Know your (saturated) fats

Too often we forget that saturated fats are just a category of fats, where each fatty acid has specific properties and this makes debates around saturated fat confused and with a lot of oversimplifications.

There are actually around 36 different saturated fat molecules found in food, maybe just about 10 commonly consumed. It's relatively easy to find information on the web on which you regularly consume.

Both for food composition (USDA nutrient database) and for effect (wikipedia or research papers like http://www.ajcn.org/content/77/5/1146.f ... a9e9fc3566).

It doesn't need to be guesswork.

For example, Olive Oil contains 11% of the saturated fat Palmitic Acid which does not seem to affect LDL / HDL cholesterol ratio.

Coconut Oil contains 44% of the saturated fat Lauric Acid, which greatly increase total cholesterol through HDL, so improves the cholesterol ratio.

The same precise approach can be taken for Mono-unsaturated fats and Poly-unsaturated fats.

Very true. Great post!

And to further encourage you to look into the different saturated fats, especially if you eat a lot of them, here are some links about goodies and nasties

As usual, don't draw conclusions too fast from single studies.

Saturated Capric acid:

- improved antioxidant status in liver and brain (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22040386)

- mitigate negative effects of some other saturated fats on cardiac cell death and cholesterol (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19482900)

- vasodilatory effects on the heart arteries - good in general (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1936910)

Saturated Palmitic acid:

- major contributor to insulin resistance (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12841357, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22203421, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21506380 and many more)

- contributor to Alzheimer's pathogenesis (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20383947, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18710535 and many more)

- promoter of pancreas beta-cells death - the ones secreting insulin (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16847595, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21753123, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21152956, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20840078 and many more)

This is just a very short excerpt of what is documented...

If people are interested, I'll try to share the little database of nutriments / effects I have built.

Keep in mind though, that a major source of palmitic acid is actually coming from the conversion of excess carbohydrate.

Razz said:

Keep in mind though, that a major source of palmitic acid is actually coming from the conversion of excess carbohydrate.

Yes, even in fatty grain-fed beef there are only a few grams per serving.

That's why it's important to get the right amounts of carbs at the right times.

Razz, thanks for pointing this out.

On this point, I couldn't elucidate the following: palmitic acid is indeed the only fatty acid that is synthesized from glucose as an intermediate step, but additionally humans have enzymes to modify this palmitic acid into other longer or unsaturated fatty acids (elongation enzymes & desaturase enzymes). Do we know the resulting balance of fatty acids and what affects it?

Josh,

Indeed. As an indication, I've been keeping track of my paleo diet using indicative values from the USDA database (averages to 2300kcal, 15% energy from carbs, 30% proteins, 55% fats), and it suggests I am eating about 20g of palmitic acid a day (from beef, eggs, avocado, 99% chocolate...) vs 45g of Oleic acid (olive oil, avocado, nuts...). In most studies I've linked above Oleic acid seems to reverse most of the negative effects of palmitic acid.

You are not getting enough carbs, and are wasting some of that protein (probably close to half, looking at those numbers) as energy. Not ideal.

Hmm Josh I can't make a stronger case for my energy sources without giving a lot of details which would derail the thread onto other topics (I've been keeping track of a lot of things over the last few months, I guess I'll need to post a summary of my experience at some point). But I'll try to critically evaluate what I am trying to do with your suggestion in mind.

Josh, do you think it's detrimental to convert proteins to carbs? To me it seems like a better way to control blood glucose while letting the body make the needed carbs through gluconeogenesis..unless one has goals that relate to mass gain or high volume training.

Razz said:

Josh, do you think it's detrimental to convert proteins to carbs? To me it seems like a better way to control blood glucose while letting the body make the needed carbs through gluconeogenesis..unless one has goals that relate to mass gain or high volume training.

Honestly, not as long as you aren't exceeding safe protein intakes. Our kidneys can handle a fair amount of ammonia. The real problem is when proteins are your major source of energy as well, because then you have GNG AND amino acid oxidation going on simultaneously and nowhere near enough of those nitrogen groups are going to be used in transamination reactions. You end up with a large nitrogen load on the kidneys. In the short term, this probably isn't going to cause permanent problems or long-term damage in healthy people but will cause problems with underlying disease. Over long periods of time this will reduce the effective organ lifespan of the kidney. It's all a matter of degree, really.

Of course this also depends on your carb sources, I mean if you're eating natural carbs like sweet potatoes, buckwheat, brown rice, veggies, and so on then you should not have a problem aside from any food insensitivities you may have (but that's usually wheat). If your carbs were coming from Honey Buns then you would probably be better off with the slow damage from the excessive protein... you'd probably have a longer life and a longer healthy portion of that life comparatively, even though you would suffer in the end from both choices.

Adrien: You'd need 30% carbs to cover basal metabolism.

At 15% carbs that's 86g of carbs, not even enough to cover your brain + red blood cell requirements. You'd need at least 110g for that. You're getting 173g of protein or so, but at least half of that is not being used as protein. Your effective protein intake, for anabolic purposes, is not higher than 86g (which is still enough for you to do just fine as an athlete as long as you don't weigh more than100 kg or so)

I am not suggesting that you aren't seeing good results from what you are doing, just that it isn't ideal from a long-term health or super high performance standpoint.

Josh, a few more questions as I am not familiar with this idea of required carbs. I understand too much protein is not good for the kidney (my uric acid levels are high normal), but then why not replace them with fats (assuming I can choose the exact fatty acid composition)?

Here are some relevant points I have in mind:

- Various sources are claiming, perhaps boldly, that the body can survive without any carbohydrates (e.g. Di Pasquale in his amino acid book)

- We don't seem to know yet all the basic pathways of energy metabolism in humans, eg. can we make glucose from fatty acids? Usual guess is "No" but the following study from 2011 suggests that yes and that it may be linked to the "metabolic advantage" of low-carb diets (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21814506)

- Judging by low-carb forums, many people on low carb diets have high level of fasting blood glucose (e.g. discussed here http://high-fat-nutrition.blogspot.fr/2 ... tance.html)

- Although it is often repeated that the brain can only use glucose as an energy source, the consensus is that it can use ketone bodies as well (switching from glucose to ketone even seem to alleviate some neurological disease)

Adrien said:

Josh, a few more questions as I am not familiar with this idea of required carbs. I understand too much protein is not good for the kidney (my uric acid levels are high normal), but then why not replace them with fats (assuming I can choose the exact fatty acid composition)?

Here are some relevant points I have in mind:

- Various sources are claiming, perhaps boldly, that the body can survive without any carbohydrates (e.g. Di Pasquale in his amino acid book)

- We don't seem to know yet all the basic pathways of energy metabolism in humans, eg. can we make glucose from fatty acids? Usual guess is "No" but the following study from 2011 suggests that yes and that it may be linked to the "metabolic advantage" of low-carb diets (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21814506)

- Judging by low-carb forums, many people on low carb diets have high level of fasting blood glucose (e.g. discussed here http://high-fat-nutrition.blogspot.fr/2 ... tance.html)

- Although it is often repeated that the brain can only use glucose as an energy source, the consensus is that it can use ketone bodies as well (switching from glucose to ketone even seem to alleviate some neurological disease)

The brain can run at a maximum of 60% on ketone bodies. It still requires 40% glucose.

We don't have the enzymes for direct fat to glucose conversion. It has been shown with gene therapy to be possible in animals recently, but for obvious reasons that is not really relevant to us at this time Hope for the future, though!

All of that has you really mixed up, just like most everyone else. You have to remember, at rest we're running on 70% fat. That's a lot. The only time this changes is when activity level increases. Higher activity level = higher carbohydrate requirements.

It is 100% true that there is a serious gap in the study of metabolic changes with high intensity exercise and extremely low carb diets in terms of enzyme prevalance, and I;m not even quite sure if that can be "safely" studied, but there is a good reason you don't see any Olympic sprinters on low carb diets. It's the same reason that the very best marathoners have high carb diets: You get the most energy per second with the carbs due to the speed of the reactions.

From a performance perspective, there is no contest. Carbs are king.

From a metabolic perspective, it is nonsense to think we don't need carbs. Ask yourself one simple question: If we don't need carbs, why do we have the ability to turn over half of the amino acids into glucose? Why do we start doing that faster as soon as we run below 70-ish% of liver glycogen stores? There is no purpose whatsoever to being able to do gluconeogenesis unless we need carbs.

Gotta think more clearly! You need carbs. You need carbs so badly that your body will break down the very tissues that give you life in order to make glucose if you actually have zero carbs in your diet. It does the same thing with dietary protein, which is normally used to maintain those vital organs, and much of the non-glycogenic amino acids get oxidized directly.

No matter what you do, no matter what you eat, your body will make carbs. It is therefore a total exercise in futility to try and go low carb. It is stupid, counter-productive, and potentially quite dangerous. A number of long-term nutrient deficiencies come from this approach because you aren't getting plant matter in your diet. I don't want to go any further on this right now, I have class.

Try to make sure you brush up on the basics of human metabolism before diving into pop nutrition. Seriously. It's a dangerous thing to listen to persuasive people who are not starting off with this exact education. There are short-term stages that you can take someone through that are very different from how a long-term proper diet should be put together, but those are either for short-term goals like a photo shoot/movie/contest day or for hormonal re-sensitization.That second part doesn't work properly without exercise.

If you don't start with the basics you can never truly understand the boundaries of time and macronutrient breakdowns that you don't want to cross for long periods of time. You also can't understand how to get what you need on a regular basis because you won't understand what you need when or why.

From the linked study, which is really interesting and should be read by those curious and educated in these areas... there is a lot of technical language.

2–30% of acetone is excreted via the urine and breath [35], while the remainder is metabolized further and could account for up to 11% of gluconeogenesis during starvation [35].

While there are a near-infinite number of things we could talk about, this quote captures the most important part.

First off, there is no proof of this yet, but that's not the important part... I always wondered why Acetyl-CoA could come from fat and carbs (and most amino acids) but could not simply be reverse-engineered into carbs. It appears that, in theory, there is a very interesting and apparently valid set of pathways for this to happen in humans, though there is no hard evidence to support this hypothesis yet.

Important part: One of the first sentences by the authors stressed that there was a very small amount of glucose that could be accounted for by this proposed process. They clearly cover the fact, later on, that there are unbreakable carbohydrate requirements even in the presence of zero carb intakes. These requirements aren't small... Did you notice the 11% number? That is the maximum theoretical glucose output, and the energy loss is between 26 and 48%, which means this would put you in even more of a calorie deficit when taken into account.

When you adjust for true calorie deficit by accounting for the thermic effect of food (how much energy it takes to digest the food before we can then use it for energy) there are zero differences between Adkins-type ketogenic diets, Mediterranean-type diets, Ornish diets, whatever diet you want, in terms of weight lost over time. There is no magic to any diet, only biochemistry. Biochemistry, like all sciences, is a slave to math. Math tells all, as long as nothing is overlooked or miscalculated.

Mark my words: There will be at least one person who makes a small fortune mis-using the message of this study. They will tell people that they can turn fat into carbs and be totally fine and get better weight loss than ever because when you turn fat into carbs it costs even more energy than doing the same thing with protein! WOW! Talk about being a fat burning furnace! You're going to have a 16 pack buddy! Better share some of those hot babes with your friends... or not!

See what I mean? I could get this place whipped up into a frenzy and defend the crap out of my statement, and even when you poke boulder-sized holes in it the hype machine will have done its work. All I need are some testimonials, which I can pay for and which companies exist to GET for you, and then I'm golden. I would also be the absolute worst kind of person on earth if I did this because I would be misleading every single one of you into thinking that whatever results you get from my product would be super awesome and that you were doing the best thing for yourself while in reality you could be hurting yourself and certainly would NOT be getting your best performance results or muscle growth.

See what I mean? That's why I am here... to try and help everyone avoid hopping on a bandwagon that is heading over the side of a cliff. The only thing I care about is helping each and every one of you get exactly what you want out of your training and that includes your nutrition.

Joshua Naterman said:

Biochemistry, like all sciences, is a slave to math.

BOW BEFORE US!!

Rik de Kort said:

Joshua Naterman said:

Biochemistry, like all sciences, is a slave to math.

BOW BEFORE US!!

Joshua Naterman said:

The only thing I care about is helping each and every one of you get exactly what you want out of your training and that includes your nutrition.

You put so much work into your posts and i learned a lot from you! So,

Thank you for your efforts!

Joshua Naterman said:

Rik de Kort said:

Joshua Naterman said:

Biochemistry, like all sciences, is a slave to math.

BOW BEFORE US!!

Being a researcher in math I can only agree with this but to me biochemistry is a lot more complex than math!

I also couldn't agree more that people need to be clear on the fundamentals like metabolic pathways before anything else. I am personally not there yet but working on it.

Anyway thanks for your thorough replies, I need time to think about them.

The gycerol phosphate shuttle is one pathway fat could be turned into carbs. Not the fat itself, but the carbon backbone.

The fat presumably would be metabolized for energy. But how much of it actually occurs in real life under normal conditions ... who knows? See http://themedicalbiochemistrypage.org/g ... enesis.php ... really deep medical biochemistry site.

The author of that site notes elsewhere that the staturated FA palmitate can lead to insulin resistance (all other things being equal). siteing http://www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/ret ... 3112000642

For general nutrient's impact on health the http://lpi.oregonstate.edu/infocenter/contentnuts.html linus pauling center

has an impressive collection. It states a lot but doesn't overstate.

Carbs burn the cleanest of all the macronutrients, and damn if they weren't meant to be eaten why would they

taste so good??

Adrien said:

Being a researcher in math I can only agree with this but to me biochemistry is a lot more complex than math!

I also couldn't agree more that people need to be clear on the fundamentals like metabolic pathways before anything else. I am personally not there yet but working on it.

Anyway thanks for your thorough replies, I need time to think about them.

No problem, it is complex. I'm working on streamlining the education so that it is easy for people to quickly understand how it all works and how to apply this in their lives. As Coach warned me, it is a process of constant re-organization

And, to be fair, I think that higher math appears much more complex than the biochemistry... I think that just reflects our relative strong and weak points in terms of foundational education! I suppose that in real terms biochemistry is one of the most complex subjects on the planet since there are so many alternate pathways and everything happens on a sliding scale, so in the end you are probably right

Joshua Naterman said:

Adrien said:

Being a researcher in math I can only agree with this but to me biochemistry is a lot more complex than math!

I also couldn't agree more that people need to be clear on the fundamentals like metabolic pathways before anything else. I am personally not there yet but working on it.

Anyway thanks for your thorough replies, I need time to think about them.

No problem, it is complex. I'm working on streamlining the education so that it is easy for people to quickly understand how it all works and how to apply this in their lives. As Coach warned me, it is a process of constant re-organization

And, to be fair, I think that higher math appears much more complex than the biochemistry... I think that just reflects our relative strong and weak points in terms of foundational education! I suppose that in real terms biochemistry is one of the most complex subjects on the planet since there are so many alternate pathways and everything happens on a sliding scale, so in the end you are probably right

Well, when you get your website up and running, be sure to have a "Donate"-button - I'll be sure to click it once in a while You're doing such an amazing job taking your time and sharing your knowledge and in-depth explanations with all of us!