The Heart Foundation has the role of educating doctors and the public about heart disease. It funds research, programs and events all aimed at reducing morbidity and mortality due to heart disease and stroke in Australia. The Heart Foundation also encourages food manufacturers to comply with its healthy eating guidelines through the “Tick program”. You have probably noticed the Heart Foundation logo consisting of a white tick within a red circle on the packaging of many foods in the supermarket. The tick is used to help consumers identify which foods are approved by the Heart Foundation, and supposedly healthy for the heart. Foods that have a tick are low in fat, especially saturated fat, as well as sodium and kilojoules. Some of these foods are high in fibre, and there are other categories of classification. Many foods that are high in carbohydrate and sugar have a tick; these include breakfast bars and breakfast cereals. Foods high in sugar and carbohydrate promote high blood sugar levels, high insulin, and can lead to Syndrome X. Any carbohydrate that you do not burn up for energy is stored as fat and can raise your cholesterol and triglyceride levels.
The Australian media has been telling us to eat less fat for years. A press release on the Heart Foundation web site states that this has created a nation of fat obsessed individuals. When choosing foods at the supermarket, the majority of Australians are primarily concerned with the fat content of a food. They will choose one food over another even if it only has 0.1 grams less fat. This has meant that fat consumption declined from 38 percent of energy intake in 1983, to just 32 percent in 1995. Despite this decline in fat consumption, risk factors for coronary heart disease have not gone down. “Average blood cholesterol levels remain virtually unchanged from 1980 to 1999-00 and there has been a significant increase in the proportion of overweight and obese Australians over the last 20 years”.
Clearly the obsession with reducing fat intake is not working to improve our health. Fat is not the demon it is made out to be. However, the main focus of the Heart Foundation’s dietary guidelines for Australians is to reduce fat intake. In their information brochures for the public, the Heart Foundation still clings to the out of date theory that too much cholesterol in the bloodstream causes fatty deposits in the arteries, which build up and make it harder for blood to flow through. Eventually these arteries can become totally blocked and this leads to a heart attack or stroke. This simplistic theory totally disregards the mountain of evidence implicating inflammation in the development of heart disease. Many of the recommendations made by the Heart Foundation actually increase inflammation in the body. The public are not always given the best advice.
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