Polyunsaturated and Monounsaturated Fat

BrittneyJ2006

Both of these have a goal set of zero a day on MFP. I sometimes have 1 or 2 grams in this category. When I researched this, the American Heart Association (heart.org) states that they can have a beneficial effect when consumed in moderation and when used to replace saturated fats or trans fats. Anyone have any insight on this? I just hate seeing it in the red as a bad thing on my diary.


ANYONE????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

mjudd1990

Mono and polyunsaturated fats = good fats. Saturated = bad fat. Trans fat = ugly mutant artificially created stay away from at all cost fat. That being said, unsaturated fats are great for your overall health so try to get away from the notion that "eating fat will make you fat." Stock up on foods like avocados and nuts and try incorporating olive oil and/or coconut oil into your cooking instead of butter, margarine, or vegetable oil.

BrittneyJ2006

Thanks for the reply! Your response is helpful. I read similar info as I looked further into it.

EvenThatNameIsTaken

I'd be curious to know if there is a general recommended daily allowance for mono and poly-unsaturated fats?

Then we could customize the amounts of those fats in the Goals>Custom section.

I'll post back if I find anything but I imagine there is a reason MFP leaves it blank, i.e. lot of disagreement perhaps? dunno.

(ETA: it looks like it is just suggested to have as many fats be unsaturated as possible. )

GertrudeHorse

I've read that saturated fats are meant to be less than 7% of overall calories (i.e. 16 grams of saturated fat on a 2000 calorie intake), which would mean the mono- and poly-unsaturated ones should comprise the remainder of your fat macro (whatever you've set that to). I usually manually adjust this stuff in the goals section. Of course, I'm sure people on paelo diets will strongly disagree with that. But the 7% figure seems to be a common heart foundation guideline that I've encountered. Of course, those guidelines will vary slightly between countries.

EvenThatNameIsTaken

Came across this article tonight, giving it a good read myself. Seems legit:

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/fats-full-story/

Snow3y

Mono and polyunsaturated fats = good fats. Saturated = bad fat. Trans fat = ugly mutant artificially created stay away from at all cost fat. That being said, unsaturated fats are great for your overall health so try to get away from the notion that "eating fat will make you fat." Stock up on foods like avocados and nuts and try incorporating olive oil and/or coconut oil into your cooking instead of butter, margarine, or vegetable oil.

What makes saturated fat bad?

jko90s

Mono and polyunsaturated fats = good fats. Saturated = bad fat. Trans fat = ugly mutant artificially created stay away from at all cost fat. That being said, unsaturated fats are great for your overall health so try to get away from the notion that "eating fat will make you fat." Stock up on foods like avocados and nuts and try incorporating olive oil and/or coconut oil into your cooking instead of butter, margarine, or vegetable oil.

Yea and not all polyunsaturated fats are "good". omega 3 is good and you can easily get enough of that by consuming oily fish, fish oil etc

Snow3y

Came across this article tonight, giving it a good read myself. Seems legit:

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/fats-full-story/

Just quoting from the article, and adding that these are not the only studies done. There are many more, with the same conclusions, from other institutes.

"More recently, several studies seemed to suggest that eating diets high in saturated fat did not raise the risk of heart disease—a finding that ran counter to decades of dietary advice. (21,22) One highly-publicized report analyzed the findings of 21 studies that followed 350,000 people for up to 23 years. "

mjudd1990

Even if saturated fats do not have any negative impact on your health, they also likely have no positive impact. Also even if they are truly innocuous, the bulk of foods that are high in saturated fat are usually loaded with sodium and other chemicals as well. By all means if you think saturated fats aren't bad then keep eating them, it's your body and your health. As for me, I try to cut out as much as I can.

calamarione

^^^^Warning: Chemistry Lesson!^^^^

Fats are long chains of hydrocarbons (technical term for a molecule that has carbon and hydrogen atoms). Hydrocarbons have a range of sizes and they are the fundamental molecules of life. Sugars, proteins, cholesterols and fats are all hydrocarbons. However, the molecular structure of fats are why they have such a higher caloric value (9 cal/g vs 4 cal/g in proteins and carbs) on average.

As stated above the molecular structure of fats is long chains. What this looks like if you can imagine is a back bone of carbon atoms with hydrogen atoms poking out. Typically the ratio of hydrogen to carbon atoms is 2 hydrogen for every carbon or 2 to 1 (neglecting any functional groups or the end carbon atoms). When this ratio is close to 2 we call this saturated fat because the molecule is saturated with as many hydrogen atoms as the carbon atoms can handle. A saturated fat looks like this:

C - C - C - C - C - C - C - C - C - C - C - R

The hydrogen atoms aren't shown since I can't get the formatting to come out properly. Just assume that each carbon has 4 hydrogen atoms minus however many other atoms are connected to it. The R represents the rest of the functional groups associated with the fat that I won't go into details here.

Unsaturated fats are like saturated fats only we start eliminating the hydrogen atoms from the chains. For every hydrogen atom we eliminate we reduce the total caloric value (or just energy) of the molecule. There are other benefits too such as how the fat transports in the body, how it agglomerates (similar to cholesterol in our blood stream), etc. A monounsaturated fat would have two of those hydrogen atoms removed and replaced by a double bond between the two affected carbon atoms. A polyunsaturated fat would have several more affected pairs of carbon atoms. An illustration of a polyunsaturated fat:


C = C - C - C - C = C - C - C - C = C - C - R

You can extend this idea to carbs and proteins which tend to be cyclic molecules. You could imagine the above hydrocarbon chain bent around on itself. This would eliminate more hydrogen atoms. Also, carbs and proteins have other functional groups attached to the carbon atoms which our bodies do not utilize as much for energy which (for the sake of illustration here) would further eliminate hydrogen atoms.

^^^^End Chemistry Lesson^^^^

WendyTerry420

The only "bad" fats are trans-fats. Both saturated and unsaturated fats are healthy and provide nutrition for your body.

PaleoPath4Lyfe

Even if saturated fats do not have any negative impact on your health, they also likely have no positive impact. Also even if they are truly innocuous, the bulk of foods that are high in saturated fat are usually loaded with sodium and other chemicals as well. By all means if you think saturated fats aren't bad then keep eating them, it's your body and your health. As for me, I try to cut out as much as I can.

Umm NO! Coconut oil??? No, not loaded with chemicals, sodium or any of the like. Fresh beef tallow, none of that stuff either. My fresh bacon fat doesn't have chemicals, sodium and the like in it............

I stay far, far away from PUFA's (Poly Unsaturated Fats - such as canola oil, corn oil, vegetable oil) they are rancid before they even make it to the store shelves and are far more likely to lead to inflammation in the body.

What do restaurants use to fry french fries, vegetables and the like??? Polyunsaturated fats! So where is the chemicals and sodium coming from???? The PUFA;'s

BrittneyJ2006

Thanks for posting. It's a good read! I'm putting a bit of it here that sums it up well.

What really matters is the type of fat and the total calories in the diet. (7-15)
•Bad fats, meaning trans and saturated fats, increase the risk for certain diseases.
•Good fats, meaning monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats, do just the opposite. They are good for the heart and most other parts of the body.

Came across this article tonight, giving it a good read myself. Seems legit:

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/fats-full-story/

BrittneyJ2006

Chemistry was one of my least my favorite subjects lol. Thanks for breaking it down!

^^^^Warning: Chemistry Lesson!^^^^

Fats are long chains of hydrocarbons (technical term for a molecule that has carbon and hydrogen atoms). Hydrocarbons have a range of sizes and they are the fundamental molecules of life. Sugars, proteins, cholesterols and fats are all hydrocarbons. However, the molecular structure of fats are why they have such a higher caloric value (9 cal/g vs 4 cal/g in proteins and carbs) on average.

As stated above the molecular structure of fats is long chains. What this looks like if you can imagine is a back bone of carbon atoms with hydrogen atoms poking out. Typically the ratio of hydrogen to carbon atoms is 2 hydrogen for every carbon or 2 to 1 (neglecting any functional groups or the end carbon atoms). When this ratio is close to 2 we call this saturated fat because the molecule is saturated with as many hydrogen atoms as the carbon atoms can handle. A saturated fat looks like this:

C - C - C - C - C - C - C - C - C - C - C - R

The hydrogen atoms aren't shown since I can't get the formatting to come out properly. Just assume that each carbon has 4 hydrogen atoms minus however many other atoms are connected to it. The R represents the rest of the functional groups associated with the fat that I won't go into details here.

Unsaturated fats are like saturated fats only we start eliminating the hydrogen atoms from the chains. For every hydrogen atom we eliminate we reduce the total caloric value (or just energy) of the molecule. There are other benefits too such as how the fat transports in the body, how it agglomerates (similar to cholesterol in our blood stream), etc. A monounsaturated fat would have two of those hydrogen atoms removed and replaced by a double bond between the two affected carbon atoms. A polyunsaturated fat would have several more affected pairs of carbon atoms. An illustration of a polyunsaturated fat:


C = C - C - C - C = C - C - C - C = C - C - R

You can extend this idea to carbs and proteins which tend to be cyclic molecules. You could imagine the above hydrocarbon chain bent around on itself. This would eliminate more hydrogen atoms. Also, carbs and proteins have other functional groups attached to the carbon atoms which our bodies do not utilize as much for energy which (for the sake of illustration here) would further eliminate hydrogen atoms.

^^^^End Chemistry Lesson^^^^

BrittneyJ2006

You're right. Guidelines vary. One of the commenters posted a good article link. Here is some of what it says about the guidelines

The latest Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommends getting less than 10 percent of calories each day from saturated fat. (27) The American Heart Association goes even further, recommending limiting saturated fat to no more than 7 percent of calories. (28) But framing diet recommendations in terms of “percentage of daily calories” is not terribly useful for the average consumer. That’s because people eat foods—not isolated nutrients.

I've read that saturated fats are meant to be less than 7% of overall calories (i.e. 16 grams of saturated fat on a 2000 calorie intake), which would mean the mono- and poly-unsaturated ones should comprise the remainder of your fat macro (whatever you've set that to). I usually manually adjust this stuff in the goals section. Of course, I'm sure people on paelo diets will strongly disagree with that. But the 7% figure seems to be a common heart foundation guideline that I've encountered. Of course, those guidelines will vary slightly between countries.

BrittneyJ2006

From what I understand the article was still saying saturated fats are bad. Here is a bit of it.

Cutting back on saturated fat can be good for health if people replace saturated fat with good fats, especially, polyunsaturated fats. (16,25) Eating good fats in place of saturated fat lowers the “bad” LDL cholesterol, and it improves the ratio of total cholesterol to “good” HDL cholesterol, lowering the risk of heart disease. Eating good fats in place of saturated fat can also help prevent insulin resistance, a precursor to diabetes. (26)

I agree with cutting out as much as possible.

Even if saturated fats do not have any negative impact on your health, they also likely have no positive impact. Also even if they are truly innocuous, the bulk of foods that are high in saturated fat are usually loaded with sodium and other chemicals as well. By all means if you think saturated fats aren't bad then keep eating them, it's your body and your health. As for me, I try to cut out as much as I can.

PaleoPath4Lyfe

Thanks for posting. It's a good read! I'm putting a bit of it here that sums it up well.

What really matters is the type of fat and the total calories in the diet. (7-15)
•Bad fats, meaning trans and saturated fats, increase the risk for certain diseases.
•Good fats, meaning monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats, do just the opposite. They are good for the heart and most other parts of the body.

Came across this article tonight, giving it a good read myself. Seems legit:

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/fats-full-story/

I would further my research if I were you................There is nothing wrong with saturated fat nor cholesterol.

http://www.ravnskov.nu/cholesterol.htm

http://coconutoil.com/mary_enig/ The article about Diet and Disease, Not what you think is a great article.

I don't trust the likes of The AMA, ADA, <<<None of the alphabet associations that are out for corporate profit.

PaleoPath4Lyfe

From what I understand the article was still saying saturated fats are bad. Here is a bit of it.

Cutting back on saturated fat can be good for health if people replace saturated fat with good fats, especially, polyunsaturated fats. (16,25) Eating good fats in place of saturated fat lowers the “bad” LDL cholesterol, and it improves the ratio of total cholesterol to “good” HDL cholesterol, lowering the risk of heart disease. Eating good fats in place of saturated fat can also help prevent insulin resistance, a precursor to diabetes. (26)

I agree with cutting out as much as possible.

Even if saturated fats do not have any negative impact on your health, they also likely have no positive impact. Also even if they are truly innocuous, the bulk of foods that are high in saturated fat are usually loaded with sodium and other chemicals as well. By all means if you think saturated fats aren't bad then keep eating them, it's your body and your health. As for me, I try to cut out as much as I can.

I have reversed Type 2 Diabetes eating a boat load of saturated fat, my fat of choice. I am back to insulin resistance and reversing that too.

I eat grass fed butter, use the bacon fat after filtering from frying bacon, coconut oil, beef tallow - all saturated fats.

The only other oil I use is olive oil.

I do NOT use any type of vegetable oils at all. No canola, vegetable or corn oils AT ALL.

When I cut out the Polyunsaturated fats and the wheat gluten, no more inflammation in my body. It has taken several years to heal from the damage done by polyunsaturated fats and gluten.

EvenThatNameIsTaken

Saw this today, thought it would add to the conversation and support the idea that saturated fats are not "bad":

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2014/03/31/295719579/rethinking-fat-the-case-for-adding-some-into-your-diet

Quoted from the article: (links in the article to studies)

""When you put all of this together," says Mozaffarian, what you see is that saturated fat has a relatively neutral effect compared with carbs. He says it's "not a beneficial effect but not a harmful effect. And I think that's what the recent studies show." He points to a host of studies published in 2010.

He also points to a highly publicized that concludes there's no convincing evidence to support the dietary recommendations to limit saturated fat."

Natmarie73

I also avoid vegetable oils such as canola but do use some seed and nut oils in moderation eg flax seed oil, macadamia oil, peanut oil, avocado oil, olive oil and coconut oil and I eat lots of grass fed butter, red meat with the fat on, roast chicken with the skin on, bacon, pork, eggs, full cream dairy etc etc.

I don't have any problems with my cholesterol, blood sugars or weight so I will keep doing what I'm doing.

WendyTerry420

I also avoid vegetable oils such as canola but do use some seed and nut oils in moderation eg flax seed oil, macadamia oil, peanut oil, avocado oil, olive oil and coconut oil and I eat lots of grass fed butter, red meat with the fat on, roast chicken with the skin on, bacon, pork, eggs, full cream dairy etc etc.

I don't have any problems with my cholesterol, blood sugars or weight so I will keep doing what I'm doing.

Olive oil, hemp oil, and peanut oil. If you have those three in your cabinet, you have no need for any other oil! :drinker:

johnsavill144

I have read many of the posts. I have worked in government public health for decades. I have only been using MFP on mobile for the last week and am now refining my goals. From my updated research, my automated goal for 30% total fat is correct if you wish to follow USA or Australian Heart foundation or Health gov guidelines.
However, the MFP should NOT automatically make poly unsat and mono unsat each zero.
I suggest the team set the total to 30% and saturated should be set to 6% ( in view of guidelines) and trans to zero and the remainder 24% be split between poly and mono unsaturated. I ask why have MFP technical advisors left these to zero in face of over whelming advice and recommendations on this forum. Why is it so?

peter56765

PaleoPath4Lyfe wrote: »

Thanks for posting. It's a good read! I'm putting a bit of it here that sums it up well.

What really matters is the type of fat and the total calories in the diet. (7-15)
•Bad fats, meaning trans and saturated fats, increase the risk for certain diseases.
•Good fats, meaning monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats, do just the opposite. They are good for the heart and most other parts of the body.

Came across this article tonight, giving it a good read myself. Seems legit:

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/fats-full-story/

I would further my research if I were you................There is nothing wrong with saturated fat nor cholesterol.

http://www.ravnskov.nu/cholesterol.htm

http://coconutoil.com/mary_enig/ The article about Diet and Disease, Not what you think is a great article.

I don't trust the likes of The AMA, ADA, <<<None of the alphabet associations that are out for corporate profit.

But you trust some foreign doctor trying to sell books on his cheesy looking website? In any case, the quoted article is from Harvard University's School of Public Health, not from the AMA or the like.

ScottAckland

Some great info here from people who truly know their stuff & unfortunately some very bad info that I can't even guess where people found their sources. Lesson of the day, look for information that sites sources or don't trust it as anything more than someone misinformed opinion. Learn to read research studies & educate yourself.

sixxpoint

You got mostly good info so far, but please do not believe for one second that saturated fat is bad for you. Anyone who believes that nonsense in 2015 is severely misinformed and would be wise to do more research.

The only fat you should completely limit are industrial trans fats, as determined by science and research.