Is saturated fat relevant?

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Is saturated fat relevant?

Postby dteresa » Sat Dec 06, 2014 6:22 am

http://nutritionstudies.org/low-carb-hot-air/

Jeff, here is an article by Dr. Colin Campbell. In it, he calls sat fat irrelevant and it looks like he says that it is guilty by association with animal protein. He says he agrees with the low carbers about sat fat not causing cardiovascular disease, cancer or other degenerative diseases. He says it is animal protein that is the danger. He does emphasize that none of the studies exonerating high fat in those low carb diets use a really low fat diet. Usually it is around 30%.

I am confused. On the same website is an article by Dr. Matt Lederer in which he talks of the dangers of coconut oil. If sat fat is not responsible for degenerative diseases and cancer according to Tom Campbell then why avoid it if it is not eaten with any animal food? (Aside of course for weight gain). And what about seed oils? They are not associated with animal protein.

So if sat fats are not associated with heart disease then maybe using coconut oil for alzheimer patients, if it works as some claim, is not a bad idea. My own mother had dementia, but it was vascular not alzheimer's. If I had my druthers I would rather mom died of heart disease than live with dementia. And for myself too.

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Re: saturated fat irrelevant?

Postby JeffN » Sat Dec 06, 2014 9:12 am

First, I would recommend you review our discussion here...

viewtopic.php?f=22&t=43572&p=448917#p448917

Second, if and when my position on saturated fat changes, I will post it in this forum right away.

Third, my position on saturated fat remains as discussed here, where I explain why the studies "appear" to show no relationship between saturated fat and heart disease...

viewtopic.php?f=22&t=15506

and...

viewtopic.php?f=22&t=45191

Fourth, if you ever wonder why someone says anything, my recommendation is to directly ask that person themselves so you get it right from the proverbial "horses mouth" and reduce the chance of any miscommunication.

Lastly, because this is making the rounds, I will add one more piece to it and do so by using the example of fiber and to do so we will look at fiber from it's positive impact on health.

Fiber is a component of food and one that has many proven benefits.

Fiber could be said to be a "marker" for unprocessed and/or minimally processed plant foods as that is the only place you can really find any significant amount of fiber. Anyone who is eating a healthy diet, based on minimally processed plant foods would naturally have a high fiber intake. You can not increase fiber intake by eating more animal foods and most overly processed plant foods have much lower fiber contents.

But you can also extract fiber from food (i.e., metamucil, konsyl, etc) and then add it to food. This could also give someone a high fiber intake, even if they were not on a healthy diet. If someone was to do this, would it have the same impact?

In other words, are the benefits of eating fiber from the fact that fiber has benefit as an isolated component? Or is it because it is a marker for a healthy diet which would have many other health benefits also? Is the fiber as an isolated component responsible for the lowering of the cholesterol and blood sugar we see, or is the lowering of the cholesterol and fiber a result of a healthy dietary pattern based on minimally processed foods that happen to also be high in fiber and also low in animal products, cholesterol, & saturated fat.

From my perspective, the answer is both.

Fiber is both a marker for a healthy diet and it also has therapeutic effects when added as an isolated component. We know this because many studies on fiber, where the diet was kept the same in both groups, show that adding fiber as an isolated component (i.e., psyllium powder), has beneficial effects, even when added to an unhealthy dietary pattern.

However, these effects are never as powerful as when the fiber is part of minimally processed food and/or part of a healthy dietary pattern based on minimally processed foods. The reason is, this pattern would also be low in saturated fat, cholesterol, animal protein, and high in phtyochemicals, antioxidants, etc and so have many other beneficial aspects to it.

So, if someone had elevated cholesterol and blood sugar levels, and they did not change their diets but added several servings of konsyl a day, it would lower their numbers. However, the would get much better results and more far reaching overall benefit from changing their overall dietary pattern as it would come with many other beneficial components and offer many more benefits.

The whole works better than the isolated component but this does not mean that there is no benefit from the isolated component.

Having said that, now lets look at saturated fat but from saturated fats negative impact on health. Saturated fat is said to increase risk for CVD, and other diseases.

Saturated fat is both a component of food and a marker of animal products intake, as most (but not all) animal products are high in saturated fat and only a few plant foods are. So, most anyone eating a diet that is high in saturated fat, is most likely eating a diet that is high in animal foods (which has many other unhealthy components) and/or a diet that is high in the few plant foods high in saturated fat. This diet would also be low in naturally occurring fiber and other beneficial substances in plants. It would most likely also be high in saturated fat, cholesterol and animal protein.

So, is the saturated fat actually responsible for the problems we see, or are the problems we see a result of a unhealthy dietary pattern that is based on animal products that has many other harmful components and is also low in plants and their beneficial components?

From my perspective, the answer is both.

Saturated fat is harmful as both a marker and when added as an isolated component

The whole may be worse than the isolated component but this does not mean that there is no harm from the isolated component.

Now, plant foods that are high in saturated fat might have some health advantages (and less disadvantages) then animal foods high in saturated fats but they are still not healthy foods especially in excess. They may not have cholesterol or animal protein but they are almost always much higher in fat and calorie density and much lower in fiber and overall nutrient adequacy.

Take a healthy lower fat, lower saturated fat, lower calorie dense minimally processed plant food dietary pattern and pour a plant based fat/oil high in saturated fat (i.e. coconut oil, smart balance, etc) over it in excess and you did not improve it in anyway but made it worse as you now have a dietary pattern that is higher in fat, saturated fat, calorie density and lower in fiber and overall nutrient density and and more likely to cause impaired health and impede any attempt at health recovery.

Since the tropical oils became popular about 10 years ago, I have seen the above many times both in my own experience/practice & in those who have come to the 10-day program. They have added these tropical oils & have seen their lipid profile number move to unhealthy levels. Remove the tropical oils & they return to healthy levels.

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Re: saturated fat irrelevant?

Postby dteresa » Sat Dec 06, 2014 9:51 am

Thanks, Jeff. I never would have asked except the article was by Dr. Campbell. And the article on coconut oil is on his site. I continue to eat only wfp no fat because I am at a normal healthy weight, already had one MI and am not about to take any chances with any other woe without rock solid proof another way is better of which there is none convincing so far. But I do get curious.

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Re: saturated fat irrelevant?

Postby JeffN » Sat Dec 06, 2014 10:35 am

Thanks and no problem.

It allowed me to address an issue that has been circulating "within" our circle.

Here is a similar one he wrote earlier in which he is making the same misguided and "fallacious" point. :)

http://nutritionstudies.org/fallacious- ... rated-fat/

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Re: saturated fat irrelevant?

Postby JeffN » Sat Dec 13, 2014 2:56 pm

A few more thoughts

There are studies and published work that has sought to tease all this out and these studies go back to the 60's when the Hegsted formula's was first invented that show saturated fats raise both LDL & total Cholesterol

viewtopic.php?f=22&t=25954&p=259367#p259367

The research on dietary fats by Hegsted and others has shown that myristic acid (C14:0), and to some extent palmitic acid (C16:0) increase cholesterol levels.

Hegsted DM, Ausman LM, Johnson JA, Dallal GE, Dietary fat and serum lipids: an evaluation of the experimental data. Am J Clin Nutr. 1993 Jun; 57(6):875-83.

http://m.ajcn.nutrition.org/content/57/ ... pdf#page=1

The Hegsted Equation:

ΔTC = + 8.45 ΔC14:0 + 2.12 ΔC16:0 - 1.87 ΔPoly + 5.64 ΔDietaryCholesterol - 6.24

Where ΔTC is in mg/dL. ΔC14:0, ΔC16:0, and ΔPoly are in %kcal.

ΔDietary cholesterol is in mg/1000 kcal.

The equation shows the effects of individual dietary fatty acids on total Serum Cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, and HDL cholesterol when l% of the energy from carbohydrates in the diet is replaced by 1% of energy of the specific fatty acids. The equation shows us that cholesterol increases from lauric acid (C12:0), myristic acid (C14:0), and palmitic acid (C16:0) which are found in coconut oil, palm oil, and butter. Elaidic acid (trans-C18:1), which is present in hydrogenated fats, is the worst because it increases LDL and decreases HDL. The saturated fatty acid stearic acid (C18:0), the monounsaturated oleic acid (C18:1), and the polyunsaturated linoleic acid (C18:2) decrease LDL and increase HDL to various degrees.

Hegsted DM, McGandy RB, Myers ML, Stare FJ, Quantitative effects of dietary fat on serum cholesterol in man. Am J Clin Nutr. 1965 Nov; 17(5):281-95.

http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/17/5/281.full.pdf

Martijti B Katan, Peter L Zock, and Ronald P Mensink, Effects of fats and fatty acids on blood lipids in humans: an overview, Am J Cli. Nutr., 1994;60(suppl):l Ol7S-22S.

http://www.ajcn.org/content/60/6/1017S.abstract

A few others...

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1415 ... d_RVDocSum

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8148 ... d_RVDocSum

http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/abstract/63/6/897

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9082 ... d_RVDocSum

As we can see, saturated fat is both a marker & a component.

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Re: saturated fat irrelevant?

Postby JeffN » Sun Dec 14, 2014 9:35 am

In my lectures, I have often discussed the North Keralia Project, though I am not sure it was discussed in this forum.

You can learn more about the N Keralia Project here..

http://www.epi.umn.edu/cvdepi/study-syn ... a-project/

The two main dietary changes in this community was 1) the shift from full fat milk to low fat milk and 2) the shift from butter to vegetables oils. The main shift was not from an animal based diet to a plant based diet and the amount of animal protein and/or animal products did not decline as much as dietary cholesterol and saturated fat did, making this an excellent population based survey of what the results of a decrease in cholesterol and saturated fat as "components" of the diet (and not "markers" of an overall dietary pattern) would be.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar ... 358890062X

"A major shift from whole to low-fat milk took place in both areas as well as a reduction in the amount of butter used on bread. The net reduction in North Karelia (difference in change compared with the reference area) in the intake of saturated fatty acids from milk and fat spreads used on bread was 20% in men and 14% in women. This reduction was similar in different age, education, and occupational groups suggesting that the dietary intervention had reached the whole community. The validity of the reported dietary changes was confirmed by parallel changes in serum cholesterol levels."

As a result of these two changes, both the risk factors for heart disease as well as death rates from heart disease declined significantly.

http://www.epi.umn.edu/cvdepi/study-syn ... a-project/

"Over the course of the study, mortality from CHD declined in North Karelia by 73% and by 65% throughout Finland. In men, mortality from cerebrovascular disease and lung cancer also declined in men and women and more in Karelia than Kuopio."

As we can see, saturated fat is both a marker & a component.

Therefore, the last thing we want to see happen is the encouragement and/or recommendations of plant foods &/or plant based diets that are high in saturated fats.

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Re: saturated fat irrelevant?

Postby JeffN » Mon Dec 15, 2014 7:58 am

From my website article, "Don't Go Cuckoo Over Coconut Oil."

http://www.jeffnovick.com/RD/Articles/E ... t_Oil.html

A study in 2001 compared death rates between Hong Kong and Singapore. The reason is, while the majority of inhabitants in Hong Kong and Singapore are both ethnic Chinese, the all-cause and cardiovascular death rates in these two regions are very different. The study looked at the differences in these death rates and the role nutrition plays in explaining these differences.

Differences in all-cause, cardiovascular and cancer mortality between Hong Kong and Singapore: role of nutrition. Eur J Epidemiol. 2001;17(5):469-77

They found:

"The most pronounced finding was that ischemic heart disease mortality in 1993-1995 was 2.98 and 3.14 times higher in Singapore than in Hong Kong in men and women, respectively."

"These differences can be most reasonably and plausibly explained by their differences in dietary habits, for example, a higher consumption of coconut and palm oil, mainly containing saturated fat, in Singapore."

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Re: Is saturated fat relevant?

Postby JeffN » Tue Sep 13, 2016 1:15 am

Sound familiar?

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The Truth About Saturated Fat - Proponents of butter and bacon are basing their arguments on misinterpreted evidence.
David Katz, MD
Sept. 12, 2016
US News

Excerpts

There is a booming cottage industry these days peddling the argument that saturated fat is suddenly good for us, with some fairly prominent health professionals involved. Unfortunately for those of you eagerly awaiting a license to eat unlimited quantities of pepperoni, the argument is invalid.

We have the answers to these questions, kept in the shadows impressively well by the peddlers of pepperoni and bacon. Since I have no charcuterie to sell you, I am happy to share them:

- The range of saturated fat intake examined is pretty narrow. In the first meta-analysis, the top and bottom of the range often differed by only a few percentage points, and even the bottom of the range was above current recommendations. The later meta-analysis compared the top third of the population to the bottom third and, again, the difference was small.

- To the extent saturated fat intake has gone down over time in the U.S. – and it hasn't gone down much – it has mostly been replaced by sugar and refined carbohydrates.
A generally neglected consideration is that overall diet quality was comparably bad at the "extremes" of the rather narrow saturated fat range observed. That's about what we would expect if the main alternatives to saturated fat from burgers, pizza and ice cream were refined carbohydrate and sugar from soda, cookies, fries and donuts.


http://health.usnews.com/health-news/bl ... urated-fat
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Re: Is saturated fat relevant?

Postby JeffN » Fri Sep 16, 2016 10:25 am

Saturated fat and coronary heart disease risk: the debate goes on.
Williams CM, et al. Curr Opin Clin Nutr Metab Care. 2016.
Authors
Williams CM1, Salter A.

Citation
Curr Opin Clin Nutr Metab Care. 2016 Mar;19(2):97-102. doi: 10.1097/MCO.0000000000000248.

Abstract

PURPOSE OF REVIEW:
Recently published meta-analyses of cohort studies and randomized controlled trials (RCTs) have challenged the link between saturated fatty acid (SFA) intake and coronary heart disease (CHD) risk. This review considers the outcome of these studies in the context of other evidence.

RECENT FINDINGS:
Recent meta-analyses of cohort studies suggest that reducing SFA intakes has little impact on CHD risk when replaced by carbohydrates. The evidence for benefits on CHD risk of replacing SFA with unsaturated fatty acids in cohort studies is stronger and is also supported by data from a recent Cochrane analysis of RCTs of dietary SFA reduction and CHD risk. This review highlights the challenges of cohort studies involving diet because of the changing patterns of dietary behaviour and other multifactorial risk factors. The studies included are normally conducted over many years and are often dependent on a single measurement of dietary intake.

SUMMARY:
The link between SFA intake, plasma cholesterol, and CHD risk is based on a broad range of evidence including mechanistic studies, RCTs of surrogate end points and clinical outcomes, as well as multinational population comparisons. Public health nutrition policy should continue to take into account the totality of evidence with recognition of the limitations of dietary cohort studies.

PMID 26727348 [PubMed - in process]
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Re: Is saturated fat relevant?

Postby JeffN » Tue Nov 21, 2017 5:48 pm

Still relevant


(2017) Health effects of saturated and trans-fatty acid intake in children and adolescents: Systematic review and meta-analysis.
PLoS ONE 12(11): e0186672.

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0186672

Abstract
Background
Elevated cholesterol has been linked to cardiovascular disease in adults and preclinical markers of atherosclerosis in children, thus reducing saturated (SFA) and trans-fatty acids (TFA) intake from an early age may help to reduce cholesterol and the risk of cardiovascular disease later in life. The aim of this review is to examine the evidence for health effects associated with reducing SFA and TFA intake in free-living children, adolescents and young adults between 2 to 19 years of age.

Design

Systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials (RCTs) and prospective cohort studies. Study selection, assessment, validity, data extraction, and analysis were undertaken as specified by the Cochrane Collaboration and the GRADE working group. Data were pooled using inverse variance models with random effects.

Data sources

EMBASE; PubMed; Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials; LILACS; and WHO Clinical Trial Registry (up to July 2016).

Eligibility criteria for selecting trials

RCTs involving dietary interventions aiming to reduce SFA or TFA intakes and a control group, and cohort studies reporting the effects of SFA or TFA exposures, on outcomes including blood lipids; measures of growth; blood pressure; insulin resistance; and potential adverse effects. Minimum duration was 13 days for RCTs and one year for cohort studies. Trials of weight loss or confounded by additional medical or lifestyle interventions were excluded.

Results

Compared with control diets, there was a highly statistically significant effect of reduced SFA intake on total cholesterol (mean difference (MD) -0.16 mmol/l, [95% confidence interval (CI): -0.25 to -0.07]), LDL cholesterol (MD -0.13 mmol/l [95% CI:-0.22 to -0.03]) and diastolic blood pressure (MD -1.45 mmol/l [95% CI:-2.34 to -0.56]). There were no significant effects on any other risk factors and no evidence of adverse effects.

Conclusions

Advice to reduce saturated fatty acids intake of children results in a significant reduction in total and LDL-cholesterol levels as well as diastolic blood pressure without evidence of adverse effects on growth and development. Dietary guidelines for children and adolescents should continue to recommend diets low in saturated fat.
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Re: Is saturated fat relevant?

Postby JeffN » Thu Dec 21, 2017 8:26 am

Metabolic activity induces membrane phase separation in endoplasmic reticulum.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2017; 201712555
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1712555114

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2017/ ... 55114.full

Abstract

Membrane phase behavior has been well characterized in model membranes in vitro under thermodynamic equilibrium state. However, the widely observed differences between biological membranes and their in vitro counterparts are placing more emphasis on nonequilibrium factors, including influx and efflux of lipid molecules. The endoplasmic reticulum (ER) is the largest cellular membrane system and also the most metabolically active organelle responsible for lipid synthesis. However, how the nonequilibrium metabolic activity modulates ER membrane phase has not been investigated. Here, we studied the phase behavior of functional ER in the context of lipid metabolism. Utilizing advanced vibrational imaging technique, that is, stimulated Raman scattering microscopy, we discovered that metabolism of palmitate, a prevalent saturated fatty acid (SFA), could drive solid-like domain separation from the presumably uniformly fluidic ER membrane, a previously unknown phenomenon. The potential of various fatty acids to induce solid phase can be predicted by the transition temperatures of their major metabolites. Interplay between saturated and unsaturated fatty acids is also observed. Hence, our study sheds light on cellular membrane biophysics by underscoring the nonequilibrium metabolic status of living cell.



How saturated fatty acids damage cells - Observations of saturated and unsaturated fatty acid behavior could impact public health
ScienceDaily.
December 1, 2017.
www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/12/171201181545.htm

Researchers have developed a new microscopy technique that allows for the direct tracking of fatty acids after they've been absorbed into living cells. What they found using this technique could have significant impact on both the understanding and treatment of obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

The behavior of saturated fatty acids once they've entered cells contributes to major and often deadly diseases," Min said. "Visualizing how fatty acids are contributing to lipid metabolic disease gives us the direct physical information we need to begin looking for effective ways to treat them. Perhaps, for example, we can find a way to block the toxic lipid accumulation. We're excited. This finding has the potential to really impact public health, especially for lipid related diseases.
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Re: Is saturated fat relevant?

Postby JeffN » Thu Dec 21, 2017 8:29 am

I thought I would bump this up as it is an earlier discussion on the issue of fat, saturated fat and animal protein and on reductionism vs wholism.

I think it answers many of the questions that may have been raised in my new post this week and the ensuing discussion on Reductionism and/or Wholism.

In that discussion, the question point was raised that for saturated fat to be proven harmful, we needed a mechanism of how it works. Well, the last study above is showing that we are actually being to learn the mechanism of exactly how saturated fat maybe damaging cells and health.

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