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Medical Forum / General / Nutrition / October 2006mono vs. poly unsaturated fats
Hi. Can someone explain which are healthier, mono or poly unsaturated fats. A quick google search recommends that saturated fats are bad whereas monounsaturated are good. If saturated fats are bad, I would think that polunsaturated would be the best. Also, can one find Omega-3 and Omega-6 fats of all three varieties and how do they relate to the saturation of the fat? Thanks. > Hi. Can someone explain which are healthier, mono or poly unsaturated > fats. A quick google search recommends that saturated fats are bad [quoted text clipped - 5 lines] > > Thanks. A man who used to be on alt.support diabetes whose advice I found to be always helpful recommended mono-unsaturated as better than polyunsaturated. The nutrition gurus who wrote about the "New Food Pyramid" in the Scientific American a few years back didn't distinguish between the two sorts. Both agreed that "trans-fats," hydrogenated vegetable oils and vegetable oils which had been heated for long, are much worse than anything else. So avoid margarine, and don't fry with vegetable oil. I don't cook with oil, period. > Also, can one find Omega-3 and Omega-6 fats of all three varieties and > how do they relate to the saturation of the fat? Dietary omega 3 and 6 are always polyunsaturated. MattLB When I was young the push was on to say that "polyunsaturated oils" were best, then the evidence caught up with the authorities, who are always behind the times to some degree. In fact, the new "heart healthy monounsaturates" claim is based mostly on "markers," and little else. If you go to my site, you can read the actual evidence and decide for yourself, but I will just mention that if "saturated fat" was "bad" then Asians on diets in which coconut oil is the primary fat source would die at very young ages and have high rates of "chronic disease," when the opposite is in fact the case. Lard is usually used as the "saturated fat" source in experiments, even though it is 39% saturated whereas chicken fat is about 30% saturated. Since coconut oil is 92% saturated, it should be incredibly unhealthy, but the opposite is the case. Because this is ludicrious, authorities in nations like the USA simply refuse to address it, hoping that it won't get enough media coverage, apparently. Fatty acid researcher Mary Enig, for example, sent information about this to Harvard's Walter Willett, but he ignored her, from what I understand. In any case, my site is: http://groups.msn.com/TheScientificDebateForum- If you have questions, ask me on the nutrition forum on that site. To give you an idea of my site, here is an study's abstract that I just added: Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons; Volume 10, Number 3, Fall 2005. Anthony Colpo. ABSTRACT The belief that low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol causes atherosclerosis and subsequent heart disease is a fundamental precept of modern medicine. Therapies aimed at reducing serum LDL cholesterol are currently considered to be an essential element of any attempt to prevent coronary heart disease (CHD). While it currently enjoys widespread acceptance among health authorities and medical practitioners, numerous lines of evidence raise questions about the LDL hypothesis. Native LDL cholesterol is a vitally important substance and is not in any way atherogenic. Statin drugs, the only LDL-lowering agents shown to have clinical benefit in reducing the incidence of heart disease, have been shown to exert their benefits via mechanisms totally unrelated to LDL cholesterol reduction. A potential causative role in atherosclerosis and heart disease has indeed been detected for oxidized LDL, but this form of LDL shows no correlation with serum levels of native LDL. Rather, individual antioxidant status appears to be a key factor influencing serum concentrations of oxidized LDL. > Hi. Can someone explain which are healthier, mono or poly unsaturated > fats. A quick google search recommends that saturated fats are bad > whereas monounsaturated are good. If saturated fats are bad, I would > think that polunsaturated would be the best. Yes, but there needs to be enough omega-3 fatty acids to neutralize some bad aspects of omega-6 fatty acids and omega-3 fatty acids are hard to get in the diet. In a balanced diet, it is good to trade off monounaturated fat for some carbohydrates. Since, most vegetable oils contain a small, but significant amount of saturated fat, you will have difficulty getting saturated fats completely out of your diet. > Also, can one find Omega-3 and Omega-6 fats of all three varieties and > how do they relate to the saturation of the fat? Both of those fats are polyunsaturated. There are three types of omega-3 fatty acids, ALA is available from some vegetable oil but the more directly utilized EPA and DHA are primarily available from fish oil.  SignatureRon Okay, so a different, but related question. We all know that partially hydrogenated vegetable oil is the principal source for trans fats, but I thought that I saw somewhere that they can be created when frying using vegetable oil at a high temperature. Is it true that regular vegetable oil can convert to trans fat when used in high temperature frying? Are there other oils that are healthy and don't convert to transfats when used in frying at a high temperature? (not that I really deep fry often anyway) > Okay, so a different, but related question. We all know that partially > hydrogenated vegetable oil is the principal source for trans fats, but > I thought that I saw somewhere that they can be created when frying > using vegetable oil at a high temperature. > Is it true that regular vegetable oil can convert to trans fat when > used in high temperature frying? Are there other oils that are healthy > and don't convert to transfats when used in frying at a high > temperature? (not that I really deep fry often anyway) The high temperatures and oxygen will cause other toxic products to be formed making the production of trans-fats a mute issue. Pan frying should be better than deep frying because there is less time for the toxic products to be formed. SignatureRon Okay, sure. I understand that deep frying is bad and I don't do it much, but if I was going to do it, which oil would be healthiest least likely to convert to trans-fat and other carcinogens. We can't all be gung-ho nutrition vigilanties who live on celery and oats. I personally try to balance the culinarily sublime with healthy foods. I don't usually deep fry, but--damnit--you can't pan-fry samosas. > > Okay, so a different, but related question. We all know that partially > > hydrogenated vegetable oil is the principal source for trans fats, but [quoted text clipped - 10 lines] > should be better than deep frying because there is less time for the > toxic products to be formed. > Okay, sure. I understand that deep frying is bad and I don't do it > much, but if I was going to do it, which oil would be healthiest least > likely to convert to trans-fat and other carcinogens. Olive oil or some other monounsaturated oil is likely to be best. > We can't all be gung-ho nutrition vigilanties who live on celery and > oats. I personally try to balance the culinarily sublime with healthy > foods. I don't usually deep fry, but--damnit--you can't pan-fry > samosas. One of my favorite fish fry take-out place is using an oil called Optimax(TM) which is advertised as not containing trans fats. I read that it is also liquid at room temperature indicating that it is low in saturated fats. I haven't been able find out the specifics as to what it contains or who is the manufacturer. SignatureRon |
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