Ancel Keys 6 countries study actually shows the more animal fat and animal protein you eat, the longer you live!

This study was published in the Journal of the Mount Sinai Hospital, New York 1953 Jul-Aug;20(2):118-39.

Study title and author:

Atherosclerosis: a problem in newer public health.

KEYS A.

This study can be accessed at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/13085148

This study examined the effect of fat consumption and death rates from heart disease in males aged 55-59 from 6 countries.

In this study Keys set out to prove that a higher fat intake was associated with a higher death rate from heart disease.

He used data from 6 countries (Japan, Italy, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and USA) that did seem to show that a higher fat consumption would lead to higher rates of heart disease.

However Keys actually had data for 22 countries. For reasons known only to himself he decided to ignore the data from the other 16. The other countries were, Austria, Ceylon, Chile, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Sweden and Switzerland.

When the data for all 22 countries are taken into account, there is a totally different outcome. 

The data actually shows: (See http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/13441073 (table IV)

(a) Those who ate more animal fat lived longer.

(b) Those who ate more animal protein lived longer.

(c) Those who ate more plant protein died earlier.

(d) Those who ate more carbohydrate died earlier.

This study from Keys is often quoted as proof that a high fat diet is dangerous. When Keys data is analysed it shows that more animal fat in the diet actually extends life and more carbohydrate in the diet lowers life expectancy.

Non-vegetarians live longer than vegetarians

Published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Vol 36, 873-877 Nov 1982

Vegetarianism, dietary fiber, and mortality
ML Burr and PM Sweetnam

This paper can be accessed at: http://www.ajcn.org/content/36/5/873.short

The table below presents the annual death rates for vegetarians and nonvegetarians derived from the raw data in the seven-year Burr and Sweetnam study. As can be seen, the "marked" difference between vegetarian and nonvegetarian men in Ischemic Heart Disease (IHD) was only .11 percent. The difference in all-cause death rate was in the opposite direction, a fact that Burr and Sweetnam failed to mention. Moreover, the IHD and death rates among females were actually slightly greater for heart disease and substantially greater for all causes in vegetarians than in nonvegetarians.

Annual Death Rates of Vegetarians and Nonvegetarians

                                      IHD   All-Cause

Male vegetarians           .22%     .93%

Male nonvegetarians     .33%     .88%

Female vegetarians       .14%     .86%

Female nonvegetarians .10%     .54%

These results are absolutely NOT supportive of the proposition that vegetarianism protects against either heart disease or all-cause mortalities. In fact, they indicate that vegetarianism is more dangerous for women than for men.

AMAZON UK Vegetarian Myth, The
AMAZON USA The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability