It seems the test involved tracking 667 old men for 10 years, seeing how much trans fatty acid they consumed, and comparing it with which ones got Coronary Heart Disease (CHD) and which ones didn’t. The conclusion was that there was a 1.28-to-1 correlation between high trans fatty acid intake and CHD.
A 1.28-to-1 correlation qualifies as a “weak association” by most statistical methods. A correlation must be at least 2-to-1 to qualify as a “strong association.” A weak association isn’t necessarily statistically insignificant, but it does mean that it might be too soon to draw conclusions from it if the sample size is too small.
I would like to know how the 1.28-to-1 correlation between trans fat and CHD established in this study compares to the correlation between high saturated fat intake and CHD. It is pretty much accepted mainstream biochemical wisdom nowadays that trans fatty acids are nearly as bad for you as saturated fatty acids (the FDA is looking at a proposal to list the trans fat content as part of the saturated fat on food labels). From my best educated guess, this study doesn’t look like it makes trans fat out to be any worse than saturated fat.
That isn’t the only study. Yes, mainstream wisdom states that saturated fats and trans fats are both and equally bad. That was the state of our knowledge a short time ago. Our knowledge as to what causes arteriosclerosis is in a state of flux and expanding. A while back mainstream said it was LDL. Then iron came into the picture. Now homocysteine raises its ugly head. Coming into play is not LDL as such, but oxidized LDL.
I don’t have all the cites. I run with a pharmocologist (Ph.D. in pharmacology) who is privy to a lot of private sites I cannot access without fees, etc. He stated what I said in my initial post.
Well, there are those studies on rats that show that a restricted calorie diet can double the rats’ life spans.
But what I was really saying was, dude was kinda-sorta implying that any diet different from the diet of our prehistoric hunter-gatherer ancestors must be automatically bad for us. I tried to point out, somewhat indirectly, that modern human lifespans are considerably longer than the average hunter-gatherer lifespan. It wasn’t that ancient man never got atherosclerosis, it was that ancient man didn’t live long enough, on average, for atherosclerosis to be a problem.
I am not surprised to learn that my former doctor was incorrect in this. She seems to buy into a lot of myths relating to diet. I complained of stomach aches once and she put me on a no fat, no spice, no dairy, low-sodium, low-calorie, no fruit, no fruit juice, no soda, no caffiene diet. I asked how long I would have to be on this diet and she told me the rest of my life. She did not run tests, she just said that the diet would probably make the pain go away and would improve my health. “If it tastes good to you, don’t eat it. It will make you produce too much stomach acid.”
According the the latest research you need to eat vegetables,fruit and a little fish and do lots of physical and mental exercise.
The people doing this research did not give an evolutionary type explanation for this BUT i reckon 14 million years of evolution must have some effect.
BUT - who can be bothered AND perhaps a short happy life is better ?
It is true that rats who eat a lot less live longer and so would humans BUT it would be a near starvation diet.
The answer may just be to eat healthy (most of the time ! ) and do some exercise.
Well, trans fats are in the news again. Last night, one of my local TV stations (KICU channel 36 in the south San Francisco Bay Area) did a little news segment on the evils of modern french fries. They claimed that trans fats, such as those found in the hydrogenated oils used by McDonald’s and Burger King’s french-fry machines, are a billion zillion jillion times worse for you than saturated fats. To back this up, they referred to something called the “nurse study” which followed the health and diets of something like 80,000 nurses, and which concluded that a 2% or 3% increase in trans fat intake corresponded to a 93% increase in their chances for heart disease.
Naturally, as most modern news programs are wont to do, they reported this conclusion as completely established scientific fact and the nurse study as completely free of controversy. (If this were indeed the case, then why is the FDA only considering changing its food labelling requirements to list trans fats as part of a food’s saturated fat content, instead of as some kind of separate, deadly concoction?)
**Q: Is it better to eat butter than margarine because of the trans fat?
A:** No. Although some margarines contain more trans fat than butter, the total of trans and saturated fat (the LDL-C raising fats) is always less than the total for butter. The total for butter is much higher because of all the saturated fat that it contains. The chart below shows you the comparisons of the content of these types of fats in butter and in some margarines. It is usually better to eat the softer or liquid margarines that contain lower amounts of saturated and trans fats. Also, nonstick cooking spray may be substituted for other fats when “greasing” the pan. The following information is from the most recently available 1995 report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and FDA data. Since that time, the margarine industry has reformulated many margarine products to reduce the total fat, saturated fat and trans fat content.
FAT TYPE PER SERVING(*)
**Product Total Fat Saturated Fat Trans Fat Saturated and
Trans Fats**
Butter 10.8 7.2 0.3 7.5
Margarine, stick 11.4 2.3 2.4 4.7
(82% fat)
Margarine, stick 9.5 1.6 1.8 3.4
(68% fat)
Margarine, tub 11.2 1.9 1.1 3.0
(80% fat)
Margarine, tub 5.6 1.1 0.6 1.7
(40% fat)
(*)Butter values from FDA Table of Trans Values, dated 1/30/95. Other values from USDA Composition Data, 1995.
I found this article to be very informative http://www.faseb.org/ascn/ajcn7799.htm in regard to trans fatty acids and fatty acids in general. It would appear that the whole debate over the negative effects of trans fatty acids in inconclusive. Most articles on the subject state a primary need to increase activity levels and a seconday need to limit the amount of saturated fat in the diet. IMOSHO, it’s the general decline in hard physical labor over time that has caused so much trouble.
The Kohlmeier study mentioned in both of those articles found that women who had consumed greater quantities of trans fatty acids had an increased incidence of breast cancer. But generally speaking, people who consume greater quantities of trans fats (primarily found in snack foods) also tend to consume greater total calories and greater amounts of saturated fat.
In fact, the Nurses’ Health Study is described in the second article as showing a positive correlation between breast cancer and the total consumption of all fats, and between breast cancer and the consumption of saturated fats. This is consistent with the notion that trans fat intake is not particularly more associated with breast cancer than the intake of saturated fat, and that the presence of trans fats in the bodies of breast cancer patients in the Kolhmeier study may merely be an “indicator” that these patients had eaten more total fat and/or more saturated fat.
Your knowledge and level-headedness is much appreciated.
It was always my understanding that it was an overabundance of saturated fat in the diet in general that contributed to health problems. Thanks for reiterating that particular fact.
Did you post to any of the Atkins Diet threads? If so, I plan an giving them another another look.
“TFA can cause an increase in plasma lipoprotein (a) concentration (especially in individuals with a high starting level) which is considered by some workers in the field to be an independent risk factor for CHD.” [emphasis mine]
It also, unfortunately, does not say whether saturated fats can cause an increase in lipoprotein (a), and if so, whether saturated fats increase lipoprotein (a) to the same degree as an identical amount of trans fats do. shell, yes, I posted to the Atkins Diet threads on occasion. I don’t remember if I said anything useful, though. My parents are on the Zone Diet, which is like a milder version of the Atkins Diet, so those threads caught my attention.
Lowfat tub margarine has the lowest saturated and trans fat total of the 5 foods in the table above, so yeah, the FDA’s position as of 1997 is that it’s the “safest” as far as your cardiovascular health goes.
Of course, tomorrow we may see some completely irrefutable study we’d never heard of before, which proves, beyond all doubt, that trans fat causes everything from Parkinson’s disease to hangnails. But for now, the best evidence we have seems to indicate that trans fat is about as bad for you as saturated fat is.
I guess we all can agree that we should avoid both trans fats and saturated fats, as the safest way to go. There are a lot of butter substitutes other than margarine. I use and like hummous, and I like it on flat bread.
