[evgen]

Wow. My great-grandfather died when he was 35 and was apparently also an prolific eater of meats and sweets of the age. I guess it was the meats and sweets that killed him.

See, I can use useless anecdote too...

Your great-grandparents may have lived well into their 90s, but they are the outliers on the curve of lifespans for people born at the same time as them. Most of the variance at this extreme end of the spectrum is entirely due to genetics and not lifestyle (e.g. Donald O'Connor led an active lifestyle, ate well for someone who lived through most of the 20th century, and lived to be 78 which is almost 25 years beyond the average life expectancy for someone born in 1925 -- he also was notorious for smoking several packs (2-5) of cigarettes a day for most of his life; shall we suggest that smoking has no health consequences since I can find examples of people who lived a long time and were also smokers?)

What is more useful is to see what the impact of diet/lifestyle options are on the larger chunks of the population and not use outliers as exemplars for points we might wish to make.

[deveren]

In most other countries that eat a much, much, higher percentage of saturated fats that us westerners, also have little to no heart disease. Why? Because they don't eat sugar! The latest studies show that a prevalence of sugar in our diets is what turns LDL cholesterol into its artery clogging form. BTW LDL cholesterol is also needed in our bodies. However, if we eat sugar it causes the LDLs to break down and attach to the arterial walls. These aren't outliers, just real world examples of how people around the world have eaten for years without developing diabetes and becoming overweight.

[graywh]

This is an important point. Don't be fooled when the outliers are the only ones left.