98-year-old fights to ban trans fats
URBANA, Ill. — Year after year, University of Illinois biochemist and professor Fred Kummerow pedaled his bicycle 4 miles to work, a Swiss cheese sandwich and apple stuffed in a brown bag inside his briefcase.
Now, two months shy of his 99th birthday, Kummerow has moved to a stationary bike for exercise, but he still likes his Swiss cheese with lettuce on rye, with fruit and whole milk — and he still loves to work.
An emeritus professor of comparative biosciences, Kummerow has spent 60 years studying lipid biochemistry, challenging common views of the dietary factors that contribute to heart disease and sudden cardiac death. Although he officially retired from the university in 1978, he has no intention of quitting work until he’s “done.”
“The way I look at life is that you only have a few minutes and so you might as well make the most of it. Ask yourself why you were put on this Earth. What are you here for? Then do it,” says the man considered an enduring marvel in the academic community. “What I wanted most out of life was to find an answer to heart disease.” Kummerow believes he found that answer years ago. Now, from the quiet solitude of his Urbana, Ill., home, and with occasional visits to the Burnsides Research Laboratory he dedicated on campus in 1963, he keeps plugging away to get everybody else to believe it.
It’s not eggs or cholesterol that are your heart’s enemy, he argues. It’s trans fats — those fats generated by the hydrogenation of oils. He is still determined after all these years to get trans fats banned from the American diet and has challenged the Food and Drug Administration to do so. Go ahead and have your eggs, milk, meat and cheese within reason, Kummerow advises. But eliminate all of the trans fats in your diet.
“I don’t buy the cholesterol theory,” he says. “Not eating any foods that contain trans fatty acids is your answer to heart disease.”
The American Heart Association says abnormal cholesterol levels can “put you at risk” for heart disease, heart attack or stroke. The association, on its website, also suggests limiting trans fats.
Kummerow now moves about in a wheelchair but still uses a walker in his home as part of his exercise regimen, which for many years included a daily 30-minute swim at lunchtime. While age has slowed his step, his mind is sharp, and he’s determined to prolong his own life and the lives of others.
Most of his hours are spent doing research and putting finishing touches on the second edition of his 2008 book, “Cholesterol Won’t Kill You But Trans Fat Could,” which he wrote with the help of his daughter, Jean Kummerow. He also is energetically completing a portion of a scientific journal article in collaboration with medical doctors nationwide.
Kummerow said he has had 460 papers published in peer-reviewed journals, along with two books he’s written and six chapters for others’ books. His work took him and his wife, Amy, who died in July 2012, to 32 countries.
Hector DeLuca, professor emeritus of biochemistry at the University of Wisconsin, is amazed by Kummerow.
“I have high respect for Fred. I think he has a lot of good argument against the cholesterol dogma,” said DeLuca, widely known for his research on vitamin D. “I don’t know of a single person at all who has worked and has published at that age. That’s stunningly outstanding.”
