Day 11: saturated fat ain't all bad
Day: 11 of 42
Starting weight: 78.4kg Last recorded weight: 76kg
How I'm feeling today: still a little low - could be my cholesterol
So what about saturated fat? It's pretty logical than animal fat is going to be more readily utilised by our animal tummies, however having had a father who died of heart disease after years of high cholesterol, I haven't ever returned to eating the fat on meat nor cooking in butter. Of course calories are a factor too.
A while ago S and I happened across an entertaining and eye-opening documentary advocating saturated fat and attempting to counter-balance the well known movie Super Size Me. You can see an excerpt below. Apart from learning that saturated fat can actually help reduce the "bad" cholesterol in your blood, the other thing that stays with me is that some children are not getting the saturated fats they need for healthy brain development due to being fed "healthy" diets by their uninformed parents.
In yesterday's post I described a study that appeared to show that saturated fat can actually be beneficial to a fatty liver compared with commonly used vegetable oils. And, I have to say, now that I've crossed the line it's actually a relief to be able to use butter for cooking again without feeling like I'm killing myself. It really is does make things taste better. Although I really need to make some ghee, as it removes the solids that burn when you fry butter.
So what does create bad cholesterol in the blood if saturated fats are so good?
What I discovered:
As you can imagine, I'm missing fritters and breads and so on, so was looking forward to cooking the Ricotta Pancakes featured in the recipe list. It's a rather complicated recipe using ricotta cheese, sour cream, lemon zest, baking soda, ground almonds, protein powder and fresh berries (I choose blueberries). It also requires artificial sweetner, which I'm really uncomfortable with, so I chose stevia. I was keen to learn how to make pancakes without flour so I launched into it.
What.a.disaster.
The pancake wouldn't stay together, but I was so hungry I fried it up as a ball of mush and tried eating it anyway. Inedible. It tasted like some kind of chemical mix, had a terrible texture, and was just plain revolting. DO NOT TRY IT. Cross it out if you buy the book for God's sake. Blech. And I'm throwing out the stevia too.
Starting weight: 78.4kg Last recorded weight: 76kg
How I'm feeling today: still a little low - could be my cholesterol
Saturated Fat
So what about saturated fat? It's pretty logical than animal fat is going to be more readily utilised by our animal tummies, however having had a father who died of heart disease after years of high cholesterol, I haven't ever returned to eating the fat on meat nor cooking in butter. Of course calories are a factor too.
A while ago S and I happened across an entertaining and eye-opening documentary advocating saturated fat and attempting to counter-balance the well known movie Super Size Me. You can see an excerpt below. Apart from learning that saturated fat can actually help reduce the "bad" cholesterol in your blood, the other thing that stays with me is that some children are not getting the saturated fats they need for healthy brain development due to being fed "healthy" diets by their uninformed parents.
In yesterday's post I described a study that appeared to show that saturated fat can actually be beneficial to a fatty liver compared with commonly used vegetable oils. And, I have to say, now that I've crossed the line it's actually a relief to be able to use butter for cooking again without feeling like I'm killing myself. It really is does make things taste better. Although I really need to make some ghee, as it removes the solids that burn when you fry butter.
But What About Cholesterol?
So what does create bad cholesterol in the blood if saturated fats are so good?
What I discovered:
- Cholesterol is a white waxy substance made of fat and steroid
- Some is gained from food, and some is produced by the liver. The more you eat, the less you liver produces
- Too much in the blood causes it to block up your arteries
- It's carried around your blood stream by low density lipoprotein (LDL), and carried back to your liver by high density lipoprotein (HDL). So if you have too much LDL going on, you'll start getting a build up in your veins
- Dietary cholesterol comes from animal sources
- If for some reason your LDL reciptors are not functioning efficiently, you'll get an accumlation of cholesterol in your blood leading to hypercholesterolema
- Most websites containing information about cholesterol advise consumers to reduce saturated fat intake if they want to reduce cholesterol
- Low carb diets tend to raise HDL and lower the level of triglycerides (fat) in the blood. A high triglyceride level is a risk factor for heart disease and stroke.
- Low carb diets affect LDL in a less consistent way, sometimes it's higher, sometimes lower, but the actual LDL particles increase in size.
- Evidence is accumulating that suggests that the smaller the particles are, the greater the risk, as small particles lodge in the walls of blood vessels more easily.
- LDL particle size seems to be strongly correlated with triglyceride level (high triglycerides go with small particle size and vice versa). And low fat, high carbohydrate diets reduce the particle size of LDL.
- There are active arguments out there in the medical community regarding what contributes to, and what reduces elevated levels of LDL, and a good article on it on the About.com website
Today's meal: Lemon Ricotta Pancakes
As you can imagine, I'm missing fritters and breads and so on, so was looking forward to cooking the Ricotta Pancakes featured in the recipe list. It's a rather complicated recipe using ricotta cheese, sour cream, lemon zest, baking soda, ground almonds, protein powder and fresh berries (I choose blueberries). It also requires artificial sweetner, which I'm really uncomfortable with, so I chose stevia. I was keen to learn how to make pancakes without flour so I launched into it.
What.a.disaster.
The pancake wouldn't stay together, but I was so hungry I fried it up as a ball of mush and tried eating it anyway. Inedible. It tasted like some kind of chemical mix, had a terrible texture, and was just plain revolting. DO NOT TRY IT. Cross it out if you buy the book for God's sake. Blech. And I'm throwing out the stevia too.
Comments