Healthy calories

lanners23 · December 2010

Hello,
I'm fairly new to this so please forgive the stupid questions.

I've just worked out everything I'm planning to eat today and currently I'm about 500 calories short of my goal. Does anyone have any good suggestions to fill in those calories which aren't massively unhealthy. The easy way to do it would be to just eat chocolate, but I reckon that's probably not the idea of calorie counting... :P

alantin · December 2010

Add some canola oil to your food portions. Lots of good fats, lots of calories.

pamp1emousse · December 2010

An avocado? Some nuts? Milk? You could also have a square or 2 of dark chocolate (yummy, but with less sugar you won't get the moreishness of milk chocolate)

chacaruso · December 2010

If I have that many calories left over, I add some frozen yogurt for dessert.

lanners23 · December 2010

I like the frozen yogurt idea.

I'm fairly limited by what they sell in the shop down the road, so avocado and canola oil are unlikely to happen.

alantin · December 2010

I like the frozen yogurt idea. I'm fairly limited by what they sell in the shop down the road, so avocado and canola oil are unlikely to happen.

Really? What oil do you use for cooking? Here rapeseed oil is sold everywhere..

paticap · December 2010

I love the Blue Diamond Roasted Almonds. I also have fallen in love with Weight Watchers ice cream treats. The dark chocolate/rasberry is amazing. The individually packaged cheese by Land O Lakes with a handful of golfish works too and gives you the protien that fills you up. The protien in the almonds works too. Good luck!

lanners23 · December 2010

Generally I use olive oil. I should probably have pointed out that I live in the UK...

raven5131 · December 2010

I have the same problem. I started drinking protien shakes to up the calories. I try to time it after exercise so it can help in muscle recovery. I keep some of the mix at work as well.I also tried to just add snacks during the day like nuts and cheese and eggs. I have been told for years I eat like a bird and was starving my body. t did not know it to be fact until I started keeping track. Who knew eating to little and eating to much of the wrong things would make you FAT?

alantin · December 2010

Generally I use olive oil. I should probably have pointed out that I live in the UK...

Well.. I live in Finland so we are almost on the same continent.

Olive oil is pretty good too. I bought it once to try it but disliked the taste. And it turned out that canola oil has even better nutritional profile! I always though olive oil was far better and canola oil was second rate..

@raven5131
Do you add some carbohydrates to your post-workout shake? That would make it even more beneficial. Only protein would make it pretty unbalanced.

jo_marnes · December 2010

Nuts! I love 'em but hate how many kcals they cram in!

Grokette · December 2010

Add some canola oil to your food portions. Lots of good fats, lots of calories.

I would suggest eating nuts, salad with olive oil / apple cider vinegar dressing, start cooking with coconut oil.

Canola oil is not healthy for us. We should stay far, far away from the processed vegetable oils that they have touted as healthy to us because contrary to popular belief, Canola oil, corn oil, vegetable oil are NOT healthy.

alantin · December 2010

@Grokette
Okay.. Have any sources?

A quote from the English Wikipedia

Health benefits
Canola oil is low in saturated fat, is high in monounsaturated fat, and has a beneficial omega-3 fatty acid profile; it has well established heart health benefits[21] and is recognized by many health professional organizations including the American Dietetic Association, and American Heart Association, among others.[22][23][24][25] Canola oil has been authorized a qualified health claim from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration[26] based on its ability to reduce the risk of coronary heart disease due to its unsaturated fat content.

Erucic acid
Though wild rapeseed oil contains significant amounts of erucic acid,[27] a known toxin,[28] the cultivar used to produce commercial, food-grade canola oil was bred to contain less than than 5% erucic acid, levels that are not believed to cause harm in humans[29][30] and no health effects have been associated with its consumption by humans.[28] Though an e-mail hoax has been circulated alleging canola oil can cause dangerous health problems, there is no reason to believe canola oil poses unusual health risks and its consumption in food-grade forms is generally recognized as safe by the United States Food and Drug Administration.[31][29][32][33]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canola

Another quote from ScienceDaily (This is just to quote a Finnish study about the subject to show that the US health care authorities aren't the only ones to promote canola oil.

According to research on fatty acids conducted at the universities of Helsinki and Tampere, the consumption of canola-type rapeseed oil decreases the level of fibrinogen detrimental to health in the body.
....
According to the researchers, the fat composition of rapeseed oil is optimal with regard to fatty acids essential to the body and consequently is well-suited to reduce the fibrinogen levels in the blood.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/11/101108072258.htm

I could also quote a lot more stuff by Finnish health care authorities but they are mainly in Finnish..

Grokette · December 2010

Here is one such article with research on how PUFAs (Polyunsaturated Fats) are not healthy for us...........

Unhealthy Vegetable Oils?
Does Food Industry Ignore Science Regarding Polyunsaturated Oils?
Implications for Cancer, Heart Disease

By CJ Puotinen

SATURATED FATS CAUSE HEART DISEASE. Unsaturated fats, especially polyunsaturated fats, balance hormones, strengthen the immune system, and prevent cancer, heart disease, diabetes, obesity, arthritis, and all types of inflammation. Some polyunsaturated fatty acids are so important to health that they are called essential fatty acids, or EFAs — you literally can’t be healthy without them. Polyunsaturated vegetable oils are the safest fats for cooking, especially deep-fat frying, and they’re the key ingredients in healthful salad dressings. Canola oil, flax seed oil, soy oil, safflower oil, sunflower oil, and other polyunsaturated vegetable oils are today’s true health foods.

Right?

“Wrong on all counts,” says Ray Peat, Ph.D., a physiologist who has studied hormones and dietary fats since 1968. According to Peat, every one of the above statements is incorrect. In fact, he says, the polyunsaturated fatty acids or PUFAs in vegetable seed oils are the bane of human health — they actually cause cancer, diabetes, obesity, aging, thrombosis, arthritis, and immunodeficiencies. Their only appropriate use, he says, is as ingredients in paints and varnishes.

Peat is not alone, for a growing number of reputable researchers, medical doctors, nutritionists, and health care practitioners share his views. Their discoveries, they say, may save your life.

What’s wrong with vegetable oils? The main problem is that polyunsaturated oils contain long-chain fatty acids, which are extremely fragile and unstable. “The unsaturated oils in some cooked foods become rancid in just a few hours even when refrigerated,” says Peat, “and that’s responsible for the stale taste of leftover foods. Eating slightly stale food with polyunsaturated oils isn’t more harmful than eating the same oils when fresh, since the oils will oxidize at a much higher rate once they are in the body. As soon as a polyunsaturated vegetable oil enters the body, it is exposed to temperatures high enough to cause its toxic decomposition, especially when combined with a continuous supply of oxygen and catalysts such as iron.”

Even if you stop eating them, polyunsaturated fatty acids remain stored in tissue, only to be released during times of stress or fasting—including the middle of the night, when one is asleep.

Although PUFAs damage every part of the body, the endocrine system, especially the thyroid, is particularly vulnerable. A slow metabolism, low energy, and sluggish thyroid often accompany the consumption of vegetable oils.

Cattle ranchers discovered the difference between saturated and unsaturated fats in the 1940s, when they fed their livestock inexpensive coconut oil (a saturated fat) in order to fatten them for market. But the cattle didn’t gain weight. Instead, coconut oil made them lean, active, and hungry. Next, ranchers tested a thyroid-suppressing drug. As expected, the livestock gained weight on less food, but because the drug was strongly carcinogenic, it was discontinued. By the late 1940s, ranchers discovered that soybeans and corn caused the same anti-thyroid effect as the thyroid-suppressing drug, allowing animals to gain more weight on less food. Since then, corn and soy have been the staples of feedlot cattle.

A later experiment fed animals pure unsaturated vegetable oil, pure saturated coconut oil, and various mixtures of the two. The animals’ obesity increased in proportion to the ratio of unsaturated fat in their diet, independent of the total amount of fat or calories they consumed. Animals that ate even small amounts of unsaturated oil were fat, and those that ate large amounts of coconut oil were thin.

By 1950, unsaturated fats were clearly shown to suppress the metabolic rate, apparently by creating hypothyroidism. In following years, scientists looked for the mechanism that caused this effect and found that unsaturated fats damage mitochondria through oxidation and enzyme suppression. The more unsaturated a vegetable oil is, the more specifically it suppresses tissue response to thyroid hormones. Unsaturated fats are derived from the seeds of plants, and seeds contain toxins and enzyme suppressors that block protein digestive enzymes in the stomachs of mammals. These chemicals evolved to protect seeds from predators and prevent germination until conditions are optimal for sprouting. It’s probably no coincidence that millions of people who eat thyroid-damaging toxins and enzyme suppressors have an epidemic of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, immune system disorders, arthritis, and other chronic diseases.

But wait a minute. If polyunsaturated fats are bad for us, why does everyone believe that coconut oil and other saturated fats are harmful to health and polyunsaturated fats are beneficial? How did that happen?

The answer is a combination of bad science and successful lobbying, explains Bruce Fife, C.N., N.D., author of The Coconut Oil Miracle and other books. In 1986, he explains, the American Soy Association (ASA) sent a “Fat Fighter Kit” to 400,000 American soybean farmers, encouraging them to write to government officials, food companies, and newspapers protesting the encroachment of “highly saturated tropical fats like palm and coconut oils” in America’s food supply, while their wives were encouraged to educate the public about the health benefits of soy oil.

Soon organizations like the Center for Science in the Public Interest embraced the pro-soy, anti-tropical oil campaign, and food manufacturers bowed to public pressure, replacing coconut oil with soy oil in their products.

“When the attack on coconut oil began,” says Fife, “those medical and research professionals who were familiar with it wondered why. They knew coconut oil did not contribute to heart disease and that it provided many health advantages. Some even stepped forward to set the record straight. But by this time public sentiment had firmly sided with the ASA, and people refused to listen.”

Senate hearings on the health implications of tropical oils brought testimony from Harvard Medical School researcher George Blackburn, Ph.D., University of Maryland research associate Mary G. Enig, Ph.D., and U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, M.D., all of whom defended coconut oil. They pointed out that coconut oil has been a mainstay in the diets of millions of people for thousands of years, and those who still follow their traditional diet, such as Pacific Islanders, enjoy long, healthy lives with none of the heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and other illnesses that plague America. The media paid little attention and instead promoted the anti-saturated-fat hysteria with headlines (“The Oil from Hell!”) that sold newspapers. In the end, fiction triumphed over fact, and restaurant chains like McDonald’s, Wendy’s, and Burger King replaced the saturated fats they had been using with more “healthful” vegetable oils. The switch, according to FDA tests, increased or even doubled the fat content of fried foods.

Worse, the vegetable oils that replaced America’s saturated fats were not merely polyunsaturated, they were refined, hydrogenated, and full of trans fatty acids. Trans fatty acids or trans fats are formed when vegetable oils are hydrogenated or hardened to make margarine or shortening. Trans fats are now recognized as a leading cause of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and other chronic or fatal illnesses. A restaurant meal that in 1982 contained only 2.4 grams of trans fats contains 19.2 grams today. To eat a food that contains 30 to 50 percent trans fats, reach for french fries, fried chicken, doughnuts, cookies, pastries, or crackers. Any processed food that contains hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated vegetable oil contains trans fats, and any home-cooked food containing hydrogenated fats does as well.

Meanwhile, canola oil, flax seed oil, soy oil, corn oil, and other polyunsaturated fats are touted as health foods.

“This is a serious mistake,” says Peat. “All of these oils, even if they’re organic, cold-pressed, unprocessed, bottled in glass, and stored away from heat and light, are damaging. These oils have no shelf life at all, they go rancid within days unless refrigerated, and when they’re warmed to body temperature, they disintegrate even faster. Once ingested, they bind with cells and interfere with every chemical reaction in the body. The results are hormone imbalances, inflammation, and all kinds of illness.”

Of the popular vegetable oils, the safest is probably olive oil. However, Peat cautions, olive oil’s moderate content of polyunsaturated fats (about 8% to 12%), which is several times higher than that of coconut oil (usually 1% to 2%), suggests that olive oil should not be used quite as generously as coconut oil.

But what about EFAs? Aren’t some polyunsaturated fatty acids essential?

During the last 30 years, Peat has asked prominent oil researchers for evidence that there is such a thing as an “essential fatty acid.” One professor cited a single publication about a single patient who recovered from an illness after taking unsaturated fat. “If he had known of any better evidence, wouldn’t he have mentioned it?” asks Peat. “The others, if they answered at all, cited ‘Burr and Burr, 1929,’ a study that tested rats. The surprising thing about that answer is that these people would consider any research from 1929 to be definitive. That’s like quoting the 1929 opinion of a physicist regarding the procedure for making a hydrogen bomb. What was known about nutrition in 1929? Most of the B vitamins weren’t even suspected. Burr had no way of understanding what deficiencies or toxicities were present in his experimental diet.”

Two years before Burr’s experiment, says Peat, German researchers found that a fat-free diet prevented almost all spontaneous cancers in rats. Later work showed that polyunsaturated fats both initiate and promote cancer. “With that knowledge,” he says, “the people who kept claiming that linoleic, linolenic, and maybe arachidonic acid are essential fatty acids should have devoted some effort to finding out how much of that ‘essential nutrient’ was enough, so that people could minimize their consumption of the carcinogenic stuff.”

By the end of World War II, the seed oil industry was in crisis. The traditional use of seed oils such as flax seed oil in paints and plastics was being displaced by new compounds made from petroleum. “The industry needed new markets,” says Peat, “and it discovered ways to convince the public that seed oils were better than animal fats. They called their seed oils ‘heart-protective,’ even though human studies soon showed the same results that the animal studies had, namely, that they were toxic to the heart and increased the incidence of cancer.”

Nevertheless, some researchers embraced the “lipid hypothesis” of heart disease, which argued that cholesterol in the blood causes atherosclerosis and that polyunsaturated fats reduce the amount of cholesterol in the blood. This theory allowed the seed oil industry and its academic supporters to promote polyunsaturated vegetable oils as having drug-like therapeutic properties. “The idea of treating seed oils as drug-like substances, to be taken in large amounts, appealed to the food oil industry,” says Peat.

Despite its widespread acceptance, the lipid hypothesis has never been proven. Oil researcher Mary Enig, Ph.D., and Sally Fallon, founder and director of the Weston A. Price Foundation, point out in their article “Secrets of the Edible Oil Industry” that the lipid theory was first proposed by David Kritchevsky, a Russian researcher, who in 1954 published a paper describing the effects of feeding cholesterol to rabbits.

“By showing that polyunsaturated oils from vegetable sources lowered serum cholesterol at least temporarily in humans,” says Enig, “Kritchevsky appeared to show that the findings from the animal trials were relevant to the coronary heart disease problem, that the lipid hypothesis was a valid explanation for the new epidemic of heart disease, and that by reducing animal products in their diets, Americans could avoid heart disease.”

Soon the United States was on an anti-cholesterol campaign.

In 1956, an American Heart Association (AHA) fund-raiser was shown on all three major TV networks. Panelists presented the lipid hypothesis as the cause of America’s heart disease epidemic and recommended the Prudent Diet, in which corn oil, margarine, and chicken replaced butter, lard, beef, and eggs.

But the panel was not unanimous. Dudley White, M.D., disagreed with his AHA colleagues by noting that heart disease in the form of myocardial infarction (MI) was non-existent in 1900, when egg consumption was three times what it was in 1956 and when corn oil was unavailable. When pressed to support the Prudent Diet, White replied, “See here, I began my practice as a cardiologist in 1921, and I never saw an MI patient until 1928. Back in the MI-free days before 1920, the fats were butter and lard, and I think we would all benefit from the kind of diet we had at a time when no one had ever heard the words ‘corn oil.’”

His observations fell on deaf ears, and ads in the Journal of the American Medical Association described Wesson Oil as a “cholesterol depressant.” Mazola advertisements claimed that “science finds corn oil important to your health,” and medical journal ads recommended Fleishmann’s unsalted margarine for patients with high blood pressure. Dr. Frederick Stare, head of Harvard University’s Nutrition Department, wrote a syndicated column in which he encouraged the consumption of up to a cup of corn oil per day.

Meanwhile, experimenters found that feeding a diet that totally lacked the “essential” fatty acids produced animals with remarkable properties. “They consumed oxygen and calories at a very high rate,” says Peat, “their mitochondria were unusually tough and stable, their tissues could be transplanted into other animals without provoking immunological rejection, and they were very hard to kill by trauma and a wide variety of toxins that easily provoked lethal shock in animals on the usual diet. As German researchers had seen in 1927, they had a low susceptibility to cancer, and new studies showed that they weren’t susceptible to various fibrotic conditions, including alcoholic liver cirrhosis.”

Enig points out that other researchers conducted population studies that showed that the animal model used by Kritchevsky, especially one that used vegetarian animals, was not a valid approach to the problem of heart disease in human omnivores. She cites studies conducted in the 1950s showing that the presence of arterial plaque, which is considered a symptom of heart disease, is a natural process that has nothing to do with diet. American soldiers killed during the Korean War had similar amounts and severity of plaques (75 percent) as Japanese natives whose diet was lower in animal products (65 percent), and the largely vegetarian Bantu in South Africa had just as much occlusions or plaque build-up in their arteries as other races in South Africa who ate more meat.

In 1957, Dr. Norman Jolliffe, director of the Nutrition Bureau of the New York Health Department, launched an Anti-Coronary Club for businessmen age 40 to 59. All were placed on the previously mentioned Prudent Diet, and results were published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1966. Those on the Prudent Diet of corn oil, margarine, fish, chicken, and cold cereal had an average serum cholesterol level 30 points lower than the meat-and-potatoes control group. But the more important statistics were the heart disease deaths of eight Prudent Diet followers, while none of those who ate meat three times a day died. Jolliffe himself died in 1961 from a vascular thrombosis, although his obituaries listed the cause of death as “complications from diabetes.”

Larger follow-up studies produced the same results, and an ambitious million-man Diet-Heart Study was abandoned “for reasons of cost” when its chairman died of a heart attack.

In the 1960s, interest in organ transplantation led to the discovery that polyunsaturated fats prolong graft survival by suppressing the immune system. “Immunosuppression was considered to have a role in the carcinogenicity of the ‘essential’ fatty acids,” says Peat. “At around the same time, there were studies showing that unsaturated fats retarded brain development and produced obesity. In addition, the age-related glycation products that are usually blamed on sugar are largely the result of peroxidation of the polyunsaturated fatty acids.

“Through the 1970s, information about the harmful effects of polyunsaturated fatty acids was slowly being assimilated,” he continues, “and by 1980, it looked as though responsible researchers would see the promotion of cancer, heart disease, mitochondrial damage, hypothyroidism, and immunosuppression caused by polyunsaturated fats as their most important feature, and they would see that there had never been a basis for believing that these were essential fats. But then, without acknowledging that there had ever been a problem with the doctrine of essentiality, fat researchers just started changing the subject, shifting public discourse to safer, more profitable topics.”

As a result, the old, discredited theories about polyunsaturated fats are alive and well, and so are the inaccurate health claims that replaced them.

Most of us are so used to hearing that saturated fats harm health while polyunsaturated fats improve it that the recommendations of experts like Mary Enig, Ray Peat, and Bruce Fife require mental adjustments.

Get reacquainted with pasture-fed butter, lard, and tallow products, and other traditional saturated fats like coconut oil. Throw away the canola, corn, and soy oil. Stay away from anything that contains polyunsaturated fats. Kiss tofu goodbye, and forget soymilk, soy yogurt, soy cheese, soy protein, and soy lecithin. For good measure, says Peat, stay away from commercially raised chicken.

“Animals that eat polyunsaturated fats don’t produce saturated fat,” he explains. “When you eat their eggs or meat, you’re eating polyunsaturated fat, with all of the adverse effects of soy and corn oil. Because polyunsaturated fats are perceived as healthful, the meat, milk, and egg industries are working on ways to promote these products —which are incredibly harmful—as desirable.”

The beef industry is doing so, he says, by treating soy oil so that it won’t be broken down in the cattle’s rumen. “I think that’s a factor in causing scrapie and mad cow disease,” he says, “since it was already established that the equivalent disease in chickens, called crazy chick syndrome, is caused by too much polyunsaturated fat in the diet. Chickens don’t have a rumen, so they are much more susceptible to these oils than cows and sheep.”

Spend an afternoon reading Peat’s research at his website where you’ll also find two articles with extensive reference lists: “Oils in Context” and “Unsaturated Vegetable Oils: Toxic.” Also see Enig’s reports at the Weston A. Price Foundation website and her book Know Your Fats: The Complete Primer for Understanding the Nutrition of Fats, Oils, and Cholesterol (Bethesda Press, 2000); as well as Fife’s books, The Healing Miracles of Coconut Oil (Avery/Penguin, 2004) and Eat Fat, Look Thin: A Safe and Natural Way to Lose Weight Permanently (Piccadilly Books, 2002), and his reports at the Coconut Research Center website. You too may join a 21st-century diet revolution—one that reserves polyunsaturated vegetable oils for use in paint and varnish while filling the kitchen with healthful saturated fats such as like virgin organic coconut oil, butter, eggs, and meat from pasture-fed animals.

Grokette · December 2010

And another one..............

Omega-6 fatty acids accelerate the growth of human prostate tumors.

The current study found that the fats caused human prostate tumors in cell culture to grow twice as quickly as tumors to which omega-6 fats had not been added.

Omega-6 fatty acids are found in vegetable oils, including:

* Corn
* Canola
* Soybean
* Sunflower

Americans currently consume over 25 times the level of omega-6 fats as the beneficial omega-3 fatty acids. Further, the researchers pointed out that the rate of prostate cancer in the United States has increased steadily along with intake of omega-6, suggesting a possible link between diet and prostate cancer.

Sources:
Cancer Research February 1, 2006; 66: 1427-1433
Food Navigator February 1, 2006

TateFTW · December 2010

Emerald cocoa roast almonds. A handful has like 400 calories, and oh so tasty.

alantin · December 2010

A Reply to Ray Peat on Essential Fatty Acid Deficiency
By Mary Enig

Ray Peat, PhD, is an influential health writer who claims that there is no such thing as essential fatty acid (EFA) deficiency. According to Peat, the body can make its own EFAs; furthermore, he claims that EFAs in the body become rancid and therefore cause cancer.

Unfortunately, Peat does not understand the use of EFA by the human body. He is trained in hormone therapy and his training in fats and oils has been limited to misinformation as far as the polyunsaturated fats and oils are concerned.

Research on EFAs is voluminous and consistent: EFAs are types of fatty acids that the body cannot make, but must obtain from food. We do not make them because they exist in virtually all foods, and the body needs them only in small amounts. The body does make saturated and monounsaturated fatty acids because it needs these in large amounts and cannot count on getting all it needs from food.

There are two types of EFAs, those of the omega-6 family and those of the omega-3 family. The basic omega-6 fatty acid is called linoleic acid and it contains two double bonds. It is found in virtually all foods, but especially in nuts and seeds. The basic omega-3 fatty acid is called linolenic acid and it contains three double bonds. It is found in some grains (such as wheat) and nuts (such as walnuts) as well as in eggs, organ meats and fish if these animals are raised naturally, and in green vegetables if the plants are raised organically.

Essential fatty acids have two principal roles. The first is as a constituent of the cell membrane. Each cell in the body is surrounded by a membrane composed of billions of fatty acids. About half of these fatty acids are saturated or monounsaturated to provide stability to the membrane. The other half are polyunsaturated, mostly EFAs , which provide flexibility and participate in a number of biochemical processes. The other vital role for EFAs is as a precursor for prostaglandins or local tissue hormones, which control different physiological functions including inflammation and blood clotting.

Scientists have induced EFA deficiency in animals by feeding them fully hydrogenated coconut oil as their only fat. (Full hydrogenation gets rid of all the EFAs; coconut oil is used because it is the only fat that can be fully hydrogenated and still be soft enough to eat.) The animals developed dry coats and skin and slowly declined in health, dying prematurely. (Interestingly, representatives of the vegetable oil industry blame the health problems on coconut oil, not on fatty acid deficiency!)

In a situation of fatty acid deficiency, the body tries to compensate by producing a fatty acid called Mead acid out of the monounsaturated oleic acid. It is a 20-carbon fatty acid with three double bonds named after James Mead, a lipids researcher at the University of California at Los Angeles who first identified it. An elevated level of Mead acid in the body is a marker of EFA deficiency.

According to Peat, elevated levels of Mead acid constitute proof that your body can make EFAs. However, the Mead acid acts as a "filler" fatty acid that cannot serve the functions that the original EFA are needed for. Peat claims that Mead acid has a full spectrum of protective anti-inflammatory effects; however, the body cannot convert Mead acid into the elongated fatty acids that the body needs for making the various anti-inflammatory prostaglandins.

Peat also asserts that polyunsaturated fatty acids become rancid in our bodies. This is not true; the polyunsaturated fatty acids in our cell membranes go through different stages of controlled oxidation. To say that these fatty acids become "rancid" is misleading. Of course, EFAs can become rancid through high temperature processing and it is not healthy to consume these types of fats. But the EFAs that we take in through fresh, unprocessed food are not rancid and do not become rancid in the body. In small amounts, they are essential for good health. In large amounts, they can pose health problems which is why we need to avoid all the commercial vegetable oils containing high levels of polyunsaturates.

Peat’s reasoning has led him to claim that cod liver oil causes cancer because cod liver oil contains polyunsaturated fatty acids. Actually, the main fatty acid in cod liver oil is a monounsaturated fatty acid. The two main polyunsaturated fatty acids in cod liver oil are the elongated omega-3 fatty acids called EPA and DHA, which play many vital roles in the body and actually can help protect against cancer. Furthermore, cod liver oil is our best dietary source of vitamins A and D, which also protect us against cancer.

Actually, Peat’s argument that polyunsaturated fatty acids become harmful in the body and hence cause cancer simply does not make sense. It is impossible to avoid polyunsaturated fatty acids because they are in all foods.

EFAs are, however, harmful in large amounts and the many research papers cited by Peat showing immune problems, increased cancer and premature aging from feeding of polyunsaturates simply corroborate this fact. But Peat has taken studies indicating that large amounts of EFAs are bad for us (a now well-established fact) and used them to argue that we don’t need any at all.

Finally, it should be stressed that certain components of the diet actually reduce (but do not eliminate) our requirements for EFAs. The main one is saturated fatty acids which help us conserve EFAs and put them in the tissues where they belong. Some studies indicate that vitamin B6 can ameliorate the problems caused by EFA deficiency, possibly by helping us use them more efficiently.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mary G. Enig, PhD is an expert of international renown in the field of lipid biochemistry. She has headed a number of studies on the content and effects of trans fatty acids in America and Israel, and has successfully challenged government assertions that dietary animal fat causes cancer and heart disease. Recent scientific and media attention on the possible adverse health effects of trans fatty acids has brought increased attention to her work. She is a licensed nutritionist, certified by the Certification Board for Nutrition Specialists, a qualified expert witness, nutrition consultant to individuals, industry and state and federal governments, contributing editor to a number of scientific publications, Fellow of the American College of Nutrition and President of the Maryland Nutritionists Association. She is the author of over 60 technical papers and presentations, as well as a popular lecturer. Dr. Enig is currently working on the exploratory development of an adjunct therapy for AIDS using complete medium chain saturated fatty acids from whole foods. She is Vice-President of the Weston A Price Foundation and Scientific Editor of Wise Traditions as well as the author of Know Your Fats: The Complete Primer for Understanding the Nutrition of Fats, Oils, and Cholesterol, Bethesda Press, May 2000. She is the mother of three healthy children brought up on whole foods including butter, cream, eggs and meat. See her website at

Canola-Type Rapeseed Oil Reduces the Level of Fibrinogen, a Cause of Thrombosis and Inflammation, Study Finds

ScienceDaily (Nov. 8, 2010) — According to research on fatty acids conducted at the universities of Helsinki and Tampere, the consumption of canola-type rapeseed oil decreases the level of fibrinogen detrimental to health in the body. The increased fibrinogen level, caused by an imbalance in essential fats in one's diet, decreases when saturated fatty acids are replaced with rapeseed oil.

The research results were published in the journal Prostaglandins, Leukotrienes and Essential Fatty Acids.

A complex state of balance, the haemostatic balance, prevails in the bloodstream. One player in this balancing act is fibrinogen, the single most important blood coagulation factor. A high level of fibrinogen promotes the creation of thrombosis and maintains inflammation within the body. An increase in the fibrinogen level is closely linked with, for example, cardiovascular disease, strokes, diabetes, Alzheimer's disease and dementia.

The new research demonstrates for the first time that an increase in the fibrinogen level of the blood is largely caused by the lack of omega-3-alpha-linolenic acid in the diet. When there is too little of this beneficial fatty acid found in one's diet, an imbalance between fatty acids in the body is created. When the omega-3-alpha-linolenic acid level is too low, the body starts to manufacture more harmful omega-6-arachidonic acid out of the omega-6-linoleic acid, creating hormone-like compounds that cause thrombosis and inflammation. According to the researchers, the fat composition of rapeseed oil is optimal with regard to fatty acids essential to the body and consequently is well-suited to reduce the fibrinogen levels in the blood.

Levels of fibrinogen and cholesterol reduced

In all 42 research subjects, many of whom with high levels of fibrinogen and cholesterol, participated in the research. The study subjects replaced one-fourth of the food fat (margarine, cheese, butter) they used to rapeseed oil. The oil used was canola-quality spring turnip rape oil. They took about a tablespoon of oil a day, for example, mixed with a salad. The rapeseed oil dose doubled the intake of omega-3-alpha-linolenic acid during the experiment period of six weeks. Due to the regime, all higher-than-average fibrinogen levels decreased by approximately 30 per cent.

The research shows that controlling fibrinogen and cholesterol by changing the fat consumed is a point of departure in the prevention of diseases as well as from the perspective of successful individual medical treatment. According to Into Laakso, Ph.D. from the Faculty of Pharmacy at the University of Helsinki, harmful effects of fats in, for example, elderly people could be easily rectified by switching one-fourth of fats to rapeseed oil. Laakso also recommends that, in addition to cholesterol, healthcare centres should measure patients' fibrinogen levels.

alantin · December 2010

In the end, it comes down to moderation. Even something healthy will quickly become very unhealthy if it is used excessively. Everyone here should have experience about this in regards to food.

Still, if something in excess is unhealthy, it is illogical to say that not using it at all is healthy. Especially if its healthyness is a well established fact.

Eating too much leads to obesity, therefore food is unhealthy and we should not eat at all.

Grokette · December 2010

A Reply to Ray Peat on Essential Fatty Acid Deficiency
By Mary Enig

Ray Peat, PhD, is an influential health writer who claims that there is no such thing as essential fatty acid (EFA) deficiency. According to Peat, the body can make its own EFAs; furthermore, he claims that EFAs in the body become rancid and therefore cause cancer.

Unfortunately, Peat does not understand the use of EFA by the human body. He is trained in hormone therapy and his training in fats and oils has been limited to misinformation as far as the polyunsaturated fats and oils are concerned.

Research on EFAs is voluminous and consistent: EFAs are types of fatty acids that the body cannot make, but must obtain from food. We do not make them because they exist in virtually all foods, and the body needs them only in small amounts. The body does make saturated and monounsaturated fatty acids because it needs these in large amounts and cannot count on getting all it needs from food.

There are two types of EFAs, those of the omega-6 family and those of the omega-3 family. The basic omega-6 fatty acid is called linoleic acid and it contains two double bonds. It is found in virtually all foods, but especially in nuts and seeds. The basic omega-3 fatty acid is called linolenic acid and it contains three double bonds. It is found in some grains (such as wheat) and nuts (such as walnuts) as well as in eggs, organ meats and fish if these animals are raised naturally, and in green vegetables if the plants are raised organically.

Essential fatty acids have two principal roles. The first is as a constituent of the cell membrane. Each cell in the body is surrounded by a membrane composed of billions of fatty acids. About half of these fatty acids are saturated or monounsaturated to provide stability to the membrane. The other half are polyunsaturated, mostly EFAs , which provide flexibility and participate in a number of biochemical processes. The other vital role for EFAs is as a precursor for prostaglandins or local tissue hormones, which control different physiological functions including inflammation and blood clotting.

Scientists have induced EFA deficiency in animals by feeding them fully hydrogenated coconut oil as their only fat. (Full hydrogenation gets rid of all the EFAs; coconut oil is used because it is the only fat that can be fully hydrogenated and still be soft enough to eat.) The animals developed dry coats and skin and slowly declined in health, dying prematurely. (Interestingly, representatives of the vegetable oil industry blame the health problems on coconut oil, not on fatty acid deficiency!)

In a situation of fatty acid deficiency, the body tries to compensate by producing a fatty acid called Mead acid out of the monounsaturated oleic acid. It is a 20-carbon fatty acid with three double bonds named after James Mead, a lipids researcher at the University of California at Los Angeles who first identified it. An elevated level of Mead acid in the body is a marker of EFA deficiency.

According to Peat, elevated levels of Mead acid constitute proof that your body can make EFAs. However, the Mead acid acts as a "filler" fatty acid that cannot serve the functions that the original EFA are needed for. Peat claims that Mead acid has a full spectrum of protective anti-inflammatory effects; however, the body cannot convert Mead acid into the elongated fatty acids that the body needs for making the various anti-inflammatory prostaglandins.

Peat also asserts that polyunsaturated fatty acids become rancid in our bodies. This is not true; the polyunsaturated fatty acids in our cell membranes go through different stages of controlled oxidation. To say that these fatty acids become "rancid" is misleading. Of course, EFAs can become rancid through high temperature processing and it is not healthy to consume these types of fats. But the EFAs that we take in through fresh, unprocessed food are not rancid and do not become rancid in the body. In small amounts, they are essential for good health. In large amounts, they can pose health problems which is why we need to avoid all the commercial vegetable oils containing high levels of polyunsaturates.

Peat’s reasoning has led him to claim that cod liver oil causes cancer because cod liver oil contains polyunsaturated fatty acids. Actually, the main fatty acid in cod liver oil is a monounsaturated fatty acid. The two main polyunsaturated fatty acids in cod liver oil are the elongated omega-3 fatty acids called EPA and DHA, which play many vital roles in the body and actually can help protect against cancer. Furthermore, cod liver oil is our best dietary source of vitamins A and D, which also protect us against cancer.

Actually, Peat’s argument that polyunsaturated fatty acids become harmful in the body and hence cause cancer simply does not make sense. It is impossible to avoid polyunsaturated fatty acids because they are in all foods.

EFAs are, however, harmful in large amounts and the many research papers cited by Peat showing immune problems, increased cancer and premature aging from feeding of polyunsaturates simply corroborate this fact. But Peat has taken studies indicating that large amounts of EFAs are bad for us (a now well-established fact) and used them to argue that we don’t need any at all.

Finally, it should be stressed that certain components of the diet actually reduce (but do not eliminate) our requirements for EFAs. The main one is saturated fatty acids which help us conserve EFAs and put them in the tissues where they belong. Some studies indicate that vitamin B6 can ameliorate the problems caused by EFA deficiency, possibly by helping us use them more efficiently.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mary G. Enig, PhD is an expert of international renown in the field of lipid biochemistry. She has headed a number of studies on the content and effects of trans fatty acids in America and Israel, and has successfully challenged government assertions that dietary animal fat causes cancer and heart disease. Recent scientific and media attention on the possible adverse health effects of trans fatty acids has brought increased attention to her work. She is a licensed nutritionist, certified by the Certification Board for Nutrition Specialists, a qualified expert witness, nutrition consultant to individuals, industry and state and federal governments, contributing editor to a number of scientific publications, Fellow of the American College of Nutrition and President of the Maryland Nutritionists Association. She is the author of over 60 technical papers and presentations, as well as a popular lecturer. Dr. Enig is currently working on the exploratory development of an adjunct therapy for AIDS using complete medium chain saturated fatty acids from whole foods. She is Vice-President of the Weston A Price Foundation and Scientific Editor of Wise Traditions as well as the author of Know Your Fats: The Complete Primer for Understanding the Nutrition of Fats, Oils, and Cholesterol, Bethesda Press, May 2000. She is the mother of three healthy children brought up on whole foods including butter, cream, eggs and meat. See her website at

Canola-Type Rapeseed Oil Reduces the Level of Fibrinogen, a Cause of Thrombosis and Inflammation, Study Finds

ScienceDaily (Nov. 8, 2010) — According to research on fatty acids conducted at the universities of Helsinki and Tampere, the consumption of canola-type rapeseed oil decreases the level of fibrinogen detrimental to health in the body. The increased fibrinogen level, caused by an imbalance in essential fats in one's diet, decreases when saturated fatty acids are replaced with rapeseed oil.

The research results were published in the journal Prostaglandins, Leukotrienes and Essential Fatty Acids.

A complex state of balance, the haemostatic balance, prevails in the bloodstream. One player in this balancing act is fibrinogen, the single most important blood coagulation factor. A high level of fibrinogen promotes the creation of thrombosis and maintains inflammation within the body. An increase in the fibrinogen level is closely linked with, for example, cardiovascular disease, strokes, diabetes, Alzheimer's disease and dementia.

The new research demonstrates for the first time that an increase in the fibrinogen level of the blood is largely caused by the lack of omega-3-alpha-linolenic acid in the diet. When there is too little of this beneficial fatty acid found in one's diet, an imbalance between fatty acids in the body is created. When the omega-3-alpha-linolenic acid level is too low, the body starts to manufacture more harmful omega-6-arachidonic acid out of the omega-6-linoleic acid, creating hormone-like compounds that cause thrombosis and inflammation. According to the researchers, the fat composition of rapeseed oil is optimal with regard to fatty acids essential to the body and consequently is well-suited to reduce the fibrinogen levels in the blood.

Levels of fibrinogen and cholesterol reduced

In all 42 research subjects, many of whom with high levels of fibrinogen and cholesterol, participated in the research. The study subjects replaced one-fourth of the food fat (margarine, cheese, butter) they used to rapeseed oil. The oil used was canola-quality spring turnip rape oil. They took about a tablespoon of oil a day, for example, mixed with a salad. The rapeseed oil dose doubled the intake of omega-3-alpha-linolenic acid during the experiment period of six weeks. Due to the regime, all higher-than-average fibrinogen levels decreased by approximately 30 per cent.

The research shows that controlling fibrinogen and cholesterol by changing the fat consumed is a point of departure in the prevention of diseases as well as from the perspective of successful individual medical treatment. According to Into Laakso, Ph.D. from the Faculty of Pharmacy at the University of Helsinki, harmful effects of fats in, for example, elderly people could be easily rectified by switching one-fourth of fats to rapeseed oil. Laakso also recommends that, in addition to cholesterol, healthcare centres should measure patients' fibrinogen levels.

This article is so wrong.

Vegetable oils are HIGHLY processed oils and contain high levels of Omega 6 - which is very unhealthy. our Omega 3 to Omega 6 ratio should be at least 5:1 and most Americans have a Omega 3 to Omega 6 ratio of about 2:6

Very outskewed from other countries because the so called "experts" try to make the REAL reseachers sound like they are crazy when they are very right about what they are saying.

This country has an agenda that the bottom line is making $$$ so they will push the stuff that is bad for us as healthy as we as a nation get fatter and sicker..........

alantin · December 2010

You don't make any sense!

You say that the results of a study, conducted by two respectable universities with no financial agenda whatsoever, are wrong and then continue to accuse my whole country for making money by pushing YOU stuff. This makes me wonder since most of the food grade canola oil, that we produce, is used domestically!
I think, americans should try looking for reasons to their own problems on their own continent...

Furthermore, you hold that Ray Peat's, a Ph.D. in Biology and specializing in hormone therapy, claims have far superior knowledge about dietary fats than anyone else and deem anyone, who doesn't agree with him, a "so called expert". Nevermind any expertice specifically in this field. Are you aware that you deem the whole scientific consensus "so called experts"?

And, if americans get ω-3 and ω-6 fatty acids in bad ratios, perhaps americans should try to balance it by introducing more fish oils perhaps. Or is the blame again on some other continent instead of in you?

Still, the answer is not to cut both off completely since both are essential fatty acids that our bodies can not produce by themselves.

Grokette · December 2010

You don't make any sense!

You say that the results of a study, conducted by two respectable universities with no financial agenda whatsoever, are wrong and then continue to accuse my whole country for making money by pushing YOU stuff. This makes me wonder since most of the food grade canola oil, that we produce, is used domestically!
I think, americans should try looking for reasons to their own problems on their own continent...

Furthermore, you hold that Ray Peat's, a Ph.D. in Biology and specializing in hormone therapy, claims have far superior knowledge about dietary fats than anyone else and deem anyone, who doesn't agree with him, a "so called expert". Nevermind any expertice specifically in this field. Are you aware that you deem the whole scientific consensus "so called experts"?

And, if americans get ω-3 and ω-6 fatty acids in bad ratios, perhaps americans should try to balance it by introducing more fish oils perhaps. Or is the blame again on some other continent instead of in you?

Still, the answer is not to cut both off completely since both are essential fatty acids that our bodies can not produce by themselves.

I don't agree with most of the University research because the majority of them have some type of financial backing by some lobbying group.

I tend to believe the independent researchers to be more knowledgeable without anything to gain - except for people calling them liars and loons.

Further more, YES, I believe that someone with a degree in hormone therapy and biology could very well have a superior knowledge of dietary fats because dietary fats are very intertwined with keeping the hormones balanced.

You are free to keep dousing yourself with the Omega 6 oils such as Canola or other vegetable oils..............

I will stick to Coconut Oil. Olive Oil and my self filtered and rendered bacon fat. I have good blood work to prove my road to being healthy and I know what road I took where I became unhealthy and I won't go back down that road again.

Healthy calories

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