As it's said about history, the theory of cardiovascular disease (CVD)— what causes it and how to treat it—is a story that's told by the winners. To demonstrate the point, let's imagine you have worrying signs of heart disease: your doctor offers you a cholesterol-lowering statin or Pepcid, an over-the-counter remedy for indigestion and heartburn. Which one do you choose?
If you reach for the statin, you've bought into the story told by the winners. The diet/heart theory maintains that eating saturated fats from dairy and red meat increases levels of LDL (low-density lipoprotein) cholesterol, characterized as the bad cholesterol that clogs arteries and causes atherosclerosis and CVD. The story goes that heart disease can be prevented, or at least controlled, by eating a low-fat diet and taking statins.
If in the extremely unlikely event you instead take the Pepcid—and who in their right mind would choose an indigestion remedy for heart disease?— you've just taken the losing side. It's a broad church that embraces many theories differing in their understanding of CVD, but they all agree that saturated fats and cholesterol have
