Nutrition Performance - Fat Makes You Fat, Right?
From a health standpoint, dietary fat is the nutrient of greatest concern to a variety of health organizations. However, we need some fat in our diet. And research shows that the total amount of fat in the diet, whether high or low, has no real link with disease.1 Rather, what really matters is the type of fat in the diet. There is consistent evidence that a high intake of either monounsaturated or polyunsaturated fat lowers the risk for heart disease. For example, Harvard researchers found that replacing 80 calories of carbohydrates with 80 calories of either polyunsaturated or monounsaturated fats lowered the risk for heart disease by about 30 to 40 percent.1
Furthermore, the relationship between dietary fat and obesity has been questioned for several reasons: 1) weight loss/fat loss on low-fat diets is characteristically modest in nature; 2) prospective epidemiological studies (i.e., studies that start with the present condition of a population of individuals and follows them into the future) have not consistently found that individuals eating the most fat are heavier than those eating the least fat; and 3) obesity prevalence has risen markedly since the 1970s in the U.S. despite a significant decrease in fat consumption as a percent of total energy.2
As dietary fat has decreased, carbohydrate consumption has increased in a compensatory fashion, and most of this increase has been in the form of refined starchy food and concentrated sugars that are high in glycemic index and/or glycemic load.2 The continued intake of high-glycemic load meals is associated with an increased risk of chronic diseases such as obesity, heart disease and diabetes.7 Consequently, many scientists and health care professionals are beginning to question the wisdom of recommending low-fat, high-carbohydrate diets.
Yes, Fat Makes You Fat
Because fat is more dense than other foods (nine calories per gram vs. four calories per gram for protein and carbohydrates), eating high-fat foods results in greater energy intake than does eating a similar quantity of lower-fat foods. Fat also has a weaker satiation effect than carbohydrates, which may result in the over- consumption of fat.
Indeed, studies in which people were overfed diets varying in the proportion of energy from fat (40 to 53 percent of calories as fat) showed that high-fat diets promoted weight gain more efficiently than did lower-fat diets. Thus, very-high-fat diets are not the way to go.
No, Fat Doesn’t Make You Fat
Recently, Drs. Willet and Leibel at the Harvard School of Public Health concluded that fat consumption within the range of 18 to 40 percent of energy appears to have little if any effect on body fatness.4 Thus, they felt that diets high in fat do not appear to be the primary cause of the high prevalence of excess body fat in our society, and reductions in fat will not be a solution.4
Further, Dr. SL. Weinberg at Dayton Heart Hospital in Ohio concluded that the low-fat/high-carbohydrate diet may well have played an unintended role in the current epidemics of obesity, lipid abnormalities, type II diabetes and metabolic syndromes.5 According to Dr. Weinberg, low-fat/high-carbohydrate diets can no longer be defended by appealing to the authority of prestigious medical organizations or by rejecting clinical experience and growing medical literature suggesting the much-maligned low-carbohydrate/high-protein diet may have a salutary, or healthful, effect on the epidemics in question.5
Finally, the authoritative Cochrane review recently stated, “Fat-restricted diets are no better than calorie-restricted diets in achieving long-term weight loss in overweight or obese people.”6 In fact, “participants lost slightly more weight on the control diets, but this was not significantly different from the weight loss achieved through dietary fat restriction”.6
In summary, it’s becoming increasingly clear that diets high in fat are not the primary cause of obesity.
Fat Intake and Testosterone
Dr. Jeff Volek and colleagues reported significant positive correlations between dietary fat, specifically monounsaturated and saturated fatty acids, and resting testosterone concentrations in a group of young gym rats. They concluded that these findings are particularly important for athletes training intensely who may experience a decline in testosterone concentrations due to overtraining. Thus, bodybuilders should not follow very-low-fat diets.
Ornish Diet Sucks Donkey Balls
The Dean Ornish diet is a very-low-fat, mainly vegetarian diet plan. Meat, poultry or fish foods aren't recommended, while only a few dairy products are allowed. Oddly, banned foods include all fats and oils, nuts, seeds and avocados. Dr. Ornish claims his diet decreases risk of diseases. However, it should be noted that outside of the Ornish research group, his results have not been replicated by any other laboratory. In fact, the one study that attempted to validate Ornish´s approach found no significant improvements in blood lipid values after 12 months of treatment. Clearly, the Ornish diet is too low in essential fatty acids and high-quality protein.
Fat Tips
• Reduce the amount of saturated fat to less than 10 percent of dietary calories. Select lean meats and low-fat dairy products.
• Minimize the consumption of hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated vegetable oils (i.e., trans fats). Processed foods that contain substantial amounts of trans fats include margarine, vegetable shortening, white bread; packaged foods such as cookies, crackers, potato chips and cakes; and fried fast foods such as French fries.
• Substitute polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats for saturated fats. Nuts, particularly walnuts, are good sources of healthy polyunsaturated fats. Olive and canola oil are particularly high in monounsaturated fatty acids as are almonds and avocados.
• Consume foods rich in omega-3 fatty acids (e.g., fish and flaxseed oil).
