Spiral,
You: Percentage of saturated fat of total fat consumption dropped significantly over the last 20 to 50 years.
The 20 year scenario shows that 1989 to 1996 saw a drop in saturated fatty acid consumption consistent with the drop in total fat consumption. According to this, levels of consumption of saturated fat have been relatively steady from 1996 to 2004.
I don't think we need any studies to prove this. Plant based oils were pretty much non existent as a food choice. If you are not old enough, ask your parents how much corn, soy, sunflower oil they used for cooking, how much margarine they ate, and what percentage of their food was processed.
The wholesale use of these cheap oils must have come at expense of something (saturate fat).
BTW, even your graph shows 1989 level of 12.33% and 2004 level of 10.99%. IMO, this is not stable, it is very significant.
If you look at saturated fat as percentage of total fat consumption, it went from 36% down to 32.87% in just 5 years.
You mean toxic concoctions made from vegetable oils I presume, underpinned by the misunderstanding that not all fats are created equal.
I am not just talking about trans fats and partially hydrogenated fats (even though that's how a lot of them get into the food supply via processed, packaged foods). Even a pure liquid vegetable oils you can buy in a bottle. All these, combined, replaced saturated fat in diet.
Swapping one harmful product for another that’s maybe worse, doesn’t do much good. What seems to be happening lately is that the incidence of CAD is decreasing, or the growth rate is decreasing, not sure but anyway some benefit seems to correspond to an increased understanding of the differences between good fats and bad fats, call it causative if you want.
The biggest contributor to any positive news on heart disease is reduction of smoking, which probably overwhelms all the other trends that have been happening at the same time, positive and negative.
All scientists stand on the shoulders of giants, I know how much you love Ancel Keyes he seems to be quite firmly positioned under your jackboot, my advice is to not throw the baby out with the bathwater. It’s quite possible that he uncovered a meaningful association, if not direct causation.
He found it (the association) after his 14(?) country data became 7 country study, after he disposed of the data that didn't fit the sloping line he was after.
The prescriptions that followed from his work contained a grave error, the notion that Fat was Bad. The distinction now confirmed, between good fats and bad fats had not yet been made.
I don't buy into the politically correct definition of "good fats" and "bad fats", where the definition changes with changing political winds. The only fats unsuitable for human consumption trans fats (proven to be bad) artificially created during hydrogenation. These were celebrated good fats buy the politically correct crowd, including Ancel Keys, who was a fan of margarine. Now these are "bad fats".
And so, science moves on.
You are being very generous, by calling it science.
We now know that we consume mainly 3 types of saturated fat - stearic acid, palmitic acid, and lauric acid. Together these 3 provide over 90% of the saturated fat in beef or red meat in general and around 65-70% of the saturated fats found in dairy products such as whole butter and whole milk. Stearic acid, found in dark chocolate for ex. gets converted to a monounsaturated fat called oleic acid in your liver, this basically the beneficial fat that is found in organic olive oil. It’s well believed that stearic acid has no negative effect on cholesterol levels, that it’s at worst benign and at best beneficial.
A good benchmark to compare to is the best food found on earth for humans, one especially designed for humans: Human breast milk. Human breast milk is not very much different from beef fat or from butter from cow milk.
If palmitic is the evil one, breast milk has more of it than beef fat. If lauric is another bad one, beef has almost none. Human breast milk is 5% (of total fat) Lauric. If stearic is the star, beef has actually more of it than breast milk. Overall, human breast milk has a higher percentage of saturated fat than lard.
Here are a couple of good links:
en.wikipedia.org
ajcn.org
On the other hand, it’s pretty much confirmed that consumption of Palmitic and Lauric acid, raise total cholesterol levels. It’s been touted that they do so in a “beneficial” way meaning that they raise HDL more than they do LDL, leading to a better ratio implying an overall improvement. Not saying that better ratios necessarily can’t reveal meaningful changes, just that focusing on any particular tree, can often divert attention from the forest or the total cholesterol number.
Or, these (HDL increase, transition from small particle LDL to large particle LDL) could be diamonds in the rough (total cholesterol).
I’m curious if you think cholesterol has absolutely nothing to do with heart disease, that it can be safely ignored.
Dietary cholesterol or cholesterol circulating in blood (or actually its carriers circulating in blood)?
Dietary cholesterol could be reasonably safely ignored.
As far as lipid profile, I think some useful information can be derived from that, once you go from nearly meaningless total cholesterol number.
In my view there is sufficient association to warrant caution. It’s like if we could measure hard and soft plaque and derive some meaningful information from the change, while we forgetting that the artery is actually 99% blocked. The notion that palmitic acid and lauric acid are beneficial is highly suspect imo.
I never claimed they are beneficial or harmful. They are source of energy. We can get into beneficial vs. harmful when we compare it something:
saturated vs. trans fat - beneficial
saturated vs. partially hydrogenated oils - beneficial
saturated vs. disproportionately high % of Omega 6 (to Omega 3) - beneficial
saturated vs. equivalent calories from sugar? - beneficial
saturated vs. equivalent calories highly concentrated carbs? - beneficial
saturated vs. mono-unsaturated? - neutral
saturated vs. equivalent calories from protein, nutritionally dense fruit and vegetables? - not beneficial
Reading this thread there appears to be some preponderance of the idea that “grains are bad”. Perhaps an oversimplification but I’m making a broad point and that is to not make the same mistake with grains or carbs, that was made with fats. Refined grains / wheat / simple carbs are a big problem, completely different animal compared to whole grains.
The thread, namely Lane, has been tracking (so far with little success) this elusive whole grain. It may be found, before Loch Ness Monster.
There is a theory that this is just an invention by nutritionists. Rather than admitting they were 100% wrong about the anti-fat, pro grain diet, 180 degrees from truth, they invent the whole grain, that moves them some 60 degrees away from their original position, much closer to truth. They are only 120 degrees away from it now...
When grains get refined vital elements are discarded.
I am not an expert on grains, but apparently the parts that get discarded are those that compromise shelf life or taste - both factors for processed food manufacturers.
For those looking to lose weight I think it’s important to consider carbohydrate consumption (in fact it’s so for everybody) and realize that all carb forms are not created equal.
Yup, especially fruits and vegetables.
Talking of vital elements makes me think of air and water, and the effects of having a singular focus on diet and/or exercise as THE important variable in putting together a healthy lifestyle. Air and water are even more fundamental forms of nourishment, so focusing on diet while not showing much concern for pollution is a logically untenable position.
Some things are within your control, other things are not. I think I am doing much better on the water front (having purchased what I think is a very good reverse osmosis filter). Air? that's not easy to change on ones own, unless you are talking some in-house filters, which I am not too crazy about.
For ex. the big form factor and extremely high starch content of modern grains is a modern invention, a very very recent one.
Yup. Exactly. And, actually, not just grains. The same is the case for fruits and vegetables. They are being "optimized" for high calorie and high carb content.
Joe |
