Ancel Benjamin Keys was born January 26^th, 1904 and died just short of his 101st birthday on Nov 20^th, 2004.

Ancel Keys is the man responsible for changing over 100 years of nutritional guidelines by suddenly, out of nowhere, claiming that FAT was bad for us and we were all dying from heart attacks caused by cholesterol. Keys is the man responsible for the "lipid hypothesis."

He brought to the world his very famous Seven Countries Study that "proved" that “the risk and rates of heart attack and stroke [cardiovascular risk] both at the population level and at the individual level was directly and independently related to the level of total serum cholesterol.”

It is because of this gentleman that the words “saturated fat” can’t be found far from the descriptive “heart-clogging.”

Now you might ask yourself: How does a man with a BA in economics and political science, an MS in zoology, and a PhD in oceanography and biology from Scripps Institute of Oceanography get to dictate to the world our dietary requirements and restrictions?

Well, maybe because he was a pioneer in biostatistics. Or maybe because when World War II broke out, he helped invent K-Rations (3,200 calories packed into just under two pounds).

Or maybe it was his Starvation Studies conducted at the University of Minnesota.

You see, during WWII, Keys studied human performance (something of interest to the military) and the effects of testosterone on muscles. He also studied supplementation of vitamins and minerals. Toward the end of the war, news of famine in Eastern Europe and Asia began reaching our shores and you know scientists: You can’t just go out and feed the starving; you have to create a study so that you will know exactly what and how to feed them. So the Minnesota Starving Experiment (also known as the Minnesota-Semi-Starvation Experiment and other much nicer monikers) started up using volunteers from conscientious objectors who had been “inducted” into public wartime service.

The war ended before the study finished, and so the world just chipped in and sent food to the starving people who seemed rather grateful that they didn’t have to wait for the final results of Keys’ study before being fed.

Working with diet influenced Keys and led him to start questioning our diets' role in health, and in cardio-vascular disease (CVD) in particular, especially when he realized that with starvation, CVD rates declined, but with prosperity, they increased.

He felt that the American businessman was the “best-fed” human being in history. Why should the American businessman be dying from heart attacks with such a great diet?

He quickly postulated (I’m not sure, but I think “postulate” is Latin for “to pull something from one’s ass") that high cholesterol was the reason for the high rate of CVD in the American businessman and immediately started a study, the Minnesota Businessman Study.

But before the study had even been underway very long (it was a cohort study, thus medical records were available for the 281 businessmen in the study), he was off to Geneva to report his findings to the World Health Organization.

Did I tell you that Ancel Keys was a very confident, brusque, and blunt sort of fellow?

All accounts report that he delivered his “hypothesis” with his usual “confidence and bluntness” and was quite taken aback when suddenly challenged. He was challenged by an Oxford debating expert, and when he responded, he got crushed. 

Keys then went on a working vacation that resulted in his famous (infamous) Seven Country Study, and the rest is history.

Well, a bit of twisted history, actually. You see, Keys was one of the many nutritional researchers who discovered the “Mediterranean Diet.” He found people in Italy living into their hundreds. Many of these people were quite poor and could hardly afford meat more than a few times a year, and mainly during holidays. He focused on their lack of meat and animal fats rather than on their use of olive oil, fresh vegetables and fruits, and, of course, garlic. It was this incorrect focus that carried his study to its conclusion.

Keys published his study and quickly found himself vindicated as his face ended up on the cover of Time and his dietary recommendations were the talk of the town as the American Heart Association hit the airways (television was still in its infancy and in almost 50% of all homes) with…well, allow me to present Wikipedia’s version:

After observing in (southern Italy) the highest concentration of centenarians in the world, Keys hypothesized that a Mediterranean-style diet low in animal fat protected against heart disease and that a diet high in animal fats led to heart disease. The results of what later became known as the Seven Countries Study appeared to show that serum cholesterol was strongly related to coronary heart disease mortality both at the population and at the individual level. As a result, in 1956, representatives of the American Heart Association appeared on television to inform people that a diet which included large amounts of butter, lard, eggs and beef would lead to coronary heart disease. This resulted in the American government recommending that people adopt a low-fat diet  in order to prevent heart disease.