Just hummous a happy tune, will ya?
I wasn’t going to post to this thread again, but if ah mus, ah mus.
I saw my friend this morning and mentioned to him the discussion of this thread vis a vis what he had said. He replied that there is good solid evidence that trans fats are worse for you than sat fats, and referred to a recent Science magazine review article. He said that it is on the web, but you have to be a paid subscriber to get the website. He said further that this week there should be letters written to the magazine discussing the pros and cons of the article.
It won’t be too long before the popular press picks up on this story, I would guess.
If the Science magazine article used the Nurses’ Health Study as a focal point, then I’d have to say the popular press has already picked up the story, because of that anti-french-fries piece I mentioned seeing on KICU channel 36 a few posts back.
Since the articles in the links previously posted were in September 2000, I doubt it. This was in last week’s Science. My friend said he will give me the issue number, but hasn’t yet.
Um … Science magazine isn’t exactly one of those prestigious peer-reviewed journals that researchers try to publish their results to first. Chances are, the Science article is a second-hand report about research already published elsewhere. (In a way, Science magazine is the popular press.)
My friend said it was a review article, which means the author reviewed studies already done. He sent me this info: The article in question is entitled “The Soft Science of Dietary Fat,” with a subheading that reads “Mainstream nutritional science has demonized dietary fat, yet 50 years and hundreds of millions of dollars of research have failed to prove that eating a low-fat diet will help you live longer.”
It appeared in the March 30, 2001 issue of Science, vol. 291, pgs.
2536-2545.
That title mentions nothing about trans fats vs. sat fats, but perhaps the article itself does, as that was what my friend said.
Um, actually, Science is pretty well regarded among bench researchers (at least the bench researchers that I work with). It’s considered comparable to Nature and Cell as far as scientific validity.
I don’t think any of them would turn down the oportunity to publish there. In fact, a Science publication can make or break a career, at least in my neck of the woods. (Pharmacology & Therapeutics, Biochemistry & Molecular Biology, Physiology & Biophysics).
Perhaps its reputation is different among research studing clinical populations, but I don’t think so…
Al.
among researchERs studYing…
<ahem>
Oh, shoot. I’m sorry.
I was thinking of Science News magazine, not Science magazine. My bad. Science (http://www.sciencemag.org) does seem to be up there. Is it really on the same level with heavyweights like Nature, though, and not merely with middleweights like Scientific American?
Most definitely. So is the price.
You know what I like about saturated fatty acids? They’re essentially a diesel fuel molecule with one little formic-acid group (O=C-O-H) stuck on the end. How come we never hear about unsaturated diesel fuel?
Okay.
so…how about peanut butter?
Natural-style peanut butter (e.g. Laura Scudder’s, Adams), or the Skippy/Jif/Peter-Pan variety that has dextrose and Crisco added to it?
You should be careful with peanut butter and don’t eat it if it is rancid, as rancid peanuts develop aflatoxin, a carcinogen.
There are soy-based spreads that take the place of butter/margarine. Light cream cheese is another substitute. And how about jelly? If you haven’t tried hummous, give it a go.
I wouldn’t worry too much about carcinogens in old peanuts. Heck, I wonder how many carcinogens there are in old soy spreads. Many common “natural” foods are rife with carcinogens, according to http://www.acsh.org/publications/booklets/menu99.html; but whenever you’re discussing a carcinogen, whether “natural” or artificial, you have to keep in mind the tried and true adage of toxicology: “The dose makes the poison.”
There’s also Benecol, which is a non-digestible fat substitute. I tried it and don’t like it. But tastes differ. The manufacturer claims it is a cholesterol-lowering dietary supplement, whereas FDA claims it’s a food, a substitute for margarine. It’s ingredients, stanol esters, are derived from plant relatives of cholesterol, mimicking animal cholesterol and thereby preventing the intestines from absborbing animal cholesterol. A recent study demonstrated a 14% reduction in cholesterol. (Science News, November 14, 1998.)
In January, 1999, McNeil Consumer Products, the US distributor, arranged with the FDA to declare stanol esters as "Generally Recognized as Safe" [GRAS] food ingredient. That allows Benecol to be marketed as a food without having to do food-additive testing on the esters. Take Charge is Unilever's Lipton margarine using a stanol-like ingredient extracted from soybeans. (Nutrution Action Health Letter, April 1999).