Cla

[Wotan]

Mary Enig is well known in anti-aging circles for her work on essential fats, well worth reading!
One HUGE problem with polyunsaturated oils is a) the fact that they go rancid [oxidise] much, much quicker than saturated animal fats and that b) the level of rancidity needs to be about three times that of animal fat before it is detectable by smell or taste.
That bottle of sunflower cooking oil that you opened two weeks ago will undoubtedly already have a fair level of rancidity, but because it seems ok most people will carry on using it. Big Mistake!
One really, truly momentously, hugely horrible mistake to make is to re-use polyunsaturated oil for cooking. Please don't. You may as well fry your eggs in linseed oil [which is simply oxidised flax oil].
Personally I use fish oil capsules, some hemp oil [just to cover my bets] but mostly olive oil, which is a monounsaturated oil.
Oh, and I dont fry anything!

[NU_nutrition_TS]

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Well, im not advocating a diet completely ladden with cholestorol and saturated fat, as high sat fat intake has definately been linked with higher incidence of heart disease in multiple independant studies,

Neither would I, as all macronutrients should be well represented in a healthy & balanced diet...however, I must disagree with your second statement...I think, if you study the full detailed findings of these multiple independent studies carefully, they don't conclusively show any such thing!

As just one illustration:

The whole sat fat/cholesterol furore began originally with one researcher named Ancel Keys. At a symposium of respected medical professionals and fellow researchers he presented his theory that the consumption of sat fats was, in his opinion, the cause of atherosclerotic heart disease! This was met with hoots of derision from the assembled intelligentia and Mr Keys scurried away professionally embarrassed but determined to "prove" his case and redeem his tarnished image as a serious researcher. Out of a possible 22 countries, whose national statistics were readily available, he cherry-picked just 6 or 7 and plotted the sat fat consumption against deaths due to heart disease. Lo and behold a clear correlation between the two appeared! Chuffed to bits he presented this "evidence" to his doubting peers and they were bowled over by his findings! Of course, how could they have been so blind?! Very quickly an "association" became equated to "cause" and the many vested interests, who sensed that great profits could be made if they exploited this "knowledge", over-egged the pudding to get the whole idea accepted by society! It was only some time later, when this steamroller of an idea had already lurched dangerously out of control, that someone sat down to examine the statistics from the other 16 or so countries that Mr Keys had conveniently left out of his original presentation. When these statistics - for sat fat consumption and heart disease deaths - were added in to those already plotted by Mr Keys, the clear-cut correlation between the two magically disappeared! In other words, if you didn't just pick the data that supported your hypothesis, there was no evidence to show that people who consumed a greater level of sat fat were any more likely to develop or die from heart disease than those who consumed a low level!

Amongst todays adherents of the sat fat/cholesterol/heart disease hypothesis this phenomena has become known as "The French Paradox" because the French exemplified a nation whose average sat fat consumption was way above that of it's european neighbours, yet had a much lower incidence of heart disease than those same low sat fat consuming neighbours! It remains something of an embarrassment to those who continue to argue that eating too much sat fat causes heart disease!

Adapted from The Great Cholesterol Con by Anthony Colpo

[NU_nutrition_TS]

As this section often refers to studies, trials, research and so forth as a means of validating a theory or opinion it may be useful to keep the quote below in mind when deciding whether the research findings actually prove or disprove a theory or not!

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It is important to differentiate between the vernacular use of the term "significant"—"a major effect; important; fairly large in amount or quantity"—and the meaning in statistics, which carries no such connotation of meaningfulness. With a large enough number being sampled, a tiny and unimportant difference can still be found to be "statistically significant".

Extract from Wikipedia article on statistics

Or, as Mark Twain put it best:

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There are three types of lie: lies, damned lies and statistics!

[Aren_Tyr]

Completely anecdotally and with no empirical validity, I can personally say that eating a diet fairly high in saturated fat makes me feel great!

I've never felt healther or more energetic, and yet my fat consumption is fairly high these days. The high fat consumption isn't making me fat either, despite bulking, as my fat gain has been very low so far.

I've also always refused to believe that such a natual and wholesome product as butter is bad for your health, and that all these bizarre chemical spreads are good for you.

It is pretty shocking that someone's deliberately selective use of statistical data to support their hypothesis should have led to a popular "truth" becoming so well established. However, it is far from being unique in this respect!

Aren.

[NU_nutrition_TS]

Well said, Aren! My overall fat (inc. saturated fat) consumption is high - generally around 50% of total calories consumed and like you I have not noticed any increase in bodyfat - in fact I am currently losing bodyfat with little regular exercise except daily walking and the occasional light weight routine. I put this down to cutting out completely all refined sugars (former sweet-tooth!) and cereal grains and getting my blood glucose and insulin response (even as a non-diabetic) under better control. I am not on a restricted calorie diet either...my intake averages between 2500 and 3000 per day. I feel healthier now than I have for years (previously fell for the ultra-low fat propaganda!).

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Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus. There is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus. Period.
(Michael Chrichton)

[Wotan]

Got to agree with both of you. I really think that the body is meant to get the bulk of its calories from fats, not carbs.
I started using fats/oils as body-fuel a few years back. My energy levels soared! With oils there is no insulin kick-back. So you don't feel zonked even after eating to capacity.
Interestingly there are two satiety ["I'm full"] switches in the body. One are stretch receptors in the stomach and the other is a chemical feedback mechanism found in the bloodstream that deals with the level of blood-lipids.
If you eat a low fat diet and rely on carbs for calories then you lose one of those switches. Add the trough in blood sugar levels following an insulin spike which makes you crave even more carbs and you can see how obesity occurs.
The receptor switch is pretty easy to dull as well, you can soon get used to massive pasta meals!
If anyone is interested instead of taking oats and protein for a shake, mix the protein with milk and then add some olive oil to it.
See how long it is before you get hungry again!

[Tom]

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Got to agree with both of you. I really think that the body is meant to get the bulk of its calories from fats, not carbs.

finally the world has worked it out

i read alot of stuff from Udos Eramus and Chuck Rudolph, they advocate a high fat diet for so many reasons, the health benefits from fats are just unreal.

my diet im starting next week will be around 3500kcals, from 300g protein, 150g carbs, 170g fat.

i cant wait

[finlee]

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finally the world has worked it out

i read alot of stuff from Udos Eramus and Chuck Rudolph, they advocate a high fat diet for so many reasons, the health benefits from fats are just unreal.

my diet im starting next week will be around 3500kcals, from 300g protein, 150g carbs, 170g fat.

i cant wait

what's ur diet like dude? wondering how u get 170g of fat in there.

[RACKITUP]

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what's ur diet like dude? wondering how u get 170g of fat in there.

The guy must IV olive oil straight into his veins!

[NU_nutrition_TS]

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what's ur diet like dude? wondering how u get 170g of fat in there.

Hi Fin! Until I saw your comment to Tom [quoted above] I hadn't really stopped to work out just how many grams of fat I've been consuming, so I checked back to the 29th of this month, when I had consumed 3097 kcals and discovered that I had actually eaten 62% of those kcals as fat...that's 214g! Believe me, I didn't even notice it was that much! The breakdown is as follows:

Saturated fat=92.4g
Polyunsat fat=34g
Monounsat fat=69g
Cholesterol=348mg

The mismatch in the quantities above with the total quantity may be due to inputting certain values from labels as opposed to using the program's database. I am not eating humungous amounts to achieve this...yet always feel fully satisfied between meals and never experience the energy slumps I used to get with a high carb diet.