Saturated Fat

Nice article on saturated fat...

 

Published on Diet Heart Publishing (http://dietheartpublishing.com)

---

When you hear the words, "avoid saturated fat," ask which one?

By AlanWatson

Created 11/16/2010 - 12:51

"Saturated" means chemically stable, nothing else. A saturated fat is chemically stable – resistant to oxidation (like rusting on a car). Because they are chemically stable, saturated fats make up 50 percent or more of the fat in our 70 trillion cell membranes (fatty bi-layers).

These fatty membranes function as the "brain" of the cell. You can remove all the intracellular organelles and the cell – if given food - continues to live. Saturated fat protects cellular integrity by providing "solid state" computer-like homeland security.

Fats (or fatty acids) are chains of carbon. (Think of rail cars in a train.) The carbons in a saturated fat are connected together by single, saturated chemical bonds – no missing hydrogen molecules. There are many types and chain lengths of saturated fats, but all contain single, stable chemical bonds.

Despite what you've heard, saturated fats are not animal fats. As an example, 18 carbon saturated stearic acid in beef, 18 carbon  stearic acid in chocolate, and  18 carbon stearic acid in olive oil are identical. Your body can't tell the difference.   

There are short, medium and long chain saturated fats - and all are metabolized differently. If someone says saturated fats are bad, ask which one? Long chain stearic acid (18C), found in beef, chocolate, olive oil and many other foods, raises protective HDL, lowering the risk of heart disease.

What's so bad about that?  

Saturated lauric acid (12C), a medium chain fat abundant in coconut and palm oil, kills a variety of pathogens, including viruses and bacteria. Maligned for decades by U.S. interests promoting cheap vegetable fats, lauric acid is another life-preserving, life-promoting saturated fat.

Saturated fat is never alone. Fat in food is always a mixture of different fatty acids, saturated and unsaturated. As an example, milk fat or butter contains 12 different fatty acids, including 8 different saturated fats (8 different chain lengths). Milk fat contains approximately 15 to 17 percent short and medium chain saturated fats, including anti-microbial lauric acid (12C). When someone says saturated fat is bad, ask which one?

Unsaturated Fats = chemical instability. Unsaturated fats are chains of carbon that contain one or more double bonds. Double bonds introduce chemically instability; they are reactive to heat, light, and oxygen. Monounsaturated fats have one double bond and are relatively unstable; polyunsaturated fats have two or more double bonds and are very unstable.

The safest fats for cooking contain the highest percentage of saturated and monounsaturated fat – and the least amount of highly reactive polyunsaturated fat. As an example, tallow, the rendered fat from beef or lamb, is more than 90 percent saturated and monounsaturated fat - safe for high temperature cooking.

Used for centuries, tallow, is about 50-55 percent saturated and 40 percent monounsaturated. Used appropriately, tallow does not go rancid; no free radical cell terrorists are formed in the food. Foods fried in tallow also contain less fat than foods fried in unsaturated, unstable vegetable fats.

From the days of George and Martha Washington up through the 1940s, our traditional more saturated and monounsaturated fats - tallow, lard, and butter - provided safe, nutritious cooking options and provided diversified income for small mixed family farms, benefitting local communities.

Then, beginning in the 20^th Century, especially after 1950, the American Heart Association – supported by vegetable oil interests – attacked our traditional fats as "artery-clogging" and began promoting the use of the newly invented - cholesterol-free - cheap vegetable oils, margarines, and vegetable shortenings.

As a result, trans-fat laden hydrogenated vegetable oil replaced tallow for frying. By 1957, margarine had outsold butter for the first time. Lard, the number one cooking fat in 1910, was replaced by hydrogenated and non-hydrogenated soybean oil, which today has greased 80 percent of the U.S. edible fat market.

When you hear the words, "avoid saturated fat," ask which one?  As you know now, there are many different saturated fats and they offer a variety of nutritional and physiological benefits, including providing structure and stability to the 70 trillion cell membranes that make up your body.  

© 2005-2010 Diet Heart Publishing. Contact. 2235 E. 38th. St., Minneapolis, MN 55407. Site Disclaimer. Website created by Cokato Computer Service.

---

Source URL: http://dietheartpublishing.com/node/206

Carl