Key words:
1. CVD:
cardio vascular disease(diseases of heart and blood vessels)
2. AHA: American
heart association
3. WHO:
world health organization
4. PUFA:
poly unsaturated fatty acid
5. MUFA:
mono unsaturated fatty acid
6. TG: triglyceride
7. HDL:
high density lipoprotein
8. LDL:
low density lipoprotein
More than half a millennium we
have spent with a common belief that fat or oils or lipids are the worst part
of our daily diet. They cause rise in cholesterol, increase in body weight,
rise in heart and blood vessel diseases, rise in brain diseases, and may be a
risk factor for causing almost all kind of metabolic abnormalities to name few.
That belief has forced us to compromise on our day today delicacies like
sacrificing cheese from burger, reducing oil from seasonings, minimizing butter
from sandwiches and cookies and even eating raw crabs and prawns in style. This
has in fact motivated the food industries to produce low fat diets and we are
trained to eat them for the sake of good health. But what if I will tell you
that, all this is a big lie. Fatty diet is never responsible to make you fatty.
Rather it’s the high content of refined carbohydrate that we consume in place
of fat, it’s the burger not the cheese, it’s the bread not the butter, it’s the
sugar and refines flour in the cookies, who are to blame if you are fatty. What
if I will tell that biggies like World health organization/American heart
association have kept us in dark knowing the fact for decades together? If I
will tell u, it’s the carb who is devil and not the fat, would u believe me? Take
a look before deciding.
Let’s have a time travel to know the facts. In 1961 AHA declared that saturated fat increases cholesterol
which causes heart attacks. This was based on a hypothesis called ‘diet heart’
hypothesis of a physiologist named Ancel Benjamin keys and accepted blindly by Paul
Dudley White, a founder-member of the AHA. It was a dark phase for USA where a
number of people were falling prey to heart attacks including the then
president Dwight Eisenhower. The situation demanded convincing answers from the
health community and White had only this piece of hypothesis in the newly
evolving health-pharmaceutical-industrial complex. Keys presented his “seven
countries study” including US, Japan, Yugoslavia, Netherlands, Italy, Greece
and Finland to prove his hypothesis which was heavily flawed. He left out 15 other
countries that did not reveal any association between saturated-fat consumption
and heart mortality rather negated it, on intension and gifted us this big lie
which was going to be blindly followed for decades.[1][2]
Yet there is no denying that obesity and its associated
diseases are on a rise and conditions like diabetes, hypertension etc have
consumed people more than the population of our country worldwide. It’s only an
eye wash to tell that only 400-450 million people are diabetic worldwide, as
more than double of it are undiagnosed, many of the rest might not have reached
the age group yet and considering the present rate of spread, there is no
denying that it’s a global threat rather than a pandemic now.[3][4]
To evaluate the real cause behind this, thousands of
researches are being carried out and many risk factors have already been
established. The most important dietary risk factors are perhaps carbohydrates
and more specifically refined carbs and not fats. Tarino P and his colleagues
found that an independent association of saturated fat intake with heart and
blood vessels disease risk has not been consistently shown in prospective
epidemiological studies However, when it was replaced with a higher carbohydrate
intake, particularly refined carbohydrates, exacerbation of the atherogenic dyslipidemia
(lipid imbalance causing blood vessel blockade) associated with insulin resistance
and obesity was observed. Still he found the replacement of saturated fat with
PUFA to be reducing heart disease incidences. [5]
Consumption of animal products, may not be associated with
increased CVD risk, whereas nut and olive oil intake is associated with reduced
CVD risk, hence indicating the more importance of total matrix of food content
than just fatty acid content for heart problems.[6] Compared with participants
on low fat diets, participants on low carbohydrate diets experienced a greater
reduction in body weight and TG(bad fatty acid) but a greater increase in
HDL-cholesterol (good cholesterol) and LDL-cholesterol(bad cholesterol) as
found on a large scale meta-analysis carried out by Nadia Mansoor and her colleagues.[7]
In the recent AHA(American heart association) presidential advisory also it is
mentioned that replacement of saturated fat with mostly refined carbohydrates
do not result in reduction of cardio vascular disease(CVD) incidences but they
have also told that replacement of saturated fat with polyunsaturated vegetable
oils will result in good heart outcomes.[8]
From this it may be concluded that combining and balancing
the total composition of daily diet with proper weightage to all types of
nutrition including carbohydrates(mostly unrefined), fats(mostly PUFA &
MUFA but also saturated fat), protein(combined animal and plant), vitamins and
minerals will result in good overall health, the composition of which can be
discussed in another article. Avoidance of fat and fatty foods and reducing
them to lower than their minimum requirements may even be harmful than
beneficial. At the same time, minimizing or stoppage if possible the intake of
refined carbohydrates like sugar, refined flours, Trans fats containing junk
foods and replacing them with unrefined carbohydrates, unsaturated fats with
Ω-3 & 6 fatty acids will result in better outcome not only in cardio
vascular but overall health and wellbeing.
References:
1.
The Big Fat Surprise by Nina Teicholz | Why Butter,
Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet [Internet]. Thebigfatsurprise.com.
2017 [cited 18 December 2017]. Available from: https://thebigfatsurprise.com/
2.
Natarajan D. The Big Fat Lie You've Been
Told About What's Hurting Your Heart [Internet]. The Wire. 2017 [cited 18
December 2017]. Available from: https://thewire.in/119934/saturated-fats-carbs-keys/
3.
Diabetes [Internet]. World Health Organization.
2017 [cited 19 December 2017]. Available from: http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs312/en/
4.
Cho N. IDF DIABETES ATLAS Eighth edition 2017.
8th ed. International diabetes federation; 2017.available from: www.diabetesatlas.org
5.
Siri-Tarino P, Chiu S, Bergeron N, Krauss R.
Saturated Fats Versus Polyunsaturated Fats Versus Carbohydrates for
Cardiovascular Disease Prevention and Treatment. Annual Review of Nutrition.
2015;35(1):517-543.
6.
Michas G, Micha R, Zampelas A. Dietary fats and
cardiovascular disease: Putting together the pieces of a complicated puzzle.
Atherosclerosis. 2014;234(2):320-328.
7.
Mansoor N, Vinknes K, Veierød M, Retterstøl K.
Effects of low-carbohydrate diets v. low-fat diets on body weight and
cardiovascular risk factors: a meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials.
British Journal of Nutrition. 2015;115(03):466-479.
8.
Correction to: Dietary Fats and Cardiovascular
Disease: A Presidential Advisory From the American Heart Association.
Circulation. 2017;136(10):e195-e195.
