Posted on 10/23/2013 7:24:23 PM PDT by Rusty0604
The British Medical Journal has issued a clarion call to all who want to ward off heart disease: Forget the statins and bring back the bacon (or at least the full-fat yogurt). Saturated fat is not the widow-maker it's been made out to be, writes British cardiologist Aseem Malhotra in a stinging "Observations" column in the BMJ: The more likely culprits are empty carbs and added sugar.
He musters a passel of recent research that suggests that the "obsession" with lowering a patients' total cholesterol with statins, and a public health message that has made all sources of saturated fat verboten to the health-conscious, have failed to reduce heart disease.
Indeed, he writes, they have set off market forces that have put people at greater risk. On the question of which is worse -- saturated fat or added sugar, Lustig added, "The American Heart Assn. has weighed in -- the sugar many times over."
Real food includes saturated fat, Lustig said, and real food lives up to the principle that food should confer wellness, not illness. "Instead of lowering serum cholesterol with statins, which is dubious at best, how about serving up some real food?"
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
A medical student was asked on an exam why mother’s milk is superior to formula. He wrote,
1. It’s always fresh.
2. The cat can’t get at it.
3. It comes in such a cute little container.
He passed.
;^)
Good on him.
The truth is coming out.
I figured it out when I first cut all the fat out of my diet. I gained weight like a freight train in a
loading yard, I got really sick, and the light bulb went on.
The opposite of what I was doing became my obvious choice, and low-carb (euphemism for
“high fat”) became my way of eating.
You’re most welcome.
Oh, I bet your puppies are happy and healthy with marvelous coats and dispositions. Good on ya!
Excuse me, I did not realize that you were trying to make a point with a rhetorical question. I genuinely thought you were asking an honest question, and so I answered it factually in a way that a layperson can understand. Although you seem to have misinterpreted my good-faith answer as some sort of commentary, I was making absolutely no comment on the practice of eating saturated fats.
I do not *ever* recall seeing fat congeal on the top of breast milk the way that fat congeals on the top of, for instance, the liquid left over in the pan after making a roast. Even if you buy non-homogenized cow milk, the cream at the top is a thick liquid, not a solid, which indicates that it is more unsaturated than saturated.
BTW, I hope you are not leaving milk unrefrigerated for prolonged periods of time, unless your kitchen is extremely cold. Bacteria can double in number every 20 minutes; a single pathogenic bacterium can multiply to dangerous numbers in just 4 hours. That can overwhelm the rudimentary immune system of an infant.
The definition I gave is the quickest and least complicated definition of saturated vs. unsaturated fat that I can give to a layperson. I find that when I start getting into the level of detail that I had to learn about the subject (since I'm a PhD life scientist), people don't understand and I lose them. Of course, the actual chemistry of fats is far more complex than a simple test of whether the fat is solid at room temperature.
I really do not know what your issue is, or where you are coming from.
The definition of saturated and unsaturated fat really is not a matter of controversy. The definition that I initially stated is actually used by scientists. Since this is a public forum, and not a biochemistry forum, I kept the definition at a level where ordinary people can understand it.
Perhaps you think I was making a statement on the consumption of saturated or unsaturated fats? Be assured, I was not—I neither expressed nor implied an opinion on that.
I admit my eyes did glaze over when I was reading on the chemistry of saturated vs unsaturated fats and single bond vs double or triple bonds of carbon atoms. The diagrams were not something I could ever commit to memory. But I can grasp the gist of it. Even us lay people sometimes have occasion to come across the more detailed explanations.
I was just going to say. My breast milk containers always had a separated layer of fat when I stored them in the fridge. It didn’t remelt on the counter.
I have a head full of images of every type of biological molecule and chemical reaction that exists.
On Youtube, there are videos (computer animations) that people have made of biochemical processes. I am a terrible artist, so it is exciting for me to watch some of these movies and see the images and reactions that have existed for so long in my mind brought to life. Yes, I am a total nerd.
Yep. My family always served real butter. Carbs are the problem.
Your definition is wrong. The presentation explains simply what is a saturated and unsaturated fat. Milk fat is a saturated fat. It is not unsaturated or a trans fat.
It is full of medium chain tryglycerides.
Given my level of education, I hardly think that I need to sit through a 53 minute presentation by a medical doctor (whose knowledge of biochemistry is probably undergraduate level) to find out what saturated and unsaturated fats are, when I've already extensively studied the subject and can draw not only the structures of lipids, but their biological synthesis, from memory.
Triglycerides of any chain length are fat molecules; the word "triglyceride" itself does not give any indication of degree of saturation. "Saturation" refers to the number of single bonds between the carbons in the triglyceride side chains; a fully saturated fat contains no double bonds in the side chains. A fully saturated fat is solid at room temperature (for example, vegetable shortening). It is meaningless to talk about a fully unsaturated fat, because the number of double bonds in the side chains is variable, so we just say that it is unsaturated, even if there is only one double bond in one of the three side chains. An unsaturated fat is *not* a solid at room temperature.
If you have access to non-homogenized milk, take a look at the cream floating on top. Or take a look at heavy whipping cream. They are not solid. Therefore, by definition, they are not saturated. Because milk fat is a complex mixture of lipids, there is very likely a fraction of fully saturated lipids (triglycerides) in the mixture. However, by definition, milk fat is *not* saturated.
The prefixes "cis" and "trans" refer to the chemical nature of the double bond in an unsaturated fat. Rather than try to describe the meaning, I'll just refer you to the Wikipedia article and draw your attention to the diagrams on the right.
I just love when I give a layperson's definition of a highly technical concept, and someone suddenly exhibits the Dunning-Kruger effect and tries to trip me up...
Fat composition differs between mammals.
Cow milk != people milk. It’s one reason you can’t really feed human babies on just cow milk and expect them to be healthy.
I had a refrigerator door full of those little breast milk containers when I was pumping for my middle baby. They got a hard shell of fat congealed on the top.
Accidentally left one out overnight and the little shell of fat was still there in the morning. Temp in my house was around 70, it was winter.
Fats are odd chemical mixtures, because the melting temperatures are often significantly higher than the congealing temperatures. Also, room temperature to a scientist is about 25 degrees C, which translates to 77 degrees F—so your house was actually below room temperature, which would slow or inhibit the fat becoming liquid again after being solidified in the fridge.
And yet the unsaturated oils in my cupboard were all still liquid.
If Dr Adkins had been administered DMSO arterially to get it into his seriously damaged brain, he might have lived. DMSO is a life saver.
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