Help with fat

[William]

I think that there is something useful in this study, but can't decode it. My guess is that it means that monounsaturated fat/hide fat is better for us than kidney fat.
Did I get it right?

"Insulin resistance is thought to be an important contributing factor to the modern diseases of civilization such as metabolic syndrome, blood lipid disorders, hypertension, obesity and type II diabetes.1 Although genetics play a role in insulin resistance, the observation that obesity and diabetes are increasing at alarming rates worldwide suggests that there are vital environmental factors that also need to be considered.2


Although carbohydrates play an integral role in insulin resistance by elevating glucose levels, there is also strong evidence that the amount and quality of free fatty acids consumed contributes to insulin sensitivity.3 It has been shown in rats that under certain circumstances, free fatty acids are required for glucose-stimulated insulin resistance. Essentially, when rats are infused with a high level of glucose, in the absence of fatty acids, the insulin response is non-existent.4 In contrast, when this occurs in the presence of high levels of free fatty acids, glucose-stimulated insulin resistance is extremely elevated. It was shown in these studies on rats that the amount of saturation of the fatty acid was also correlated with insulin secretion.5 The more saturated the fat, the higher the insulin burst. Thus, in rats, it seems that free fatty acids are vit al to produce glucose-stimulated insulin resistance, and, of these, saturated fats have the
 most detrimental effects.


Whether this occurs in humans was investigated by Vessby et al. (2001), who established that the amount and quality of fat in the diet could also be important for the development of insulin resistance in our species. A group of 162 healthy subjects were given an isocaloric diet high in either saturated or monounsaturated fat for three months. As in rats, insulin resistance depended on the amount of fatty acids consumed and the saturation of those fatty acids. When the amount of energy gained from fat was greater than 37%, it was found that insulin sensitivity was impaired in both the saturated fat group (-7.8%) and the monounsaturated fat group (-3.3%). However, when the amount of energy coming from fat was less than 37%, a significant difference was found with saturated fat still decreasing insulin sensitivity (-12.5%) and monounsaturated fat increasing it (+8.8%). Within the context of this study, it would seem that insulin resistance can be improved
 on a diet c onsisting of less than 37% of energy from fat, with this fat coming predominantly from monounsaturated fatty acids."

[PaleoPhil]

If I were you, William. I would read the original studies, or at least the abstracts. Saturated fat studies are notorious for being poorly done and selecting non-healthy foods for the saturated fat. None of these studies is particularly new (the newest is from 2003), so Anthony Colpo, the pro-saturated fat fanatic, has probably torn them all to shreds already.

Someone has already pointed out that Vessby’s saturated fat diet included "butter and a table margarine containing a relatively high proportion of saturated fatty acids" versus a "monounsaturated fat diet used a spread and margarine containing high proportions of oleic acid derived from high-oleic sunflower oil." I eat saturated fat from the body fat of animals, not from butter or margarine, so I'm not concerned. If they compared saturated fats from grass-fed suet vs. monounsaturated fat from a high-monounsaturated-fat margarine, I'll bet they would find the opposite results.

Besides, both Lex and I eat diets high in saturated fats from animal body fats and we do not appear to be insulin resistant.

So Dr. Dan's article could be viewed as an argument against butter and margarine, but probably not against all saturated fat sources.

[TylerDurden]

Please bear in mind that all such studies focus on COOKED saturated fat so that, inevitably, health problems arise from eating the heat-created toxins present in such cooked saturated fats, and such negative results inevitably show up in the multitude of studies on saturated fats. Raw, saturated fats, though, are fine.

Interestingly, the very few studies I've seen which are high-quality and which favour consumption of saturated fats tend, overwhelmingly, to be the ones focusing on the consumption of coconut oil(which is usually only lightly-treated re heat).

[PaleoPhil]

That's another good point, Tyler--and the butter likely was not raw and did not come from grass-fed animals, so even the pro-raw-dairy advocates would have a good counter argument against the Vessby study.

The nonsaturated-fat plant oil companies have way more money than the companies that make lard or coconut oil, so they are able to fund study after study, too numerous for 99% of the people to actually read them all, which is what they are counting on. Doctors and scientists see all the studies, don't have the time to read more than an abstract of a couple of them, and just assume that with so many they MUST be true. If you look closely at any one of them, you'll see they are riddled with problems and often don't even make the conclusions that the anti-saturated fat diet dictocrats and veggie fanatics claim. As of 2008, when I last reviewed the studies, there were none that made a good case against raw, nondairy saturated animal fats, and I haven't noticed any since.