Daniel DeNoon from WebMD Medical News wrote a brief review on a Wake Forest University
study dealing with
trans fats, or partially-hydrogenated fractal oils that
have been linked directly to heart disease due to their mutated biological structure.
From the WebMD article:
"In the study, researchers fed 51 male vervet monkeys a western-style diet
- that is, 35% of their diet was fat. Half the monkeys got a lot of trans
fat, totaling 8% of their diet. The other monkeys were fed unsaturated fats such
as olive oil. Both types of diets were calorie-controlled. In theory, the monkeys
should not have gained weight.
"But they did.
"Over six years - what would, in humans, be a 20-year span - the
monkeys who ate unsaturated fats upped their body weight by 1.8%.
"Those fed trans fats packed on 7.2%. In humans, that would be enough weight
gain to significantly increase risk of diabetes and heart disease."
The Wake Forest study began with a flawed premise, although based on a novel idea.
The idea was to see if trans fats alone were sufficient to cause a gain in weight
over a long period of time, even when calories were kept exactly the same as compared
to a control group. Two groups, both fed the same amount of calories, should not
show significant weight gain when compared to each other.
The flaw was the use of
monkeys, a common mistake researchers make when
looking at nutritional paradigms for humans. The digestive system of a monkey is
quite different than a human. In fact, our digestive track is much more similar
to canines than apes. So, perhaps Rover should have been asked to join the study
while Bo-Bo the Chimp took a back seat.
While I believe this study is important - and I also believe that a properly
controlled study on canines would reveal a similar conclusion (perhaps not as severe),
it's the way the study was written up that should give us all cause for alarm.
There was no distinction between saturated fats and trans-fats.
Now, the argument can be made that the researchers knew the difference - but
the American people most certainly do not. WebMD's reach is vast, and such
a careless lack of distinction can lead people into believing what the media and
medical community have tried to convince us of for years: that saturated fat is
the "devil of foods". This is simply not true.
Unlike trans-fats, which are completely useless in human biology, saturated fats
are absolutely vital to numerous cellular and hormonal functions. Here is just a
partial list. Saturated fats...
- Raise HDL cholesterol levels, the so-called "good" cholesterol;
- Are one of the only dietary agents that lower the highly dangerous lipoprotein(a);
- Do not bind with insulin; something of extreme importance to diabetics;
- Are critical to hormonal and immune function;
- Help protect the neuron integrity in the brain, which helps keep memory and cognitive
function active as we age;
...and that is a partial list.
Do not be afraid of saturated fats in moderation - or for that matter
anything
in moderation that is from a whole food source.
Again, the dietary plans in
Fit Over 40 are unparalleled when it
comes to consuming a nutrition plan that's tasty and healthy, containing ample
amounts of natural, unrefined food sources. If you do not have
Fit Over 40,
grab it today and see for yourself...
...oh, and watch out for those obese monkeys with bags of Oreo Cookies.