IHD and ghee

Just while ghee is in focus, there's this abstract from Jaipur. There's a typo three lines from the end where the 1 is missing from the "greater than 1 kg". I've re checked the "greater than" sign in IBIDS and it is correct, the one is still missing.

So the ghee eaters were fatter, ate more calories, more sat fat and more monounsaturated fat. Same total PUFA as the low ghee eaters. Oh, they had less coronary heart disease too. The only serious potential confounder is that the ghee eaters were younger. With multivariate analysis to account for this, p was still less than 0.001. The odds ratio was 0.23. I think this means that they were less than a quarter as likely to have a heart attack. Eat your heart out statinators! Oh!!! That pun was NOT intentional. If only ghee were patentable!

Of course the dietitians probably forgot to ask about sugar consumption. If they did check, they're not saying. Certainly not in the abstract. This gets a bit tedious sometimes!

Fatty acid intake summary from the abstract:

"This group [ghee eaters] consumed significantly more calories, saturated and mono-unsaturated fats while the consumption of polyunsaturated fats was similar in the two groups"

"Fatty acid intake analysis showed that group 1 males consumed more mono-unsaturated (n-9) fatty acids than group 2. Intake of polyunsaturated n-3 and n-6 fatty acids was similar"

I take it from the second quote that the cardiologists are falling back on monounsaturates to save the lipid hypothesis. In their repetition, they forgot to repeat the higher saturated fat intake. Some people are just so forgetful!

But it looks to me to be more likely that you can eat extra calories and be fatter while being less likely to have heart disease, provided your excess calories come from non PUFA fat sources. The sugar intake? If anyone has the full text, and if it was even remotely enquired about, I'll bet it was lower in the healthier, heavier ghee eaters.

Peter