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Comment by the_gastropod | Hacker News Reader

> I have mixed feelings about Beyond Meat: my wife and I love the hot Italian sausage and burgers, but it is really not that healthy.

I totally get this, and have similar feelings. But I try to remind my self what Beyond Meat and Impossible Burger are competing with: meat. They have similar saturated fat profiles to their "real" alternatives.

I look at these meat alternatives as mostly beneficial for:

1. Meat eaters looking to eat more sustainably, but continue eating burgers and sausages and whatnot occasionally

2. "Cook out" situations where you can bring a good veggie burger and not be a total social weirdo eating grilled corn by yourself. And it's a good conversation starter, and others are usually intrigued enough to try, and impressed after having done so.

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Why do you guys think saturated fat is bad for you? Certainly when fried it's much much healthier as it doesn't decompose into cancerous aldehydes. The science on this is very tainted so I would be very careful about assumptions here. Are there other things apart from saturated fat you are worried about?

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/3t902pqt3C7nGN99hV...

Literally first hit on Google: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5475232/

"The science on this is very tainted" isn't a particularly strong argument.

Your article supports my argument but your comment sounds like you disagree :-) which is it?

It doesn't support your argument. "Replacing SAFA by cis-polyunsaturated fatty acids was associated with significant CHD risk reduction, which was confirmed by randomized controlled trials."

"In prospective observational studies and randomized controlled trials, higher total SAFA intakes were not associated with higher incident CHD events or mortality, but replacement nutrients were not taken into account."

So I see the conclusion as a mixed bag:

"Although higher SAFA intake might increase CHD risk by increasing plasma LDL-C [70], recent meta-analyses of prospective observational studies [1, 71, 72] reported that when compensating nutrients were not taken into account, SAFA intake was not associated with CHD or stroke mortality, all-cause mortality, or myocardial infarction. Two large, independent, prospective cohorts of US men and women confirmed this result [73]1. In a prospective Dutch cohort, higher total SAFA consumption was related to lower risk of ischemic heart disease, but not to CHD risk [74]. In another Dutch cohort, a positive association was observed between CHD risk and palmitic acid, but not total SAFA intake [75]."

So the study you quote has lots of different outcomes as if the science is very difficult and under different conditions different results are found.

What about that article makes your point? Olive oil is low on saturated fat and stable to cook with!

Moreover, if you keep your diet low in fried foods (which I do), this is not a concern, since you don't expose the oil to high heat.

Good evidence is given by the global burden of disease project. Funded by Bill&Melinda Gates, over 2000 scientists aggregated 15‘000 publications into the largest epidemiological study. Addressing 14 health risks concerning your diet into actual life years lost (DALY) respective per region, age, gender. Unsaturated fats is not the biggest contributor, but nevertheless.

http://www.healthdata.org/gbd

I'm confused by where it says eating saturated fat is bad for you.

Closest thing I could find on that site that matches this description is the second chart on this page. [1] It shows diets "low in poly-UN-saturated fatty acids" as 11th-highest risk factor, contributing to less than 1% of the disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) lost.

I'm not sure that a diet low in unsaturated fats can be conflated with one with high saturated fats. They tend to come from different sources (vegetables, nuts, and fish vs. meat, butter, and eggs, respectively).

Also, please do not make it this difficult to source your claims - the link you provide is to a homepage for an entire decades-long project full of results and reporting. This is incredibly annoying and unconstructive to the discussion.

[1] http://www.healthdata.org/announcement/improved-diets-and-in...

As with climate change, there are a handful of bad actors and contrarians claiming that the science is tainted. But for the better part of a century, we've known that saturated fats are linked to heart and cardiovascular disease. It's frustrating that this misinformation is so readily spread, as it literally causes people's early death—including one of the early vocal adherents to it, John Atkins, who suffered several heart attacks and congestive heart failure before having a stroke that ultimately lead to his death.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nhzV-J1h0do

I suppose you’ll disagree with his analysis because the FDA say eat loads of carbs.

Or because Nattia is a hack with close ties with the animal agricultural industry: https://www.politico.com/story/2015/10/the-money-behind-the-...

From the article: "Taubes and Attia advocate a low-carb diet much like Teicholz; however, they have hired researchers who disagree with them to conduct groundbreaking nutrition studies."

They sound like right hacks. I'm not sure if you think the sugar industry paying for studies is great either, which a lot were.

For posterity I'll add in this excellent explanation about why we can't run controlled experiments very easily (in nutrition studies): https://peterattiamd.com/is-red-meat-killing-us/

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