Going against the standard dietary advice that has been advocated for years, a new controlled scientific study has shown that increasing levels of carbohydrate in the diet increases fats in the blood but increasing saturated fat does not. Lead researcher J. Voleck of Ohio State University says that this new study “challenges the conventional wisdom that has demonized saturated fat and extends our knowledge of why dietary saturated fat doesn’t correlate with disease.”
“There is widespread misunderstanding about saturated fat, ” Dr. Volek explains. “In population studies, there’s clearly no association of dietary saturated fat and heart disease, yet dietary guidelines continue to advocate restriction of saturated fat. That’s not scientific and not smart. When you consume a very low-carb diet your body preferentially burns saturated fat,” he said. “We had people eat 2 times more saturated fat than they had been eating before entering the study, yet when we measured saturated fat in their blood, it went down in the majority of people. Other traditional risk markers improved, as well.”
In this study the participants were fed a reduced carbohydrate diet for three weeks and then the diet was changed every three weeks , increasing the carbohydrate level in the diet. As the carbohydrate level of the diet increased so did the level of saturated fat in the blood. Dr Volek states, “People believe ‘you are what you eat,’ but in reality, you are what you save from what you eat,” he said. “The point is you don’t necessarily save the saturated fat that you eat. And the primary regulator of what you save in terms of fat is the carbohydrate in your diet. Since more than half of Americans show some signs of carbohydrate intolerance, it makes more sense to focus on carbohydrate restriction than fat restriction.”
“For more of the latest in nutritional/ lifestyle research check all of my blog posts at www.drsobo.com/blog
For the best care in Integrative Medicine call Henry C. Sobo, M.D., at 203-348-8805 or write us at [email protected]