Astrogirl » saturated fat

Fat content of various protein sources

Nicole — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 23:24:25 +0000

This is something I did for my own reasons, but I’m talking about it on a mailing list, and posting a table in there is *not* convenient.

Mostly, I was interested in polyunsaturated and saturated fats in various foods, but it’s always interesting to be reminded about some other facts. We’re always hearing about how, say, bacon is chock full of ARTERY-CLOGGING SATURATED FAT(!), but it actually has more monounsaturated fat than saturated.

I was also surprised (though I really don’t know why) at how much more fat farmed fish has. I knew about the lack of Omega-3, but I didn’t realize just how much fattier it is generally.

Anyway, the fats are at the bottom of the chart. If you want an excel copy to mess with, I can email that to you.

All the numbers are courtesy of the USDA food nutrient database (free for the taking). I have it loaded into MySQL on my computer so that can get up to all sorts of trouble with it.

Follow Up On Saturated Fats

Nicole — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 17:24:30 +0000

One of the blogs I read regularly has a nice summary of studies related to saturated fat and health.

You’ll find it here: The Dirty Little Secret Of the Diet-Heart Hypothesis

Saturated Fat is NOT Unhealthy

Nicole — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 19:14:39 +0000

It’s a hard idea to wrap your brain around. The phrase is constant and appears in virtually every article about diet and nutrition: artery-clogging saturated fat.

Except that it isn’t. Unless you’re a rabbit.

As I’m sure most of you know, rabbits are herbivores. What you may not know, is that the study considered the gold standard for proving that saturated fat causes arterial plaque was done by feeding powdered butter (a very low-quality food containing oxidized cholesterol) to rabbits. When autopsied, the rabbits had goo in their coronary arteries. This is not really a surprise as they are not even remotely adapted to such a diet.

Dr. David Kritchevsky further went on to show that consuming polyunsaturated vegetable oils reduced total cholesterol. As we know now, total cholesterol is a pretty useless number.

This lousy advice was then reinforced by the Seven Countries Study done by Ancel Keys. I mentioned this a couple of posts ago, but here’s something Gary Taubes has to say about it in Good Calories, Bad Calories:

Despite the legendary status of the Seven Countries Study, it was fatally flawed, like its predecessor, the six-country analysis Keys published in 1953 using only national diet and death statistics to support his points. For one thing, Keys chose seven countries he knew in advance would support his hypothesis. Had Keys chosen at random, or, say, chosen France and Switzerland rather than Japan and Finland, he would likely have seen to effect from saturated fat, and there might be no such thing today as the French paradox — a nation that consumes copious saturated fat but has comparatively little heart disease.

Based on the same research, especially the rabbit study, it was decreed that we should switch to margarine and Crisco and give up lard and butter. Lard, butter and coconut oil (that one didn’t get the beat-down until the 80s) are all solid at room temperature. The hydrogenation process that creates trans-fatty acids is done to make unsaturated fats behave like these natural fats. Americans were all given some very bad advice in the form of The Prudent Diet.

“Everybody knows” is rarely the case, but once the propaganda machine (and farm policy money) gets rolling, it’s very hard to stop. We were told to eat something that is, by the consensus of more or less the same people, “even worse” than saturated fat, and this went on for fifty years!

From the Wikipedia entry on trans-fat:

Unlike other dietary fats, trans fats are not essential, and they do not promote good health.[1] The consumption of trans fats increases the risk of coronary heart disease[2] by raising levels of “bad” LDL cholesterol and lowering levels of “good” HDL cholesterol.[3] Health authorities worldwide recommend that consumption of trans fat be reduced to trace amounts. Trans fats from partially hydrogenated oils are more harmful than naturally occurring oils.[4]

Michael Pollan does make some assertions with which I cannot agree, but I really love one of his rules for eating: Don’t eat anything your great-great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food. .

Next time you read the words “artery-clogging saturated fat”, remember the rabbits.

Calories In = Calories Out

Nicole — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 15:10:26 +0000

I could write ten blog posts about this subject, unfortunately. Most of my complaints come down to the fact that the proper way to state that is Calories In = Calories “Out”. The next thing out of the mouth of Conventional Wisdom is that “a calorie is a calorie.” Nothing allows for any possibility of calories not being burned efficiently. That, however, is a topic for another day. Today, I’d rather talk about Cognitive Dissonance from nutrition and exercise nannies.

This study in the British Journal of Sports Medicine has been producing quite an uproar since it was publicized. From that link:

Methods: Fifty-eight sedentary overweight/obese men and women (BMI 31.8 ±4.5kg/m2) participated in a 12 week supervised aerobic exercise intervention (70% heart rate max, 5 times a week, 500kcal per session). Body composition, anthropometric parameters, aerobic capacity, blood pressure and acute psychological response to exercise were measured at weeks 0 and 12.

And the results that cause a certain type of health nanny’s brain to explode?:

Results: Mean reduction in body weight was -3.3 ±3.63kg (P<0.01). However, 26 of the 58 participants failed to attain the predicted weight loss estimated from individuals’ exercise-induced energy expenditure.

I generally like Calorielab.com, but their nutritionist suffers from the usual delusions about ARTERYCLOGGINGSATURATEDFAT and ACALORIEISACALORIE.

Her piece starts:

A major news magazine’s cover story sent out ripples of shock waves when it suggested that exercise, although good for you, may not make you lose weight. Actually, research shows that if you burn more calories without increasing calories from food and drink, you will lose weight.

Except that it doesn’t. That was the WHOLE POINT of the study! Then we have this:

A 150-pound adult who adds that activity daily (and doesn’t cut back on other activity) burns about 120 to 140 extra calories per day.

With no changes in diet, that should lead to weight loss of one pound in 25 to 30 days. On the other hand, if the new walker rewards that walk with an extra muffin, 24-ounce soda or second helping at dinner, after 25 to 30 days his or her weight would probably be a pound higher, not lower. That’s because the increased calories from any one of those are more than double the calories burned in the walk.

Here’s what I take away from that paragraph: You people adding exercise to your lives to lose weight? You’re far too stupid to realize that adding an extra muffin or two cans of coke or another plate of food at dinner? That stuff might make you even fatter!. One of the overwhelming ideas one sees coming from those who think they know better than us is that everyone’s fucked but me.

Whenever we hear about how something that tastes good is also good for us, these people have to come out and yell NO IT ISN’T or say that just because resveratrol is a good thing doesn’t mean we should take up heavy drinking to get more red wine into our diet. Because, you know, we couldn’t figure that out because we’re all idiots and morons.

On to one of my favorite idiot columns, the The New York Times Well blog by Tara Parker-Pope. This article has a by-line by Gretchen Reynolds, but presumably, Ms. Parker-Pope is the final arbiter of taste.

Near the end of the article, a different study is being discussed. This one is specifically about the idea of afterburn, but there’s something really important they discovered. It’s worse than the idea that afterburn apparently doesn’t exist:

Each of Melanson’s subjects spent 24 quiet hours in the calorimeter, followed later by another 24 hours that included an hourlong bout of stationary bicycling. The cycling was deliberately performed at a relatively easy intensity (about 55 percent of each person’s predetermined aerobic capacity). It is well known physiologically that, while high-intensity exercise demands mostly carbohydrate calories (since carbohydrates can quickly reach the bloodstream and, from there, laboring muscles), low-intensity exercise prompts the body to burn at least some stored fat. All of the subjects ate three meals a day.

To their surprise, the researchers found that none of the groups, including the athletes, experienced “afterburn.” They did not use additional body fat on the day when they exercised. In fact, most of the subjects burned slightly less fat over the 24-hour study period when they exercised than when they did not.

Um, wow. So, that number of calories burned you see on your Wii or the treadmill or elliptical at the gym? 100% fictional. I’m not especially surprised by this, but the Well Blog decides to point out how stupid people are:

“The message of our work is really simple,” although not agreeable to hear, Melanson said. “It all comes down to energy balance,” or, as you might have guessed, calories in and calories out. People “are only burning 200 or 300 calories” in a typical 30-minute exercise session, Melanson points out. “You replace that with one bottle of Gatorade.”

Because no one is aware that every snack sold in the U.S.? It has this thing called a Nutrition Facts label on it that says how many calories are in it! WOW, who knew, right?

Then right after that:

This does not mean that exercise has no impact on body weight, or that you can’t calibrate your workouts to maximize the amount of body fat that you burn, if that’s your goal.

“If you work out at an easy intensity, you will burn a higher percentage of fat calories” than if you work out a higher intensity, Carey says, so you should draw down some of the padding you’ve accumulated on the hips or elsewhere — if you don’t replace all of the calories afterward.”

Because we don’t like the results of the study, we’re just going to ignore it. Obviously, those people in the lab were not working out right.

In fact, it always comes down to saying that Americans are fat because they just aren’t following the government’s advice closely enough. It’s never that recommending the same thing over and over and expecting different results THIS TIME is simply insane.