For the past six decades, saturated fat and cholesterol have been wrongfully vilified as the culprits of heart disease. Research shows it’s actually refined carbs, sugar, and trans fats found in processed foods that are the real enemy.

The first scientist to publish evidence linking trans fats to heart disease while exonerating saturated fats was Dr. Fred Kummerow,¹ author of Cholesterol Is Not the Culprit. That first article was published in 1957.

Now 100 years old, Dr. Kummerow has spent eight decades immersed in the science of lipids, cholesterol, and heart disease, and his lifetime’s work reveals that trans fat and oxidized cholesterol promote heart disease—not saturated fat, which actually has a beneficial health impact.

FDA Finally Takes Affirmative Action Against Trans Fat

Trans fat, found in margarine, vegetable shortening, and partially hydrogenated vegetable oils became widely popularized as a “healthier alternative” to saturated animal fats like butter and lard around the mid-1950s.

Its beginnings go back 100 years though, to Procter & Gamble’s creation of Crisco in 1911.

In 1961, the American Heart Association (AHA) began encouraging Americans to limit dietary fat, particularly animal fats, in order to reduce their risk of heart disease. In the decades since, despite low-fat diets becoming increasingly part of the norm, heart disease rates soared.

In 2013, Dr. Kummerow sued the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for failing to take action on trans fats in face of the overwhelming scientific evidence against it.

More than a decade earlier, in 2002, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) had even noted that there was “no safe level of trans fatty acids and people should eat as little of them as possible.” Yet the FDA did nothing.