
Time to end the war against saturated fat? - kareemm
http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-saturated-fat-20131022,0,2193813.story
======
dragonshed
It's several decades past due.

Robert Lustig, quoted in the article, gave a fantasticly informative talk
which hit youtube a few years back, which explains the folly of the low-fat
diet.
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM)

~~~
csshelton
Seems like Lustig's point is that a high-fructose diet is worse for you than a
high-fat diet. We have replaced the fat in our diet with fructose, but that
isn't necessary. We could just eat carbs low in fructose and/or more protein
instead of fat. Regardless, this article is discussing saturated fat, which is
a subset of all fats. "Healthy" oils like olive oil, canola oil, and many nuts
have lots of fat, but very little saturated fat.

~~~
jared314
> "Healthy" oils like olive oil, canola oil, and many nuts have lots of fat,
> but very little saturated fat.

Why do you consider those oils to be healthful?

~~~
csshelton
Quotations were used around the word to indicate skepticism. Believe those are
called scare quotes.

------
berrypicker
I think a bigger war to end is that against carbs. The paleo diet trend has
gotten out of hand, everybody's afraid to touch bread now. There's evidence
both on a large scale (population wide - there are countries like Italy where
carbs are abundant in the diet, and others where fats are more common) and in
controlled studies, that your carb-calorie to fat-calorie intake ratio makes
little difference to your overall health as long as you're getting both, along
with protein.

Yet we have a group of people focusing religiously on minimizing carb intake
and preaching to everyone about it. Am I seriously going to live an extra 20
years of youth if I don't eat delicious sandwiches for lunch?

~~~
yOutely
You might, because two slices of white bread spikes your blood sugar higher
than a can of full sugar coke [http://quittingsugar.com/2012/07/11/bread-and-
coke-smackdown...](http://quittingsugar.com/2012/07/11/bread-and-coke-
smackdown-a-blood-sugar-experiment/)

~~~
berrypicker
Since you're nitpicking, a sandwich isn't just two slices of white bread.

~~~
yOutely
I don't think that a documented, reproducible very high blood sugar spike is
nitpicking. I personally think it is reason for concern.

But you are absolutely correct, a sandwich is more than that. The author
acknowledges this as well. It would be a fun thing to measure your blood
glucose against (as I intend to). From an armchair perspective, the other
ingredients in the sandwich _may_ slow down the glucose dump into your
bloodstream, but it will likely still dump the same amount, because the bread
is still present. Along with the fat storage mechanism that glucose > insulin
turns on, the extra ingredients may be more likely to be stored as fat.

I'll respond to this as soon as I complete the experiment!

------
nanexcool
This is anecdotal, but I've now lost 20 kg with a ketogenic diet. Started at
110 kg, I now weigh 90 kg after 5 months. I've complemented the diet with a
regular amount of exercise (mostly running).

If anyone is interested,
[http://www.reddit.com/r/keto](http://www.reddit.com/r/keto) has a nice
community of ketoers.

~~~
yetanotherphd
Do you think that since minority opinions tend to foster a community around
then, this also biases people toward minority opinions?

~~~
beagle3
ketogenic diets have been shown to help a variety of conditions, obesity on
one hand, and epilepsy on the other (although, as far as I know, the mechanism
is unknown)

~~~
guruz
It's interesting how much diet affects people.

There's also a diet for Autism/ADHD/.. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gluten-
free,_casein-free_diet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gluten-free,_casein-
free_diet)

~~~
thomasz
from TFWA

>In their report, the AAP found that __they could not recommend __the use of
special diets for children with autism spectrum disorder because of inadequate
evidence.

> A 2008 systematic review from the Cochrane Library indicates that a gluten-
> free and/or casein-free diet has not been shown to have any effect on the
> behavior or functioning of individuals with autism

> The systematic review, conducted in 2009, concluded that the results "reveal
> that the current corpus of research does not support the use of GFCF diets
> in the treatment of ASD.

~~~
guruz
I don't know what TFWA or AAP are, but those statements are quite useless.

If you have a child with those problems and you want it to be healed, of
course you can just try it for some months. If it works great, if it does not
what did you lose? Not eating diary/grains is not that hard.

(And there's clearly a lot of information on the web about this diet and
autism, so it must work for someone)

~~~
oftenwrong
Might as well try prayer healing too. If it works great, if it does not what
did you lose?

~~~
guruz
Bad comparison. Don't underestimate the power of the placebo effect :-)

But seriously: Say you are suffering some problem. You would not do something
because scientific sounding entity x and y say a solution to this problem does
not work, but a lot of other people say the solution works? That's not
logic/sane behaviour.

~~~
yetanotherphd
When you delete the word "sounding" it becomes very rational behavior.

------
trevvvor
it's interesting to watch the saturated fat debunking come into mainstream
media. Most people who are deep into food research (I don't like to say
"nutrition" because it's such a loaded term now) reading many modern studies,
books, and blog posts, already know that saturated fat is good and healthy.
Both the comments here and on that article show a good deal of naysayers, and
how powerful public opinion is.

These doubters seem to have the most basic "common knowledge" explanation of
saturated fat: Sat.fat raises cholesterol, and cholesterol clogs your
arteries, and clogged arteries lead to heart disease. If you think this chain
is how your body works, you should know that it isn't nearly the entire story,
and not accurate.

50% of every cell membrane in your body is saturated fat. Your body produces
75% of the cholesterol that it NEEDS to operate, the rest comes from diet. Why
does your body produce cholesterol and what is its purpose? That would be a
good research starting point if you are still anti sat.fat.

Of course, you shouldn't trust articles on science reporting. You shouldn't
trust me. You should read studies and analyze them yourself. You might be
pleasantly surprised by what you find.

~~~
yetanotherphd
There are probably thousands of articles on the topic.

I'd there any reason we shouldn't just accept the opinion of the FDA or AMA

~~~
beagle3
The same reason you should not accept the TSA's opinion on security, or the
FED's opinion on economics, or the DEA's opinion on marijuana, or the NSA's
opinion on information security, or the SEC's opinion on market manipulation.

They are not working for you; while they try to avoid uprising, and that often
does correlate with what is good for you - they generally care more about the
profits/benefits to themselves/supporters/friends/industry.

Somehow, it is clear to almost everyone on this forum about the TSA and the
DEA, to many (but not all) about the SEC - but almost everyone believes the
FDA and FED are "the good guys". (The NSA switched sides from good to bad
recently thanks to Snowden, I believe).

But there's no difference. Regulatory Capture has happened in all of these.
Follow the money trail and the revolving door with the industry.

~~~
NoPiece
or the IPCC's opinion on global warming...

~~~
beagle3
I haven't been following them recently, perhaps they are a little more
dependable now - but in the late 80s they had reports saying a lot of coastal
cities will be flooded by 2000 if we don't do anything. We didn't do anything.
Nothing happened - but in 2008 I looked and those early reports mysteriously
disappeared.

Yes, climate does change, for sure, and it's probably bad - but so many of the
climate scientists were wrong in their predictions from 30 years ago, that
they need to do more to be convincing with their predictions for 30 years from
now. And the data crunching they are doing, every time I looked at it, is not
convincing.

~~~
NoPiece
I agree with you - I hate the "the science is decided" or the "economics is
decided" argument for any of the examples you mentioned. Whether it is
saturated fat, sea level rise, or quantitative easing, one should maintain a
healthy skepticism.

------
yetanotherphd
Before jumping to conclusions based on an opinion piece of one researcher, I
would suggest looking at the article

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturated_fat_and_cardiovascula...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturated_fat_and_cardiovascular_disease_controversy)

------
michaellosee
+1 for keto. The wife and I have lost 20 lbs each in the last 3 months.

~~~
meritt
Congrats. Just like a determined programmer will do well with any
language/platform, determined individuals will realize their health goals
regardless of which fad diet they are currently utilizing.

~~~
eru
As long as the fad diet isn't too crazy. (You won't lose weight on a caloric
surplus, for example.)

~~~
montecarl
Is your statement true? Why should it be a forgone conclusion that our bodies
are able to convert all macronutrients into energy with 100% efficiency? If
you maintain a stable weight for 1 year does this mean you managed to
perfectly balance caloric intake with caloric expenditure? That when you ate
that extra cookie or drank an extra soda that you needed those calories to
offset some energy expenditure? That seems hard to believe.

One interesting question that I do not know the answer to is the kinetics of
metabolism for different macronutrients. How quickly can our bodies metabolize
fat, protein, and carbohydrates? Is it possible that our bodies convert
carbohydrates into energy very quickly, thus leading to an excess of energy
that gets stored as fat? While other nutrients get digested much more slowly
and only used if needed?

The basic question is do all ingested calories get used? Does the body have a
mechanism for maintaining a certain "ideal" weight that can function across a
range of caloric intakes?

~~~
jacques_chester
The calorie labels you see on food are adjusted to account for average
digestive and absorptive effects for the mix of macronutrients in that food.

Calories in - calories out doesn't mean "Calories on food label minus readout
on the treadmill". It refers to the actual energy balance. Under no reliably
observed circumstances has human biology been shown to violate the
conservation of energy and matter.

The point of repeating "a calorie is a calorie" is to reconcile people to the
inescapable fact that a caloric deficit, no matter how imposed, is the
necessary and sufficient cause of lowered long term average body mass.

The problem is that some folk like to embrace Nirvana Fallacy as some kind of
debating trump card. "You can't calculate future weight down to 1 gram
resolution 6 months from now, therefore your premises are totally wrong!"

Well I can't predict the temperature in my bedroom exactly 6 months from now
either. But I have a pretty good idea of what season it will be.

------
KVFinn
I think it is well established that you are better off with saturated fat and
cholesterol heavy foods if it means no longer being obese. Since compliance
with any diet is so important, it probably is healthier for people in general
to not worry about saturated fat and worry more about sugars and carbs and
keeping weight in check. But that doesn't mean saturated fat in your diet is
an ideal you should aim for.

I'm partial to this explanation:

[http://www.mprize.org/blogs/archives/2010/01/hi_dr_feinman_a...](http://www.mprize.org/blogs/archives/2010/01/hi_dr_feinman_a.html)

>What I think we're seeing is exactly the divergence within these populations
that you know: that carb is really rather bad for overweight, insulin-
sensitive people, such that replacing it even with SFA is relatively harmless
-- whereas for lean, insulin-sensitive people, SFA (and dietary cholesterol,
its fellow-traveller in omnivorous diets) is likely more _relatively_ harmful,
because carb is less able to derange the metabolism. We have to remember that
any time we look at these studies and see only modest or borderline-
significant effects: 66% of the US population is overweight, and half of that
majority is obeese; Europe is somewhat better-off, at 49.8% and 13.3% in men
and 36.0 & 13.5% in women per MONICA. So the deleterious effects of any
nutrient with a differential effect on low-BMI, insulin-sensitive people will
tend to be blunted by the much larger number of people for whom such effects
are blunted by their "larger" problem.

>It also means that the deleterious effects of a rise in SFA intake are at
least temporarily outweighed if it is is part of a dietary shift into a lower-
carb diet when it is successfully used for weight loss (as opposed to just
being a person's self-selected default diet, which of course is what's going
on in teh studies in Jakobsen and in the Swedish, Greek, and US Nurses low-
carb/high-protein studies). But it's reasonably clear that if you're insulin-
sensitive -- which, interestingly, is what one is likely to become after
losing weight on a successful low-carb weight-loss diet! -- the effects of SFA
become more _relatively_ harmful as teh deleterious effects of carb recede.

>t the end of the day, we have to go with what we've got. Until we get a
couple of thousand healthy twenty-year-olds locked up in metabolic wards for
sixty years or so for a really vigorous diet trial, I think saturated fat AND
carbs (especially starchy carbs) stand out as things to reduce in the diet, in
exchange for vegetables, fruit, lean protein, and PUFA (and probably MUFA) as
things to maintain or increase. And most people should lose weight!

------
hiroaki
Comment thread from last week:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6623205](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6623205)

------
gabemart
Saturated fat intake has been suggested by some studies to be positively
correlated with cancer risk [1]. I don't have an opinion on the quality of the
evidence, but it's worth considering. The article doesn't appear to mention
cancer risk at all.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturated_fat#Cancer](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturated_fat#Cancer)

~~~
venomsnake
Everything gives cancer according to scientists. Also everything protects from
one according to other bunch. We die from cancer mostly because there isn't
much left to die from - the medicine is keeping all the other stuff in check
pretty well lately.

------
Nilzor
tl;dr: we don't know shit about the human body.

------
ars
And government lunch programs want to serve only low fat milk
[http://frac.org/highlights-healthy-hunger-free-kids-act-
of-2...](http://frac.org/highlights-healthy-hunger-free-kids-act-of-2010/)

We give government too much power. Parents should decide what kind of milk
their kids should drink. Or let the kid decide.

~~~
throwaway9848
Yes, government tyranny in action, giving federal funding to qualified after-
school meal programs operated at a local level that provide free skim milk to
hungry children.

~~~
ars
Why are they forcing unhealthy skim milk?

------
autarch
Yes, I take all my health advice from newspaper articles summarizing single
journal articles.

