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<blockquote data-quote="Chris24Main" data-source="post: 2697345" data-attributes="member: 585131"><p>So in the spirit of not being stuck in thinking that turns out to be wrong headed - I'd like to humbly retract something I said much earlier about Omega-3 fat.. I think I understand better now the relationship between inflammatory response, and the different types of fat, and having a good balance of Omega-3 and Omega-6 fats in your diet (these being the only types of fat that your body cannot produce by itself) is important.</p><p></p><p>So - here's an attempt to conjure up a story that makes some sense (following on from that last post, I'm becoming more and more to the opinion that good stories may be the best answer to a bunch of bad stories that we've grown up with)</p><p></p><p>We all struggle with what fats are, and how they work - we don't like saturated fat.. because ... well, I think because the fear of the word <strong>saturated</strong>.. it just makes you think of a greasy pan.. that sense of fat <em>saturating</em> your body. Of course, that's not what it means.. it's just about the links between carbon molecules.</p><p></p><p>So - I grew up in a fishing village on the East Coast of Scotland - in my childhood, there was a working fish market, and the trawlers would come and go every day, and there would be piles of nets along the harbour walls, with nets needing mending.</p><p></p><p>Now, if you think about your cell membranes like fishing nets, that's an easy thing to imagine... each cell with a wall made up of nets, which in turn are made up of net line, knotted together.. easy, right? Not totally accurate, but good enough. Now, the thing is that all fat is simply strings of carbon atoms, knotted together in various ways - so think of each piece of net line as a carbon string, or fatty acid - I think that's a close enough analogy.</p><p></p><p>Then - saturated fat, most saturated fat in your body was made in your liver, and the word just means that each bond linking carbon atom to carbon atom is stable - or saturated, but in our net analogy, think of it as being made from new paracord - it's new line and it's not likely to break. That's really all saturated means, it's only a technical chemical term.</p><p></p><p>Mono-unsaturated fats (think mainly olive oil) mean that one of those bonds is unstable, so in our analogy, maybe the net line is cheaper nylon with a single 'nick' in the line, that could break. Omega-3 (think fish oil) and Omega-6 (think nuts) are special cases, where the nick is in a certain position on the line - position, or carbon atom, 3 and 6.</p><p></p><p>Poly-unsaturated fats (think seed oils) mean that there are many nicks in the line, as there are many (poly) positions in the line that are nicked (or many unstable links between carbon atoms). </p><p></p><p>So - if we eat a good balance of fats, our cells will be composed of many different types of fatty acids - or the nets will be made up of mainly good paracord, with some nylon with nicks in them which are likely to break under stress.</p><p></p><p>OK - so if you're with me so far, the analogy goes like this - Breaks in the line are natural, they are caused by many things (like too much glucose in the blood) and when it happens, the body triggers a repair response. We want that to happen at a certain rate, because the repair team will also look after the system as a whole. To stretch the analogy, there is no point going out fishing with broken nets and not knowing about it; you will starve. You do need something to tell you that the mending is needed.</p><p></p><p>To go back to the net analogy, every Sunday evening, a group of people would go over the nets, mending as they went. All part of normal business. Later in the evening, they would all go home and the harbour walls were empty during the week.</p><p></p><p>So - (and this is where it gets really detailed, and my analogy cannot cope, so I'll back off) - different types of fatty acid have different effects on the repair team (immune response to inflammation). Some raise the alarm, and some calm everything down and persuade everyone to go home. (so this is where having the right mix of Omega-3 and 6 is important, we tend to be all 6 - raising the alarm - and no 3 - time to go home).</p><p></p><p>In other words - out diet (of too much polyunsaturated fats and oils) means that our cell walls are made up of too many pieces of 'breakable net line' that break in a way that sets off the alarms ... all the time... so that the repair team is called out at all hours, night and day, and is exhausted, and no longer able to do the job it should be doing properly..</p><p></p><p>And that's a story that explains what inflammation is... (and of course this is what drives all the bad health outcomes that we are all aware of)</p><p></p><p>But - it should also be easy to see that there is nothing in this to make anyone feel that saturated fat is bad...</p><p></p><p>Sure, if you eat far too much - the harbour walls become totally full of nets and spill over - too much of anything is bad - but within reason, saturated fat itself is really not the bad guy - we need a good balance of all the complex fats you get in real food. (not the abundance of seed oil that you get in overly processed food).</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Chris24Main, post: 2697345, member: 585131"] So in the spirit of not being stuck in thinking that turns out to be wrong headed - I'd like to humbly retract something I said much earlier about Omega-3 fat.. I think I understand better now the relationship between inflammatory response, and the different types of fat, and having a good balance of Omega-3 and Omega-6 fats in your diet (these being the only types of fat that your body cannot produce by itself) is important. So - here's an attempt to conjure up a story that makes some sense (following on from that last post, I'm becoming more and more to the opinion that good stories may be the best answer to a bunch of bad stories that we've grown up with) We all struggle with what fats are, and how they work - we don't like saturated fat.. because ... well, I think because the fear of the word [B]saturated[/B].. it just makes you think of a greasy pan.. that sense of fat [I]saturating[/I] your body. Of course, that's not what it means.. it's just about the links between carbon molecules. So - I grew up in a fishing village on the East Coast of Scotland - in my childhood, there was a working fish market, and the trawlers would come and go every day, and there would be piles of nets along the harbour walls, with nets needing mending. Now, if you think about your cell membranes like fishing nets, that's an easy thing to imagine... each cell with a wall made up of nets, which in turn are made up of net line, knotted together.. easy, right? Not totally accurate, but good enough. Now, the thing is that all fat is simply strings of carbon atoms, knotted together in various ways - so think of each piece of net line as a carbon string, or fatty acid - I think that's a close enough analogy. Then - saturated fat, most saturated fat in your body was made in your liver, and the word just means that each bond linking carbon atom to carbon atom is stable - or saturated, but in our net analogy, think of it as being made from new paracord - it's new line and it's not likely to break. That's really all saturated means, it's only a technical chemical term. Mono-unsaturated fats (think mainly olive oil) mean that one of those bonds is unstable, so in our analogy, maybe the net line is cheaper nylon with a single 'nick' in the line, that could break. Omega-3 (think fish oil) and Omega-6 (think nuts) are special cases, where the nick is in a certain position on the line - position, or carbon atom, 3 and 6. Poly-unsaturated fats (think seed oils) mean that there are many nicks in the line, as there are many (poly) positions in the line that are nicked (or many unstable links between carbon atoms). So - if we eat a good balance of fats, our cells will be composed of many different types of fatty acids - or the nets will be made up of mainly good paracord, with some nylon with nicks in them which are likely to break under stress. OK - so if you're with me so far, the analogy goes like this - Breaks in the line are natural, they are caused by many things (like too much glucose in the blood) and when it happens, the body triggers a repair response. We want that to happen at a certain rate, because the repair team will also look after the system as a whole. To stretch the analogy, there is no point going out fishing with broken nets and not knowing about it; you will starve. You do need something to tell you that the mending is needed. To go back to the net analogy, every Sunday evening, a group of people would go over the nets, mending as they went. All part of normal business. Later in the evening, they would all go home and the harbour walls were empty during the week. So - (and this is where it gets really detailed, and my analogy cannot cope, so I'll back off) - different types of fatty acid have different effects on the repair team (immune response to inflammation). Some raise the alarm, and some calm everything down and persuade everyone to go home. (so this is where having the right mix of Omega-3 and 6 is important, we tend to be all 6 - raising the alarm - and no 3 - time to go home). In other words - out diet (of too much polyunsaturated fats and oils) means that our cell walls are made up of too many pieces of 'breakable net line' that break in a way that sets off the alarms ... all the time... so that the repair team is called out at all hours, night and day, and is exhausted, and no longer able to do the job it should be doing properly.. And that's a story that explains what inflammation is... (and of course this is what drives all the bad health outcomes that we are all aware of) But - it should also be easy to see that there is nothing in this to make anyone feel that saturated fat is bad... Sure, if you eat far too much - the harbour walls become totally full of nets and spill over - too much of anything is bad - but within reason, saturated fat itself is really not the bad guy - we need a good balance of all the complex fats you get in real food. (not the abundance of seed oil that you get in overly processed food). [/QUOTE]
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