What Makes You Live Longer? Fats or Carbohydrates?

A recent article published in the Lancet in August of 2017 revealed an interesting conclusion about dietary fats, carbohydrates, and mortality rates. In the large Prospective Urban Rural Epidemiology (PURE) study of people aged 35–70 years from five different continents, scientists studied what was eaten on a regular basis including carbohydrate, fats, and protein. They also followed mortality rates and major cardiovascular events such as fatal cardiovascular disease, non-fatal myocardial infarction (heart attack), stroke, and heart failure. What did they find?

They concluded that "high carbohydrate intake was associated with higher risk of total mortality, whereas total fat and individual types of fat were related to lower total mortality."

What was also extremely paradigm-shifting was the fact that the amount of fat and the types of fat were NOT associated with cardiovascular disease, myocardial infarction, or cardiovascular disease mortality.

In other words, it didn't matter what SPECIFIC type of fat, i.e. supposed health vs supposed unhealthy, you eat.

Particularly, the supposed unhealthy "saturated fat" had an INVERSE association with stroke. This means that the higher the saturated fat intake the LOWER the risk for stroke.

The Hormone Zone has been talking about this for years:

• Fat does NOT make you fat.
• Fat does NOT technically clog your arteries.
• Saturated animal fat is NOT "bad fat."
• Fat has vitamins A, D, E, and K that have healthy HORMONAL effects in your body.