American Heart Association Was Paid Off By Procter & Gamble To Say Heart Disease Was Caused By Saturated Fat, Not Seed Oils

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) lists out the official recommendations for eating a healthy diet that will stave off disease and obesity. The information comes from a document called Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2020-2025, and it lists out the following for a healthy eating plan: an emphasis on grains, produce, and fat-free and low-fat milk products, foods that are low in saturated fats, and a variety of protein such as beans, poultry, and lean meat. Saturated fat is discouraged by public health organizations and just about every mainstream expert you'll encounter. But we're quickly learning how useless this information may be.
 

"The 1961 AHA advice to limit saturated fat is arguably the single-most influential nutrition policy ever published, as it came to be adopted first by the U.S. government, as official policy for all Americans, in 1980, and then by governments around the world as well as the World Health Organization," the article reads.

However, they were paid off to distribute this information. The AHA accepted $20 million (in today's dollars) in funding from Procter & Gamble, a corporation that conveniently makes and sells Crisco Oil. The AHA recommended that everyone replace butter with "heart healthy" alternatives like vegetable oil or Crisco Oil.

It wasn't until the late 2000s that scientists and journalists started to re-examine saturated fats and restructure the way people talked about butter, meat, and eggs in relation to overall health and wellness. Teicholz points out that the 2020 Dietary Guidelines expert committee "found that 88% of studies in their own review did not support" the idea that heart disease was caused by saturated fat. And yet the committee ignored this data and claimed "the evidence against saturated fat was 'strong.'"