Ancel Keys Archives

The Ghost in the Guidelines: How the Fat Debate Shaped the Story of Heart Disease

Just days ago, something remarkable happened.
FDA Commissioner Marty Makary stood at a podium and said what would’ve once been unthinkable.
That dogma still lives large,” he declared, referring to America’s decades-long war on saturated fat. “You see remnants of it in the food guidelines that we are now revising.”
It wasn’t just a revision. It was a rebuke.
Makary didn’t mince words. He called the foundational science behind decades of dietary advice—especially…

The Sugar Papers: How Industry Shaped Science—and Changed Heart Disease Policy

A forgotten folder. A cryptic label. And a quiet set of instructions that may have rewritten the rules of modern medicine. This story doesn’t start with a discovery—it begins with a cover-up. Not in a lab or at a press conference, but deep in the shadows, in an archive no one was supposed to search. … Read more

The Explorer Who Ate Only Meat—and Lived to Tell the Tale

In the winter of 1906, somewhere north of the Arctic Circle, a young explorer named Vilhjalmur Stefansson sat cross-legged in an igloo, surrounded by Inuit hunters. Outside, the wind cut like a knife, shrieking across the frozen plain. Inside, the flickering light of seal oil lamps cast dancing shadows on the snow-packed walls. The air … Read more