Why it's okay to say yes to butter -- without harming your health!

This post is an edited summary of an article by Debbie Bell, a Registered Dietitian, appearing in The State Journal of Frankfort KY, July 22, 2014

For the past 60 years, saturated fat and cholesterol have been wrongfully maligned as the culprits of heart disease, one of the nation’s leading causes of death. 

Dr. Fred Kummerow has spent eight decades studying the science of lipids, cholesterol, and heart disease. His work shows that it’s not saturated fat that causes heart disease, but rather trans fats are to blame. 

Trans fats are created in an industrial process that adds hydrogen to liquid vegetable oils to make them more solid. Another name for trans fats is “partially hydrogenated oils.”

These fats can be found in many foods — but especially in fried foods like French fries and doughnuts, and baked goods including pastries, piecrusts, biscuits, pizza dough, cookies, crackers, stick margarines and shortenings. 

There is some confusion about fats and their impact on LDL cholesterol, often referred to as “bad” cholesterol.  According to the conventional view, high LDL is correlated with heart disease, and saturated fat does tend to raise LDL. However, we now understand that there are TWO kinds of LDL cholesterol particles:

Small, “dense” LDL cholesterol and large, “fluffy” LDL cholesterol

The latter is not “bad” at all. Research has confirmed that large LDL particles do not contribute to heart disease. The small, dense LDL particles, however, do contribute to the build-up of plaque in your arteries, and trans fat increases small, dense LDL. Saturated fat, on the other hand, increases large, fluffy LDL.

In addition, research has shown that eating refined sugar and carbohydrates, such as bread, bagels,and soda, increases small dense LDL particles. Together, trans fats and refined carbohydrates do far more harm than saturated fat ever possibly could.

To read the original article, go to: Saturated Fats, Cholesterol Are Not Evil.

Here's another article to the same effect, and from other sources, from the Wall Street Journal: The Questionable Link Between Saturated Fat and Heart Disease

Fructose is the new "Fat"

So, last night, I picked up The Great Cholesterol Myth: Why Lowering Your Cholesterol Won't Prevent Heart Disease and perused it in the book store. It's by an MD and a PhD, and is backed up with lots of studies. In it, the authors explain why sugar, corn syrup and anything high in fructose are so harmful to our bodies in general and especially our heart health. The quick summary: because they're processed first by the liver. (This article by the editor of Harvard Health Publications provides a quick and easy to understand summary of the subject.)

Which isn't to say that ANY fructose is bad; it's just the over-prevalence in the modern American diet that is problematic. A meta-analysis published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition reached the conclusion that "obesity and diabetes rates were low when total [dietary] fructose intake was in the range of 25–40 g/d [grams per day]," adding the caution that, "Conclusions as to the safe and prudent amounts of fructose consumption will require carefully controlled dose-responses studies in different populations...."

This has prompted me to do some research on fructose found in various types of sweet substances. Here are some things I've discovered...

Here is a University of Vermont study (See Table 1) which found that higher grades of maple syrup -- those that are lighter in color -- may contain lower levels of fructose than their darker cousins.

A short list of the highest offenders, from the Wheat Belly Blog by Dr. William Davis:

Where do you find fructose? Fructose can be found in (roughly in order from worst to least):

• Agave

• High-fructose corn syrup

• Sucrose (white sugar)

• Honey

• Maple syrup

Self Magazine's incredibly helpful nutrition database has a page listing more than 700 foods highest in fructose. 

And here's the opinion of one Paleo dieter, from a forum thread on PaleoHacks:

The monosaccharide form of fructose, which is found in corn syrup, is supposed to be the most harmful. Surprisingly, the honey has about 42gm of monosaccharide fructose per 100gm serving, while molasses has about 13gm and maple syrup has about 4gm (source). So with regard to monosaccharide fructose, maple syrup would appear to be the least toxic.
However, in the previous thread on honey, studies are cited which show that honey does not have the same harmful effects as other sweeteners, and may even be beneficial. This is probably because honey is a whole food whose ingredients have complex interactions that somehow mitigate some of the possible harm from the fructose.

(Update, 3/12/13) And here's a great post on Green Lite Bites, exploring the nutritional aspects of several natural sweeteners.

Probably more info to come...

I am not a health professional and this post is not intended to be professional medical advice.

photo credit: Wikimedia

Cholesterol vs. Inflammation

What you think you know about cholesterol could hurt you.

Twenty years ago, doctors told us to stay away from high-fat foods like eggs, bacon, and butter because they raised cholesterol and could lead to heart disease.

America responded and stopped eating fat. In its place, however, we ate more sugar and other carbohydrates.

How did that work out? Not great.

As a whole, Americans grew fatter and sicker than before. Scientists back then may have reached the wrong conclusion.

As more research uncovers the role diet plays in cardiovascular disease, it’s becoming obvious that fats aren’t the only villains in the picture. Increasingly, scientists are recognizing that you should also watch out for some carbohydrates—specifically, sugars and refined grains. “I believe that a diet containing moderate amounts of saturated fat is OK, and possibly better, than a low-saturated-fat diet that is rich in sugars and refined carbohydrates,” says Ronald Krauss, M.D., director of atherosclerosis research at Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute.

Now a growing number of medical experts say weight gain, heart disease, and other illnesses are not caused by high cholesterol, but by something different: inflammation.

Dr. Beverly Teter, a lipid biochemist at the University of Maryland, said scientists wrongly blamed cholesterol for heart disease when they saw high levels of it at a damaged blood vessel. Teter believes the body put the cholesterol there to fix the problem, which was actually caused by inflammation.
"It's the inflammation in the vessels that start the lesion," she explained. "The body then sends the cholesterol like a scab to cover over it to protect the blood system and the vessel wall from further damage."

Good things cholesterol does in your body:

- can protect against respiratory and gastrointestinal problems.
- helps create vitamin D.
- the brain contains more cholesterol than any other organ and needs it in order to send messages from one brain cell to another.

Foods that fight inflammation:

- that are high in Omega 3 fats
- olive oil
- avocados
- cold water fish
- coconut oil (fights colds and the flu and has even reversed the symptoms of Alzheimers, ALS and Parkinson's Disease in some people.)
- walnuts, almonds, hazelnuts, and pecans.
- pumpkin and sesame seeds
- natural saturated fats (maybe; science is still sorting this one out).

Foods which, in excess, cause inflammation:

- Omega 6 fats
- vegetable oils
- mayonnaise
- margarine
- anything containing high fructose corn syrup or other sugars
- white bread, white pasta, white rice

Foods which, in any amount, cause inflammation:

- trans fats (Which is a man-made fat, and for which the Harvard School of Public Health says there is no safe level to consume.)
- any packaged food containing the word "hydrogenated" on the label.


Condensed from an article by Lorie Johnson at CBN and an article by Rachel Johnson, Ph.D, M.P.H., R.D., at Eating Well.

I am not a health professional and this post is not intended to be professional medical advice.

photo credit: Nicola since 1972 via photopin cc