Cholesterol Won't Kill You, But Trans Fat Could

The popular press has lots of information, some of it contradictory, on what's actually healthy to eat. This book identifies scientific facts and nutritional myths and provides research evidence as to why some myths should not be the cornerstone of nutritional advice. It explains how some food fictions arose, their basis in flawed and incomplete research studies and what's wrong with these studies by examining the basics-the basic biochemical processes in the body, how food fuels those processes, and how those processes fit together.

You'll learn for example, how cholesterol is a life-sustaining substance that has been unfairly implicated in heart disease. You'll understand why trans fat is unhealthy based on some of the author's research beginning in the 1950's and why he thinks the government should ban trans fats and industry change the way it makes them. You'll also learn why his family has always eaten butter.

How the body uses food to make what we need to keep going is an incredible, almost magical, process. We hope in reading this book, you'll not only learn what is healthy to eat, but also why it is healthy to do so. Of course when we end with practical advice on what's really best to eat, you'll understand why as well!

Fred A. Kummerow, Ph.D., is biochemist and food scientist who has worked in the field of nutrition for nearly seven decades. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin in 1944. His first position was at Clemson University in South Carolina on the disease Pellagra, caused by a deficiency of the vitamin, niacin. He figured out a way to fortify common foods with the needed vitamin and demonstrated this to manufacturers. Thus, he knows first hand the impact of adding necessary ingredients to food and the difference that makes in people's lives.

His next position was at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas, where some of his work involved the technology of storing foods, a particularly important issue when American Armed Forces were scattered worldwide. Some of this work ultimately made it possible for our supermarkets today to have frozen poultry remain "fresh" for consumers.

He has been at the University of Illinois in the Department of Food Science since 1950 and currently has an appointment in the Department of Biosciences even in his 90's. His focus is on heart disease, particularly the role of diet and fats in the development of that disease. He offers another way to look at cholesterol as a symptom of heart disease, not the cause of it. He also has studied trans fats and their negative effects on people and has sounded warnings of these since the 1950's. Most of all, he wants you to learn about nutrition and eat well to provide the proper fuel for your body. "Eat well and prosper" is his hope for you.