It turned out that not only was there no advantage to replacing saturated fat with vegetable oil, there was a distinct disadvantage, particularly if you were over sixty-five. Vegetable oil lowered cholesterol just fine—which was what everybody thought would happen. What vegetable oil didn’t do was save lives. In fact, in people over sixty-five, there was a distinct trend, and not at all in the direction that was expected: Those who lowered their cholesterol the most had the highest risk of dying.
