Saturated fats no longer the true enemy, experts say | Hacker News Reader

Saturated fats no longer the true enemy, experts say

theglobeandmail.com

62 pointsokket81 comments

I wish people would stop trying to boil down diet into platitudes. The truth is much more complex.

Specifically, research has demonstrated that some saturated fatty acids are particularly egregious, while others are innocuous, or even healthy. For instance, a lot of research has shown palmitic acid to have negative health consequences, while stearic acid is neutral and shorter chain saturated fatty acids like lauric acid may actually be beneficial. Additionally, there are conditions on these observations; for instance, palmitic acid is only bad under some circumstances - e.g. when consumed as part of a diet low in certain monounsaturated and omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids. Finally, these findings are almost certainly population specific to some degree, so if you have a different genetic background from the study population, it might not apply to you at all.

The only true way to figure out how to properly eat is to track metrics of health that are meaningful, log what you eat, and adjust your diet based on changes in those metrics. It can also be helpful to look at what people who are very healthy/fit eat; the diets of people in "blue zones" and natural bodybuilders are good case studies.

It's nice to see something resembling common sense in the media on food. There's been far too much "avoid this" only to be told the opposite a decade later.

I've tried to ignore all the food claims as I've gone through life. If we do anything it's to prefer basic foods over processed. The longer the ingredient list, or the more packed with sugars, the less likely it is to go in the trolley. I never switched from butter and full fat cheese as the alternatives taste terrible, the other half tried low fat spreads for ages, but hated them.

As we've done more cooking and baking we've rediscovered how poor most of the mass produced ones are. Especially bread and cake.

At 50 after the age related checkup, my blood work was excellent. Proves little of course. I still got the lecture on low fat though! I suspect everyone has to get it.

I saw a TV show a couple of years ago about which nation's national diet is the healthiest. I admit I don't remember them giving sources for their claims, but France was high up the list of healthiest, even though they eat a lot of saturated fat. The point is they eat real food rather than processed food.

I also read recently that the French have one of the lowest rates of heart disease.

It is known as the French Paradox.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_paradox

Having looked at the data a lot of different ways, I'm fairly certain that the health of the French is a result of low stress levels and strong social connections. Your mental state plays a huge role in your health, to the point that someone who takes slightly better care of their body because they worry about their health will end up less healthy than someone who is carefree and relaxed.

If you're correct, I'm screwed.

I recall a few of the pieces stemming from the recent sugar story and the multi nation study. France couldn't be included as it would give the wrong result. I seem to remember that they had data from 20 or 30 countries most varying markedly from the preferred answer.

They drink a lot.

I doubt they drink as much as the British or Americans.

Your doubts lead you astray. The French and British have about the same alcohol consumption per capita (who drinks more depends on exactly what year you're looking at and what dataset you're using), but they're both about 30% more than the US.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_alcohol_c...

It shouldn't be surprising, really. There are a lot of people in the US who don't drink at all for religious reasons, and the consumption of alcohol is more heavily restricted by law.

Also likely depends on what they drink... do the French drink mostly wine?

After 4 months of high fat low carb diet after questionable cholesterol levels, I went in for a checkup. My numbers were pretty optimal. HDL high, LDL low, had halved my triglycerides to 70. In 4 frick'n months. And I'd lost 40 lbs. The PA and nurses came in and threw me a little party congratulating me.

And then I told them how I did it and got a long long long lecture on why I should be on a low fat diet :/

Similar story here, for everything that they test for in the bloodwork, results markedly improved (as well as weight loss). But if you tell them how you achieved it, its "Well you should eat less fat, especially saturated."

Same story here. The doctor was really excited about a rare "win". The nurses were too, until I told them how I did it. Then they were horrified. Didn't seem to bother the doctor though.

I always say doctors are just regular people that went to medical school at one point. They don't remember everything they learned and they aren't gurnteed to learn new stuff.

Curious: which specific high-fat / low-carb plan did you follow? I'm planning on starting such a lifestyle change and wonder which ones work well.

I ate whatever meat I found appealing, always used olive oil, coconut oil, or butter. Then lots of vegetables, but limiting carbs to < 50g on days I run and < 20g on days I don't. So no starchy veges and fruit only when I was jones'n for something sweet, I'd eat some fruit.

I think this is sound advice. I've been pretty much following this rule. Basically nothing is off limits as long as it isn't processed, home made apple pies and good spaghetti. Of course in moderation :)

Edit: Would like to clarify this means you have to make the apple pie too from scratch.

Hah. Apple pie led to obsessive asking from the kids when they were younger.

Not a conversation I was going to help with, I'd never refuse more mum's apple pie. :)

Whenever pop-science articles use phrases like "no longer the true enemy", I always roll my eyes. The science coming out says that they were never the problem, not that they aren't anymore. There's a difference.

We've always been at war with Easttransfats, right?

Science is nuanced, complex, and always in progress. That does not and never has translated into the kind of simple dumbed down slogans and "war on ..." objectives that work in politics and public opinion influencing. Huge impedance mismatch there.

I mean some things are simple. Smoking is pretty unambiguously bad for you. But nutrition is not simple, and is probably individual due to genetic factors.

> Smoking is pretty unambiguously bad for you.

Stress is a killer. Smoking can reduce stress. Nothing is simple.

Except that smoking has a very small impact on stress, and a large negative impact on your health in other ways. Additionally, for people addicted to cigarettes, much of the stress being relieved may be caused by the addiction in the first place.

>> ... is probably individual due to genetic factors.

It's more complex than even that. There is growing evidence that the active genes in our adult bodies are impacted by the food we had as kids, even before birth. So there may be no 'ideal diet' that an adult can start. Some damage done long ago may not be reversible, and switching to a radically different diet may come with patient-specific downsides that we little understand. The most known difference is in the efficiencies by which adults absorb nutrients. Grow up with plenty of food and you don't harvest every little calorie from your food. Grow up hungry and your body might scrounge even when as an adult you have plenty of available food. The same may likely be true for various micro-nutrients.

Westtransfats is the True Enemy. Easttransfatters are just harmless rabble rousers compared to them.

Unfortunately, health and diets are not like new and fashionable programming concepts - there is no quick hack and no one way that turns everything on its head. Processed foods cause health issues. Saturated fats definitely cause health issues. Processed sugars definitely cause health issues. You may have heard this before, but whole fruit, vegetables, greens, starches, beans, lentils and nuts - are the healthiest foods for you - as shown by science, population studies, metabolic ward studies, randomized double blind placebo studies and studying the habits of longest lived populations.

Fruits, vegetables, leafy greens, nuts, seeds, legumes, whole grains, and animals products. These are food.

But the idea that "saturated fats definitely cause health issues" is shaky at best, and downright causing negative health outcomes at worst.

We can have our fruits, vegetables, leafy greens, nuts, seeds, legumes, whole grains, and animals products, and drown them in as much butter, coconut oil, lard, etc, as you can stand to eat - which generally isn't a lot, so long as you don't burn those fats, and your health will improve over any other eating plan.

We know this because every. fucking. person. who does it (and doesn't have a liver / gall bladder problem, or some other clinical malabsorption problem that needs to be fixed first) reports improved well being, mental clarity, improved energy levels.

Maybe an exaggeration - not everybody. Some feel lack of energy, don't digest nuts well, get gas from legumes, get fat off of fruit.

Sorry, yes, good point. I didn't mean to imply everyone should all of those things though it was written that way.

Of course restrict or eliminate those which don't work for you.

what is the definition of processed in this context?

I can think of several examples where applying a process to a food does not make it something we should avoid (i.e. when a butcher chops meat, he/she is processing it).

Where do we draw the line between "safe" processed foods and "unhealthy" processed foods.

> I can think of several examples where applying a process > to a food does not make it something we should avoid ? > (i.e. when a butcher chops meat, he/she is processing it).

Surely you're a very intelligent person, and you know the difference between whacking off part of a thing, and making say, corn syrup. The latter is essentially one extremely purified sugar, with no nutritional value outside of, "sugar". The former is still a piece of meat.

Go to the grocery store and pick up something for sale. Look at the list of ingredients. Are all the ingredients listed, "food"? Or is the item you picked out itself just one food-item, like a banana?

It's not a perfect test but if it passes,that item is probably an OK thing to eat as part of your regular diet.

Do I want to subsist on olive oil? No. Do I want to use olive oil on my salad? Yes. Do I want to eat cake? Yes? Do I want to eat cake every day? Guh, no.

Does Soylent pass this test? Hell. No.

Well, like commercial "whole grain" bread. Which is basically white bread with the grain shells (bran I think it's called) added back in. Where if you had actual whole grain bread, the flour wouldn't have been through chemical processing and a roller making it as easily digestible as sugar.

Yea, same thing is true of commercial milk. Apparently they skim off all the fat and just add it back in to make 1%/2% etc. Who knows, they may even do it for whole milk so that the percentage (and taste/texture) are consistent cross batches.

Not inherently a bad thing I suppose, but feels wrong because it's such an industrial process.

"Sola dosis facit venenum". Watch out for unnatural concentrations of stuff. Corn syrup for example concentrates the sugar from corn into a ridiculously unnatural level. A butcher cutting off a bit of meat does not.

So they agree that there is no evidence saturated fat causes health problems. Then they assert you should not eat processed food but fail to even assert a link to any specific health problems. Then they mention antioxidants which, if they had been paying attention, they would know was merely a hypotheses that was invalidated many years later in long term studies.

Why do people insist there must be a single magic diet which will immortalize us, despite never finding it? What are the Bayesian priors on this? Bizarre

I can't remember which paper I read it in, but it said the amount of oxidation that happens normally as your body functions significantly dwarfs the amount of antioxidant effects you can get by eating antioxidant containing food.

Seems like common sense you can't eat your way out of aging.

Isn't "oxidation" pretty much how our cells function? Stop that, stop living.

The idea was that your body produces free radicals, molecules which are highly reactive because of an unpaired electron, caused a lot of damage to the body. The antioxidants sopped these up and prevented the damage. That was the hypothesis

I don't get why fried foods are still demonized. If you use, say coconut oil or avocado oil and stay under the smoke points (so the oils dont break down), what's the problem?

Maybe there's an assumption that this means commercially prepared fried foods, which may use soybean oils that aren't cleaned/changed regularly?

It's mostly the anti-fat bias, with some justifiable concern about high calorie content, as frying adds a possibly huge number of calories, mostly as fat (and breading!).

http://www.livestrong.com/article/504208-how-many-calories-d...

Maybe there's an assumption that this means commercially prepared fried foods, which may use soybean oils that aren't cleaned/changed regularly?

Makes sense. I'm not sure if you were implying this, but both ends[1] of the diet spectrum seem to decry "industrial" fry oils which are hydrogenated and thus full of the undesirable trans fatty acids.

Even if they were cleaned or changed regularly, they would still contain those undesirable components.

[1] By both ends, I mean the low-fat, vegetarian-style end (Ornish, etc) as well as the high-protein, high-fat style (Atkins, Mediterranean, Paleo, etc).

So what other things is the media duping us on right now, that in 10 years will be shown to be B.S?

Here are some current mainstream media misconceptions regarding health and nutrition. Admittedly, most of these are already acknowledged as wrong in the same way that "all saturated fat is bad for you" is wrong, with the exception of #2:

1. Lots of cardiovascular exercise (eg running) is good for you.

2. Anabolic steroids are extremely risky and will likely kill you dead.

3. You need to eat throughout the day.

4. Whole eggs are bad for you because of the cholesterol.

5. Salt is bad for you even if you don't have high blood pressure.

6. Lots of protein is bad for your kidneys.

7. Unfermented soy is good for you.

8. A calorie is a calorie

Part of the issue has got to be the oversupply of specific, yet mostly useless advice. Should we really expect people to decide to consume any (almond, peanut, olive, coconut, sesame, palm, soybean, corn, safflower, etc.) oil based on the relative amount of saturated fat?

I've tried to explain what polyunsaturated fats are to my mom, many times, when she's trying to decide to use olive oil or something else. The news stories on TV, Dr. Oz, Oprah, etc. have convinced her that's worth worrying about.

I'm much happier with simple, broad advice. "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants." (Regardless of how you feel about Pollan.)

I always hear the platitude "don't eat too much". I don't think I've ever heard of anyone who "wants to eat too much".

It's like telling people "drive safely". Nobody is trying to get in an accident.

it was 2007 i first ran into the issue that the conventional wisdom was there is no link between consuming vast quantities of sugar and a bodies inabilty to process sugar, but rather the foods we have always consumed in large quantities.

Its a very strange kind of relief to see the tide turning and a wider body of people beginning to believe they got duped.

I really think the food industry needs to be regulated more like the pharmaceutical industry. production line food should face the same stringent tests that production line simple molecules for human consumption always have done.

So, if the new advice is to avoid "processed foods", what set of characteristics about processed foods make them bad? Is there a specific pattern? High in triglycerides? Preservatives? Artificial colors and flavors? Out of whichever things are "bad", is it individually, or just in combination? What kinds of "badness scores" would each item/combination get? What kind of individual variability is there?

As someone who is obese and working on it, my suspicion is that it's mostly sugar. If you look at "processed" foods you'll see tons of sugar, which is both very bad and not very filling. One thing different from home cooked sugary treats is lots of spices and additives like salt and MSG that make you feel more hungry and thirsty which keeps you eating more of the high sugar non filling processed foods in a vicious cycle.

My favorite piece of dietary advice: stop stressing over what you shouldn't be eating and focus instead on what you should be eating. We can argue about fat, sugar, and carbohydrates and which is worse till we're blue in the face, but the simple truth is that if you're getting most of your calories from fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, then you needn't waste any mindshare on this debate.

most of your calories from fruits, vegetables, and whole grains

Well no, that misses the point. Everyone's diet has some macronutrient ratio, whether that be high-carbohydrate, high-fat, high-protein, or somewhere in between.

It's fine to ignore the debate and just do what works for you personally, but that doesn't make a high-carbohydrate diet (which is what you're suggesting) obviously good general advice.

Can you name a single Blue Zone that doesn't have a "high-carbohydrate diet"?

Did you mean to reply to me? I hadn't commented at all on the virtues (or lack thereof) of any particular macronutrient ratios, high-carbohydrate or otherwise.

My point is that the appropriate response to a debate between any given X and Y isn't "no need to consider the facts because the answer is obviously X".

I don't know what the truth is but after being diagnosed with high blood pressure and high cholesterol for the first time, why should I take chances? There is no harm in cutting back on red meat, fried foods, and saturated fat

Well there's no harm in doing that, sure. The issue is that in order to compensate for the loss of that intake, people will resort to upping their intake of other things.

As an example, "light yogurt" is low on fat. To make up for the loss of flavor, they add sugar.

The harm is that you may end up replacing those foods with ones that may actually be to linked heart disease. You still have to eat a certain number of calories, so replacing red meat/fried food/saturated fat with say, bread or rice (which are low-fat) might actually increase your risk.

Yeah that goes without saying - part of eating "heart healthy" is cutting back on carbs, sugars and sodium.

I guess another way to put it is "I don't know what the truth is" is somewhat inconsistent with "there's no harm in cutting back on".

For instance, if someone said "drinking water decreases your sodium levels", and you said "there's no harm in cutting back on water", you'd be making a mistake.

I also think the full verdict is still out on what "heart healthy" means.

In your specific case, it could be family/genetic disposition to high blood pressure/cholesterol, environmental factors, or diet.

If it is diet, and you were eating more than the average person's amount of red meat, fried foods, and saturated fat, perhaps it will help you to cut back on those things, but you would need to do that for a while and keep everything else constant and see if things improved. If you weren't eating "lots" of those things to begin with, it's not clear reducing them further would make a difference.

I think this is why nutrition is so hard, it's almost impossible to really control all the variables and our objective measurements are lacking. For instance, "high cholesterol" doesn't tell you anything about the size of the cholesterol. High blood pressure may just run in your family. It's really hard to determine the effects of our diet.

True. But in my particular case I spent over 10 years eating like crap but exercising like crazy between being a part time fitness instructor and running that covered up a lot of sins. I cut down on exercising, got older, and it caught up to me. I acknowledge that it was all my fault.

Unless if by cutting red meat, fried foods, and saturated fat, you end up reducing satiety with your diet, and thus increasing your total calorie intake ("but it's low fat!"), in which case your high blood pressure and cholesterol levels will get worse.

Your best bet to fix high blood pressure and high cholesterol is to reduce weight, which almost always means reducing dietary calories by whatever diet composition works for you.

I am not satisfied classifying the extremely broad category of "processed foods" as "bad". Technically olive oil is a processed food, so is milk and frozen meat. What about Soylent? It's very much a processed food but is probably much healthier than the typical processed foods out there.

Give it a more charitable reading, perhaps.

We all know what is meant by "processed foods" - we're talking about packets of chips, soda, biscuits (both sweet and savoury), most 'breakfast cereals'.

When people refer to "processed foods" they don't mean to include all packaged food. Many packaged foods and long shelf life products, are fine so long as your also eating at least some fresh food.

Putting 5 apples in a plastic bag with a barcode on it a processed food does not make.

I'm not so sure. That phrase is bandied about with no definition ever advanced. None is given here either - just 'we all know'.

Well, folks have been eating cooked food for 40,000 years or more. Been threshing/separating grain from chaff for nearly that long. Does that make it all 'processed'? Probably not. Then what does? We've certainly become adapted to any processing that started that long ago. So what is the issue with it?

Both saturated fats and processed foods are the "enemy". Seriously.. you are risking heart disease and to some degree cancer if you believe 50 years of life saving science. If you wish to choose to believe a handful of studies funded by the meat and dairy industry, do it at your own risk to your health and the environment for our children.

You prefer to believe studies funded by the sugar industry?

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/13/well/eat/how-the-sugar-ind...

Isn't sugar part of "processed food"? As in.. processed sugar.

I was referring to the way you happily dismiss research by the dairy and meat industries, but seem to readily accept '50 years of life saving science' which was originally based on research funded by the sugar industry to shift the blame on heart disease away from sugar and on to saturated fats.

Wow.. those sugar industry must be really loaded to have funded 50 years of research. Sure part of that wasnt funded by government as well?

That same 50 years of science have led to the biggest obesity epidemic in history.

Not sure where in the scientific literature it recommends to eat a big mac and fries.

It doesn't, but the problem is larger than that.

The scientific literature recommending a low fat diet, incentivized the food industry to reduce/remove fat from their products, but then they had to compensate for the loss of flavour by adding sugar and other flavour enhancers. Fat is also filling, and by removing it, people need to eat more in order to feel full.

The average woman in the US today weighs as much as the average man did 50 years ago [0]. Changes in nationwide dietary habits, due in part to scientific literature over the last 50 years, bear some responsibility for that.

0: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/06/12/look-...

The processed food industry followed what the guidelines were to be compliant and be profitable. I don't see how what scientific studies recommends, such as whole foods and greens are in the same vein as a low-fat microwaveable TV dinners from processed food companies.

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