Dispelling the dogma: saturated fats

"Kate, I can't eat like you do. My cardiologist is going to kill me! I can practically feel my arteries getting clogged up with every bite."

Another discussion about fat is getting started between me and my mother-in-law. I sympathize with her. For 40+ years we've been talking about the dangers of saturated fats and the risk of disagreeing with the dogma carries dire consequences.

"We are extremely good at test-tube science," maintains my husband every time I lash out against the establishment. He is right, of course. We really are! We learn so much each day about how to further optimize treatments, how various micro-nutrients impact our bodies, we even figured out that sugar is bad for you. Go us! Yet, when it comes to fats, I can't buy it.

So, I am finally getting off my butt and figuring out what's wrong with the world of nutritional science and how it got to be that way.

I recently blogged in my personal journal about an article published by the Journal of the American Medical Association in which a real-life modern-time western-scientist says, nah... fats are ok (as I learned from this commentary). We've been retarded for all this time. I got very excited, but found that I could not access a copy of this article without paying. I would happily pay $40 to access a study, but this was just commentary. I figured, i'd rather look for something that has numbers.

I dug just a little further, and - voila - The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition is full of studies that overturn the claim that fats cause heart disease.  Unfortunately, I do not have full access to the majority of what's available there (though I think it's time to get my credit card out), here are some points I pulled out of the abstracts:

• "there is no significant evidence for concluding that dietary saturated fat is associated with an increased risk of CHD [coronary heart disease] CVD [cardiovascular disease]" [here]
• "replacement [of saturated fat] with a higher carbohydrate intake, particularly refined carbohydrate, can exacerbate the atherogenic dyslipidemia associated with insulin resistance and obesity that includes increased triglycerides, small LDL particles, and reduced HDL cholesterol. [here]
• Though the same article points out that "Clinical trials that replaced saturated fat with polyunsaturated fat have generally shown a reduction in CVD events".  

Here is how I would summarize findings for today:

There is no significant evidence that saturated fat is bad.  However, you are better off eating polyunsaturated fat (the essential fatty acids).  But whatever you do, don't limit fat and replace it with pasta! Now, that's the one that will clog up your arteries as we speak, mom!  :-)