{"id":2617,"date":"2009-09-11T05:08:24","date_gmt":"2009-09-11T03:08:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.ultimatefatburner.com\/?p=2617"},"modified":"2014-06-26T14:36:46","modified_gmt":"2014-06-26T18:36:46","slug":"saturated-fat-bad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/saturated-fat-bad\/","title":{"rendered":"Saturated Fat May Not Be So Bad After All…"},"content":{"rendered":"

Interesting blog post by Monica Reinagel, over at NutritionData.com<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Saturated fat and red meat seem to prevent\u00a0expanding waistlines<\/strong><\/p>\n

Danish researchers<\/a>\u00a0studied the\u00a0links between\u00a0consumption of various food groups and change in waist size.\u00a0 Why are they\u00a0worried about waist size? An increase in waist size signals an increase in visceral, or abdominal, fat. This is considered the most dangerous pattern of weight gain because abdominal fat is strongly linked to increased risk of heart disease, cancer, insulin resistance, and diabetes.\u00a0 In fact, the association is so strong that a waist measurement of more than 35″\u00a0 (for women) or 40″ (for men) is an independent risk factor for heart disease.<\/p>\n

Surprisingly (to some), they found\u00a0that women who\u00a0ate more butter and high fat dairy products gained less weight around the waist than those whose diets are lower in saturated fat.\u00a0A similar association was observed with red meat–that is, those who ate more red meat had smaller waistlines. The researchers seem to be at a loss to explain these findings.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Actually, the paper points out that…<\/p>\n

For women, 5-year difference in waist circumference was inversely related to intake from red meat, vegetables, fruit, butter, and high-fat dairy products, whereas intake from potatoes, processed meat, poultry, and snack foods was positively associated. For men, red meat and fruit intakes were inversely associated with 5-year difference in waist circumference, whereas snack foods intake was positively associated.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So it may not be saturated fat per se that’s problematic, as the quality of the overall diet.\u00a0\u00a0Saturated fat intake in the context of a balanced diet\u00a0rich\u00a0in nutrient-dense\u00a0whole foods\u00a0may not be\u00a0so bad, after all.<\/p>\n

For the record, I’ve never been a real stickler about avoiding saturated fat-containing foods,\u00a0either.\u00a0 Although I eat lean meat\/skinless poultry and avoid butter, I loooove cheese (including full fat cottage cheese) and consume whole eggs virtually every day.\u00a0 I also use a dab of coconut oil here and there for cooking.\u00a0 Yet my blood lipid levels are excellent.\u00a0 Of course, I try to make sure I get a balance of fats, too, with polyunsaturates from fish oil\/grapeseed oil + monounsaturates from foods like nuts, olive oil and avocadoes.<\/p>\n

So I’m with Monica when she writes:<\/p>\n

…it seems that plain overconsumption of food in general is a bigger problem.\u00a0 The fact that so much of that food is over-processed and nutrient-poor sure doesn’t help.<\/p>\n

If you’re eating a calorically-appropriate diet made up mostly of whole foods, I’m prepared to be pretty darned flexible about the details.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s sound advice, and certainly tracks with my personal experience. \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Interesting blog post by Monica Reinagel, over at NutritionData.com: Saturated fat and red meat seem to prevent\u00a0expanding waistlines Danish researchers\u00a0studied the\u00a0links between\u00a0consumption of various food groups and change […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[14,28],"tags":[308,808,843,1434,1742,1786],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2617"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2617"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2617\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7724,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2617\/revisions\/7724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}