Can you help me with this nutrition question?

[Stella Richards]

Hello,

What if I wanted to only ingest unsaturated fats? what is the difference(heath consciously) other than the lowering of cholesterol. are saturated fats the same as unsaturated fats except saturated with cholesterol? Is it still bad to have too much unsaturated fats in my diet? I know I have many questions but please sum them all up for me in your answers.

[Jackamaideshwang]

Oooh righty. First of all, ingestion of saturated fats have not been proven to be damaging to the heart or to raise cholesterol levels. Secondly, the link between blood cholesterol levels and arterial plaques is minimal in most people, if not non-existant. Saturated fats are actually very healthy for you in many ways, including immune function (which will reduce the risk of cancers).
If you're going to ingest lost of unsaturated fats, ingest the monounsaturated varieties, these are so called "heart healthy" by the organisations, but I would just call them neutral - nothing bad.
If you get too much polyunsaturated fats in your diet, namely the omega 6 variety, this will harm your health, promoting inflammtion and suppressing the immune system. Actually this mainly just results from linoleic acid, the omega 6 DGLA promotes anti-inflammatory processes. Linoleic acid was one of the first immuno-suppressors used for kidney transplant patients, yet most stopped using this as there were way too many cancer cases in the transplant patients (I think canola oil is about 21% linoleic acid, other common oils have up to 80%....death oils). You should be conscious of eating more omega 3 fatty acids, as these are thought to counteract the omega 6's you consume in terms of the inflammatory and immunosuppressing responses. Most of the bad polyunsaturates are in grains, and nuts and even vegetables. The good polyunsaturates are in fish and grass fed animal products (these have a better ratio of omega 3:6). Its debateable about whether all you need to worry about with the omega 3 and 6 is the ratio, or if there is a daily window of requirement/ some threshold for their effectiveness.

So in my opinion, you should consume mostly saturated fats, then followed closely by monounsaturates, then polyunsaturates.
(with little carbohydrates- 40g and under a day, and plenty of antioxidants/barely any free radical producing substances, as this will combat cardiovascular disease the best in my opinion)

[Honken]

Very nice post! :smile:

[Aiden Bloodaxe]

I knew Jack would kill off this question straight away. :good:

[Jackamaideshwang]

Awww shucks.

[Birch]

You say you put saturated above unsaturated?
Why so?

[Jackamaideshwang]

Because of the various health benefits. At least 50% of your fats need to be saturated in order for calcium to be deposited into the bones effectively. The enhancement of immune function as stated above. You use essential fatty acids better, and omega 3's are better retained in tissues. Saturated fats are said to be the preffered fuels for the heart. They help protect us against harmful micro-organisms in the GI tract.(also cholesterol can act as an antioxidant, which means it can actually protect from heart disease).
They're also much more stable, so you can use them in cooking and you won't get trans fats.

Plus, by limiting unsaturated fat intake, you're limiting linoleic acid and arachidonic acid intake also, which is much more plentiful in most unsaturated fat sources than ALA, DHA and EPA (apart from fish). Most foods with saturated fats (grasssfed animal sources) have preferable levels of omega 3's and 6's.

[Birch]

When you say 'preffered fuels for the heart' are you reffering only to the animal sources? Because I believe the ones from the processed side of things are the ones you want to avoid.
And are you saying go 50/50 with saturated/unsaturated because of the calcium?

I can understand you would stay away from trans fats, which if I am not mistaken are unsaturated. But whats so bad aboutu getting most of your fats from things like avacado's, nuts and oils? Does it not lower the LDL and raise the HDL?

[Tocowujo]

Wonderful thread, i now have a greater understanding of lipids. I believe that one of the reasons that monounsaturated fats are promoted so much is because typical diets are excessively high in saturated fats as is.

[Jackamaideshwang]

The preffered fuels for the heart I think are palmitic acid and stearic acid, don't quote me on the stearic, but they are both saturated fats. Fresh animal fats are best, yet some of the 'processed' (rendered I'm assuming) saturated fats are still good because of the stability of the fatty acid molecule (don't go all trans and partially hydrogenated and such). It is inevitable though that there are unsaturates in the mix and will be damaged when heated (when the fat from the animal is rendered). Coconut oil is promoted alot as a good cooking oil because of the saturated fat, avocado oil is also promoted as being more stable, but they don't mention it's because it has a bit more saturated fat than other oils. There are hamful compounds that are derrived from fats though (for industrial use, and body cleansing products), so yeah I guess the unprocessed the better.

Avocado's and nuts have plenty of monounsaturated fats, which are seen as 'heart healthy' because of it's effect on HDL and LDL thing, but as I said in my first post, the LDL and HDL thing isn't based on solid research, and doesn't even make sense if you really think about it. The thing with most nuts and oils is the omega 6 content, they have shitloads compared to the omega 3's, if they have any. Walnuts are touted as a nut with omega 3's in it, and they do have small amounts, of ALA, and alot more omega 6's. The minscule amounts you actually convert to EPA, aren't worth the large amounts of linoleic acid and other unhelpful omega 6's. Saturated fat sources (the good grass fed ones - how it should be), also have small amounts of polyunsaturated fat in them, and they have much more desirable omega 3 and 6 profiles than the other polyunsaturated fat sources. This is why I put saturated fat consumption higher than the others, and because of the other bonuses of saturated fat.
Of course it's more expensive and can be hard to find grass fed meat/game meat, so the alternative is grain fed. These have quite undesirable omega 3 and 6 profiles, so you will need to supplement with lots of fish oil and/or just eat lots of oily cold-water fish.

So a diet high in animal fats, therefore high in saturated fat, is good, as long as it's grass fed.
A diet high in grain fed animal fats is bad, in that case, minimise the fat in your animal products, get extra saturated fats from coconut oil etc, and supplement with fish oil. In both cases, avoid omega 6's, as even on the recommended diet, it's easy to go overboard.

I'd probably go around 60-70% of fats saturated, 20-30% monounsaturated and 10% polyunsaturated (you don't need much to fulfull the EFA requirement). The percentages probably wouldn't work as part of a low fat diet, as you need a certain amount of each fats to get the benefits.
I hope that made sense to everyone.

Edit:
To Tocowujo, saturated fats are avoided like the plague in most places (in my experience), because of the false Heart disease links and the over-reporting in the media etc, yet it's this that is probably making heart disease and some other chronic disease cases more common. Saturated fats aren't bad, this is the major point of my responses. However they may be high in terms of too much caloric intake, or damaged fats.