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  #1   ^
Old Tue, Jul-22-03, 06:00
gotbeer's Avatar
gotbeer gotbeer is offline
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Default "Fats ain't what they used to be"

Fats ain't what they used to be

First they told us they were bad for us. Then carbohydrates were the enemy. So are fats our friends or our foes? Hilary Freeman reports

Tuesday July 22, 2003

The Guardian


link to article

Fat used to be a four-letter word. Dietary advice was simple: eat a low-fat diet, cast out your full-cream milk and fry-ups, and fill up on potatoes and pasta instead. Then came the Atkins diet, and fat was no longer perceived to be the enemy. Instead, a new food foe was unmasked: carbohydrates. Millions discovered that a diet high in fat could still result in weight loss, without, apparently, raising their cholesterol level.

Yet the latest scientific research, published last week in the Lancet, has put fat firmly back in the bad books. Scientists at the Medical Research Council's Dunn Human Nutrition Unit in Cambridge have discovered that a high-fat diet could put women at a far higher risk of breast cancer, as much as doubling their chances of developing the disease.

So is fat our friend or our foe - and what exactly does the F-word mean? Are we eating too much of it? And if so, does that explain the country's rising obesity figures? Or have we demonised this important food group at a high cost to our health?

Dispelling the myths

One thing should be made clear from the off: dietary fat and body fat are not the same thing. The oft-heard adage "a moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips" is somewhat misleading. When you eat a cream bun or family-size chocolate bar, the high fat content will not travel straight to your love handles. Eating fat does not necessarily make you fat.

However, eating too much fat may lead to heart disease and cancer - and being overweight is also a risk factor for these diseases. But the correlation between the two is not direct.

What is fat?

Fat is fuel, the body's richest source of energy. It provides nine calories (kcal) of energy per gram, more than double that provided by either protein (four kcal) or carbohydrate (3.75 kcal). If you eat a lot of calories and don't burn them off, your body will store them as flab. That is why eating a high-fat diet - inherently high in calories - makes people fat.

We all have friends who appear to subsist on nothing but high-fat junk food and yet, annoyingly, never seem to put on a pound. That is because, whether it's a result of lifestyle or a naturally high metabolism, they burn off more calories than they take in. If, however, they could see the state of their arteries, they probably wouldn't feel quite so smug.

"Fat is made up of fatty acids, of which there are two types: saturated and unsaturated," explains Dr Hannah Theobald, nutrition scientist at the British Nutrition Foundation. "Saturated fats tend to be solid at room temperature and of animal origin (notable exceptions are palm and coconut oil), while unsaturated fats are usually liquid at room temperature and tend to be of plant origin. Unsaturated fats can be subdivided into polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats. There are also fats known as trans fats, which behave like saturated fats in the body."

What does fat do?

There's a reason that full dairy cream ice-cream tastes better than its reduced-fat, reduced-calorie cousin: fat makes foods taste good. It has a creamy texture, which feels pleasurable in our mouths, and it also acts as a solvent, allowing flavours and odours to dissolve within it. Since fat globules are small, the flavours melt tantalisingly on our tongues.

Recent research in India suggests that the ability to taste fat may be a separate human capacity, to add to our ability to distinguish between sweet, salty, bitter and sour flavours.

Fat not only makes food more palatable, it also has a number of important nutritional functions. It aids the absorption of the fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E and K - we need roughly 30g of fat a day just to ensure that we absorb sufficient amounts of these nutrients.

It also contains the essential fatty acids (EFAs), linoleic acid and alpha linolenic acid, which are important in the formation of cell membranes, particularly nerve tissue.

How much fat should we be eating?

The government recommends that no more than 35% of our food energy intake should come from fat and that no more than 10% should come from saturated fatty acids, which have been linked to high cholesterol levels and various cancers.

That means (leaving out the maths) that a woman eating an average daily calorie intake of 2,000 calories should eat no more than 76g of fat. The average man should eat about 100g of fat per day. To put this in perspective, a burger and fries contain about 60g of fat.

The latest data from the National Diet and Nutrition Survey suggests that men are consuming on average 87g of fat per day (or 36% of food energy), including 33g of saturated fat (13.5% of food energy). Women consume on average 61g of fat a day (35% of food energy), with 23g of saturated fat (13% of food energy).

It appears that the "eat less fat" message has got through. A decade ago the average daily fat intake was 102g for men (40% food energy) and 74g for women (38%).

If we are eating less fat, why are we getting fatter?

Cutting back on fat consumption appears to have done little for our waistlines. Obesity has trebled in the last 20 years, with nearly a quarter of us now considered obese and almost half of us overweight.

"The population as a whole is eating fewer calories and also less fat than in the past," says Theobald. "But we tend to lead more sedentary lifestyles, so we're not burning off the calories we take in. There are more labour-saving devices at work and home and more cars per head of population, which are being used for increasingly shorter journeys. Recent research has also suggested that increased television watching is strongly associated with obesity and weight gain, independent of diet and exercise."

Bad fats

"Different sorts of fats carry different health risks and/or benefits," says Toni Steer, nutritionist at the Medical Research Council's Human Nutrition Research Unit in Cambridge. "Eating saturated fats is linked to a rise in plasma cholesterol, a risk factor for cardiovascular diseases, such as heart attacks and strokes. There is also believed to be a relationship between eating too much saturated fat and developing cancers of the breast, colon, lung, prostate and endometrium."

Last week's breast-cancer study results from the Dunn Human Nutrition Unit found that women who eat 90g of fat per day run twice the risk of developing the disease than those who eat a diet containing less than 40g of fat. "The effect seems to be related particularly to saturated fat, found mostly in high-fat milk, butter, meat and some cereals such as biscuits and cakes," says Sheila Bingham, the unit's deputy director.

Good fats

On the other hand, there is evidence to suggest that consuming a diet rich in polyunsaturated fats (nuts, green-leaf vegetables), and particularly the omega-3 fatty acids (such as fish oils) actually reduces the risk of developing cardiovascular diseases and may help lower blood pressure and prevent cancer.

Further research shows that long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids help children with behavioural problems, such as ADHD and dyslexia, and that expectant mothers who eat oily fish (such as salmon and mackerel) have babies with better visual development.

"Our bodies can produce saturated and monounsaturated fats themselves," says Theobald. "But omega-3 and omega-6 oils/fats are known as essential fats as our bodies cannot make these fats and they must be consumed in the diet. The government recommends that we eat at least one portion of oily fish per week but few of us are doing so."
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  #2   ^
Old Tue, Jul-22-03, 16:56
Kristine's Avatar
Kristine Kristine is offline
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*sigh* And they *still* ignore the affect of insulin on the whole scheme of dietary fat, and don't tell us whether or not those women on the higher fat diet with breast cancer were eating fries, a white bun and a coke with their big ol' high-fat burger.

...and they imply that *one* study can put a major essential nutrient - fat - into the "bad books". I hate this kind of over-simplistic reporting.
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  #3   ^
Old Tue, Jul-22-03, 17:04
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MsJinx MsJinx is offline
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Plan: Schwarzbein II, BA, IS
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Also, since when was that low-fat B.S. before Atkins??? My mom did Atkins WAY before the low fat/high sugar insanity hit our nation. He was ahead of the curve.

Jinx
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