Saturated Fat

[plantagenet]

I have been around a while, having been diagnosed with T2 in 2009. I have good control of my diabetes through diet and exercise, thanks to this forum and the fantastic Low Carb Program which was a life saver for me. I have a good understanding of what carbs to avoid and generally how my diet affect my BG levels, maintain a low 5s fasting average. I eat very few potatoes, no rice or pasta and have found a low carb GF bread (bread is my weakness).

The thing I still struggle with is Saturated fats - Keeping within daily recommended amounts, there again, should I? The carbs recommended amount has been proven to be a nonsense.

So much HF in LCHF is also high in Satfat. How much is too much? Should we worry overly? On the one hand dairy is good because it is generally low carb and high fat, but there again it's high in Sat Fats. On top of all that some of those Sat Fats are poly- and mono-unsaturated fats with their missing hydrogen atoms, not to mention trans fats of which CLA is good trans fat, but, apart from a lamb chop, how do we know if we are eating good transfat?

I have a book entitled simply "Fat" that extolls the virtues of fat and it tells me that butter is 50% saturated, 30% Monounsaturated and 4% Polyunsaturated (the rest is water and milk solids in case you are still with me). It tells me that if the third pair of hydrogen atoms is missing then it is an Omega 3 fat and similarly if the sixth pair is missing then its an Omega 6 fat. I guess if both are missing it's Omega 9??? My brain is beginning to hurt!!

I realise this has turned into a bit of a Sarah Vine column in the Daily Mail, but am I the only one confused by Fat?

 

[Freema]

No I am both a bit scared of doing the wrong thing eating too much saturated fat, and on the other hand thinking how can I eat all that fat that I have to when going really low carb...
untill now I eat hardly any animal fat, and most of my saturated fat is from fresh coconut... but in the way I eat I seem almost to not eat any cholesterol at all..
and then I wonder is it okay not to get any cholesterol at all or is bad to go to the other extreme as well..
I dont like to eat pure oil or butter , but use a bit more mayo than I did before, but is it healthy then, there has been a lot of warnings against certain plant oils, so then ; is it the right kind of plant oils that is contained in cheap mayo..?
and how do I get the right ratio of omega 3 to omega 6 on an everyday basis..

I am lucky to live in Denmark where we have almost forbidden trans fats in all foods and sweets and alike.. so I don´t have to worry much of that poisonous kind of fat...but I think it ought be forbidden in all modern countries as it is not really humans food but poison.

I think it must soon be time to make a LowCarbHighFat-dictionary-cook-book, with whole weeks suggestions as it is such a new style of eating and we really need to be able to flick it together in a healthy way..

but what is facts in science and what is not when it comes to fats... I think it is getting harder and harder to be really sure if there is really a heavy substance under different claims of scientific-research on living humans.. or if what one reads is twisted to promote medicine or certain groops of producers in the fields of food manufacturing.

 

[Squire Fulwood]

am I the only one confused by Fat?

Possibly, or at least more confused than anyone else I have read on here. Personally I use what I regard as the Malhotra method. I buy full fat milk, extra thick double cream for my berries and anything with Low Fat written on it stays in the shop. I buy butter and not plastic in a tub. Since I don't eat bread you may find that eccentric but I use it to float the occasional portion of new potatoes in since this lowers the GI.

I never actually joined the Low Fat sillyness since some instinct told me it was wrong. Likewise buying and eating fat just because it achieves a percentage diet wise seems equally daft. Just stop worrying about it.

 

[Brunneria]

Like the Squire, I think advising people to eat excessive amounts of fat (or anything really) is a nonsense.

But if we cut carbs, then we need to fill that hollow empty feeling with something, don't we?
And I really don't need more meat.

Plus fat, in sufficient quantities tastes delicious.

With the added bonus, in my case, that it has helped my overall health, improved cholesterol ratios, and prevented me craving carbs.

Brill, really.

 

[kokhongw]

I think it basically boils down to the fact that our body doesn't work well when both carbs AND fats are in abundance. There are different hormones/enzymes triggered that are needed to process either carbs or fats. And primarily when we get plenty of carbs, the priority is to remove it from the system.

Only when there is insufficient carbs intake that the enzymes needed to process fats are upregulated...and it takes a while for that to happen since most of us have been on high carb diet for decades...

 

[NoCrbs4Me]

I used to be confused about fats, then I figured it out:

Fats that are unhealthy: artificial fats (e.g. trans fats), fats produced from plants using industrial processes (e.g. vegetable oil, canola oil, corn oil, etc)

Fats that are healthy: natural fats in meat, seafood, and dairy.

 

[psignathus]

I personally would not worry about saturated fats unless my total cholesterol went above maybe 8 or 9. when I told my doctor this he went a funny shade of purple. At 1 point my TC was 7.5 but it has since dropped to 6.4.