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Showing posts from November, 2014

Carbs, SFAs, and Circulating Fatty Acids

A recent study looking at saturated fat intake in the context of a low-carbohydrate diet came out in PLoSOne the other day (1), and the headlines are covering the topic in their typical misleading fashion - see medicalnewstoday's article here titled "Rise of Saturated Fat in Diet does not Raise Fats in Blood". Even Greg Miller, PhD tweeted the study to me saying: At face value, seeing that headline and Greg's comment, I would think...hmm okay, researchers got together, set up a tracer study using some kind of labeled fatty acids in individuals consuming typical diets and showed that lipid fractions in the blood weren't enriched in these labeled fats, in any individual, obese or not, and that there was some functional outcome. Having read the study, I can tell you that's not even close to what was done - so let's investigate further: The study was entitled "Effects of Step-Wise Increases in Dietary Carbohydrate on Circulating Saturated Fatty Ac

War of the Worlds: Butter vs Oil

Fats are all the rage lately, as people who become interested in nutrition start to realize that the field's methods are far from perfect and leave the science pretty soft . I find the conversation to be a bit nauseating at times, as we try to isolate one nutrient while ignoring the whole food complex, and the food's place in the context of the diet**. Lately, the conversation seems to be about butter - is butter back? Bittman proudly declared it so . Time Magazine had a cover with the headline "Eat Butter". Harvard School of Public Health responded with an article, " Is Butter Really Back?" . What's the deal - is the nutritional sciences community really that split on whether you should be using butter or oil? My take on the issue is much more simplistic than opinions on fatty acid profiles that can't be backed up by the current data (unless someone can find me some data where humans replaced only palmitic acid with only linoleic acid and saw be