While it’s impossible to point to a single event that is responsible for the American obesity, diabetes, cancer, infertility, and ADHD epidemic, one clear factor is the work of a scientist named Ancel Keys. During World War II, Keys performed starvation experiments on conscientious objectors. He had noticed that heart disease was skyrocketing among well-fed American businessmen, but was dropping significantly in the areas of Europe that had been food deprived by the war. He created the currently-accepted notion that cholesterol was responsible for heart disease, and performed studies to prove it. The backbone of Keys’ hypothesis was a study in which Keys studied heart disease and cholesterol levels versus saturated fat consumption in six countries, and found a direct correlation between the two: the more saturated fat people ate, the more cholesterol and heart disease appeared in those countries. Keys used that study, along with several others created by his students and associates that seemed to support it, to go on a crusade in the 1950s against the then-traditional high fat diet (bacon, eggs, and sausage for breakfast, fatty steak and potatoes with greasy gravy for dinner). Keys fought long and loudly, and eventually got the attention of the government. Unfortunately, Keys’ research wasn’t on the up-and-up. His vaunted six-country study actually had almost two dozen countries’ worth of data behind it – he just picked out the six that “proved” his hypothesis and left out the remainder entirely. The other countries had data that utterly defied Keys’ hypothesis – some had massive cholesterol levels with no heart disease and little saturated fat consumption, others had lots of heart disease with almost no cholesterol or saturated fat, etc. Other scientists even pointed this out at the time the study was being touted as a revolutionary glimpse into the heart health of the civilized world.