Uploaded March 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Today there is a glut of self-proclaimed “nutrition gurus” who prowl the Internet and raise the alarm about the dangers of their pet toxin, be it aspartame, glyphosate, seed oils, or MSG. But long before the Food Babe, Gwyneth Paltrow and RFK Jr. pranced around online, there was Phil Sokolof. Facebook, Instagram and Twitter were not even specks on the horizon in the late 1980s when Sokolof launched a campaign to convince people to pay attention to their blood cholesterol and curb their intake of fats. He took out full page ads in major newspapers calling attention to the “Poisoning of America” by food producers who were pumping fats, particularly coconut and palm oil, the so-called “tropical oils,” into their products.
Sokolof was a successful businessman, having made millions from introducing steel connectors to the drywall industry. He was thin, didn’t smoke, had low blood pressure, and ran every day. Then at the age of 43, he had a heart attack! His only risk factor was a high total blood cholesterol of 300 mg/dL or 7.8 mmol/L, far in excess of the desirable under 200 mg/dL or 5.0 mol/L. That stimulated him to become an amateur cardiologist and launch a campaign in which he invested $15 million of his personal funds to alert the public to the dangers of high blood cholesterol caused by excessive saturated fat in the diet.
American physiologist Ancel Keys had laid the foundations to the diet-heart disease relationship in the 1960s with his famous “Seven Countries Study.” People in countries where saturated fat consumption was the greatest had the highest levels of LDL cholesterol, the so-called “bad” cholesterol. Since high blood cholesterol was linked with heart disease, Keys concluded that saturated fats increase the risk of heart disease. With this conclusion in hand, Sokolof took out giant ads urging producers to remove tropical oils loaded with saturated fats from their products and even targeted McDonald’s for frying its fries in beef tallow and having a high fat content in its burgers. As a result, McDonald’s switched to unsaturated vegetable oils and giant corporations such as Kellogg’s, General Mills and Pillsbury removed tropical oils from their products.
Sokolof was certainly on the right track, but since his era we have learned that the diet-heart disease connection is much more nuanced. While saturated fats do contribute to heart disease, they are not the sole villains as Sokolof portrayed. They do raise LDL, but some, like stearic acid in beef and dairy, also raise HDL, the “good” cholesterol. That makes the impact of these fats more complex than had been believed. In many cases, Sokolof’s advocacy for low-fat foods led to processors replacing fats with refined carbohydrates and sugar, both of which have since been implicated in heart disease. Today, instead of vilifying specific food components and praising others, the general recommendation is to examine the overall diet and aim for mostly unprocessed foods, lots of fruits and vegetables, healthy fats as found in nuts, avocados and olive oil, and minimally processed grains, all of which are components of the “Mediterranean diet.”
In the end, Phil Sokolof may have been overzealous in his attacks on tropical oils, but he did push the food industry to make positive changes, particularly in eliminating the trans fats that are byproducts of the hydrogenation process that turns liquid fats into solids. These are definitely linked to heart disease. Sokolof became a poster boy for his low fat advice, dropping his cholesterol to 150 mg/dL and living to the age of 82. His legacy includes lobbying for the “Nutrition Labeling and Health Education Act,” passed by Congress in 1990 requiring packaged food and beverages to have nutrient labeling including the saturated and unsaturated fat content of the product.
Today there is a glut of self-proclaimed “nutrition gurus” who prowl the Internet and raise the alarm about the dangers of their pet toxin, be it aspartame, glyphosate, seed oils, or MSG. But long before the Food Babe, Gwyneth Paltrow and RFK Jr. pranced around online, there was Phil Sokolof. Facebook, Instagram and Twitter were not even specks on the horizon in the late 1980s when Sokolof launched a campaign to convince people to pay attention to their blood cholesterol and curb their intake of fats. He took out full page ads in major newspapers calling attention to the “Poisoning of America” by food producers who were pumping fats, particularly coconut and palm oil, the so-called “tropical oils,” into their products.
Sokolof was a successful businessman, having made millions from introducing steel connectors to the drywall industry. He was thin, didn’t smoke, had low blood pressure, and ran every day. Then at the age of 43, he had a heart attack! His only risk factor was a high total blood cholesterol of 300 mg/dL or 7.8 mmol/L, far in excess of the desirable under 200 mg/dL or 5.0 mol/L. That stimulated him to become an amateur cardiologist and launch a campaign in which he invested $15 million of his personal funds to alert the public to the dangers of high blood cholesterol caused by excessive saturated fat in the diet.
American physiologist Ancel Keys had laid the foundations to the diet-heart disease relationship in the 1960s with his famous “Seven Countries Study.” People in countries where saturated fat consumption was the greatest had the highest levels of LDL cholesterol, the so-called “bad” cholesterol. Since high blood cholesterol was linked with heart disease, Keys concluded that saturated fats increase the risk of heart disease. With this conclusion in hand, Sokolof took out giant ads urging producers to remove tropical oils loaded with saturated fats from their products and even targeted McDonald’s for frying its fries in beef tallow and having a high fat content in its burgers. As a result, McDonald’s switched to unsaturated vegetable oils and giant corporations such as Kellogg’s, General Mills and Pillsbury removed tropical oils from their products.
Sokolof was certainly on the right track, but since his era we have learned that the diet-heart disease connection is much more nuanced. While saturated fats do contribute to heart disease, they are not the sole villains as Sokolof portrayed. They do raise LDL, but some, like stearic acid in beef and dairy, also raise HDL, the “good” cholesterol. That makes the impact of these fats more complex than had been believed. In many cases, Sokolof’s advocacy for low-fat foods led to processors replacing fats with refined carbohydrates and sugar, both of which have since been implicated in heart disease. Today, instead of vilifying specific food components and praising others, the general recommendation is to examine the overall diet and aim for mostly unprocessed foods, lots of fruits and vegetables, healthy fats as found in nuts, avocados and olive oil, and minimally processed grains, all of which are components of the “Mediterranean diet.”
In the end, Phil Sokolof may have been overzealous in his attacks on tropical oils, but he did push the food industry to make positive changes, particularly in eliminating the trans fats that are byproducts of the hydrogenation process that turns liquid fats into solids. These are definitely linked to heart disease. Sokolof became a poster boy for his low fat advice, dropping his cholesterol to 150 mg/dL and living to the age of 82. His legacy includes lobbying for the “Nutrition Labeling and Health Education Act,” passed by Congress in 1990 requiring packaged food and beverages to have nutrient labeling including the saturated and unsaturated fat content of the product.
