Higher plant fat intake associated with higher deaths

Introduction

A couple of people sent me the paper in this week’s note. It was called “Plant and Animal Fat Intake and Overall and Cardiovascular Disease Mortality” (Ref 1). The lead author was Bin Zhao from China. Other authors were mostly from China but also one each from Finland, Sweden, and the US.

The name, Bin Zhao, was unusual and it triggered a memory, so I searched my site and, sure enough, Bin Zhao was the first author on an anti-egg paper back in 2022, which I covered here (Ref 2).

My heart sank when I saw yet another epidemiological paper promoting plant foods and attacking animal foods. I looked at the paper expecting it to be like so many others we’ve covered and therefore containing nothing new of interest. But there were some things new and of interest.

By the way, the study didn’t report the words that I used as the title of this note. The study reported the exact opposite, but my headline is true – before the mystery that is adjustment was undertaken.