Good Calories, Bad Calories Read Online Free PDF

necessary, I cite or quote these individuals to add either credibility or a personal recol ection to the point under discussion. The appearance of their names in the text, however, does not imply that they agree with al or even part of the thesis set forth in this book. It implies solely that the attribution is accurate and reflects their beliefs about the relevant point in that context and no other.
    Lastly, I often refer to articles and reports, for the sake of simplicity and narrative flow, as though they were authored by a single relevant individual, when that is not the case. A more complete list of authors can be found using the notes and bibliography.

Part One
    THE FAT-CHOLESTEROL HYPOTHESIS
    Men who have excessive faith in their theories or ideas are not only il prepared for making discoveries; they also make very poor observations. Of necessity, they observe with a preconceived idea, and when they devise an experiment, they can see, in its results, only a confirmation of their theory.
    In this way they distort observation and often neglect very important facts because they do not further their aim…. But it happens further quite natural y that men who believe too firmly in their theories, do not believe enough in the theories of others. So the dominant idea of these despisers of their fel ows is to find others’ theories faulty and to try to contradict them. The difficulty, for science, is stil the same.
    CLAUDE BERNARD, An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine, 1865

Chapter One
    THE EISENHOWER PARADOX
    In medicine, we are often confronted with poorly observed and indefinite facts which form actual obstacles to science, in that men always bring them up, saying: it is a fact, it must be accepted.
    CLAUDE BERNARD, An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine, 1865
    PRESIDENT DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER SUFFERED his first heart attack at the age of sixty-four. It took place in Denver, Colorado, where he kept a second home.
    It may have started on Friday, September 23, 1955. Eisenhower had spent that morning playing golf and lunched on a hamburger with onions, which gave him what appeared to be indigestion. He was asleep by nine-thirty at night but awoke five hours later with “increasingly severe low substernal nonradiating pain,” as described by Dr. Howard Snyder, his personal physician, who arrived on the scene and injected Eisenhower with two doses of morphine. When it was clear by Saturday afternoon that his condition hadn’t improved, he was taken to the hospital. By midday Sunday, Dr. Paul Dudley White, the world-renowned Harvard cardiologist, had been flown in to consult.
    For most Americans, Eisenhower’s heart attack constituted a learning experience on coronary heart disease. At a press conference that Monday morning, Dr. White gave a lucid and authoritative description of the disease itself. Over the next six weeks, twice-daily press conferences were held on the president’s condition. By the time Eisenhower’s health had returned, Americans, particularly middle-aged men, had learned to attend to their cholesterol and the fat in their diets. Eisenhower had learned the same lesson, albeit with counterintuitive results.
    Eisenhower was assuredly among the best-chronicled heart-attack survivors in history. We know that he had no family history of heart disease, and no obvious risk factors after he quit smoking in 1949. He exercised regularly; his weight remained close to the 172 pounds considered optimal for his height.
    His blood pressure was only occasional y elevated. His cholesterol was below normal: his last measurement before the attack, according to George Mann, who worked with White at Harvard, was 165 mg/dl (mil igrams/deciliter), a level that heart-disease specialists today consider safe.
    After his heart attack, Eisenhower dieted religiously and had his cholesterol measured ten times a year. He ate little fat and less cholesterol; his meals were cooked in either soybean oil or