statement, there is an 
    51        international consensus on this? 
    52        A.   Yes, yes. 
    53
    54   Q.   Dietary cholesterol, you mentioned about how that had
    55        changed, but effectively the advice is now that dietary
    56        cholesterol levels should be kept fairly low?
    57        A.   I think the advice, if I remember rightly from the
    58        document, is that dietary cholesterol should not increase.
    59
    60   Q.   Right?

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