No...low fat does not mean high carb!!!

It means complex carbs, not simple, refined junk carbs. And even the "good" fats are mostly "bad" fats still.

Please read up on both Dr. Esselstyn's and Ornish's books.

What is your definition of a processed food? Removing all the fiber and protein, and extracting pure fat, tossing away the rest, that is a processed food in my book. Eat an olive, that is a whole food.

If you're going to watch Dr. Esselstyn's presentations, great. He does a great job explaining why you want to eliminate all added fats from your diet, as well as refined carbs. He also limits nuts and seeds because of their high fat content. His diet is to aggressively reverse heart disease and open up clogged arteries, making you heart attack-proof within a couple of weeks of starting to follow his diet.

I would say whatever effect you believe palitic acid has on raising cholesterol, if it is a byproduct of a starch-based whole foods diet, it is negligible. People switching to Dr. Esselstyn's diet get off of cholesterol meds and are able to achieve excellent numbers. After you watch his talk, I'm sure you could contact Dr. Esselstyn directly with further questions.

Cheers.

My advice is to read Dr. Esselstyn's full book, watch his video presentations on the DVD, and read his peer reviewed studies on his site http://www.HeartAttackProof.com

I suspect that the reason you didn't hear back from the Campbell Foundation, other than that they probably get a ton of mail and don't have staff to respond, is that they are not big on over-focusing on micronutrients. There's a sort of silver bullet thinking in a lot of fad diets where they focus on a few micronutrients and extrapolate all sorts of stuff. But when the diet is right, health follows, and trying to tease apart all the different aspects and narrow it down to a few important nutrients -- is a dead end (or a sales gimmick).

If you have credible studies showing that whole food diet which is high in unprocessed potatoes, rice and whole grain pastas is shown to increase heart disease, you can send them to Dr. Esselstyn, I expect he will reply when he is not traveling and has time.

The bottom line is that oils injure the endothelial layer of your arteries. When you have a high fat meal, be it McDonald's junk food or a meal high in cold pressed olive oil, your blood flow is impaired for a period of time after. The more fat, the longer the recovery. When people are eating a lot of oil and fat, they are repeatedly injuring their arteries, creating a sludge where a vital flow is required. You can look at the work of Robert Vogel MD on that, fascinating stuff.

I also recommend Jeff Novick's DVD called "Oil to Nuts," which debunks the Mediterranean Diet craze, which I think Simopoulos is part of. Here is an excerpt:

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