It obviously does not because there are whole populations, such as Tibetans, who consume butter on daily basis and are still alive and well, without any cardiovascular epidemic.
What is a risk, by the way? How it is defined, apart from a personal lifestyle, diet, habits, current set of disorders and chronic illnesses of a particular person? It is a likelihood? An average of some imagined population of which some non-representative sample is treated according to some abstract, disconnected from reality model of a few selected unproven factors in a complex multiple causation individual phenomena? How the value of that number related to anything meaningful? It passes peer-reviews because it conforms to a socially constructed consensus (the current set of memes) but no one does a review of logic and causality.
The classic example, since modern nutrition research started in the '50s, is Inuit/Eskimo. They eat a lot of whale blubber, yet have very low rates of heart disease.
A good book that presents the case against nutrition research is "The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat & Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet."
I wouldn't say "The Big Fat Surprise" makes a case against nutrition research as a field - rather it points out some of the difficulties in performing nutrition research (the largest: it's almost impossible to enforce compliance with an experimental diet without massive expense) and some of the flaws in traditional conclusions (e.g. That dietary fat is associated with heart disease - turns out it probably isn't)
I wonder if the Tibetans and Inuits benefit from the fact that their dietary fats come from animals who lived healthy, whole lives. Much of the US consumes dairy and meat that comes from animals who were shoved into dark, overcrowded, stressful, unnatural habitat and fed strange feed that they'd normally not eat such as corn and grain.
To argue that, you'd have to demonstrate that the fats in animals raised on what you call healthy food differ chemically from the fats you'd find in animals fed otherwise.
Related example: The glucose from sugar beets is chemically identical to and indistinguishable from the glucose from sugar cane or corn. Animal fat tends to be a more complex mix, but while no expert I suspect there's only so many different lipid compounds produced and stored in animal cells. After all, the energy currency in any animal's bloodstream is mainly glucose - the source information is lost.
There are excellent _ethical_ reasons not to mistreat animals as is today often the case. I'm not sure that there are chemical reasons related to nutrition.
Most claims, however, focus on omega-3 fats, in particular alpha linolenic acid (ALA). Higher intakes of this plant-based omega-3 fatty acid are associated with a lower risk of heart disease, stroke, Type 2 diabetes and depression.
According to Dr. Richard Bazinet, a professor in the department of nutritional sciences at the University of Toronto who analyzes fatty acids in beef, grass-fed beef outranks grain-fed beef when it comes to ALA.
Conventional beef has about 20 milligrams of ALA in three ounces, whereas the same amount of grass-fed beef has 50 to 100 mg. A big difference? Yes. Meaningful? That depends.
Women need 1,100 mg of ALA each day; men require 1,600 mg. Eating a six-ounce grass-fed steak three times a week provides, at most, 5 per cent to 8 per cent of your daily ALA requirement. Keep in mind that during cooking, the ALA content of meat will decrease since ALA is found in fat.
Making the switch to other grass-fed animal foods, such as pasture-raised poultry and eggs and grass-fed dairy, could conceivably make an appreciable difference towards your daily ALA needs.
Is there meaningful mass production of glucose (or dextrose) from corn? Corn syrup is higher in fructose, which is metabolized very differently from glucose.
Absolutely! The glucose mix initially produced from corn is about 50% glucose and 42% fructose, which is roughly the same ratio as you get from beets or cane. You can then _optionally_ raise the percentage of fructose to 55, 65 or even 90% fructose. The 90% stuff is usually diluted/mixed before use.
HFCS is just sugar syrup with an intentionally elevated level of fructose. There's nothing that specifically ties corn to high amounts of fructose, other than that corn is heavily subsidized in the US while other sources of sugar are hit with import tariffs. So corn is what US sugar producers will tend to use as a source.
I do not think you can generalize from Tibetans or other populations. That is because those rural populations often have a much healthier diet than the standard american diet. More vegetables, more fiber, less animal products in general. To say that this obviously shows that butter cannot be that bad is just not true.
You are right in one point: If the only thing you eat is butter with your veggies then you do not have much of a problem in terms of a cardiovascular epidemic.
I think we focus on diet over environment too much. It isn't just what you eat but how you get around that is vital to tackling the cardiovascular epidemic.
The only evidence that I currently have available is the Netherlands. The only western country to have a reducing obesity index, by 2030, predicted to be 8.5% down from 10%. Their diet is a very typical western diet.
However their transport system and their urban planning is hugely focused on prioritising walking and cycling with good provision of local amenities within easy cycling distances. Yes, you build higher density urban environments, but this is a good thing.
In Netherlands it is common to have rather cold temperatures in houses even if people can afford to pay for warmth. And cold requires body to spend much more energy that is coming directly from burning body fat unless one shivering from cold.
In fact if one wants to loose like 10 kilos quickly, just climb to Everest. Most of that weight will be spent on body heating, not muscular work.
That also explains why butter does not harm people in Tibet. It is not stored as body fat and goes directly into body heat.
Interesting. Is that on purpose, to help lose fat, or to get the body used naturally handling a wider range of temperatures (I've read yoga prescribes that to some extent), or something else?
Do you have any references on that? I was under the impression being cold didn't really burn that many more calories. I'll stop wearing a jacket if I can burn hundreds of calories.
Just read hypothermics.com . Its author, Ray Cronise, has done a lot of measurements using proper equipment.
And anecdotaly I have a co-worker who was into serious climbing. Before a high climb like over 6km he on purpose typically gained like 5 kilos of weight and still came back learner from the trip. And he knows for sure that that was due to coldness as on much more physically demanding trips at warmer altitudes weight loss was much smaller.
"Being cold" does not have any particular caloric advantage until and unless you are cold enough to shiver. Shivering, as it happens, is a fantastic way to burn calories, and 15 minutes of shivering is equivalent to approximately an hour's worth of exercise.
Indeed. Thanks for the correction. The science, as I understand it, is that just being cold, but not to the point of shivering, will help boost your metabolism if you're performing exercise, while just being cold while idle will burn a basically insignificant amount of calories.
You are right that being active is also very important for cardiovascular health. However, you cannot underestimate the importance of diet as it too is a daily reoccurent factor for health.
Agreed but when you look at the Dutch diet, it really is not good. I mean sprinkles on toast really is not food. However the assumption is that, you as a child, will get to school by walking or cycling and you will get around for most of your childhood independently by bicycle.
The Dutch are unusually active in general, and this may well be down to their environment encouraging being active from birth.
I'm not saying diet is not a factor (1 in 10 are obese), but, the UK is currently at 27% (1 in 4), the worst in Europe heading for 35% (1 in 3) obese by 2030 with a similar diet profile to the Dutch, indicating about 25% of obesity will be down to environment. The US is even worse. Both the US and UK have an extremely car dependent design philosophy. One that the US is rapidly tackling through road diets. However planning is still a step behind at the moment.
I'm not disputing diet is vital, but if you have to get into a car to do a 0-5 mile journey because the "roads are too dangerous to cycle" or you won't let your kids walk/cycle to school 2 miles away you end up with an obesity problem no matter how good the population's diet.
Are tibetans generally heart-healthy, though? I took that for granted but did not actually fact check the original poster.
I think he just wanted to give an example for a rural, healthy eating society. I do not know if that was true in the past or is now, though.
Which is irrelevant, as it only speaks of total risk. If butter was bad, it would be bad for them too, in a controlled study against not butter eating Tibetans, regardless if they all run 10k miles per day and eat only vegetables.
It can't be controlled for if there is no variation in the population. At that point it becomes a fixed effect--a population-specific intercept, as it were--and the only way to net that out would be through a difference-in-difference type study.
Depends. The external validity may be questionable due to the height of the Tibetan plateau, epigenetic expression that is potentially common in the nation, or any number of other factors. In other words, conditional randomization is not true randomization required.
However, the grandparent comment I understood to be relevant to dietary factors.
Cholesterol isn't bad, it's in fact very important for the production of testosterone among other things. The problem comes from the inability to use it because the body isn't healthy. Polyunsaturated fats will produce bad byproducts when it breaks down and over time makes the body sick.
We crucially lack magnesium and potassium in our diet. There are tons of studies showing the benefits of magnesium against heart disease. And it's not just the heart, cholesterol can obstruct the liver and a sick liver will cause a whole lot of problems.
"The problem comes from the inability to use it because the body isn't healthy. Polyunsaturated fats will produce bad byproducts when it breaks down and over time makes the body sick."
However you could be easily making all of this up or be using bad/unscientific sources. Could you show us the studies/articles that you are using to gain those insights?
Obviously, this is anecdotal and I'm not advocating that anyone else do what I did until they consult with their own doctor but this is my experience.
I had some long term digestive issues.
I began supplementing my diet with magnesium and within a week, the problem began to abate. Within a month, all of my abdominal cramping was gone. All of my constipation issues were gone.
This is a common and very natural treatment of constipation. The other treatments are very unnatural, because they amount to poisons that the body what's to reject (in the intestines). That's what my gastroenterologist told me 15 years ago.
The grey matter in your brain is mostly cholesterol. I've personally lost 10 pounds in 10 days eating a high fat, low carb diet, with light excercise about 3 days a week. Kerrygold is my #1 choice for butter, because it comes from grass-fed cows.
Separately, I don't know if I understand your point. To me you are saying that because the grey matter in our brains is made of cholesterol that means we should eat more cholesterol and your recommendation for how to get more cholesterol is by using grass fed butter.
I think the point was that most of the health-conscious general public has the mindset that fat is the enemy and that things like cholesterol should be avoided at (almost) all costs.
The reality is that you can have a diet that is relatively high in fat and still lose weight, just as you can have a diet that is low in fat and still put on weight. As for cholesterol, it isn’t a toxin that should be eradicated from your diet - it’s something that just needs to be eaten in moderation (perhaps with butter on toast for breakfast, rather than fried chicken for lunch).
That may be so. But it's undisputed (aside from most keto blogs) that an increase in serum cholesterol and especially LDL-C increases the risk of heart disease.
Studies show that you generally need a level of < 150 mg/dL to avoid heart disease. That's quite a bit below the average "normal" level. But today's average is NOT physiologically optimal.
> But it's undisputed (aside from most keto blogs) that an increase in serum cholesterol and especially LDL-C increases the risk of heart disease.
Sure, but show me where cholesterol intake correlates to LDL.
At some point someone managed to convince the public subconscious that food fat = body fat, and that food cholesterol = body cholesterol. And it's a ridiculous notion.
For starters, saturated fat increases cholesterol and that is almost exclusively in animal products. Animal products are basically the only products to contain dietary cholesterol. So there you have at least a strong correlation.
"Serum cholesterol concentration is clearly increased by added dietary cholesterol but the magnitude of predicted change is modulated by baseline dietary cholesterol. The greatest response is expected when baseline dietary cholesterol is near zero, while little if any, measurable change would be expected once baseline dietary cholesterol was > 400-500 mg/d." (That is 2 eggs or 400 g beef etc.)
That's a 25-year-old revisit of even older studies dating back as far as 1960... none of which controlled for key elements like carbohydrate intake.
Even so, check out this element of its conclusions:
"The greatest response is expected when baseline dietary cholesterol is near zero, while little, if any, measurable change would be expected once baseline dietary cholesterol was > 400-500 mg/d. People desiring maximal reduction of serum cholesterol by dietary means may have to reduce their dietary cholesterol to minimal levels (< 100-150
mg/d) to observe (even) modest serum cholesterol reductions while persons eating a diet relatively rich in cholesterol would be expected to experience little change in serum cholesterol after adding even large amounts of cholesterol to their diet."
It didn't even differentiate HDL from LDL, let alone the actually harmful subsets like small-particle LDL.
> For starters, saturated fat increases cholesterol and that is almost exclusively in animal products.
You conveniently fail to mention that it increases HDL and LDL in proportion, when a common marker for heart disease is the LDL/HDL ratio. [1]
> Animal products are basically the only products to contain dietary cholesterol. So there you have at least a strong correlation.
No, that's a non-sequitor. It would have been a correlation if a higher LDL/HDL ratio was contributed to dietary cholesterol, which it isn't. [2]
From your link:
> High-density lipoprotein (HDL) was consistently increased in most studies, with HDL2 increasing more than HDL3 after cholesterol consumption (42,43). Interestingly, the increase in serum HDL cholesterol re- sulting from cholesterol feeding appears to be greater when the background diet is high in polyunsaturated fatty acids (29). .....
> These subtle changes in lipoprotein composition and concentration-apart from changes in serum total or LDL cholesterol concentrations may help explain recent epidemiologic findings that implicate dietary cholesterol as an independent risk factor for coronary disease after fasting serum total cholesterol and other known cardiovascular risk factors have been controlled for (67, 68). However, because changes in LDL cholesterol accounted for most of the changes in total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol will be the focus ofthe remaining discussion.
Even the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee doesn't state that cholesterol over consumption is of no concern. [3]
While dietary carbohydrates don't raise cholesterol, they do lower HDL, thus raising the LDL/HDL ratio. [4]
If you'd like, I'll admit that eating animal fats can increase LDL, but it's not the whole picture.
Some bonus sources for low carb (high fat) diets improving cardiovascular health: [5] [6]
But as I've read a lot of them, there's also opposing studies, like: [7]
My point is: approach this from an attempt to find truth, not from trying to prove that animal fat is bad, because it really shines through which one it is.
> Studies show that you generally need a level of < 150 mg/dL to avoid heart disease. That's quite a bit below the average "normal" level. But today's average is NOT physiologically optimal.
My point was that people see the “no cholesterol” message and start eliminating cholesterol from their diet...but then they end up replacing all the sources of fat in their diet with carbohydrates, or in some cases end up not getting enough of some nutrients which are often found in foods that are relatively high in cholesterol (e.g. iron or calcium).
The message about cholesterol should be more nuanced - less “don’t eat cholesterol”, more “don’t consume more than X mg”.
What I've heard, all diets work. And they work because they let you focus on what you eat, and they let you eat less energy. The problem is what happens in the long term. If you regain your weight, you're worse off.
When you eat less, the body adapts by working more energy efficient. So you eat 10% less, meaning the body can use only 90% of the normal energy supply. It react by using only 85%, storing that extra 5% in case things get worse later on. So the body expects that later on, supply could drop to 70% or much less. Then those stored 5% are really useful.
However, when you go back to that original 100%, before the weight loss, meaning that you should go back to that weight, the body still stays in 5% save modus. The effect is that you gain weight in the long run, and it will be harder to lose weight the next time.
NB: the 5% example used here is just a guess to describe the way this works. I have no idea if this is 5% or 20%, and I suppose this is personal, depends on your history etc.
I'm thinking about doing the keto diet myself. So I'm not against it. I'm just aware of the danger of rebound, the jojo-effect.
>"It react by using only 85%, storing that extra 5% in case things get worse later on. So the body expects that later on, supply could drop to 70% or much less. Then those stored 5% are really useful."
As someone who's tried every diet and training regiment under the sun, and never (before or after) being outside of "normal" BMI and of varying levels of athletic (maxing out at 10 push-ups through 30 dead-hang pullups):
On your first point, yes. Most diets work, as long as they fit with your persona and schedule. Anything you feel comfortable with and can stick to. Just by "doing" a diet, you end up being a lot more conscious of what you put in yourself.
When someone asks me for advice, it's mostly the same:
* Write down everything you eat for two weeks, weigh yourself before and after. The initial point was to measure your actual TDEE, but people invaribaly end up eating less and losing weight during those two weeks because they don't want to write down "half a package of Ritz crackers" in their log.
* Take an honest before pic. When you think you've stopped progressing after a few weeks after the initial burst, being able to compare backwards is invaluable as a motivator.
> When you eat less, the body adapts by working more energy efficient. So you eat 10% less, meaning the body can use only 90% of the normal energy supply. It react by using only 85%, storing that extra 5% in case things get worse later on. So the body expects that later on, supply could drop to 70% or much less. Then those stored 5% are really useful.
This is however not anything I'm comfortable believing before I read it from reputable sources. From a strict weight standpoint, I've rarely seen anything that doesn't align to your TDEE mainly differing by your weight and muscle/body ratio, unless chemically induced.
While I'd say that the keto diet works, it's not very practical, when accounting for eating in restaurants, socially (other people cooking for you, you cooking for others), etc.
What is your goal? Just losing weight? Being healthier? Body recomposition?
What is your life today? Could you cut out something you indulge in now? Alcohol, snacks, sugar in your drinks? Would you be content in cutting those out?
Do you work out? Could you see yourself doing that a few times a week? What would you enjoy doing? Hard 7 minute work-outs daily? Fun climbing/swimming/rowing/hiking? Lifting in gyms?
TLDR; Whatever diet/routine works is whatever you can stick with. I hate running/endurance training, so HIIT and calisthenics is what I've had most fun with. Would love climbing if I didn't hate heights :)
I just got a Fitbit. The iPhone app that comes with makes it really easy to track what you eat and the corresponding calories. I have lost weight mostly due to that.
I just do not want to record a snack of Doritos (100s of calories) versus a snack of a carrot (30kCal)
This is great, but beware of the relaps. Can you make this a habit? If you have to fight it, you'll lose in the end. Now the Fitbit is a new gadget, really nice app, but what happens in three weeks? Will you still fill in all your calories, and be ashamed of that doritos?
Do something that creates a habit, something that you don't have to put effort in. That will continue to work.
From a very simple calorimetric pov 1 lbs fat ~ 4000/3500 cal, assuming using 2000 calories for normal daily activity one needs to spend an extra 2000 cal per day for 10 days, which is like running 20 mile with no energy intake whatsoever every day (for 3 days per week it is 40 miles for days when one exercises).
This is correct. You can expect maybe a kilogram of fat (2 lbs) per week on a very restricted diet. Much more than that is hard to maintain over a longer period and unrealistic. When you first start with a keto diet, you can easily expect 3-4 kilogram of water weight being lost.
The problem with ketogenic diets is not the weight loss. The diet works for weight loss, that is undisputed. The problems are in the longer term with elevated cholesterol and increasing insulin resistance.
There's however tons of this. Most keto bloggers will try to tell you that increasing LDL-C is okay for different reasons (depending on who you read). That is however just not true. The link between LDL-C and heart disease is very strong and has been proven over decades.
As for the cholesterol, the study I linked was probably not a very good example - sorry.
Saturated fat does raise cholesterol however - so unless you are on a vegan low carb diet, you will see it rise. (IF you keep your weight steady, weight loss almost always lowers cholesterol)
Losing weight, especially fat does wonders for insulin sensitivity, though.
The low carb group lost 6.2 kg of fat. That is a lot. I do wonder what happens if you look at insulin sensitivity when weight and fat mass remains mostly neutral. I do not know if there are studies done on that (in humans). I will have a look around.
> Losing weight, especially fat does wonders for insulin sensitivity, though.
Agreed.
> The low carb group lost 6.2 kg of fat. That is a lot. I do wonder what happens if you look at insulin sensitivity when weight and fat mass remains mostly neutral. I do not know if there are studies done on that (in humans). I will have a look around.
Sure, but if it's purely weight dependant, then high fat isn't a factor. And if it's not, why did it increase sensitivity?
I'm not trying to say that fat is the one solution to everything, but I'm definitely saying it's not the one cause for everything. I can cite multiple studies showing the various detriments of carbs, and likewise the pitfalls of fat, but when the circumstances are key, then isn't that simply the answer?
Don't be afraid of butter and eggs, don't be afraid of rice and carrots. Eat everything in moderation. Maybe stay away from sugar and deep fried treats?
I do not have one. But I also never said it was better (!).
I merely said that it works. People on a keto diet often say something along the lines of "Oh, keto is such a good diet. I lost 20 pounds with it". And I believe them. But that should not be the only measure of how good a diet is for you. Weight is important but not everything.
Ok, fair enough. I just figured that almost any very-low-carb diet would lead to a 15 or 20 pounds weight loss, due to the water loss. Due to the difficulty of the diet (for some), I just always have a hard time recommending it or bringing it up compared to a 'regular' low carb diet.
The water loss in the beginning is real, and accounts for most 1st month loss. After that comes the real progress. Some find the inital loss to be motivating, others feel the lull after is the opposite.
I thought that LDL-P had been determined to be a more reliable indicator of heart disease risk? Also hasn't heard of insulin resistance as an effect of ketogenic diets... What's the mechanism for that, do you know?
An easy way to boost potassium is to replace table salt (sodium chloride) with potassium chloride. For example, Morton's Lite Salt (in the USA at least) is half-and-half.
As far as I know, that shift has only occurred in the past decade or so, after the FDA started requiring trans fat to be listed on the Nutrition Facts label. It might be too soon to look for the effects of that change on long-term risks for cardiovascular disease.
Also, FDA labeling allows "0g trans fat" for food with 0.5 g per serving, and listed serving sizes are often laughable, so I wonder. This article I just found claims "0.56% to 4.2% trans fats" in "soybean and canola oils found on store shelves in the U.S." (https://authoritynutrition.com/6-reasons-why-vegetable-oils-...) Dunno how much weight to give it; I try to avoid those oils anyway.
There's coconut oil and palm fruit oil. (There may be environmental concerns about the latter.) I also use butter/ghee sometimes. (And olive oil, but you already mentioned it.) For non-cooking, I like flaxseed oil.
Olive oil comes in many varieties, and some of them have a smoke point comparable to canola, or even higher. Even the unrefined varieties tend to have a fairly high smoke point. So unless you're searing, olive oil is just fine for cooking.
Thanks I'll try out Avocado oil. Someone else mentioned it also. When I say "taught" I really mean my mom said "that one's good. Oh that one's good, too."
Don't worry too much about the low amounts. Develop cooking techniques to use less oil (non-stick pans, measuring out oil, etc), and switch between oils when you cook. I don't figure I'm eating enough fats to worry about it, as I don't eat meat and limit fish/seafood to once every week or two.
I use either butter or a butter/canola blend for most stovetop cooking and generally use an olive/canola blend for breadmaking, with the exception of pizza crust which is oil-free.
The theory I go by is to avoid highly polyunsaturated oils (which include canola); prefer monounsaturates. Olive oil is indeed the best if you're not going to get it too hot; next is avocado oil. Hi-oleic safflower/sunflower might be a third choice (better, at least, than canola).
In India safflower and sunflower oil are recommended as being better for the heart, etc. Don't know enough to say if that is right or not.
Also, recently I think I read that coconut oil may not be as harmful as thought earlier by some (my guess is people thought it was harmful because it congeals at a higher temperature than other vegetable oils do). But on the other hand, people in coastal states like Kerala, Tamil Nadu, etc., must be using it a lot, and I have not read about them having higher cardiac problems.
I just checked what the Finnish wikipedia has to say about trans fats last night, and it makes the claim that margarine's trans fat content is <= 0.5% while vegetable oils contain none of it, and butter contains 2%. All numbers are low enough that the trans-fat content isn't a concern, but butter is comparatively worse. Apparently studies show similar numbers in Sweden.
Partially hydrogenated oils are shelf-stable, so they're used in a lot of individually-wrapped junk food items. That kind of stuff should be left out of just about any diet.
If you're saying the phase-out is really happening and widespread, that's great. Nothing could make me happier. Partially hydrogenated oils are basically poison. I've noticed them falling off the ingredients list of some of the junk in the store.
I try to avoid eating vegetable oil. I understand that the polyunsaturated oils are preferentially stored to protect the body from these unstable oils.
The Center for Science in the Public Interest needs to eat some crow.
The entire nutrition science industry needs to start reporting confidence levels associated with studies. Almost all nutritional advice is based on small studies. That's why you see them contradict each other on a frequent basis.
You need a 5 sigma result to discover a new particle. Discovering new particles doesn't kill people.
> Almost all nutritional advice is based on small studies.
I doubt they'll ever really expand beyond small studies in that field. There's certain groups that routinely do meta-analyses of nutritional (and other) studies, like the Cochrane Collaboration. E.g., Effect of cocoa on blood pressure: http://www.cochrane.org/CD008893/HTN_effect-of-cocoa-on-bloo...
That's really the only way to be confident, short of setting up a massive (expensive) randomized controlled trial.
Temperate vegetable oils are really, really bad for you. Example bad temperate oil: Canola oil. Temperate plant oil is designed to provide nutrients to the germinating seed at lower temperatures. After it gets warm enough and the seed germinates the oil is no longer needed. So it oxidizes. Oxidation is a serious problem for the mammalian body plan.
Eat only unprocessed tropical oils, extra virgin olive oil or raw unprocessed avocado oil.
However, it's delicious, comes in stick form, doesn't separate or spoil when I leave it out in a dish at room temperature, and can keep that way long enough for it to be used entirely.
No mediocre substitute holds up to real butter, cow farts and ethics be damned.
This is coming from someone who thought Country Crock was real butter until I was a teenager, because that's what my mother always bought.
I can't even put it in macaroni and cheese these days, let alone on my toast.
Even the expensive stuff like "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter" is nearly repulsive compared to real butter IMO.
A drive to a store to buy oil has a larger co2 footprint than the butter producing cow. That make the butter eating cyclist a more ethical person than a oil buying driver, if we are going to argue co2 footprints.
A 500 g packet of butter has a footprint of 4.7 kg of CO2 equivalent. If a car does 200 grams of CO2e / km, distance by car on the store trip would have to be over 23 km to match the butter.
Most atmospheric methane produced photo oxidizes to CO2 after about 20 years though.
CH4 + 2O2 -photons---> C02 + 2H20
I'm not sure what time scale of heat per mass equivalencies are based on in your example; there is approximately 28 : 1 heat/mass eq. ratio at the 100 year scale, during which time the heating effect decreases exponentially with the decrease in methane concentration[0]. After 100 years the ratio is approximately 1:1 since almost all methane has decomposed.
20 years is a very relevant timescale since we need to prevent the tipping point of melting artcitc methane deposits and loss of reflection from permafrost areas.
Yea, I agree. Cows also live about 20 years, so even not breeding cows wouldn't solve this problem. The morality of eating butter is kind of a moot point when all the production mechanisms are already in place and they aren't flexible.
A possible solution would be methane fixing bacteria (methanotrophs) in the guts of cows or in the ocean where
> 75% of the current concentration atmospheric methane originates. The ocean also contains a significant amount in solid form that gets released as temps rise. [0]
I don't wish to argue (I'm a butter eating cyclist after all!) but this seems to be selective, since cows are more known for producing methane than co2 ?
If I recall right, they producer more co2 than methane by a factor of 2. A better measurement is pollution, but then we would need to attribute all the particles which makes it more complex to compare the burning of fossil fuels with gas produce by fermentation.
Not to say that I am not a fan of less selective counting. I in big favor of counting footprint based on a person complete effect on the environment rather than specific choices. If we counted everything from purchases of items, clothes, travel, commuting, diet, and so on, I am convinced that the end result is more enlightening than just looking one diet item vs an other.
That's the rationale for the concept of CO2e, the amount of CO2 that is equivalent to the emission. So emitting 1 kg of CO2 and 1 kg of a GHG that is 2x as potent as CO2 would be expressed as emissions of "3 kg CO2e".
I'm not a vegetarian, but I thought dairy necessitated pregnancy, and as such went hand in hand with veal production. Is this incorrect? Input from someone with experience in the domain would be helpful.
(I've googled it but the sources primarily seem to be extremely biased).
IME most people, if they look into it, find ethical problems in industrial dairy/beef production. Maybe most don't care or muster discipline enough to change their consumption, but that is different from thinking it's all fine.
> Milk cows are continually raped for the duration of their lives
This is misleading and utter bullshit (no pun intented). By that reasoning, every routine examination at the gynecologist or proctologist would constitute rape.
We have no reason to suspect that a cow feels "raped" during artificial insemination, or anything more than slight physical discomfort.
There is: Butter contains 3 % trans fats. And even keto fanatics admit that trans fats are extremely unhealthy. You could say it doesn't have a huge impact and that might be true because it's only a small part of the diet.
However, any amount of trans fat is dangerous. The body's enzymes can hardly remove any trans fat build up in the arteries.
From the studies I can Google, the jury still seems to be out on the dominated trans fat in animal sources, vaccenic acid, and related compounds known as conjugated linoleic acids. The later group of trans fats actually might be beneficial to human health: some studies have linked it to anti-cancer properties (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4964663/) and fat loss (http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/85/5/1203.long), although as indicated studies are very preliminary at the moment, so you really can't conclude anything definitely about this.
I can even Google papers such as this -- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19935865 -- that seem to say vaccenic acid might not be that bad, which is contrary to the link you provided. Again -- this is more not to say vaccenic acid is good, and more that I believe the science is inconclusive right now.
Elaidic acid (the "bad" partially hydrogenated vegetable oil trans fat) is present in natural sources as well, but in much smaller quantities.
Small amounts of trans fats are pretty much found in any animal product, so it is difficult to avoid trans fats entirely unless you become completely vegan. Personally... my guess is that a small amount of animal based trans fat is not going to be a big deal overall, so a little butter is fine. The studies are most damning at the moment over partially hydrogenated vegetable oil.
Trans fat from partially hydrogenated vegetable oil is (mostly) Elaidic acid, which is probably harmful. Butter contains other trans fats, like Vaccenic acid. We don't know much about the long-term health effects of Vaccenic acid.
_No_ it does not. Trans fats are a completely artificial creation originally thought to avoid weight gain because it's specifically _not_ butter. They don't exist naturally in any butter.
Yes they do contain trans fats - just not the same kind -
and recent research shows that they are probably just as damaging as the artificial creations. See my comment to the other poster.
How about olive oil? The oils they name there already got a bad rap in the press here for not being very good for you. But olive oil persists.
Also; you have to wonder about these tests... Anecdotal, but too many times I see people take cola light, a light sugar substitute for their tea and veg oil based butter with their 3000 kcal burger & fries & chocolate sunday.
Also, the more I read up about it, I think stress is far more involved than food in a lot of cases. And if you feel you have a lot of stress (some people can handle tons and feel nothing, other get burn out with comparitively little, so it is personal) then I do not think food matters a lot: exercise probably does. Just looking at food is not enough there; weight, stress, genetic factors and exercise have to be equal for all individuals.
> How about olive oil? The oils they name there already got a bad rap in the press here for not being very good for you. But olive oil persists.
Sorta an apples and oranges comparison. Olive oil is primarily a monounsaturated fat. The article covers polyunsaturated fat. Olive oil is more stable than linoleic oil, but still less than any decent saturated fat.
I think it's kinda funny the article references cholesterol levels. My suggestion: They could try and measure the subjects' midichlorian levels.
Ah, I read vegetable oils. I do not know the difference between polyunsaturated and monounsaturated, but will read up on it. In our region they use olive oil for everything hence I was curious.
- polyunsaturated fats are the category that includes omega 6 and omega 3 fatty acids. Even further, omega 3's can be ALA (from plants) or DHA (e.g. salmon) variety. Omega 3's and in particular DHA have been shown to have anti-inflammatory and other health properties. Which is to say even within polyunsaturated fats there is a wide variety of alleged health effects, but when talking about cooking oils and processed foods we're almost certainly talking about other types than the type known to have health benefits.
- polyunsaturated fats can be hydrogenated which makes them solid at room temperature. So replacing butter with margarine typically means these types of fats. It was discovered relatively recently that trans fats (which are often the by-products of this) are almost certainly bad for you.
- polyunsaturated fats are the least stable, meaning they're more likely to break down into things that are probably not good for you (e.g. if deep frying with them).
- highly-processed foods tend to be high in polyunsaturated fats, and omega 6's in particular. This is the same category regular vegetable oil (e.g. soybean oil) falls in.
- olive oil is high in monounsaturated fat, is generally thought to be pretty healthy, and it doesn't have these same kinds of "gotchas" that polyunsaturated fats can. Historically the main reasons we think olive oil is healthy are that populations with less heart disease (e.g. Mediterranean populations) eat a lot of it, I don't know how much more recent research there is actually proving causation here.
- saturated fat is the other type, which can occur in plants like coconuts (healthy) or in butter, fatty meats like bacon and steak, etc. The history here is pretty fascinating, but through lots of misplaced assumptions of correlation/causation these are traditionally viewed as unhealthy (thus why people are doing these studies like replacing butter with other fats). AFAIU this debate is still ongoing, there is some evidence these really do raise your cholesterol but also some evidence that the particular kinds of cholesterol they raise aren't necessarily bad, in otherwise healthy people. I'm a bit unclear of this aspect.
I've concluded for me personally, this stuff is still so unknown that your best bet is just to keep your total calories under control and not worry about types of fat, with the exception of not eating any trans fats and prioritizing fatty fish if you can.
>- polyunsaturated fats are the category that includes omega 6 and omega 3 fatty acids. Even further, omega 3's can be ALA (from plants) or DHA (e.g. salmon) variety. Omega 3's and in particular DHA have been shown to have anti-inflammatory and other health properties.
You missed EPA which is also in fatty fish. ALA doesn't convert very well in humans to DHA or EPA. So eating lots of flax to get Omega3 is pretty useless.
Opinion: The conclusion I came to a few years ago is that we have too much PUFA in our foods, of which Omega-6 is just one form. Eating fatty fish and cutting down on vegetable oils high in O6 help to restore a more natural ratio that humans are more tolerant to. But ultimately saturated fats are intended to be the primary fuel.
Good point on PUFA, that was probably worth making it into my conclusion too.
In my home cooking I've started using macadamia nut oil (similar profile to olive oil, it's high in monounsaturated fats) in place of vegetable oil. You can get it on Amazon and it has a more neutral, slightly nutty flavor and a higher smoking point than olive oil, so it's great for slightly higher temps or cooking foods that you don't want to taste like olive oil.
Apologize in advance for not listing sources (busy) but my comment can perhaps still be a source of some information for you. The last I'd read up on it, one aspect of Olive (and perhaps, others) oil has to do with additional compounds which act as more specific anti-inflammatory substances. Again, sorry for no source, but my brain says that the recommended daily intake of Olive oil (per "official" mediterranean diet) is similar to ~1/10th a dose of aspirin. There is some speculation that the additional benefits of Olive oil consumption may be related not to just to the fat type but also to the additional anti-inflammatory compounds.
Whether this type of benefit could be replicated (/ is safe) by taking low dose aspirin directly is probably a subject of some investigation. I hope this is helpful despite a my non-cited fuzzy memory.
Stress makes you lost tons of vitamins and minerals. Eating whole foods as opposed to processed foods is important, but I agree reducing stress and exercising is more important.
I think that generalizations on fats in diets don't work for analyzing different diets because of other factors like how much processed foods, sugar, and meat are in a person's diet.
My wife does well eating lots of butter and more meat. I do well by eating lots of vegetables. The only thing our diets really have in common is the avoidance of packaged/processed foods. It is some work, but people need to pay attention to how eating different foods make them feel, and over a long period of time.
You inadvertently seem to be avoiding grains and carbs. Every livestock farmer knows nothing makes fat mammals quite like high grain intake.
Government dietary recommendations on grain intake have increased with excellent correlation to very little other than re-election donations by grain farmers.
Like almost all nutritional studies, the evidence here is circumstantial and should be read with significant skepticism. Stephen Pauker, a professor of medicine at Tufts University and a pioneer in the field of clinical decision making, says, “Epidemiologic studies, like diagnostic tests, are probabilistic statements.” They don’t tell us what the truth is, he says, but they allow both physicians and patients to “estimate the truth” so they can make informed decisions.' (Excerpt from Do We Really Know What Makes Us Healthy by Gary Taubes http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/16/magazine/16epidemiology-t....)
If you look at the larger body of evidence beyond this study, there are major reasons why institutional wisdom continues to advocate for the consumption of mono and polyunsaturated fats over saturated fat. For example, a larger 2016 cohort study of 115,000+ participants concluded high dietary intakes of saturated fat are associated with an increased risk of coronary heart disease (http://www.bmj.com/content/355/bmj.i5796).
Eating healthier is all about what categories of food replace current calories. If similar studies continue to show vegetable oil consumption is not protective against heart disease, it will probably make more sense to advocate replacing vegetable oil calories with fatty nuts and avocados that are much more nutritiously dense than oils (my preference for where to get fats). To jump to the conclusion we should all eat more butter based on this one study of n=9,423, however, is bad logic.
I would normally agree with you, but did you actually read this study or the article? This is not the usual "epidemiologic" nutritional study. This was a "rare randomized controlled trial." It was in fact a double blind randomized controlled study: http://www.bmj.com/content/353/bmj.i1246
You make a fair point on the quality of the research technique. I did skim through the study and conclusions and don't deny double blind randomized control trials are historically the golden standard of scientific evidence (http://ebm.bmj.com/content/early/2016/06/23/ebmed-2016-11040...). Other randomized control trials have found polyunsaturated fat in place of saturated fat reduces Coronary Heart Disease events (see this meta-analysis of 8 randomized control trials, n=13,000+ http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/jou...).
It's no doubt an interesting study and makes me question recommendations to consume oils. Still, based on current scientific evidence, there is good reason to be cautious about consuming more butter / saturated fats as is being advocated in numerous comments on this thread. As a reminder to those reading, there is strong evidence to supports nuts are a much better source of fat for health than both oils and saturated fat. Here's a meta-analysis of two cohort studies of 110,000+ that found nut consumption is inversely associated with total and cause-specific mortality (http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1307352).
What you really need is a study comparing saturated fats, ideally from butter AND from coconut oil, with monounsaturated fat which is the plant fat recommended as healthiest (olive oil, avocados, almonds), not polyunsaturates that no-one claimed was particularly healthy to begin with. It also needs to looks at all cardiac events, not just death (having cardiac events can reduce life quality).
A more useful headline: "Replacing butter with vegetable oils high in monounsaturated fatty acid reduces risk of cardiac events and neurological disorders" https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3705810
One of the most remarkable snacks I've ever had was served on a trawler in the North Sea - a large number of butteries (pastries from the North East of Scotland which, as the name suggests, are made with a large amount of butter) layered in a deep baking tray and covered with a couple of pounds of salted butter and then baked until nice and hot.
Possibly the most delicious thing I have ever consumed NB (it was shared among the crew of 6 or so).
Isn't the Omega-6 to Omega-3 ratio one important measure of how heart-healthy a diet is? This could at least in part explain increasing heart disease risk.
I assume using lots of Omega-6 oil would push the ratio to even more unhealthy levels than what a standard american diet has.
But what does it reduce the risk of what we DO NOT KNOW is happening to us? Perhaps a disease or affect that is difficult to measure immediately, but is affect-ing us ul-tim-at-ely.
Please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News.
Edit: actually, you've done this so much already that we've banned this account for trolling. If you don't want it to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.
What is a risk, by the way? How it is defined, apart from a personal lifestyle, diet, habits, current set of disorders and chronic illnesses of a particular person? It is a likelihood? An average of some imagined population of which some non-representative sample is treated according to some abstract, disconnected from reality model of a few selected unproven factors in a complex multiple causation individual phenomena? How the value of that number related to anything meaningful? It passes peer-reviews because it conforms to a socially constructed consensus (the current set of memes) but no one does a review of logic and causality.