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108 www.womenshealthandfitness.com.au

FATWith controversial research suggesting that saturated fat may be less harmful than once thought, and new fats such as coconut oil

sending health pros into a spin, we set out to uncover which fats you need to dose up on and

which you need to ditch.

Words: Stephanie Osfi eld

controller

108-115_Fat controller.indd 108 26/05/14 10:01 AM

www.womenshealthandfitness.com.au 109

Full cream milk or skim? Low fat or low carbs? In the past five to 10 years, the food police have struggled to reconcile new and old science on fats – leaving the

average stir-fry fiend up the creek without a butter pat. No sooner had authorities agreed that animal fats were bad and vegetable fats were good than a host of nouveau fatty acids joined the fray. Until a few years ago (pre-Miranda Kerr), medium-chain fatty acids found in coconut oil were a non-issue. Omega-3s and omega-6s were similarly niche. (Guess you’ve heard the recent warnings about disproportionate omega-6s.) Fast forward to today and divergent experts are spitting more than a too-hot Teflon pan of canola oil.

The biggest upset is the recent suggestion that saturated fat is not the coronary devil dairy-phobes have long imagined. The release of a

meta-analysis of over 70 studies involving over 600,000 people by Cambridge University found no link between total saturated fatty acids (SFA) and coronary risk. It flies in the face of universal health guidelines urging us to swap butter for marge and trade down from T-bone to salmon and small handfuls of almonds.

The message that saturated fat is a villain first came from Ancel Keys, an American scientist in the 1950s who cherry-picked data from seven out of 22 countries to prove his theory that fat ramps up cholesterol and causes heart disease. Had he published the data from the other 15 countries, his theory would have been far less convincing. For example, the island of Crete, which he excluded, had the lowest death rate from heart disease even though 40 per cent of their kilojoule intake came from fat. Despite the inconsistencies, Americans were encouraged to

embrace a low-fat diet (with Australians soon following their lead).

Adding insult to confusing injury is the voracity with which pundits – and lab results – are bickering. Another recent study, at Sweden’s Uppsala University, found that eating saturated

fats could adversely skew body composition in favour of fat. Liver and abdomen fat increased markedly in those consuming saturated fats while those sticking with polyunsaturated fat from vegetable and seed oils saw increased muscle mass.

Confused? Come with us.

OUR CELLS CONSIST OF

50 PER CENT FAT AND RELY ON A MIX OF

SATURATED AND MONOUNSATURATED FATS.

THE GREAT

LARDLow fat. Omega-3s.

Paleo. What’s a health fiend to make of

conflicting fat promises? Here’s the debate in a nut

shell.

1 SATURATED FATS These are solid at room temperature and found

in full-cream dairy foods like cheese, cream, milk and butter and meats, like steak and chicken (particularly the skin). Structurally, the branches on the chains of saturated fatty molecules have atoms attached to them, which makes them quite stable and less vulnerable to change.

� THE CASE FOR: A growing number of people, particularly if they follow Paleo or low-sugar diets, believe that saturated fats are the key to maintaining a healthy weight, feeling full and having good cellular function. “From 1971 to 2000, as Americans

decreased their fat intake, this didn’t cause a reduction in the average waistline,” says David Gillespie, author of Big Fat Lies: How the Diet Industry is Making You Sick, Fat & Poor (Penguin, $29.95). “In fact, it was expanding faster than it ever had,” says Gillespie. “Eating less fat was not making people thinner.”

According to Gillespie, saturated fat’s stable structure means it is less likely to react with air or oxidise and go rancid. “That’s why you can leave butter out of the fridge for hours and it is still good to eat and not spoiled,” he explains.

��THE CASE AGAINST: Although the Paleo diet has become one of the ‘it’ eating

plans, Dr Robert Grenfell, the Heart Foundation’s National Director of Cardiovascular Health, points out that Paleo man “ate wild, lean meat only once every few weeks because he didn’t have access to regular meat stores. He mostly lived in a half-starved state and died around 25, before he could get heart disease, so we should not be using him as an example of the benefits of a diet high in saturated fats.”

According to Grenfell, “Studies have proven and reproven in multiple settings and different cultures that saturated fat in the diet causes an elevation of cholesterol and is a risk factor for weight gain and also for cancers, such as bowel cancer.”

debate




Low-fat falloutIn the last 50 years, as well as downing skinny lattes, many of us have cut our fat intake by eating less protein in the form of red meat, chicken and eggs. To fill the gap we’ve been reaching for more carbohydrates, often in the form of white breads, pastries, pastas and biscuits. “This is a serious problem because these refined carbohydrates have a high glycaemic index (GI), which means they are broken down quickly into glucose in the bloodstream and they increase risk of weight gain, heart disease and diabetes,” says Jennie Brand-Miller, a GI expert and professor of human nutrition at the University of Sydney.

This may explain the results of the controversial Cambridge study, say experts from organisations like Harvard University, who are criticising its conclusions. Their complaint? That the review did not check if people on the low-fat diets were eating more carbohydrates. “If they were, then this factor and not their lower fat levels is most likely to explain the lack of benefits of their low-fat diet on heart health,” says Dr Grenfell.

Some experts believe that our cells are central to the debate about dietary fats. “Our cells consist of 50 per cent fat

and rely on a mix of saturated and monounsaturated fats,” says Dr Natasha Campbell McBride, a former neurologist who now runs the Cambridge Nutrition Clinic in the UK and is a vocal advocate of saturated fats. “Fats and cholesterol are essential to life – they create and protect the white blood cells and millions of other cells that repair the wall linings when damaged. When we reduce our intake of fats we reduce our cellular health, which sets the stage for conditions like heart disease and cancer.”

Weighty issuesAustralia’s Heart Foundation strongly disagrees. “Over the last few decades, there has been an astronomical fall in heart disease and a 75 per cent drop in cardiac events and that has been because we have aimed to reduce cholesterol levels,” Dr Grenfell points out. “Certainly this drop has been helped by better medications and heart treatments and lower smoking rates, but

education about issues like eating less saturated fat has

also contributed.”According to Dr

Grenfell, weight gain is complex and it is too simplistic to attribute the obesity crisis to the fact that we are eating less saturated fats.

“Heart disease is linked to weight gain, but a range

of other factors, not just the fats we eat, contribute to that

2 POLYUNSATURATED FATThese are high in omega-6 fatty acids. They are usually liquid at room temperature and found in foods like

margarine, sesame (and tahini paste, used in hummus), linseed (flaxseed), sunflower and safflower oils. Structurally, vegetable/seed oils have some branches that are unattached to atoms so they are then free to attach to oxygen atoms. Some believe this means they oxidise more rapidly and readily, which is a little like the process when a nail goes rusty when exposed to the elements.

� THE CASE FOR: The Heart Foundation of Australia says that poly-unsaturated fats should be used instead of saturated fats where possible, because omega 6 fats help to reduce LDL cholesterol (bad) and boost HDL cholesterol (good). This line is also supported by the Dietitians Association of Australia, our National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) and the World Health Organization, British Heart Foundation, American Heart Association and National Health Service UK (NHS UK).

“The argument that these fats are unhealthy because they have more capacity to oxidise is not the full story,” says Dr Darren Saunders, a cancer researcher at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research, who says that some vitamins and other compounds found in vegetable and seed oils actually soak up and inactivate their oxidative capacity. “While vegetable/seed oils can be oxidised to produce chemicals that cause mutations in DNA, the same effects have also been seen with some saturated fats,” Dr Saunders adds. “To confuse things, some types of fats/oils can act to protect DNA against this kind of mutation, and some vitamins act as protectants also. We get mixtures of these various inducers and protectors of DNA damage from food, so it is very difficult

to extrapolate effects of individual components into effects of various diets.”

� THE CASE AGAINST:“Seed oils such as canola oil, sunflower, grapeseed or rice bran oil are very high in omega-6 fatty acid, which used to be very rare in our diets before the 1920s,” says Gillespie. “Now we manufacture these oils and they are in everything because they are cheap to make in bulk. But because these fats oxidise easily, they are causing problems in our cells, which is setting us up for ill health and disease.”

Gillespie cites the Sydney Diet Heart Study as a case in point. “When the group eating butter were compared with the group consuming margarine and seed oils, they had a significant 60 to 70 per cent higher mortality rate,” Gillespie says. Easy to grasp? Well, maybe not. This study too is causing controversy. When the study began, margarine contained high levels of trans fats, which all experts agree are dire for heart health. So Australia’s nutrition experts believe the mortality rate in the Sydney Diet Heart Study reflects the trans fat content in the diet of that group, which has clouded the health benefits of vegetable and seed oils. Trans fats have been all but wiped out of Aussie margarines.

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weight gain.” Eating too much fat, which is higher in kilojoules per gram than other macronutrients, eating the wrong kinds of processed foods and being sedentary all contribute, Dr Greenfell says.

Finding the balanceFats’ relatively high kilojoule quotient demands overall moderation. But filling our shopping trolleys with low-fat foods is not necessarily the answer. “Low-fat foods often contain more sugars, salt, flavours and kilojoules while having far less vitamins and minerals than nutritionally dense foods like fruit and vegetables,” says Kerin O’Dea, Professor of Population Health and Nutrition at the University of South Australia. “For this reason a plain, full-fat yoghurt is often a better choice than the low-fat variety.”

Does that mean it’s time to trade yoru bircher for bacon and eggs? Not quite. Ross Walker, a respected cardiologist and author of 5 Stages of Health (Trade Paperback, $34.95), who first questioned the demonising of saturated fats several decades ago, points out that we need to be savvy about our saturated fat choices. “We need to be clear to distinguish between natural fats in foods like meat, eggs and dairy and ones used in processed foods such as processed meats such as bacon or delicatessen meats, cakes and takeaway, which are clearly not good for us,” Walker says. “A large recent study has shown there is no relationship between the intake of natural meats and heart disease but there is a 40 per cent increased risk for cardiovascular disease in people who regularly consume bacon and delicatessen meats.”

What most people don’t realise is that most fats comprise both saturated and unsaturated components. For example, butter is around 51 per cent saturated fat and 24 per cent unsaturated fat, while olive oil, which is considered super healthy, is around 84 per cent unsaturated fat and 14 per cent saturated fat. In light of this, the best approach may well be to simply eat both in moderation. Meanwhile, you can’t go wrong if you follow the golden nutrition rules most experts espouse. “Avoid what I call ‘white death’, in the form of high sugar, salt and processed foods like white breads and biscuits,” says Dr Walker. “Avoid foods that come in boxes and choose fresh fruit and vegetables and good quality lean protein. If your grannie or great grannie would not have recognised that food, then you shouldn’t eat it.”

HEART DISEASE IS LINKED TO WEIGHT GAIN,

AND A RANGE OF OTHER FACTORS, NOT JUST THE FATS WE EAT, CONTRIBUTE TO THAT

WEIGHT GAIN.

IS BUTTER MAKING A COMEBACK?Twenty to 30 years ago, butter was considered a villain of the fat family. But as we learn more about the natural fats it contains, it turns out it may have more health pay-offs than once thought. Swedish research has shown that after a meal, butter leads to lower elevation of blood fats than olive oil, canola and flaxseed oil. The medium- and short-chain fatty acids in butter are apparently used by the body for energy but not stored as fat. Some fatty acids in butter are also antimicrobial (palmitoleic acid) and antifungal (butyric acid), which can help reduce inflammation, which is linked

to heart disease. Butter also contains conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), which may help prevent weight gain, and the butyric acid may be protective against some cancers. So maybe you don’t need to feel an attack of guilt if you indulge in occasional golden dollops on your potatoes or bread. But again, enjoy a little rather than a slab.

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CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY FOUND NO LINK BETWEEN TOTAL

SATURATED FATTY ACIDS (SFA) AND CORONARY

RISK.

WHAT MOST PEOPLE DON’T REALISE IS THAT

THE MAJORITY OF FATS ARE A MIX OF BOTH

SATURATED AND UNSATURATED COMPONENTS.

SATURATED FATS ON the menu

Anastasia Boulais is a medical doctor and spokesperson for the Ancestral Health Society of New Zealand, which considers healthy saturated fats to be important within a good diet. “I prefer to steer

people away from focusing on a single nutrient and encourage them to concentrate on real foods,” Boulais says. “For example, eggs are vastly superior in nutritional value and keeping you full compared to industrially processed products like cereal.” According to Boulais,

here’s a day’s healthy diet – non low fat-style.

BreakfastSmoked salmon with scrambled eggs and

avocado or

Omelette with ham, tomato and spinach

LunchBeef mince fried in

coconut oil with a side of green vegetables tipped with butter

orLeftover dinner meat with roast vegetables

DinnerBaked fish with

kale chips baked in coconut oil and salad

orLamb chops with

sweet potato mashed with butter and two

other vegetables

Morning/afternoon tea“I believe that if you need snacks between meals

you are not getting enough nutrition with your main meals,” says Boulais. “In no point of our evolution did our ancestors eat five to six meals a day. The reason why you are hanging out for your morning-tea office break is because you had high-sugar cereal and low-

fat milk for breakfast.”

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