Wednesday 19 June 2013

Completing the trine: Which are the safest fats?

First, watch this video by Chris Masterjohn.

Diets very high in pufas (polyunsaturates) are not beneficial to heart health or longevity. Flora? No thanks!

Here's a chart. The beige & grey bars represent pufas (omega-6 & omega-3).
Comparison of dietary fats
The yellow bars represent monounsaturates and the orangey-red bars represent saturates. I consider these to be harmless, as long as you don't go mad and eat them in such large amounts that you gain weight.

Bearing in mind the information in the video, plus the information in Fats: Spawn of Satan or Dogs' Doodads? , I use only fats from the bottom 6 for cooking (olive oil and butter, actually).

Flaxseed oil can be used as an omega-3 supplement for vegetarian/vegan women, as omega-3 pufas are as rare as rocking-horse poo in most foods (apart from oily fish).

Non-vegetarian/vegan people can get their long-chain omega-3 pufas (EPA & DHA) from oily fish. As vegetarian/vegan men barely produce any DHA from the omega-3 in flaxseed oil, they should get it from algal DHA supplements. See Extremely Limited Synthesis of Long Chain Polyunsaturates in Adults: Implications for their Dietary Essentiality and use as Supplements.

2 comments:

Kade Storm A.K.A. Hedonist said...

Seen the video before. Like it generally, if also for the fact that is can admit that low-fat diets generally have existed in traditional and on-going populations without yielding negative results. In other words, eat natural sources of fats from animals, seafood or tropical foods. Alternatively, defer to an actual low-fat diet as opposed to this 30% S.A.D. nonsense with industrially strained PUFAs.

George said...

Very nice chart. A substantial part of the SaFA in butter is MCT and butyrate. I suspect that if you removed these from the equation the MUFA/SaFA ratio would be more like that of tallow.