Ending a decade of diet lies about nutritionist Ancel Keys

Ancel Keys, arguably the most influential nutrition scientist of the past half-century, died in 2004 at the age of 100. Keys invented the “K ration,” named for him, that provided our deployed military with portable and complete nutrition. He was among the first, if not the first, to hypothesize that heart disease was not an inevitable consequence of aging but likely related to diet and lifestyle.

Obvious as that now seems, someone had to be the first to consider it — and that someone was Ancel Keys. He developed and directed the Seven Countries Study, a colossal undertaking that tested the above hypothesis, concluding that variation in dietary sources of saturated fat — notably meat and dairy — contributed importantly to cardiovascular risk.

Throughout most of his life, Keys was celebrated as a public health hero. He graced the cover of TIME Magazine as such in 1961. In the years leading up to his death, however, and in the decade since, much of the public commentary about Keys, his life’s work, his seminal Seven Countries Study, and his integrity has been derogatory. There are five apparent reasons for this.

The first is perhaps best described as Newtonian: for every action, an equal and opposite reaction. Maybe we simply can’t resist the inclination, whenever someone settles securely on a pedestal we’ve placed under them, to shift our efforts to knocking them down.

The second might best be described as Aesopian, as in the Aesop’s Fable that says: we are all judged by the company we keep. The latter years of Keys’ life, and those since his death, were concurrent with misguided forays into low-fat dietary boondoggles, and somebody had to be blamed for Snackwells. In many quarters, that somebody wound up being Ancel Keys, for having pointed out the harms of dietary fat — albeit only certain dietary fat — in the first place.

The third reason is that everyone seems to love a good conspiracy theory. So, there were careers to launch and books to sell, as there are today, by telling us all that everything “authorities” had advised was wrong, that the real truth was being concealed, distorted or suppressed. As one of the world’s preeminent epidemiologists, Keys was among such “authorities,” and thus an obvious target of conspiracy theory, revisionist history and “alternative facts.”

The fourth reason was the advent of the internet.

Once upon a time, you needed actually to know something to broadcast “expertise,” because an editorial filter stood between you and the public at large. There were ways around this, of course, such as the reliance on celebrity as an alternative to content knowledge as a basis for selling books, lotions, potions or programs. But even so, the means of disseminating messages favored those with some claim to genuine merit.

Now, anyone with internet access can broadcast opinion, masquerading as expert opinion, into the echo chambers of cyberspace, where those who own the same opinion already will amplify it. So, for instance, those totally devoted to eating — or selling — meat, butter and cheese are also apt to eat up, and regurgitate, any allegations against those pointing out the related liabilities.

The fifth is the most obvious: along with not wearing plaid, dead men don’t fight back very effectively, either. Keys has mostly been turned into a scapegoat since dying. By way of reminder, he lived to 100 and applied what he thought he knew about diet and lifestyle to himself. That alone would make him a candidate for both celebrity and expert status today. One imagines the book: “Diet of the Century.”

The popular allegations against Keys are: (1) he “cherry picked” countries to enroll in his study to align with the beliefs he already held; (2) he “fudged” or selectively presented data to make a case aligned with the beliefs he favored; (3) he either failed to study sugar or misrepresented findings about it; and (4) he advocated for a now generally discredited “lowfat” dietary pattern.

The True Health Initiative, a 501c3 nonprofit organization I founded to identify and disseminate the fundamental truths about lifestyle and the health of people and planet alike, based on the weight of evidence and the global consensus of experts, commissioned a White Paper to determine the veracity of these claims. The paper, with its extensive and fully transparent bibliography of primary source material, was just released, and is accessible to all. The basic conclusion is that all popular disparagements of Keys and his research are demonstrably false. Lies, repeated often enough, can smother the truth. After a decade of lies about Ancel Keys and the Seven Countries Study, it’s time for the truth to break free, and strike back — clad in plaid or otherwise.