Saturated Fat

**Portia**

I'm about 100pgs into 'The Diet Delusion' and my head is spinning.

Is Sat Fat still considered bad? Is it now good? Is there a general consensus on the Sat Fat issue amongst nutritionists/dietician?

Also, how is it understood ot affect cholesterol levels? And is high cholesterol still considered bad??

Lots of questions I will prob get the answer to as I read through the book but I wanted to see what people thought of his ideas and how much credance is actually given to them and if there are any criticisms!

Since I've started reading this forum I have never been so conflicted re nutrition!

Sapsorrow

**Portia** wrote: »

I'm about 100pgs into 'The Diet Delusion' and my head is spinning.

Is Sat Fat still considered bad? Is it now good? Is there a general consensus on the Sat Fat issue amongst nutritionists/dietician?

Also, how is it understood ot affect cholesterol levels? And is high cholesterol still considered bad??

Lots of questions I will prob get the answer to as I read through the book but I wanted to see what people thought of his ideas and how much credance is actually given to them and if there are any criticisms!

Since I've started reading this forum I have never been so conflicted re nutrition!

All I'll say is take Taubbes with a pinch of salt, he is an extremist imo although he's still very good and I enjoy his writing a lot. My opinion is saturated fat isn't as bad as it was thought to be but that doesn't mean its good either or that its sensible to start laying on the cheese and cream. Fat's important but I don't think a high sat fat intake is necessary for health in any way and at the moment my stance is that it's better to be safe by not going too mad on it until more is learnt but not to be too scared to have moderate amounts in the diet. The main thing is to make sure you fry and cook with it as its more heat stale. It does seem to affect some people negatively more than others cholesterol wise. Most dieticians/nutritionists agree that sat fat is something to restrict, at least in my college. High cholesterol can be bad or good, depends on the type and ratio.

El_Dangeroso

Reading the next 200 pages will definitely answer all your questions.

The perception of saturated fat is definitely changing in the scientific realm, albeit slowly, the penny is starting to drop with more and more prominent scientists.

The original evidence against saturated fat was one observational study where the lead researcher conveniently 'forgot' to include the data from 15 out of 22 countries.. the 15 countries that happened to show no association (or an inverse association) at all with sat fat and CVD.

But that was the 1950's and it took about 30 years for the idea to reach public policy, and it's gonna probably take another 30 years to change back. Arterycloggingsaturatedfat is an idea really ingrained in people's minds and that's not going to change overnight.

Enjoy the Diet Delusion, Taubes is one of the best scientific writers working today, he's got a new book coming out in 2011 that I'm eagerly anticipating.

The sat fat debate has pretty much been done to death on this forum. Here's the last round:

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=64009714#post64009714

El_Dangeroso

khrystyna100 wrote: »

All I'll say is take Taubbes with a pinch of salt, he is an extremist imo although he's still very good and I enjoy his writing a lot. My opinion is saturated fat isn't as bad as it was thought to be but that doesn't mean its good either or that its sensible to start laying on the cheese and cream. Fat's important but I don't think a high sat fat intake is necessary for health in any way and at the moment my stance is that it's better to be safe by not going too mad on it until more is learnt but not to be too scared to have moderate amounts in the diet. The main thing is to make sure you fry and cook with it as its more heat stale. It does seem to affect some people negatively more than others cholesterol wise. Most dieticians/nutritionists agree that sat fat is something to restrict, at least in my college. High cholesterol can be bad or good, depends on the type and ratio.

I do understand the cautionary principle in waiting until more is known, but by that logic it would be far more wise to replace all the vegetable oils in your diet with saturated fat, considering that the establishment didn't think twice about sanctioning the introduction of a food into our system that basically didn't exist before this century.

We've been eating sat fat since year dot, we've only been eating veg oils in any serious quantity for about 35 years, right at the start of the obesity epidemic. Co-incidence? Quite possibly, but there is evidence coming out that excessive omega 6 causes appetite dysfunction, along with cancer, heart-disease and depression. So you could say we've all been participating in a massive uncontrolled experiment for the past few decades.

I don't think there is such a thing as too much saturated fat. Too much dairy, probably, but it's definitely not the sat fat that's causing the issue. It's very filling and you'll get diarrhea if you even try to overeat it. It's pretty much self-limiting