A SWEET fat lie..!

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.