Posts

Showing posts with the label saturated fatty acids

Popular topics

Show more

MUFAs = Inflammation ⇈, SFAs = Cholesterol ⇊? Human Study Has "Good MUFA, Bad Saturated Fat"-Myth Tumble

Written by | published on
Image
Are the "good MUFAs" in olive oil not so "good" after all? Should you rather be eating SFAs all day? Whut? I guess that's what you may have thought, when you read the headline of today's SuppVersity article. "How on earth is that possible?" Actually, that's not far off of what I have thought, when I hit on the latest study from the  Top Institute Food and Nutrition  at the Wageningen University  in the Netherlands (Esser. 2015). I mean, I was not surprised to hear that the gene-expression changes the scientists concluded revealed (we should rather say confirmed) that a high fat (HF) challenge in the course of which 18 lean and 18 obese male subjects between 50–70 years, who were non-smoking, normoglycemic (WHO criteria) and not diagnosed with any long-term medical condition, consumed milkshake with 95g of fat that were either high in saturated fat (SFA) or monounsaturated fat (MUFA). Learn more about the effects of your diet on your he...
Read full article »

Scientists Probe the Interaction Between Saturated and Unsaturated High Fat Diets and Their Corresponding Carbohydrate Sources (Cornstarch vs. Fructose)

Written by | published on
Image
This add is a perfect example of how saturated fat, in this case lard has always been blamed for the "lard" on ones hips. Any hypothesis that tries to blame for our "fat misery" on a single nutrient is short-sighted. After years of fat-bashing, carbophobia and fructose hating in the course of which the situation progressively, we are now seeing the first studies which investigate what the Polish researchers, Adam JurgoÅ„ski, Jerzy JuÅ›kiewicz and Zenon ZduÅ„czyk from the Institute of Animal Reproduction and Food Research at the Polish Academy of  Sciences call the "biological interactions among these dietary factors" in their latest paper in the peer-reviewed open-source journal Nutrients (JurgoÅ„ski. 2014). With the publication of the data of a their latest rodent study, the scientists have already taken the first step to a new, an "interactionist" perspective on the obesogenic effects of saturated vs.unsaturated and simple vs.complex ca...
Read full article »

Grass-Fed Pork? Not Really. Still the Difference in Fatty Acid Composition & Micronutrient Content Are Profound & Not Accounted for by Food Databases - Let Alone Epidemiology

Written by | published on
Image
You often hear that pigs are pretty closely related to us humans, but "are all pigs created equal"? Or what may be a more appropriate question for the SuppVersity: Is all pork really created equal? If you like databases like nutritiondata.com or the USDA's very own detailed nutrient database in order to evaluate whether your diet is actually delivering all the nutrients you need you are probably missing half of the picture. At least as far as the more sophisticated details go, a recent paper from the Instituto de Ingeniería de Alimentos para el Desarrollo at the Universidad Politécnica de Valencia clearly indicates that you would at least have to consider what the animals, in this case pork, were fed and from which muscle of the animal the piece of meat you are eating has been cut, in order to get an approximate idea of how much of unquestionably health relevant micronutrients, such as coQ10 , carnosine , anserine , taurine , creatine glutamine or haem you get - a...
Read full article »

Demonized N-6 Pufas Surprisingly Ergogenic: Safflower Oil More Than Doubles Swimming Endurance of Aging Mice.

Written by | published on
Image
Image 1: Unexpectedly ergogenic - Carthamus tinctorius   L., better known as "safflower", a highly branched, herbaceous, thistle-like annual. As a regular visitor of the SuppVersity and/or listener of SuperHumanRadio, you will be familiar with my skepticism towards fish oil supplementation as the "good for all" wonder-supplement in an athletic population. You will also be familiar with studies such as Filaire et al. (2010) which showed increased MDA (malondyaldehide) levels (and thus more, not less toxic waste) in athletes receiving 600mg of EPA and 400mg of DHA for 6 weeks. Thusly, it may not come as a total surprise that Guihua Zhang and his colleagues the National Food Research Institute and the National Institute of Vegetable and Tea Sciences in Japan found that 12 weeks on a diet containing 6% fish oil reduced endurance performance in aged mice by -20% . What may be more surprising, though, is that the vilified n6-pufas from safflower oil more than d...
Read full article »

Body Fat Modulation with Corn Oil & L-Carnitine: What You Can Learn From Your Schnitzel

Written by | published on
Image
Its quite remarkable that, primates aside, swine are among the best models of human metabolism . So, even if you do not feel piggy at all, the fact that pigs just as humans are omnivores, makes them a much better model for metabolic disease than rodents. It is thus not too unrealistic to assume that we can learn something about ourselves from the results of a very recent study published in the Journal of Animal Science ( Apple. 2011 ). Figure 1: American Pork Cuts; quality is determined by corn-oil and carnitine intake of the swine. What lessons can you learn from our pink relatives? Investigating the effects of l -carnitine supplementation on the quality characteristics of fresh pork bellies from pigs fed three levels of corn oil, J.K. Apple and his co-workers observed a linear trend towards decreased belly-firmness with increasing amounts of corn oil (0, 2 or 4%) in the diet. If you look at the average American, his/he...
Read full article »

High MUFA Diets are (Heart-)Healthy and Probably Superior to High PUFA Diets

Written by | published on
Ever since the "Mediterranean Diet" was/is the talk of the town, more and more people become aware of the potential benefits of the formerly largely ignored mono-unsaturated fatty acids (MUFAs). In spite of that, the majority of consumers (probably due to the misinformation coming from the marketing machinery of the food industry) still focuses on avoiding the "bad" saturated fats and consuming as much "healthy" polyunsaturated fats (PUFAs) as possible in order not to fall victim to an obesity epidemic which is inseparably intertwined with these kind of black-and-white approaches to nutrition. In an extensive review ( Jones. 2011 ) scientists from the Department of Human Nutritional Sciences at the Richardson Centre for Functional Foods and Nutraceuticals (University of Manitoba, Canada) evaluated data from over 50 years of research to come to the conclusion: Consumption of dietary MUFA promotes healthy blood lipid profiles , mediates bloo...
Read full article »

Poly-Unsaturated Fatty Acids (PUFA) Alter Glucocorticoid Action on White Adipose Tissue

Written by | published on
Image
A very recent investigation found a possible explanation for the protective effects of high PUFA consumption against adiposity and the metabolic syndrome. On the cellular level, PUFA decreases an enzyme, called 11beta-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase type 1 (11beta-HSD1), which amplifies intracellular glucocorticoid action by converting inactive glucocorticoids to their active forms in vivo. Figure 1: Effect of Diet high in PUFA, SFA, TFA on enzyme activity (HSD1 basal = 10%). The scientists explain that, in mice, "adipose-specific overexpression of 11beta-HSD1 induces metabolic syndrome [...], whereas 11beta-HSD1 null mice are resistant to it." For the average human being this means avoiding overgeneration of this enzyme may well keep him/her lean. And in fact, the most effective way to do so, is to follow the general advice to avoid trans-fatty acids (TFA) and saturated fatty acids (SFA) and consume polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) instead: 11beta-HSD1 gene expressio...
Read full article »
Disclaimer:The information provided on this website is for informational purposes only. It is by no means intended as professional medical advice. Do not use any of the agents or freely available dietary supplements mentioned on this website without further consultation with your medical practitioner.