We all know the mantra: high cholesterol causes heart attacks, so foods high in saturated fats which raise cholesterol should be avoided. We also know that by the age of 40, as many as one in three of us will be taking cholesterol-lowering drugs called statins, to reduce our risk of coronary heart disease.
Now a controversial new documentary is questioning this received wisdom. It asks whether the link between saturated fat (found in foods like butter and cream), high cholesterol and coronary heart disease is as straightforward as believed – and warns that we mess with cholesterol levels at our peril. Statin Nation: the Great Cholesterol Cover-Up, made by Justin Smith, a former personal trainer at the BBC turned film director, includes interviews with cardiologists and other specialists, yet it has been widely attacked by others in the medical establishment as “simplistic” and a “travesty”.
Smith’s film will be released as video on demand next month and was “crowd funded” – made with money he raised from the general public. In it, he asks why it is that, if high cholesterol causes heart disease, cholesterol levels for men in Britain are the 15th lowest among 45 countries in Europe – yet Britain still has one of the highest levels of heart attacks. He also queries why both men and women in the lowest social economic group die of heart disease at far higher rates than their richer peers, yet do not have higher cholesterol levels.
The film also claims a US study from 2009 showed that patients with heart disease had lower levels of LDL cholesterol than the general population, as did studies in Hawaii and Austria. Yet, with statins pushed as the answer, the cholesterol-lowering industry” is worth billions – the statin Lipitor made $13 billion for Pfizer in 2010.
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