To go along with that recent CETP trial news, here's another one for the "We don't know much about human lipid handing" file. A dietary study originally done back in the 1960s and 1970s has been (almost literally) resurrected, with data pulled out of yellowing stacks of paper, old cardboard boxes, and ancient-format computer tapes.
What it shows is that, under about the most controlled conditions possible in a large human trial (institutionalized patients being served standard meals), that replacing saturated/animal fat in the diet with vegetable-derived fats and oils provided. . .no cardiovascular benefit whatsoever. In fact, the lower the cholesterol levels of the patients, the higher their death rates. This was in over 9,000 subjects over five years, probably the largest study of its kind ever conducted, and it had only produced one (not very thorough) paper in 1989 that didn't make much of an impression. ///

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