Re: Re: Negative study on saturated fat? Any thoughts? --M...

September 14, 2003

I apologize that I didn't read the whole study before my eariler comment, but

the abstract-- because I didn't realize the full text was right below it.

Please forget my earlier comments as I made some mistakes.

I commented earlier that they used trans-vaccenic acid, which is wrong. For

some reason I assumed that because it was trasn 18:1 (18 carbons long, one

double bond) but there are actually very many trans 18:1s, depending on where

the

double bond is. This one was from partially hydrogenated vegetable oil.

The study essentially found that hydrogenated oil is good for you and

prevents heart disease.

It's too bad they used caprylic acid instead of lauric acid, since it would

be impossible with the former, but possible with the latter, to get half your

dietary fat from it.

A benefit of reductionist studies like this is you can look at effects of

different fatty acids, because they all have different physiological effects. A

drawback is these are comparing a bunch of different unnatural diets, most of

which can't be replicated naturally.

It was interesting that they found cholesterol from saturated-fed animals had

*greater* risk of oxidation than that of unsaturate-fed animals. However, I

kind of wonder what the relevance is, since the oxidation was measured by what

the extracted and condensed LDL oxidized in a test tube rather than what they

oxidized in the body. This is particularly problematic because they

centrifuged them which essentially gave the unsaturate LDLs an advantage of

aggregation they wouldn't have in the blood. They suggest maybe the

non-aggregation in

the blood allowed greater contact and connection with antioxidants, but they

ignore that the aggreagation of the saturate LDLs in the blood would prevent

oxidation. So it's probably a normal body response to add antioxidants to the

vulnerable LDLs and not the invulnerable (saturate) LDLs. So I don't think any

worthwhile conclusions can be drawn.

And like Suze and I said before, since their discussion of atherosclerosis

rests wholly on the fallacy that " fatty streaks " are " early atherosclerosis, " it

can all be safely taken with a grain of salt, and perhaps laughed at.

Chris

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