Diet - Saturated fat

Saturated fat

1. Saturated fats are bad fats.
2. Trans-fatty acids are also bad fats (even though they are unsatu- rated fats)
3. So the total bad fat one eats is a total of the grams of saturated fat and the grams of trans-fat.

1.ur advice is to limit the bad fat to 20 grams a day for healthy people and to 10 grams a day for people who have had a heart attack, heart surgery, elevated triglycerides, a ratio over 4 or an LDL over 130.

1. It isn’t easy to know how much trans-fat there is in food because there’s is no requirement to label trans-fatty acids in food prod- ucts at this time. (And no one is labeling or telling how much trans-fat is in their products).
2. Trans-fat is produced when unsaturated fat is hydrogenated— turning it into a solid.
3. Until the amount of trans-fat in a product is put on labels, a help- ful rule of thumb (a pretty good estimate) can be to consider that in most hydrogenated food products the trans-fat probably equals the saturated fat on the label.
4. Thus, when you are wondering how much “bad fat” there is in a product like salad dressings, margarine, table spreads, cream cheese and other hydrogenated food products, we suggest checking the amount of saturated fat listed on the label and doubling that number. In other words, if there is 1 gram of saturated fat per tablespoon of a product, there is probably another 1 gram of trans-fat, giving a total of 2 grams of bad fat.

Saturated fat is usually a bigger problem than the cholesterol we consume.

Saturated fats are the characteristically hard fats found mostly in animal products such as lard, butter and fatty meat as well as in vegetable oils such as coconut and palm.

We usually consider all saturated fats as bad fats - and most are. Some saturated fats may turn out not to be as harmful as others. For the sake of simplicity, we suggest for the time being that all saturated fats be considered essentially the same.

Limit saturated-fat intake to a 10- or 20- gram budget a day.

Saturated Fat is One of the Principle Culprits for heart attacks

As you may already know, meat and other animal fats, lard, butter, whole milk, ice cream, egg yolks, cheese and many other things contain saturated fat. Tropical oils such as coconut, palm and palm- kernel also contain lots of bad fat. These oils are in many of the things you eat, such as baked goods and especially junk food.

Most youngsters in our culture grow up eating hamburgers, fries and shakes-to say nothing of butter, cheese, bacon, sausages, fried foods and fatty meats. It’s not just the kids. Although some change is going on, most people in our culture eat way too much saturated fat. People anywhere in the world who eat the same way as people in North America also have very high heart-attack rates.

So, what about people who don’t get heart attacks?

Around the world, people eat vastly different foods with some interesting basic similarities. Each diet is built on some type of grain-wheat in the United States, Canada and Russia; rice in Japan and the orient; and corn in Mexico, Central America and much of Latin America (These grains provide essential building blocks called essential amino acids. Besides eating grain, to make a complete protein, people need other essential amino acids found in legumes such as beans. Fortunately, when both grains and legumes are eaten regularly (not necessarily in the same dish or even in the same meal), a bal- ance occurs so a complete protein results. Fish and other seafood also supply the essential amino acids. Seafood or a combination of grains and legumes, are good low-saturated-fat sources of the essential amino acids. It shouldn’t be surprising that these are the main diet components for people living in cultures where heart attacks do not occur-or occur rarely). Many also eat fish and seafood to complement the grains with essential amino acids.

Compare this eating pattern with the vast quantities of meat, eggs and whole-milk products that are a major part of the typical diets of people who do have heart attacks.

Another consistent dietary factor among many cultures with low heart disease is that, for the most part, they are not milk-drinkers. Cream, regular whole milk, cheese and ice cream contain butterfat.

“Wholesome milk is an essential food. Isn’t it necessary in our diet?” you may wonder. Most of us have grown up learning and believing this is true. Commercials keep shouting at us to drink more milk to be healthy. No one denies that milk contains many good nutrients, especially for infants and young children. The problem is the butterfat in whole milk, cream, ice cream and cheese that is a sig- nificant contributor to clogging coronary arteries. Maybe that’s one reason why only 2% of the people in the world drink milk after they are weaned (According to Frank Oski, M.D., the editor-in-chief of The Yearbook of Pediatrics). Good evidence suggests it isn’t coincidence that the traditional Japanese, Eskimos and others who don’t have heart attacks usually don’t drink milk or eat very much cheese or ice cream.

This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t drink any milk or eat any milk products, but after the milk-drinking years of childhood, a better choice is to use fat-free (nonfat) milk, yogurt and dairy products.

Another thing about the Japanese, Eskimos, people from the Pacific islands and other cultures where heart attacks are rare or non- existent, is that many of them get much of their protein from fish and seafood.

The traditional diets of most Africans and Latin Americans don’t contain much bad, saturated fat. (Except for the cattle-producing countries of Argentina and Uruguay where meat consumption is high.) The beans and corn eaten so abundantly in Latin America pro- vide valuable complex carbohydrates and protein.

Although people in the Mediterranean countries consume some saturated fat in lamb, yogurt and cheese, their cooking oil is primar- ily olive oil instead of animal fat. Olive oil contains mostly mono- unsaturated fat which seems to have some additional benefits.

There is absolutely no question about the correlation between saturated fat, plaque formation in coronary arteries and heart attacks. While almost everyone knows this now, it was not always so clear.

Let’s roll back the calendar to 1952 and eavesdrop on a conversation while a Belgian pathologist, Dr. Eugene Picard, was performing an autopsy with the assistance of a young medical student (William P. Castelli - one of the authors of the book “Good fat, Bad fat”)

“They’re coming back,” Dr. Eugene Picard announced as he examined the inside of a dead man’s coronary arteries.

“What’s coming back?” asked the student.

“The fat plaques. Just look at the atherosclerosis plugging up this 52-year-old man’s coronary arteries. This is why he died of a heart attack. We have not been seeing coronary-artery plaques for a long time.”

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“What do you mean?” asked the student.

“They disappeared by 1942 and they’ve been gone for about ten years. Now they have started to come back. We saw them before the war in three-quarters of the people we autopsied. They were almost always there in the older people. Then they started to go away and not many seemed to die of heart attacks. The people lived longer and when they died, for whatever reason, their arteries were open and clear.”

Why did the fat plaques go away in Belgium during those horrible years of World War II? Something interesting happened. People couldn’t get the rich foods they were used to eating-especially meat, butter, cream and milk. Troops came to the farms and took the live- stock away for their own use. The Europeans, rich and poor alike, were deprived of meat, butter and cream. They had no choice. They lived on plain, ordinary foods like grains, vegetables and fruits. Fat plaques disappeared by 1942-and so did heart attacks—until after the war when the people were once again able to eat lots of fatty foods.

How early do fat plaques start being deposited in a person’s coro- nary arteries? Is this something that just starts to happen when a per- son is old? This answer is of great significance because we think we can help children and young adults beat the odds of a heart attack, as well as ourselves.

Plaque buildup begins in childhood and in the young-adult years. This became evident when autopsies were performed on American troops killed in the Korean War. The average age of the young men killed in that war was 22 years and three-fourths already had fat streaks in their coronary arteries. Recent studies have confirmed this.

Think about these fat plaques every time you or family members eat greasy hamburgers, fries, doughnuts, butter and other things loaded with fat. And keep in mind that as this fat goes in, your body makes cholesterol and triglycerides. Little by little these add to deposits in your coronary arteries that may cause a lot of grief.

If you, or someone in your family, eats like a typical North American, odds are almost 50-50 that you will die of a heart attack or stroke. This is true for men and women. Because of the myth that women don’t get coronary-artery disease, their symptoms are often not taken seriously-even by physicians. This is tragic because women are at serious risk of heart disease, especially after meno- pause. In fact, coronary-artery disease is the leading killer of women over 65. Five times more women die of heart disease than of breast cancer. Every day more women than men in North America die of heart attacks. Vital statistics show 49% of women still die of athero- sclerotic vascular disease (includes coronary-artery disease, stroke, peripheral vascular disease, aneurysms, etc.) compared to 42% of men dying of these causes. (Because hormonal replacement therapy markedly reduces the risk of these devastating causes in women who are no longer producing enough estrogen to be protective, we strongly recommend that these women be on on-going hormonal replacement therapy in addition to the other things we suggest.)

No one likes lousy odds in a bet, yet sometimes people don’t pay much attention to poor odds when it comes to themselves or their health. Too many people think “It won’t happen to me.” We hope you won’t kid yourself with this misdirected reasoning. Plugged-up coro- nary arteries can happen to you. So can an untimely massive heart attack or stroke.

You can significantly change the odds.