Low fat and Low Carb pros & cons part 2...

Today's post: Friday, 6-5-2008

Low fat diets were & still are promoted as a way to lose excess fat & prevent heart disease.

Low carb diets have been promoted as a way to lose fat but attacked as sometimes increasing heart disease risk.

There are three kinds of fats your health will be better if they are very low or even zero in what you eat.:

We posted these 3 yesterday as well. But we add some commentary today.

1. We now know that trans fats & all kinds of hydrogenated vegetable oils are basically heart & cardiovascular disease fertilizer. A diet low in these is unsafe. A diet higher than low is frighteningly unsafe. For these fats, low isn’t low enough. Zero is the right amount of them to eat. That’s right -- absolutely none if you can possibly arrange it.

Unfortunately, you have to read labels on every food that has one to be sure to avoid these as they are still in thousands of food & processed foods in stores. And, at this writing, you have to be very careful of restaurant food & ask what kinds of oils they use.

And, you have to simply avoid virtually all commercial baked goods to avoid these oils. Since the other ingredients of commercial baked goods tend to be sugar, high fructose corn syrup, & refined grain flour, which are the exact carbs that are the WORST for your health & waistline, avoiding commercial baked goods is likely a very good idea, healthwise.

>>> Here’s the take home. Note that the two articles from yesterday support all of the above about trans fats.

a) If you value your health, make an enormous special effort to never eat foods with hydrogenated oils or foods that list ANY trans fat content above 0.

Since this kind of fat helps trigger heart attacks, strokes, peripheral artery disease, kidney disease, circulation related mental decline, & erectile dysfunction, it’s that important. This is a kind of fat it PAYS to be so low in your consumption that you approach eating zero amounts of it.

And, health experts & doctors today all agree. There is no disagreement on this of which I am aware.

This can be both logistically and emotionally difficult. But it is that important to do.

If they list zero but the label includes hydrogenated oils, the label is WRONG. They can LIST zero if the product actually has 0.499 grams of trans fat per serving. So if you eat 5 small servings of a snack food with 0.42 grams of trans fat per serving that is LISTED as having 0, you actually take in 2.0 grams of trans fat if you eat that snack food. Ouch !!

Another example is pie. I’ve always loved eating pie when I’ve had the opportunity. And, I’ve loved pit crust combined with the filling. Guess what. If you don’t know that you or the home cook who made it used butter or some other real food fat to make the crust, you MUST assume it’s been made with shortening which contains ONLY transfat loaded hydrogenated vegetable oil. So, when I am served pie now, unless I know it was cooked with butter or some other real food, I only eat the filling & leave the crust.

b) The carbs it helps your health most to avoid are those that tend to be combined with transfats. These are the ones that tend cause you to be fat & sick. They are high glycemic carbs that tend to cause heart & cardiovascular disease, type II diabetes, AND obesity. Ouch !!

So, make an enormous special effort to never eat foods or drink drinks that contain high fructose corn syrup. (And, just as with transfats, it’s now in so many commercial baked goods & processed foods, you have to be a bit paranoid & ALWAYS read labels to avoid it.)

Regular sugar is MUCH safer to eat than high fructose corn syrup – but not by as much as people with a sweet tooth would like. So eating sugar or foods that contain it a few times a week is dramatically better for you than eating it a few times a day. And, working to keep your carbs moderate to low will help you achieve that.

It also helps if you eat something with fiber or a health OK fat with your sugar or spice your sweet treat with cinnamon. These things buffer the high glycemic effect of the sugar.

And eating that much is likely only OK IF you eat a lot of vegetables, usually eat it only a few times a week AND exercise regularly.

Try as best you can to avoid eating ALL refined grains. These foods are almost as bad for you & your waistline as high fructose corn syrup. And, they are still everywhere. These are a great kind of carb to simply eliminate from your food intake 100 %.

They are high glycemic, have virtually no fiber, & have very little nutrition in them compared with whole grains.

Refined grains are quite literally junk food. If you must eat grain, eat ONLY whole grains & not too much.

If you eat some whole wheat bread or non-“quick” oatmeal you’ll weigh less & be much healthier than people who eat a lot of refined grain foods.

(By the way, white rice is a refined grain food.)

2. Saturated fat in your diet in large enough quantities will increase the amount of bad LDL cholesterol in your blood & increase your risk of heart disease. However, that effect is dramatically increased if you eat too many high glycemic, high carb foods.

Here’s the more comment I promised from yesterday.:

It is true that people who go on a high protein, low carbohydrate diet tend to lose fat. And, it’s true that when they lose fat they tend to get improved cholesterol readings even if they have been eating fatty meats & some full fat dairy products. (As we’ve posted on before, protein turns off hunger longer & more completely than carbs AND carbs tend to turn off hunger at first and then turn it back on high later. Protein foods don’t.)

However, studies in both France AND China show that in those parts of each of those countries where people eat the most saturated fat, the rate of heart disease is highest.

In my opinion, this proves pretty conclusively that a low or low moderate amount of animal based saturated fat is MUCH better for you than a high intake is.

And, other studies have found that a Mediterranean diet that is higher in extra virgin olive oil & fish & a variety of vegetables produces less heart disease & type II diabetes & cancer than a diet high in butter & fatty meat.

So, wild caught fish, nuts, beans, and a moderate amount of lean meat from animals fed only grass or only pasture fed & NEVER fed grain, & perhaps some eggs, other wild caught seafood, & nonfat or very lowfat dairy ARE better for your health than fatty meat, cream, full fat cheese, & butter.

The one piece of good news is that IF you eat a lot of vegetables, usually eat the low saturated fat proteins listed above, AND exercise regularly eating fatty meat, full fat cheese, & butter occasionally is likely OK.

3. Most animal fat from most commercially raised meat animals is fed grain that has been raised using pesticides & herbicides. That means the meat you get is high in pesticide & herbicides, higher by far than animals that are pasture fed or grass fed only. And, it’s even higher than in produce raised using pesticides & herbicides !! These animals bioconcentrate the pesticides & herbicides in their fat. It’s also too high in omega 6 oils than is Ok for good health & too low in omega 3 oils. Farmed fish, unfortunately, is even worse.

Similarly many fatty meats from grain fed animals are sold as sausage, bacon, salami, ham, & sandwich meat. Those foods & farmed fish tend to be high in nitrates & nitrites & have been implicated as causing cancer & colon cancer in particular.

So, it’s clear that there ARE 3 kinds of fat it’s very desirable to avoid: Transfats, excessive saturated fat, & fat from unnaturally raised animals. Since the majority of high protein foods in stores now is this third kind, this makes it a bit difficult to follow a high protein, low carb diet.

So, wild caught fish, nuts, beans, and a moderate amount of lean meat from animals fed only grass or only pasture fed & NEVER fed grain, & perhaps some eggs, other wild caught seafood, & nonfat or very lowfat dairy ARE better for your health.

Mercifully they are becoming more available. And by eating them & some extra virgin olive oil & avocados, you can get enough omega 3 & other essential oils to support good health.

AND, studies show that people who lose weight by cutting back on the worst carbs & fats and by doing regular progressive strength training & interval cardio are successful. In addition they are MUCH healthier & likely to KEEP OFF the fat they lose than people who eat a very, very low fat diet.

So the bottom line is both low fat & low carb approaches have some ways in which they are valuable & some ways in which they are not good for you.

It depends TOTALLY on which KIND of carbs & fats & protein foods you eat AND whether or not you exercise regularly in addition to eating right.