During the final quarter of the 20th century, the American diet was revolutionized as food products containing saturated fats were spurned in favor of vegetable oils high in linoleic acid, an essential omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acid. The driving force behind this was the Minnesota Coronary Experiment (MCE), conducted from 1968 to 1973, which sought to examine the relationship between diet and heart health. While the findings fueled dietary overhauls, recent investigations have begun to question multiple aspects of the MCE, casting doubt on the validity of its conclusions and suggesting its findings about the healthiness of vegetable cooking oils and other dietary findings were overestimated.
Food for Thought
While it may be well and good to reexamine the MCE from a strictly scientific standpoint, leading figures in nutrition and nutritional research point out that it does not change the fact that there is a connection between coronary heart disease and the intake of saturated fats and that forsaking the health benefits of vegetable oils for a return to animal fats would result in a significant increase in heart problems and associated diseases. Though the challenges to the MCE may be justified, it must be noted that in the decades following the study, the intake of saturated fats declined while the intake of linoleic acid more than doubled, resulting in a decline in mortality rates from coronary heart disease of greater than 60%.
Challenges to the Challenges
As explained by Dr. Walter Willett, chair of Nutrition at Harvard’s School of Public Health, the MCE itself no longer carries any real import, but research since then has found substantial evidence supporting the connection between diet and heart health and, though the MCE study may be fraught with problems, it did spur increased and more diligent research into this field, which refined the initial results and provided even greater evidence to the health risks associated with saturated fats and the health benefits of a diet rich in polyunsaturated fats.
As an example, Dr. Willett spoke of the years following the MCE, when researchers learned more not only about the role of vegetable oils rich in omega-6 acid, but of the importance of omega-3 acid as well and the benefits that are derived from foods containing it. And, he goes on to say, the data put forth by the research challenging the efficacy of the MCE, are just as flawed, failing to report key findings that supported the MCE conclusions.
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All in all, despite the limitations and suspect processes used in the MCE, current research continues to support its initial conclusions regarding the diet-to-heart connection, and those looking to butter both sides of their bread should take to heart the knowledge that they would be better served using a spread made from vegetable oil.
