7 Reasons to Eat More Saturated Fat

Mid-Section Fat Loss: Problem Solved?

A couple of generations ago two physicians—one on the East Coast, one on the West—while working long hours with many patients, serendipitously stumbled onto a method to rapidly decrease fat around the mid-section. We’re sure that other doctors figured out the same thing, but these two were locally famous and published their methods. Interestingly, neither was looking to help patients lose weight.

Blake Donaldson, M.D., who practiced in Manhattan, was looking for a treatment for allergies; Walter Voegtlin, M.D., a Seattle gastroenterologist, was trying to figure out a better method for treating his patients with Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. Dr. Donaldson got his inspiration from a meeting he had with the aforementioned Vilhalmur Stefansson; Dr. Voegtlin came up with the same idea based on his knowledge of comparative anatomy. Though they came at two different questions from very different angles, they arrived at the same dietary answer. Both solved the problems they were seeking to solve and, coincidentally, noticed that their overweight patients lost a tremendous amount of fat from their abdominal areas while undergoing the treatment. As happened later with us and with Dr. Atkins, word of their success in combating obesity spread rapidly, and before long both physicians were deluged with overweight patients seeking treatment, completely changing the character of their medical practices. In retirement, both wrote books about their methods. Donaldson’s was published in 1961; Voegtlin’s in 1972. And as far as we can tell, although their years of practice overlapped, they never knew one another.

What was their secret? What did these two men independently discover? What kind of nutritional regimen did they use to bring about such great results in their patients?

Both had their patients follow an all-meat diet.

An all-meat diet?

Yes, an all-meat diet. Remember that when these physicians were in practice, there hadn’t been all the negative publicity about saturated fat and red meat that there has been in recent years. At that time, most people considered meat as simply another food, just like potatoes, bread, or anything else. No one worried about eating it. The (misguided) hypothesis that fat in the diet causes heart disease hadn’t reared its ugly head, so telling people at that time to go on an all-meat diet didn’t provoke the same sort of knee-jerk emotions that it does—at least in some quarters—now.

The patients who followed these all-meat diets rapidly lost weight from their midsections and improved their blood sugar and blood pressure problems if they had them. Calculations of cholesterol in all its various permutations was still decades away, but both doctors even used the all-meat diet for their patients with heart disease without problem. The all-meat diet proved to be a safe, filling, rapid way to help patients lose abdominal fat while improving their health. And remember, one of these diets was developed to treat GI problems, the other to treat allergies. The rapid weight loss that followed was a surprising, but welcome side effect.

7 Reasons to Eat More Saturated Fat

In the not-so-distant past, the medical establishment considered all fats equally loathsome: all fats were created equal and they’re all bad for you. Things have changed in that quarter, if only slightly. You have no doubt heard the drumbeat of current medical thinking on fats: some fats are now good for you—olive oil and canola oil*—but others are bad for you—trans fats and all saturated fats. That’s an improvement from the old cry, but far from the truth.

It seems that no matter how the story spins from the denizens of the anti-fat camp, one piece of their advice remains staunchly constant: “You should sharply limit your intake of saturated fats.” The next admonition will invariably be, “which have been proven to raise cholesterol and cause heart disease.” Their over-arching belief is that saturated fat is bad, bad, bad.

You see with just a glance at [our suggested meal plans] that we’ve included fatty cuts of meat, chicken with the skin, bacon, eggs, butter, coconut oil, organic lard, and heavy cream in the plan. Aren’t we worried that these foods will increase your risk of heart disease and raise your cholesterol? In a word, nope. In fact, we encourage you to make these important fats a regular part of your healthy diet. Why? Because humans need them and here are just a few reasons why.

1) Improved cardiovascular risk factors

Though you may not have heard of it on the front pages of your local newspaper, online news source, or local television or radio news program, saturated fat plays a couple of key roles in cardiovascular health. The addition of saturated fat to the diet reduces the levels of a substance called lipoprotein (a)—pronounced “lipoprotein little a” and abbreviated Lp(a)—that correlates strongly with risk for heart disease. Currently there are no medications to lower this substance and the only dietary means of lowering Lp(a) is eating saturated fat. Bet you didn’t hear that on the nightly news. Moreover, eating saturated (and other) fats also raises the level of HDL, the so-called good cholesterol. Lastly, research has shown that when women diet, those eating the greatest percentage of the total fat in their diets as saturated fat lose the most weight.

2) Stronger bones

In middle age, as bone mass begins to decline, an important goal (particularly for women) is to build strong bones. You can’t turn on the television without being told you need calcium for your bones, but do you recall ever hearing that saturated fat is required for calcium to be effectively incorporated into bone? According to one of the foremost research experts in dietary fats and human health, Mary Enig, Ph.D., there’s a case to be made for having as much as 50 percent of the fats in your diet as saturated fats for this reason. That’s a far cry from the 7 to 10 percent suggested by mainstream institutions. If her reasoning is sound—and we believe it is— is it any wonder that the vast majority of women told to avoid saturated fat and to selectively use vegetable oils instead would begin to lose bone mass, develop osteoporosis, and get put on expensive prescription medications plus calcium to try to recover the loss in middle age?

3) Improved liver health

Adding saturated fat to the diet has been shown in medical research to encourage the liver cells to dump their fat content. Clearing fat from the liver is the critical first step to calling a halt to middle-body fat storage. Additionally, saturated fat has been shown to protect the liver from the toxic insults of alcohol and medications, including acetaminophen and other drugs commonly used for pain and arthritis, such as nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs or NSAIDs, and even to reverse the damage once it has occurred. Since the liver is the lynchpin of a healthy metabolism, anything that is good for the liver is good for getting rid of fat in the middle. Polyunsaturated vegetable fats do not offer this protection.

4) Healthy lungs

For proper function, the airspaces of the lungs have to be coated with a thin layer of what’s called lung surfactant. The fat content of lung surfactant is 100 percent saturated fatty acids. Replacement of these critical fats by other types of fat makes faulty surfactant and potentially causes breathing difficulties. Absence of the correct amount and composition of this material leads to collapse of the airspaces and respiratory distress. It’s what’s missing in the lungs of premature infants who develop the breathing disorder called infant respiratory distress syndrome. Some researchers feel that the wholesale substitution of partially hydrogenated (trans) fats for naturally saturated fats in commercially prepared foods may be playing a role in the rise of asthma among children. Fortunately, the heyday of trans fats is ending and their use is on the decline. Unfortunately, however, the unreasoning fear of saturated fat leads many people to replace trans fats with an overabundance of polyunsaturated vegetable oils, which may prove just as unhealthful.

5) Healthy brain

You will likely be astounded to learn that your brain is mainly made of fat and cholesterol. Though many people are now familiar with the importance of the highly unsaturated essential fatty acids found in cold-water fish (EPA and DHA) for normal brain and nerve function, the lion’s share of the fatty acids in the brain are actually saturated. A diet that skimps on healthy saturated fats robs your brain of the raw materials it needs to function optimally.

6) Proper nerve signaling

Certain saturated fats, particularly those found in butter, lard, coconut oil, and palm oil, function directly as signaling messengers that influence the metabolism, including such critical jobs as the appropriate release of insulin. And just any old fat won’t do. Without the correct signals to tell the organs and glands what to do, the job doesn’t get done or gets done improperly.

7) Strong immune system

Saturated fats found in butter and coconut oil (myristic acid and lauric acid) play key roles in immune health. Loss of sufficient saturated fatty acids in the white blood cells hampers their ability to recognize and destroy foreign invaders, such as viruses, bacteria, and fungi. Human breast milk is quite rich in myristic and lauric acid, which have potent germ-killing ability. But the importance of the fats lives on beyond infancy; we need dietary replenishment of them throughout adulthood, middle age, and into seniority to keep the immune system vigilant against the development of cancerous cells as well as infectious invaders.

—

Footnotes:

*We advocate the use of olive oil, but recommend against the use of canola oil, despite its widely perceived healthful reputation. In order to be fit for human consumption, rapeseed oil (which is canola oil) requires significant processing to remove its objectionable taste and smell. Processing damages the oil, creating trans fats. Also, the oil is sensitive to heat, so if used at all, it should never be used to fry foods.

###

The above post is an exclusive excerpt from Dr. Eades’ newest book, which is directed at people who want to reduce abdominal fat. Despite the title, the principles it details are ideal for anyone who wants to decrease both visceral (internal) and subcutaneous (under the skin) fat in the abdomen.

http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2009/06/06/saturated-fat/

Saturated with fat

Spin You Right Round


One thing is for certain, today any dietary "facts" you once held have been turned on their head.  Take saturated fat, the Darth Vader of fats.  You once thought of him as a serious badass--destroying lives and worlds in the name of evil.  That is what we once thought about saturated fat--that it was a one-way ticket to coronary heart disease.  Then, along come the Star Wars prequels, and now we think of the ultimate evil Darth as just one of many darths and really a wimpy, moody kid.   Thank you George Lucas for emasculating such an awesome villain.  Back to fats, we can actually thank the current research into fatty acids that saturated fat has been de-villainized.  This is a lot to wrap your mind around, I know, but saturated fat...is...not...bad.  Let me explain why.

The Big Bad

First off, lets look at the research.  Here is an excellent summary of the current research for the layperson.  There are some basic points to address from the article:

1. The diet-heart hypothesis established in 1953 that set up saturated fat as the big bad has been questioned by a slew of contrary evidence.  
2. LDL/HDL ratios are more important than simply looking at LDL count.  
3. LDL particle size is more important than its total count since small, dense LDL are the only ones that correlate with increased risk of heart disease by clogging arteries.  
4. Saturated fat intake increases both LDL and HDL counts, and HDL is the "good" cholesterol that cleans up the LDL.  
5. When fats replace carbohydrates in the diet, the amount of small, dense LDL decreases.  
6. Low-carb, high-fat dieters compared to high-carb, low-fat dieters typically have reduced markers of heart disease: reduced small, dense LDL, better HDL/LDL ratio, and reduced triglicerides.
7. What happens to excess carbohydrates in your diet?  They are converted into triglicerides.  This is why low-fat dieters can still have high triglicerides.  
8. Triglicerides are equally relevant in risk of heart disease.  
9. The current American Heart Association guidelines did not address this LDL research when making their guidelines to reduce saturated fat intake from 10% to 7% or less of daily calories.  

More on the current research: a meta-analysis performed in part by Dr. Krauss (who is referred to in the previous article as founder of the particle size importance) made this conclusion:

A meta-analysis of prospective epidemiologic studies showed that there is no significant evidence for concluding that dietary saturated fat is associated with an increased risk of CHD or CVD. More data are needed to elucidate whether CVD risks are likely to be influenced by the specific nutrients used to replace saturated fat.

Even Loren Cordain, Paleo Diet founder, has softened his once hardline stance on saturated fats.  From his blog:

The bottom line is that we do not recommend cutting down saturated fatty acid intake but rather decrease high-glycemic load foods, vegetable oils, refined sugars, grains, legumes and dairy.

My conclusion: it seems that saturated fat isn't the big bad we had once thought.



Is it actually, dare I say the word, beneficial?

Here are the main points of a Dr. Eades interview at Four Hour Work Week entitled: 7 Reasons to Eat More Saturated Fat.  Dr. Eades is a proponent of a high protein, high fat diet with reduced carbohydrate intake.  Go and read it for yourself to see the details.  Here are the benefits:
1. Improved Cardiovascular Risk Factors
2. Stronger Bones
3. Improved Liver Health
4. Healthy Lungs
5. Healthy Brain
6. Proper Nerve Signaling
7. Strong Immune System

However, if one has chronic inflammation, Dr. Ayers of Cooling Inflammation suggests limiting saturated fats, although he readily promotes saturated fats over vegetable oils and includes them as part of an anti-inflammatory diet.

Here is another take on the benefits of saturated fats from the Weston A. Price Foundation, a non-profit that distributes nutritional information from their founder, a nutritional guru.  Please read the site for more specifics and references to each point.  To quote his list of saturated fat benefits:

• Saturated fatty acids constitute at least 50% of the cell membranes. They are what gives our cells necessary stiffness and integrity.
• They play a vital role in the health of our bones. For calcium to be effectively incorporated into the skeletal structure, at least 50% of the dietary fats should be saturated.
• They lower Lp(a), a substance in the blood that indicates proneness to heart disease. They protect the liver from alcohol and other toxins, such as Tylenol.
• They enhance the immune system.
• They are needed for the proper utilization of essential fatty acids.
  Elongated omega-3 fatty acids are better retained in the tissues when the diet is rich in saturated fats. 
• Saturated 18-carbon stearic acid and 16-carbon palmitic acid are the preferred foods for the heart, which is why the fat around the heart muscle is highly saturated. The heart draws on this reserve of fat in times of stress.
• Short- and medium-chain saturated fatty acids have important antimicrobial properties. They protect us against harmful microorganisms in the digestive tract.

Bottom line: There seems to be more good about saturated fat than bad.  How about them apples?


Other Contributing Evidence


Here is another article, an older one, discussing saturated fats and their dietary role.  Unfortunately, it was funded by Nestle with agricultural interests to avoid having to reduce saturated fats in foods.

Mark's Daily Apple has a good discussion of saturated fat summarizing the background to the debate and why not to avoid them.

Free the Animal also has an extensive review of the debate and current research.  He is definitely not afraid to offend, so you are hereby warned.

Whole Health Source has a great post with a bunch of research articles to read about the topic.

Fatphobia

Many are plagued by this "disease," which grew strong in the late-20th century and has led to a full-blown fat-free hysteria.  We've seen it everywhere from the general media to school lunchrooms and nutrition classes.  It is perpetuated by the Mayo Clinic, American Heart Association, American Diabetes Association, and most influentially by the USDA.  How can something so inGRAINed in our health knowledge be so wrong?

Contrary to Popular Belief


Despite promoting a reduced-fat and fat-free lifestyle over the last 20 years, Americans have been getting fatter.  Obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and stroke are all at all-time highs.  One large study summarized here started back in 1993 and tracked nearly 50,000 women for eight years.  Close to 20,000 followed a low-fat diet, while the rest continued their usual diet.  Here are the results:

The results, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, showed no benefits for a low-fat diet. Women assigned to this eating strategy did not appear to gain protection against breast cancer, colorectal cancer, or cardiovascular disease. And after eight years, their weights were generally the same as those of women following their usual diets. [see article for citations]

and

The findings from the Women's Health Initiative Dietary Modification Trial came as a surprise to many Americans who have been hearing for years that reducing fat is important for long-term health. Yet long-term follow-up studies such as the Nurses Health Study have consistently found little relation between the percentage of calories from fat and risks of breast cancer, colon cancer, or coronary heart disease. Such studies are one reason why major reviews of diet and health during the last five years, including those conducted by the U.S. Institute of Medicine and the U.S. Dietary Guidelines Committee, have moved away from advocating low fat intake to an emphasis on the type of fat.

Another large study found that the Atkins diet trumped the food pyramid standard diet, Zone Diet (40 carbs:30 protein:30 fat), and Ornish (high carb) at producing weight loss and decreasing risk of heart disease.  What makes Atkins so different?  It is the only very low-carb diet that was tested.  Sure, eating bun-less cheese burgers and bacon might not be very healthy, but compared to low-fat diets and moderate- to high-carbohydrate diets, Atkins won.  Looks to me like carbohydrates may be the real issue, not fat.  If anything, the higher fat diets did better!

Here is a (LONG) presentation from the Stanford lecture series on the findings of that study given by the lead researcher, a vegetarian.  It is fun and filled with visuals, so it's worth the time and effort to watch.  A good summary of it is here.

So why aren't our healthcare sources catching up with the current research?  Their tenacity to desperately hold on to out-dated policy calling for the reduction of fat IS NOT making us thin or protecting us from disease.  It is perpetuating a myth.  Just look at the general public consensus: we all know that fat makes us fat, right?  From my school lunch post, we know this is still being taught in schools and infiltrates school menus.

Bottom line: The low-fat and fat-free diet recommendation is NOT supported by current science.      

Why Fat-Free is Health-Free


Fat is not some boogeyman of the macronutrients.  Fat is essential, hence the essential fatty acids.  Essential is a nifty term given to substances your body CANNOT make and HAS TO ingest through your diet.  The essential fatty acids are alpha-linoleic acid (ALA), an omega-3 fatty acid, and linoleic acid (LA), an omega-6 fatty acid.  Two other omega-3 fatty acids, eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), are best consumed from dietary sources because although your body can synthesize them from ALA, the conversion is inefficient.  The omega-6 fatty acids are prevalent in nuts, seeds, and vegetable oils.  Omega-3s are rich in fish oil, fatty fish, chickens (and their eggs) fed flax and pastured, and grass-fed livestock.  The increase in our use of vegetable oils and decreased consumption of fish and grass-fed livestock has lead to an overbalance of omega-6 to omega-3s in the typical American diet.  While omega-6 fatty acids are still essential, too much leads to problems, while more omega-3s is protective of many diseases.  Basically, the bottom line is ditch the veggie oils, supplement with fish oil, and eat pastured chickens and their eggs, wild fish, and grass-fed beef.  You'll still get plenty of omega-6s.

Okay, so now we know the dangers of giving up fat entirely.  You can't live without essential fatty acids.  But, fat-freers will still get plenty of omega-6 in their diets due to the prevalence of veggie oils in everything processed, despite the "fat free" labels ("fat free" can really just mean very little fat, not entirely without fat--same goes for "trans fat free").  However, where will fat-freers get their omega-3?

Fat is required in your body for many jobs.  One is storage of energy.  A woman too low in body fat can't menstruate.  There just isn't enough fuel to support her body and certainly not any excess to support a child.  Without enough body fat, you start to eat away at yourself, self-cannibalizing your tissues to fuel essential functions.  There is no excess.  That tells us something about resources--your body NEEDS fat to support its function.  It can't function without it.  Excess calories whether from protein, fat, or carbohydrate are stored as fat.  If anything, carbohydrate is the Big Bad.  Your body can produce glucose internally without consuming it, so in reality, you don't need to consume carbohydrates for their energy.  According to Dr. Eades in Protein Power,

the actual amount of carbohydrates required by humans for health is zero.

OMG--read that again, it's life changing!  It totally overturns the dominant paradigm which places carbohydrates at the base of our beloved food pyramid (or as the dominant sliver nowadays).  You don't need carbohydrates.  There are no essential carbohydrates like there are essential fatty acids or essential amino acids.  You might want to consume carbohydrates for their vitamins and minerals, but without fat, that is a losing battle.  Here's why:

Another job of fat is dissolving fat-soluable vitamins like vitamins A, D, E, and K.  Fat-soluble vitamins are water-proof, meaning water can't break them down and you can only capture them and use them if you have fat to bind to them and take them where we need them to go.  If you want to find out more about what each fat-soluable vitamin does for our body and how vital they are, read up on them here.  So guess what happens to all the precious vitamin D and A fortified in our dairy when we drink skim milk?  Flush!  It is our fatphobia that has lead to this fortification because the typical American eats so little fatty natural sources of these vitamins (fatty fish, nuts, eggs, grass-fed meat, and oils).  And with our busy lives we definitely do not get enough vitamin D synthesis from the sun, even those living in Florida, the Sunshine State!

How about the health-conscious salad eater with fat-free dressing and dip for his/her veggies?  Where do all those precious vitamins go?  Flush, flush!  Vitamins E, K, and A (precursors) are prevalent in leafy greens and carotenoids (for vitamin A).  Without fat consumed along with veggies (also sources of these vitamins, itself), there is no absorption of these vitamins.  Thus, the fat-free craze necessitated supplementation of essential fatty acids into our already highly processed foods because we were no longer eating natural sources of fat-soluble vitamins and couldn't absorb them from veggies alone.  But this doesn't solve the problem if we still aren't eating any fat with the fortified foods!

(Don't worry, there's a recipe coming--keep reading!)

Replacing The Fat

What replaces the fat in naturally fatty products like oils and butters?  Give you a hint.  It is a big C.  In baking, a standard to reduce fat is to increase the sugar or use shortening or margarine instead of butter (more sugar to spike your blood sugar or hydrogenated oils and trans fat--which is the lesser evil?).

Check out the carbohydrate in uber-popular Kraft Ranch Dressing and Kraft Fat Free Ranch Dressing.  The fat free version has 11g of carbohydrate, compared to 3g for the regular ranch.  Granted it only has one more gram per serving of sugar, but what the hell are the other unnamed carbohydrates in there?  Remember, aside from the fiber, no matter the source: carbohydrate breaks down into sugar in your body.  And without fat to slow down digestion and keep you feeling full longer, your blood is quickly flooded with glucose, insulin mobilizes to get it out and store excess as fat, gets too much out since so much insulin was required, and leaves you with a blood sugar crash, which brings irritability and hunger, again.

Let's go to the video-tape per se, and dissect these two frankenfoods to see the real cost of fat free:

Kraft Ranch Dressing

Ingredients: WATER, SOYBEAN OIL, SUGAR, GARLIC JUICE,BUTTERMILK, CONTAINS LESS THAN 2% OF SALT, MODIFIED FOOD STARCH, WHEY, PHOSPHORIC ACID,MONOSODIUM GLUTAMATE, EGG WHITES, VINEGAR, XANTHAN GUM, CITRIC ACID, POLYSORBATE 60, SPICE, NATURAL FLAVOR, ENZYMES, WITH SODIUM LACTATE, NATAMYCIN, AND CALCIUM DISODIUM EDTA AS PRESERVATIVES. CONTAINS: MILK, EGG.

Kraft Fat Free Ranch Dressing

Ingredients: WATER, CORN SYRUP, VINEGAR, HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP, WHEY (FROM MILK), SALT, MODIFIED FOOD STARCH, CONTAINS LESS THAN 2% OF GARLIC JUICE, ONION JUICE, SOYBEAN OIL, XANTHAN GUM, POTASSIUM SORBATE AND CALCIUM DISODIUM EDTA AS PRESERVATIVES, ARTIFICIAL COLOR, PHOSPHORIC ACID, PROPYLENE GLYCOL ALGINATE, NATURAL FLAVOR,DRIED PARSLEY, DRIED GREEN ONIONS, DISODIUM GUANYLATE, DISODIUM INOSINATE, SPICE, CARAMEL COLOR, SULFITING AGENTS, YELLOW 5.

I highlighted those ingredients that differ.  At first glance, you can tell that the fat free version is making up for its reduction of fat with a plethora of pinatas--sorry, I mean ingredients, but since they carry within them a host of sugary treats, the slip is fitting.  Both are unacceptable because I can't pronounce half of their ingredients or identify most of them as actual foods, besides the fact that there are just too damn many of them.  But all that is besides the point.  This is a case study of the average American, a ranch-dressing aficionado, told by the health community to choose fat free ranch over regular ranch dressing.

The regular ranch gets its fat (at least it has some?) from soybean oil (a vegetable oil rich in omega-6 fatty acids we are trying to avoid) and sugar is up there as its #3 ingredient.  Fat-free has sugar in the form of corn syrup AND high fructose corn syrup as its #2 and #4 ingredients.  You already know my argument against high fructose corn syrup and the processing to create these frankensugars nauseates me.  Do youreally need sugar in your salad dressing?

Despite the snooze-factor, let's take a closer look at some of the ingredients that differ.  This is IMPORTANT because I bet you've partaken in processed foods with naivety just like me.  Let's look at the dark underbelly of those most common:

Monosodium Glutamate is MSG, which has a spotty history and may be responsible for symptoms like headaches, nausea, heart palpitations, and chest pain after eating MSG-laden foods.  Disodium Gyanylate and Inosinate are a pair that take the place of MSG in the fat-free dressing.  They provide saltiness and are derived from fish or yeast.  Recommendations against asthmatics, those with gout, or babies using products with this couplet make me a little nervous.

Citric Acid is a flavoring and preservative extracted from mould that eat sugar, mostly derived from corn sources.  Like yeast-fed sugar, I would think that citric acid is a little outside the paleo diet.  To note: Xanthum Gum is also usually corn-derived (it's also produced by bacteria fed corn-derived sugar).  Most chemically processed additives are derived from grains, so be wary of them if not for their highly processed nature (ex. Modified Food Starch), but also for their hidden gluten and anti-nutrients.

It would be nice to know the source of the "Sugar" and what the hell a generalization like "Enzymes" really means, "Spice" too while we're at it.  What are they specifically and where do they come from???  I am also concerned about the milk source of the buttermilk and the egg whites.  Without any guarantee that the animals were pastured and organic, I have no doubt they are animal products from brutal, inhumane factory farms.  Doesn't matter how little we rely upon products from that industry--any use is complacency and keeps them in business.

Let's keep free-falling down this rabbit hole, it only gets more horrifying:

In both dressings there is something mysteriously called "Natural Flavor," but if it was actually natural flavor, why is it an additive?  Hello contradiction!  Basically, natural flavor is anything from plant or animal used to flavor food.  Good luck tracking down that one to find out what you are actually eating.  The fat-free dressing also has sinister-sounding "Artificial Color" with Caramel Color and Yellow #5 to boot.  All this to get white dressing?  Caramel color comes from sugar, usually derived from corn, which amongst other concerns begs the GMO question: what exactly are we eating?  Sulfiting agents can be really bad for asthmatics and those sensitive to sulfur, and the fact that the FDA thought them dangerous enough to ban their use on foods eaten raw makes me nervous about their use in food products.  Guess who Yellow #5 is also dangerous for?  That's right!  Asthmatics!

Can you see a trend here?  Those with the most compromised and sensitive digestive tracts are falling ill when consuming these artificially produced chemicals added to our foods.  This might be a chicken and the egg question begging more research, but I see a connection here between a damaged digestive tract and asthma.  What damages the digestive tract?  Gluten (for one)!  Hmm, does that mean asthmatics might be more inclined to have gluten-intolerance and seriously adverse reactions to gluten a la celiac disease?  Not surprisingly, the answer is yes.  Giving up gluten reduces asthma.  That is a big home-run right there.

Bottom line: Look before you eat.

(And yes, we are almost there!)

The Downward Spiral

So let me connect the dots (la, la, la for those of you who rememberPeeWee's Playhouse): the food industry replaces fat with carbohydrate (which breaks down into sugar) and derives most of its chemically processed additives from grains.  The sugar puts our blood sugar regulation on over-drive leading to a host of problems, especially since we don't have any fat to mediate digestion and produce satiety.  We lose valuable vitamins because we don't have the fat to absorb them.  That is a runaway train of metabolic sickness on its own.

But it gets better:

Meanwhile, gluten, lectin, and anti-nutrients from grains in the typical American diet destroy a person's digestive tract.  The inflammation, permeability problems, and inefficient, broken digestion that results is further exacerbated by those chemically produced food additives that are, no surprise: allergens!  Asthmatics and celiacs are at greatest risk because they are hypersensitive, but when you look at the scientific evidence about what grains do to your body, aren't we all celiacs by varying degrees?

Conclusion: The trade-off of fat for sugar, more carbohydrate, and more additives just isn't worth it.

The True Skinny

So it looks like fat isn't really all that bad for us after all.  Whew!  And I didn't even touch on the cholesterol myth or go into the nitty gritty of metabolism!  We'll save those for another day.  If you haven't read mysaturated fat rant, please do.  I know that is crazy controversial, but 'the truth is out there' if we are brave enough to digest it.

I think our society has made great sacrifices in our health by throwing out the fat in our diets and replacing it with more processed frankenfoods at worse, sugar and more carbohydrates at best.  And that isn't saying much if carbohydrate is really to blame for our obesity epidemic and the modern Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and stroke.  But then, this challenges a paradigm backed by national commodities like wheat, corn, rice, and beans.  Their production is subsidized and their use is required in public schools.  This is where money and power diverge with nutrition.

Bottom line: Fat is healthy.  Seriously.  Obviously, you should choose natural sources with as little processing as possible, but that goes for everything.  Duh.  Healthy sources are olive oil, coconut oil, nut oils in moderation, animal fat, fish oil, avocados, and if you partake in dairy: butter, whole milk, and cream from raw, grass-fed sources.  For more information, see Mark's Daily Apple's Definitive Guide to Oils and aPrimal Primer: Animal Fats.  Ditch the fat-free frankenfoods.  Don't be afraid to give yourself a little "indulgence" and enjoy healthy fat!  Make sure you have some at EVERY SINGLE MEAL!

http://feastingonfitness.blogspot.com/2010/02/fatphobia.html

Food Cops On Stossel

The Truth About Lactic Acid

By 

Steven Low

Published: November 4, 2009Posted in: Advanced, Featured, TrainingTags: exercise, lactic acid, metabolic pathways, training

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I. Introduction
II. Delayed onset muscle soreness
III. Cramping
IV. Muscular acidosis
V. Fatigue
VI. As fuel and in exercise
VII. Conclusion

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Lactic acid has been unfairly demonized for everything from delayed onset muscle soreness to cramping to robbing banks. Well, maybe not robbing banks, but you get the point.

In this article we will dispel all myths about lactic acid, and cover physiologic explanations for the phenomena supposedly associated with lactic acid. If you have one that I have not covered please comment at the bottom of the article, and I will integrate it in later.

This is the first post in a series on the metabolic pathways.

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Lactic acid is not responsible for delayed onset muscle soreness.

Delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) is caused by a couple factors. Exercise, especially eccentric exercise, creates microtrauma within the muscles. The body initiates an inflammatory response to repair the damaged area. There are a couple theories on how this produces DOMS, but none involve lactic acid.

• The inflammatory response itself may be responsible for aggravating afferent sensory neurons which would “cause” the pain associated with soreness.
• Microtrauma in the muscles allows ions to leak out into the surrounding musculature. This may also aggravate afferent neurons as many of these are ion sensitive. For example, neurons activate by firing action potentials which may be more easily set off by accumulated ion concentrations from the tears in the muscles.
• Enlarging of the area due to swelling and/or muscle growth may cause fascia stretching which may aggravate afferent neurons causing pain.

Lactic acid is a metabolite not involved with any of the factors in delayed onset muscle soreness.

In fact, lactic acid is removed almost totally from the muscles within 30 minutes of cessation of exercise. How it could even begin to explain delayed onset muscle soreness which comes 24-72 hours later is beyond me.

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Lactic acid is not responsible for muscle cramping.

Cramping occurs due to a few reasons.

• Impact/injury may cause cramping. What this means is if there is trauma to an area of the body, the body will generally tighten up to protect the area which thusly may cause cramping.
• Low blood flow. This may be due to already cramping muscles, too much scar tissue, or poor circulation. If there is very little blood flow to an area there is less oxygen. Less oxygen means poor metabolic functioning. If there is not enough oxygen to facilitate production of ATP, pumping of Ca2+ back into the sarcoplasmic reticulum cannot occur. This leads to sustained contraction of the muscle.
• Improper or overactive motor neuron function. Some diseases such as muscular (myoclonic) dystonia are caused by this. Similarly, twitching of random muscles may lead to cramping.
• Alternatively, cramps can also be due to overuse. Similarly to the low blood flow, we have a case where the muscle cannot keep up metabolically supplying the sarcoplasmic reticulum transporters with ATP to pump Ca2+. Thus, Ca2+ runs loose and initiates sustained contractions
• vElectrolytic imbalances from intake of too many nutients or lack of nutrients also may contribute to cramping.

Apparently, loss of electrolytes does not cause cramps, especially from sweating during physical exertion.

Secondary cause:

• Poor range of motion. When muscles are moved into a short range of motion and contracted, they are likely to cramp. For example, the quads are likely to cramp if you try to do an L-sit or V-sit the first time you try. This goes back the poor blood flow scenario where a sustained contraction cuts off oxygen availability and the muscles cramp due to lack of ATP. People that are inflexible usually have tight musculature and lots of scar tissue already and are thus “predisposed” to poorer blood flow and easier cramping. Foam rolling, massage, and static stretching are musts.

As you can see, lactic acid is not involved with cramping. High quantities of it may be detected in severely oxygen limited muscle cells with diminished amounts of ATP. However, this is only a correlation and not the actual causation of cramping.

Note: the basis of massage and techniques such as ART/trigger points aim at releasing contracted muscles. This frees up blood flow for healing and ATP production as well as breaks up scar tissue and reintroduces inflammation to heal the prolonged damaged and contracted areas of muscle.

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Lactic acid is not responsible for muscular acidosis.

Muscular and systemic acidosis is caused by three factors.

1. ATP depletion: ATP + H2O -> ADP + P + H+

2. Oxidation of glucose (C6H12O6) releases the hydrogen atoms as it is metabolized. Before the H+ ions get converted into H2O with oxygen at the end of the electron transport, they are released as H+ ions mostly in the krebs/citric acid cycle. All of the NADH generating reactions release H+.

2 NADH from Glycolysis + 1 (*2) NADH from Acetyl-CoA generation + 3 (*2) NADH from citric acid cycle generate 10 H+ per glucose molecule. The other two H+ are “absorbed” by FADH2 (QH2).

Hydrogen ions are buffered by microchondria through H+ ion gradients which drive the ATP synthase enzyme (this has very important implications which will be discussed later). ATP synthase is responsible for production of all ATP in the body by combining ADP + P and literally “smashing” them together to form ATP.

3. CO2 in the blood combines with water.

CO2 + H2O -> HCO3- + H+

This drops pH. The body has monitors up near the heart to detect blood pH levels. If the pH of the blood drops, this tells the body that there is too much CO2 in the blood making it too acidic. Thus, we increase our inhalation and exhalation rate. Thus, we breath not because we need oxygen but because we need to exhale CO2.

4. Incorrect: pyruvic acid + NADH -> NAD+ + lactic acid

Do NOT be confused here. Pyruvic acid –> lactic acid conversion does not release H+. Hence lactic acidosis is a misnomer and untrue because the pyruvate’s carboxylic acid group already has the hydrogen ion dissociated from it.

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Lactic acid is not responsible for fatigue, especially muscular fatigue.

There are a large number of reasons for decline and failure of contraction and peak tension in muscles. None are due to fatigue.

Muscular acidosis is indeed one cause of fatigue; however, as we already examined lactic acid is not involved in “creating” muscular acidosis.

Similarly, other causes of fatigue may include (going down the chain): CNS, motor nerves not being activated, nerve impulses not being transmitted correctly through lack of ion gradient, depletion of neurotransmitters at the neuromuscular junction, actin/myosin or muscle damage especially in eccentric contractions, calcium dysregulation, lack of metabolic substrates, blood flow or oxygen leading to ATP depletion, etc.

Metabolically, the accumulation of lactic acid does usually signal that the body is fatiguing; however, it is not directly involved and may only be used as a measuring stick especially in anaerobic exhaustion.

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Some “recent” articles in the media here and here have given the public an image that lactic acid is a fuel.

This is false.

This is the Cori Cycle discovered in 1929 by the biochemists Carl and Gerty Cori.

There are two lactate transporters, MCT1 and MCT4, involved with symporting lactate/H+ out of the muscle cells into the blood stream. These are transported as you can see in the image to the liver which metabolizes the lactate to glucose. Glucose is then shipped back to the muscle cells. The liver also releases glycogen stores as well.

The alternative reaction that lactate can undergo within the muscle if exercise intensity decreases is that it can be reformed to pyruvate with NAD+ and then remetabolized into the citric acid cycle normally.

Thus, lactate is indeed a substrate used to resynthesize glucose. But saying it is a “fuel” itself is an stretch at best, and calling it new is certainly absurd.

For more on the discovery of the Cori Cycle, see this article.

But wait…

The Cori Cycle is only one of the important “alternate” metabolic pathways in the body for resynthesis of glucose in the liver.

The other is the Glucose-Alanine Cycle.

If oxidative metabolism is limited by the number of mitochondria, then excess pyruvate is converted into alanine from pyruvate and another amino acid.

This leads to a dual interplay between the Cori Cycle (CC) and Glucose-Alanine cycle (GAC) which shifts the metabolic “debt” over to the liver. Since the GAC conserves NADH as opposed to the CC due to the pyruvate-lactate reaction (pyruvic acid + NADH -> NAD+ + lactic acid), the GAC allows more energy to be produced within the muscle because the NADH can be used to create 3 ATP in electron transport. This assumes, of course, that the intensity is not high enough that the extra NAD+ is needed for glycolysis.

So basically we have both pathways playing off each other to send off substrates to the liver to help resupply glycogen to the muscles. If the intensity is higher, the Cori Cycle tends to be used a bit more. If the intensity is lower but above lactate threshold, the Glucose-Alanine Cycle is more prevalent. There is a mix of moderately-high intensity where both are used simultaneously.

For more information see Exercise Biochemistry Page 220.

Let me clarify a little bit here. The during exercise, excess lactate within the blood stream can be uptaken by the brain, heart, and slow twitch muscles as a source of energy besides being used by existing muscles.

I argue that this is NOT to be considered a “fuel” rather as an intermediary metabolite during a vast set of biochemical reactions. It’s not a “fuel” just because everyone thought it was a “dead end” reaction and found it that it does get reprocessed by other tissues or used by the tissues its in.

Lactic acid must still be reconverted into pyruvate before it’s oxidation in the CAC and electron transport which is typical of the primary carbohydrate energy pathway. Shunting lactic acid from one place to another (as in the Cori cycle or to the brain, heart or slow twitch muscles) does not make it a fuel — rather a way for the body to transfer some of its metabolic load to other tissues.

Basically, I see it as dispersing the energy load from the hard working muscles to other tissues through intermediary metabolites. If this constitutes fuel to you, then by all means call lactic acid a fuel.

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In conclusion, we know that lactic acid does not cause DOMS, cramping, muscular acidosis, fatigue, and it is certainly not a fuel source although it may be used to resynthesize metabolites used for further production of energy.

Lactic acid is a metabolic byproduct of high intensity exercise. The fact that it correlates fairly well with the above symptoms and ailments does not mean it is a causative factor.

Most laypeople and even medical and exercise physiology texts still follow “conventional wisdom” without fact checking their sources. The only way to combat the ignorance is with correct information.

Next time someone blames lactic acid for anything please set them straight.