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Swedish researchers did a study in 2008 where they asked young, healthy people to eat at least two fast food meals per day and not exercise for four weeks. The goal was to raise their body weight 10 to 15% rapidly and see what effect that had on them. The results of that study were startling, and they’ve held up to further testing.
The researchers were expecting the fat to raise bad cholesterol levels. Instead: saturated fat boosted the good cholesterol. That’s the cholesterol that actually protects you from disease and even lifestyle choices like smoking. Some of the subjects did experience the beginning of liver damage. But not because of the fat: because of the sugar in the cokes. This may finally explain the “French paradox”:
For nearly two decades, scientists have wrestled to explain how the French can consume a diet rich in fats — from abundant butter, cream, cheese and meat — yet have generally low levels of heart disease and hypertension.
“The study showed that the increase in saturated fat correlated with the increase in healthy cholesterol,” he said.
And don’t we all have at least one ancestor who ate eggs, real butter, cheese and/or meat three times a day and lived to be eighty or more with no heart problems or diabetes or any of the other things fat supposedly causes? This study may finally explain how that happened, and why many of us who dutifully switched to margarine and low-fat meats and low-fat everything had worse health to show for it.
The other important thing to consider here is that low-fat processed foods often contain more sugar than their regular-fat counterparts. Fat provides a lot of flavor, and it takes a lot of sugar to replace that flavor. Even foods you don’t think of as sweet – like sour cream – can get a couple of grams of sugar added to every serving when they’re made “low fat.” A couple of grams doesn’t sound like a lot, but when you eat low-fat salad dressings, sour creams, breads, etc., a “couple of grams” here and there adds up, and we find ourselves eating more sugar than we realize.
If you really want in-depth information about this, check out this article written by an OB-GYN nurse practitioner. For years, she believed the myth that eating fat was bad, and couldn’t understand why both she and her patients were getting less healthy on low fat diets instead of more healthy. She breaks down precisely which fats are the best ones and explains the incorrect thinking behind a lot of food myths that even doctors still believe. She also explains just why we need fat and can’t resist our cravings for it. It’s pretty complex stuff, but worth a read – or at least a scan to the headings that interest you.
It’s interesting to note that most of the later press reports of the Swedish study ignored the sugar issue and blamed fat exclusively for the problems the people in the study experienced, even though that’s totally the opposite of what the study actually said. That’s really unfortunate for people who are looking for the truth. One has to wonder if it protects the profits of a booming weight loss/health industry that’s been telling us to eat their processed foods instead of natural fats for years.
Thanks, Jeremy. I’m now enjoying your entry on how to truly get your money’s worth at a restaurant by thinking of quality instead of quantity. (I subscribed right back.)
I actually switched to the low-fat version of the yogurt I used rather than the fat-free one. With the low-fat, I gain 4 calories (about 16 kj) and half a grain of fat per serve*… a lose a bucketload of artificial sweetener. Seems like a fair trade to me :p
* I think it’s worth doing a piece about misleading nutritional information. I don’t know what it’s like in the US, but in Australia, companies have to list by 100g/ml serve, but *can* also list by whatever they arbitrarily decide is a ‘serve’. The 16g of sugar in my OJ seemed ok… til I realised that a 600ml bottle is considered 3 serves. Naturally, the serves are always ridiculously low. Who the hell drinks 1/3 of a 600ml juice at a time?
I’d be interested to know how closely Swedish fast food resembles what’s sold in the US. The Cooking Channel ran show on fast food round the world that made it clear that even Mickey D has altered what it serves to suit local preferences. In our country, we have Morgan Spurlock’s experiment as counterweight to this one.
But I don’t mean to impugn the main point of this piece — we are designed to need fat, and the better the quality of fat, the better for us. Also, the more whole the food, the better. And not to forget: these days, when we say “sugar”, we generally mean GMO high-fructose corn syrup — and there’s plenty of research on the scary things that stuff does to us.
This study has been corroborated by other studies, as I pointed out (the third link, the one written by the OB-GYN, is especially helpful). And Morgan Spurlock’s experiment does not counter this one at all. From the first link I provided:
The Swedish study was conducted to find out what caused the liver damage. They presumed it would be the fat, but in fact it was the sugar.
The article referenced by an “obgyn” is not an obgyn, but a women’s health nurse practitioner….not that such an erratum changes the insight.
Thanks, Clark, I didn’t realize what the NP stood for in the byline. I actually prefer nurse practitioners – they listen to patients better and they assimilate what we’re telling them into a new understanding. Doctors often prefer to rely strictly on established medical findings, so if I tell them “I did what you said, but something unexpected happened” they just assume I’m lying, confused or not doing it right rather than question the possibility that, hey, maybe medicine doesn’t know everything just yet. This has happened a lot to me over the years, and I know I’m not the only one.