The Skinny on Saturated Fats

Maybe Gary Taubes already said this, but sat fats are not the culprit.

I'm reading an article by J Bruce German and Cora J Dillard, from the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2004;80:550-9, for those who check references.

What the article basically says, is don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. First, what more and more of us know, "high-carbohydrate diets were recognized as contributing to the lipoprotein pattern that charcterizes atherogenic dyslipidemia and hypertriacylglycerolemia."

In short, when the food industry began to remove sat fats from foods, they substituted carbohydrates in many forms. And those carbs not only made us fatter or obese, they changed our blood lipid profile to one which is "atherogenic" or bad for our blood vessels and circulation, and they gave us high triglycerides. Thanks a lot.

More interestingly, the article points out some of the things that saturated fats, or fatty acids, do is not bad, and what's more, some have positive effects on the body. The article states that there is no strong evidence that saturated fat elevates LDL cholesterol and thus the risk of CAD. What has not been studied is the possibility that some of the saturated fats might have positive effects, since mammals have within the mammary gland the means to produce a number of saturated fats, namely butyric, caproic, caprylic, capric, lauric, myristic, palmitic and stearic acids, to ensure the growth and survival of mammalian offspring. Evolution is a funny things, and things seem to have happened for a reason.

The article notes that saturated fats are the preferred fuel for the heart, a source of fuel during energy expenditure.

It concludes that the advice to remove sat fats from the diet has made us all fatter, and has failed to have any effect on the prevalence of diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

Next time: the sat fats and what they do for us.