Truth about the British Heart Foundation

[modesty007]

Thought you might want to know the truth about BHF and the troubling science on sterols. http://www.drbriffa.com/2013/08/09/the- ... n-sterols/

 

[paul-1976]

Very recommended read and professor Weissberg's response didn't answer the points raised by Dr Briffa at all.


"...the main objective of the partnership with Unilever is to utilise their considerable reach to help us highlight the risk of CVD to women."

Yeah right... :lol:

 

[phoenix]

I don't take them preferring to stick to natural foods but I don't have very high cholesterol either. I would also prefer that the charity didn't have sponsorship from major food companies since I agree that it raised the possibility of conflicts of interest.
Nevetheless, I also wonder about some of Dr Briffa's statements
Dr Briffa wrote

These findings were the reason for Health Canada, the federal department responsible for helping Canadians maintain and improve their health, to raise significant safety issues and not to allow functional foods enriched with plant sterol esters to be sold in Canada

I thought that it would be interesting to find out exactly why in contrast to other Health authorities, Health Canada had done this , so I looked it up and this is what I found.

In May of 2010, Health Canada's Food Directorate approved the addition of plant sterols (phytosterols) to a limited range of foods B spreads, mayonnaise, margarine, calorie-reduced margarine, salad dressing, yogurt and yogurt drinks, and vegetable and fruit juices. This decision was made following the completion of a safety assessment in response to submissions from the food industry. Health Canada also reviewed the relationship between the ingestion of plant sterols as part of the daily diet and the lowering of cholesterol levels in the blood, and is in agreement that sufficient evidence exists to support this claim

.
http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/fn-an/label-etiq ... ex-eng.php

Having read that, and the safety report which is available on the website , I looked up safety of stanols/sterols in pubmed to see if what has been published recently.
There were several more recent papers than those mentioned in Dr Biffa's blog but most are behind paywalls This wouldn't be a problem for him though so it would be have been interesting to see what some with titles such as this one
A review on the role of phytosterols: new insights into cardiovascular risk actually said.
There was a review and meta analysis from 2012
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3279314/
The reviewers pointed to several limitations in the evidence and thus the review . However, with caveats (ie better studies needed)they they said

Plant sterols have been ascribed atherogenic effects, mainly because atherosclerosis has been encountered in patients with phytosterolaemia which is accompanied by extremely high concentrations of plant sterols. Equally, however, serum phytosterol concentrations have been demonstrated to correlate with atherosclerotic plaque burden in individuals not affected by this disease.34,35 Our meta-analysis, however, argues against an association between moderately elevated concentrations of plant sterols and CVD

and concluded

In conclusion, our systematic review and meta-analysis do not provide any evidence that there is an association between moderate fluctuations of serum concentrations of plant sterols and CVD risk. However, our meta-analysis does not address the vascular effects or safety of long-term consumption of plant sterol-enriched foods

(one of the authors received funding from Danone, the other 10 declare no conflict and seem to be based in many different places)