Heart Disease and Diabetes Risks Tied to Carbs, Not Fat, Study Finds Christopher Wanjek - LiveScience
go to original December 3, 2014

Is the pendulum swinging back? In what seems contrary to mainstream dietary advice, a small new study shows that doubling the saturated fat in a person's diet does not drive up the levels of saturated fat in the blood.

Rather, the study found that it was the carbohydrates in people's diets that were linked with increased levels of a type of fatty acid linked to heart disease and type-2 diabetes. The results of the study, which followed 16 middle-aged, obese adults for 21 weeks, were published Nov. 21 in the journal PLOS ONE.

Saturated fats, largely from meat and dairy products, have been vilified for decades as a primary culprit in promoting heart disease. And most health authorities maintain this stance.

However, in recent years, scientists have seen the ill effects of completely replacing saturated fat with carbohydrates, particularly the simple carbs that are found so commonly in processed foods. A large analysis published in 2009 in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that swapping saturated fats with carbs had no benefit in reducing people's risk of heart disease. But replacing those so-called bad fats with polyunsaturated fats — found in fish, olives and nuts — did.

"The unintended consequence of telling everyone to restrict fat was that people ate an even greater amount of carbohydrates," said Jeff Volek, senior author on the new study and a professor of human sciences at The Ohio State University. "This is a fact. It's not a stretch to make the connection between overconsumption of carbs and the obesity and diabetes epidemic."

The new study "challenges the conventional wisdom that has demonized saturated fat," Volek said, because it shows that saturated fats don't need to be replaced at all, neither with carbs nor polyunsaturated fats.

Read the rest at The Huffington Post

Photo: Time

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