Finding a Heart Healthy Diet

The first widely accepted dietary paradigm is developed.

There was a time of much disjointed work in the past, because there was no agreed basis for nutritional science. Unfortunately the initiative to recommend a healthy diet was not supported by the immature science of the 1970's. The dietary recommendations of the McGovern Senate Committee were a political compromise. The key "scientific" ideas those politicians believed, were not validated by science, and eventually turned out to be wrong.

It would be easy but unfair to blame Ancel Keys. America's post war boom, and the desire to reverse the growing numbers of people dying from heart disease, created an irresistible social, political and economic tide, that overcame the well rounded scientific objections of many experts in the field. Almost 92% of doctors and nutritionists were in favour of a "moderate dietary change."