Thread by @EAllen0417

Chanced upon an interesting study from Sweden today. Sweden had some of the highest CVD mortality in the 1970s, so programs were put in place to decrease cholesterol. They were successful at getting reductions in serum cholesterol by decreasing SFA primarily in the 80s and 90s.

In 2004, the #LCHF movement got a lot of press and Swedes seemed to be convinced by social media campaigns to abandon their dietary guidelines and decrease carbohydrates and increase fats. You can see that they did exactly that from the graphs. What happened?

Cholesterol levels went up, in spite of a near doubling of the use of statin drugs. In addition, BMI continued an inexorable rise, no changes were seen in the trends for obesity and no reduction in cancer rates was seen. In fact, cancer continued a steady rise.

Now it is clear that Swedes continued to eat CHO, but the reductions were significant. It is also clear that this divergence from the dietary guidelines did not help with any significant health measure. nutritionj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.11…

So the space to make an argument for #LCHF from this data is to argue that these modest reduction in CHO and increases in SFA are inadequate to reduce BMI or CVD risks, but that more extreme increases in SFA and decreases in CHO would be better. But is that reasonable?

Arguments are always put forward that #LCHF is easier to adhere to due to this satiety factor or that amount of increased protein. But this campaign in social media clearly worked to alter behavior. Swedes got the message. They ate less CHO and more fat. researchgate.net/publication/28…

Proponents need to show why disease and BMI trajectories didn't change at all during this period of national compliance with #LCHF guidelines.