Fats, Part 2--Saturated Fats

My girls love steak.  And I truly enjoy a great medium-rare filet mignon at Morton's.  So I have to admit that I went into my research on saturated fats with desire to find reasons to continue my meat-eating lifestyle!

In the first post on fats, I covered Fat Basics, a quick overview of the types of fats.  In this post, I will focus on saturated fats, with unsaturated fats the focus on Fats, Part 3.  However, it is important to remember that fat containing foods are often a mixture of saturated and unsaturated fats (and, sometimes, trans fats).

Recommendations on Saturated Fats

In my last post, I covered the current recommendation that no more than 10% of daily calories should come from saturated fats.  However, there has been a lot of attention on saturated fats lately.  Basically, the newest focus comes from a meta-analysis published earlier this year.  In this paper, researchers went back and looked at many different studies and determined that there is no evidence that consuming saturated fat increased heart attacks and heart disease. 

As noted in an overview of the paper, saturated fat does increase LDL ("bad") cholesterol, but it also increases good HDL cholesterol.  And the LDL increased by saturated fat is LDL pattern A, generally thought to be benign.  LDL pattern B is the artery-clogging kind and is actually associated with a high carbohydrate/high sugar diet.  Additionally, researchers found that the saturated fat in milk and milk products were associated with decreased heart disease risk.  Not surprisingly, the meta-analysis found a link between trans fats and heart disease. 

Given this study, how much saturated fat should you be eating?  Is butter back?

In All Things, Balance

The meta-analysis is the latest study to look at the question of saturated fats.  But my guess is this story is far from over.  Remember, nutrition is a young science and what might seem like the "right" path today could change over time.  Keep in mind, everyone thought partially hydrogenated oil seemed like a great idea until evidence against trans fats started piling up.  My take?  This study is not a license to consume a giant mound of bacon (my dear husband, I am thinking of you as I write this sentence), but to consider adding a few saturated fats back into your life.  A little shredded Parmesan cheese is just what my girls needed to enjoy broccoli.  Indeed, Ellyn Satter in her Secrets to Feeding a Healthy Family advocates the use of butter (and salt) to help make vegetables more palatable for children.  Just remember, at 9 calories per gram, fats can add up quickly (proteins and carbs are 4 calories per gram). 

By the way, if you do decide to cook bacon, try the oven.  Perfect bacon with less mess!

Saturated fats vs Unsaturated fats vs Refined carbohydrates

In several commentaries on the meta-analysis, experts pointed out that while replacing saturated fats with unsaturated fats is generally a step in the right direction, replacing fats with refined carbohydrates and sugars is not.  As I mentioned previously, many experts believe that in our rush to expel fat from our diets, we ran headfirst into a pile of sugar and Snackwells, leading in part to our current obesity issues. 

To examine this in the real world, I decided to look deeper into a standard morning breakfast.  I often make my girls English muffins spread with butter.  But would jam be a better choice?  This morning, I measured a typical spread on the muffins.  I usually buy local berry jam at my farmer's market, but for this analysis used Bonne Maman Raspberry jam.  Additionally, we use butter from pastured cows, delivered by South Mountain Creamery.  For this analysis, I used Whole Foods butter.  In both cases, I used these products as nutrition information is readily available. 

	Jam	Butter	Whole wheat English muffin	Whole wheat English muffin  and Jam	Whole wheat English muffin and Butter
calories	67	50	120	187	170
total fat (g)	0	5.5	1.5	1.5	7
sat fat  (g)	0	3.5	0	0	3.5
carbs  (g)	17.3	0	24	41.3	24
sugar  (g)	17.3	0	1	18.3	1
fiber  (g)	0	0	3	3	3
protein  (g)	0	0	7	7	7

Four grams of sugar is the equivalent of 1 teaspoon of sugar.  The English muffin with jam, in red, is sporting over 4 teaspoons of sugar.  But the muffin with butter has just one gram of sugar.  Additionally, the buttered muffin has just under 16% of the daily saturated fat intake for a 2,000 calorie per day diet (3.5g x 9 cal/g = 31.5 calories.  31.5 is 15.8% of 200 calories).  Additionally, while the sugars in the jam are processed by our bodies quickly, the fat in the butter provides satiety, resulting a feeling of fullness longer.  This satiety may result in fewer calories consumed later.  Best choice?  A little butter on your English muffin.


Real food vs Donuts

To me, it is important to look at your saturated fat intake in context and make choices based on what the rest of the food's nutrition profile.  Taking a look at a few foods: 

	Total Fat	Saturated Fat	Protein	Carbohydrates
Egg	5 g	1.5 g	6 g	0 g
Whole milk (1 cup)	8 g	5 g	8 g	12 g
Krispy Kreme donut	11 g	5 g	2 g	21 g
Butter (1 Tbsp)	11 g	7 g	0 g	0 g
Starbucks grande frappucino (skim, with whip)	11 g	7 g	4 g	72 g
Starbucks grande gingerbread latte (2% milk, with whip)	13 g	8 g	12 g	42 g

For years, I steered away from eggs.  But with just 1.5 grams of saturated fat and a good serving of protein, they are a great food choice.  Moving to two items with 5 grams of saturated fats, the better choice is whole milk with its protein, vitamins, and minerals (and fewer sugars).  The saturated fats of the Starbucks drinks mostly come from the whipped cream, but the 7 grams in butter doesn't come with a huge helping of sugar.  As Mark Bittman writes in his Butter is Back article, we need to eat real foods, not processed junk.

Cows and Chickens--They are what they eat

Meats and animal products are a major source of saturated fat in our diets.  But animals, whether fish, fowl, or cow, are products of what they eat and that, in turn, alters their fat profile.  Conventionally raised dairy cows, cattle, and chickens don't eat the grasses and, in the case of chickens, bugs, that they are designed to eat.  Instead they eat corn, soy, and other commercial feed. 

Several studies have shown a better fat profile of eggs, milk, and beef raised on grass or pastured.  In the case of eggs, pastured chickens produce eggs with more omega-3 unsaturated fat and vitamin E and less saturated fat.  In our house, we often eat eggs from the farmers market or  Vital Farms Backyard Eggs.  Vital Farms chickens forage and are given additional feed.  Unfortunately, their packaging uses the standard nutrition information for eggs (1.5 grams of saturated fat).  I emailed Vital Farms, but they have not done independent testing on their eggs.  In this case, I am relying on the overall science regarding the fat profile.  Plus the eggs just taste better!

For more comparisons, the Union of Concerned Scientists summarized many studies of pasture vs conventional feeding on the fat profiles of milk (page 41) and steak (page 44).

The differences may be small.  For example, Organic Valley produces a conventional butter and a pastured butter.  Both butters have 7 grams of saturated fat per tablespoon, but the pastured butter has better balance between the omega-3 and omega-6 unsaturated fatty acids (an issue that I will cover more fully in the next post). 

These are small differences, as noted in an article on grass-fed beef, and may or may not play a significant role in our overall health.  Our family typically eats beef once or twice a week.  I usually buy grass-fed because I know that if we eat out, our beef is likely conventionally raised.  I am hoping to balance our diet.  However, grass-fed beef is expensive.  If I had to choose, I would spend my money on pastured items we eat more frequently, like eggs and butter, thinking that the cumulative effect of these pastured foods may have more impact.

References
All quotes and sources are linked in the above text.  General nutrition information came from Whitney and Rolfes' Understanding Nutrition, 13th ed., from Nutrition for Sport and Exercise, 2nd ed. by Dunford and Doyle, and from Marion Nestlé's What to Eat.