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Old Tue, Jul-30-02, 14:55
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Voyajer Voyajer is offline
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Okay, I got the full article. What it says is that high-fat diets have a favorable effect on serum lipids (cholesterol) i.e. high-fat diets are good for cholesterol and the amount of fat in the diet should never be reduced. The only good they think can come is replacing saturated fat with unsaturated fat. (Of course, I somewhat disagree with this last statement. But the overall message of not reducing fats in the diet is a good one. What concerns me is that this was shown 10 years ago.) The problem with fingering saturated fats in this article as the culprit out of the fat family is that stearic acid was purposely left out of consideration in this study. The reason is as Gary Taubes wrote in his The Soft Science of Dietary Fat article: "And some saturated fats--stearic acid, in particular, the fat in chocolate--are at worst neutral. Stearic acid raises HDL levels but does little or nothing to LDL." A third of the saturated fat in red meat is stearic acid. Now if stearic acid were considered in this analysis of 27 studies, it probably would have been found that saturated fat was equal to unsaturated fat in creating a favorable lipid profile. This is still a good review of the studies to prove that fats help cholesterol and carbohydrates harm cholesterol:

Arterioscler Thromb 1992 Aug;12(8):911-9

Effect of dietary fatty acids on serum lipids and lipoproteins. A meta-analysis of 27 trials.
Mensink RP, Katan MB.

Department of Human Biology, Limburg University, Maastricht, The Netherlands.

To calculate the effect of changes in carbohydrate and fatty acid intake on serum lipid and lipoprotein levels, we reviewed 27 controlled trials published between 1970 and 1991 that met specific inclusion criteria. These studies yielded 65 data points, which were analyzed by multiple regression analysis using isocaloric exchanges of saturated (sat), monounsaturated (mono), and polyunsaturated (poly) fatty acids versus carbohydrates (carb) as the independent variables. All fatty acids elevated HDL cholesterol when substituted for carbohydrates, but the effect diminished with increasing unsaturation of the fatty acids. Tus, replacement of carbohydrates by fat lowered serum triglycerides independent of the nature of the fat. Replacement of saturated by unsaturated fatty acids raised the HDL to LDL cholesterol ratio, whereas replacement by carbohydrates had no effect. Thus, under isocaloric, metabolic-ward conditions the most favorable lipoprotein risk profile for coronary heart disease was achieved if saturated fatty acids were replaced by unsaturated fatty acids, with no decrease in total fat intake . Extrapolation of our data to free-living populations requires more insight into effects of diet on body weight; if high-oil diets promote obesity, then their favorable effects on serum lipids will be lost. [mathematical calculations omitted]
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