The role of dietary polyunsaturated fats in heart disease and atherosclerosis

Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients, August-Sept, 2003 by Wayne Martin

Dr. White started out by saying that five years of using antibiotics had greatly reduced deaths from syphilitic heart disease but aside from that, deaths from myocardial infarction had been and now were increasing in alarming numbers,

He had a little booklet with the title "Treatise on Sudden Death." It had been written by two doctors at Oxford University in 1855. It told of two deaths which viewed in 1955, were deaths from myocardial infarction, but in 1855 were so rare an event as to be a complete mystery.

Dr. White then said that what was in diet in 1855 when deaths from myocardial infarction were unknown and were so completely rare, was food high in cholesterol and the fats were butter and lard. He said that the GOOD polyunsaturated fats were not to be had in 1855. He suggested that the Prudent Diet may be the cause rather than the cure for myocardial infarction. And so their big meeting ended on a sour note.

The orthodox medical establishment then undertook to prove that the Prudent Diet would prevent deaths from heart attacks. The first trial of the Prudent Diet was the Joliffe Anti-coronary Club started in 1960. Dr. Joliffe worked for New York City. He was diabetic and a vascular wreck. He was in a wheelchair with a foot ulcer and be had gone blind in one eye. He was looking to the Prudent Diet for his salvation. He had devoted much effort to the members of the club. The control subjects were men of wealth who were determined to have all of the wrong things in diet, butter cheese and roast beef with almost none of the GOOD polyunsaturated fats in diet. The men who were to live on the Prudent Diet were teachers in colleges in and about New York City. A small drug firm in Evansville, Indiana made a special margarine for them with just the right amount of the GOOD polyunsaturated fat. They were to avoid butter and cheese. They were to drink only skimmed milk and to eat red meat no more than once a week.

The trial went on for six years and the results were reported in 1966. (1) The results were given much PR by the medical establishment and it was given as the reason why we should all be living on the Prudent Diet. The trial was said to be a success because the men on the Prudent Diet had their cholesterol reduced from 250mg% to 225.

One had to read the fine print to find that eight men living on the Prudent Diet had died of myocardial infarction whereas none of the men living on all of the wrong things, butter, cheese and roast beef had died of a heart attack. These men who were the controls, had been living on a diet very much like diet in England in 1855.

Then Dr. Jollife died, it was said of his diabetic condition.

Prudent Diet Investigator Dies from Heart Attack

The American Heart Association then said that what was needed was a trial with a million subjects in which half would live on the Prudent Diet. This trial was to be run and paid for by our National Heart Institute. There would be food warehouses in five cities where the subjects living on the Prudent Diet could get, for free, the right kind of food. There were polyunsaturated doughnuts. Meat from which every bit of fat had been trimmed away was to be had by men living on the Prudent Diet.