Doubling Saturated Fat In Diet Does Not Increase It In Blood

An anonymous reader writes: A new study by researchers at Ohio State University found that dramatically increasing the amount of saturated fat in a person's diet did not increase the amount of saturated fat found in their blood. Professor Jeff Volek, the study's senior author, said it "challenges the conventional wisdom that has demonized saturated fat and extends our knowledge of why dietary saturated fat doesn't correlate with disease."

The study also showed that increasing carbohydrates in the diet led to an increase in a particular fatty acid previous studies have linked to heart disease. Volek continued, "People believe 'you are what you eat,' but in reality, you are what you save from what you eat. The point is you don't necessarily save the saturated fat that you eat. And the primary regulator of what you save in terms of fat is the carbohydrate in your diet. Since more than half of Americans show some signs of carb intolerance, it makes more sense to focus on carb restriction than fat restriction."

Comments

16 people?

[cmdr_tofu]

It seems awfully unscientific to come to any kind of conclusion based on a study of 16 people over a 3 week period with engineered diets.

There is a saturated fat plateau. When you consume enough saturate fats, you cannot absorb them, but that doesn't mean it's a healthy amount to eat.

Add this to the list of misleading studies: http://nutritionfacts.org/vide...

Re:Interesting though not to be overinterpreted

[AthanasiusKircher]

Before everyone jumps on the low-carb bandwagon there are a few caveats to note:

Thanks for this list -- yes, it's important to note the limitations of this study.

However, one broader issue that this study should point out is the continued stupidity of the medical profession in assuming that because the quantity of X in diet is increased, it will necessarily increase the quantity of X in one's blood or other chemical markers.

We've seen this for many years with cholesterol studies -- the body manufactures most cholesterol, so dietary consumption has little relation to blood cholesterol levels. But that hasn't stopped decades of doctors demonizing any food with cholesterol (e.g., eggs) with no actual basis. I know doctors who still give out this crap advice to focus on a "low cholesterol diet" to lower cholesterol. It just doesn't work that way for many (most?) people, and there's no reason it should.

Now we have a study showing clearly that dietary saturated fat intake does not necessarily relate to the levels that ultimately end up in the bloodstream. Once again, this is common sense -- given that the body PRODUCES fat to store energy. If you're throwing fat into a system that is capable of producing fat, you have to actually consider what causes the system to produce fat... rather than just assuming it's only about how much fat is taken into the system.

Anyhow, more studies like this will hopefully cause clueless doctors to realize this. Once again, when a system produces the vast majority of X, dietary intake of X is probably not the most important variable -- you need to figure out what regulates the production of X.

Again, this seems like an intuitively obvious element for isolating what's going on in a system with such characteristics. But it seems beyond the comprehension of medical science -- hence all of the crappy dietary advice with no proven basis.