UK Food Standards Agency shows its ignorance

"Nothing is more terrible than ignorance in action."

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Part One: Introduction

In February 2009, the UK’s Food Standards Agency (FSA) launched a concerted campaign to get us all to reduce the amount of saturated fat — by which they mean animal fats and tropical oils – in our diets.

But not only the message, but also they way they delivered it, showed their total ignorance of the science and evidence published over the last decades. This shows that, in fact, it is not natural saturated fats that are the problem, it is the unnatural processed polyunsaturated vegetable cooking oils and margarines.

Ridiculous, misleading propaganda

For example, the BBC showed 'saturated fat' being taken from the fridge and then poured down the sink drain. Then the U-bend was dismantled to show how the fat had clogged it. This, they said, was what happened in your arteries.

It was complete rubbish, and untrue!

Firstly, saturated fat would be solid in a fridge; there is no way you could pour it down a drain straight from the fridge. Secondly, a sink drain is entirely different from an artery, both in form and temperature. Thirdly, there is no way that such fat could get into an artery to clog it (Are the FSA unaware of the fact that most people don't inject fats into their arteries? Have they forgotten the digestive process).

Have they no basic knowledge of biochemistry? Don't read medical journals? Surely, if they did, they would know that the major fats found in atheromatous plaques is not saturated fats, but POLYUNsaturated fats.

A study published in Lancet, so it isn't hard to come by, compared the fatty-acid composition of aortic plaques with that of post-mortem serum and adipose tissue. They found positive associations "between serum [in the bloodstream] and plaque [the stuff which blocks arteries] omega 6 [VEGETABLE oil] (r = 0.75) and omega 3 (r = 0.93) polyunsaturated fatty acids, and monounsaturates (r = 0.70)... No associations were found with saturated fatty acids."[1]

Just in case you missed the last sentence, it read:

"No associations were found with saturated fatty acids"

If it still isn't clear: Arteries block with polyunsaturated fatty acids, NOT saturated fats.

Fat facts

As a species, we have eaten animal fats and tropical oils, all of which contain a significant amount of saturated fatty acids, for the whole of our existence. Until the 20th century, before which time coronary heart disease (CHD) was either unknown or at least extremely rare, such fats were the only ones we did eat. With that background, why should we change?

The reason we are told to restrict our total fat intake to about 35% of calorie intake is because it is assumed that eating fat makes us fat, and that being fat predisposes us to diseases such as diabetes, heart disease and cancer.

The reason for the specific warning against saturated fats is the belief that saturated fats increase the risk of heart disease. Animal fats are sought out particularly for damnation as they not only contain some saturated fatty acids but cholesterol as well – so they must be doubly bad. Polyunsaturated oils, on the other hand, tend to lower our blood cholesterol levels, so they must be healthier. We saw earlier that there is precious little evidence to support these assertions; nevertheless, these are the sole bases for the recommendations.

Fats are important constituents in our diets for many reasons. With the highest amount of calories of any food, they are an important energy source. Our bodies need energy all the time. The amount of energy coming from carbohydrates is stored in our bodies in the form of glucose and glycogen, but that store is very limited: enough for perhaps two days if we take it easy. Our bodies’ major energy store is body fat – a ‘saturated animal fat’, by the way.

But fats are much more than just an energy reserve. Our brains are mostly composed of fats; and fats are building blocks for body cell membranes and a wide range of hormones and hormone-like substances; fats also play an important part in cushioning vital organs.

Fats are also essential if our bodies are to use the fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E and K; they are essential for the conversion of carotene from plant foods to vitamin A.² Butter is the best source of these important nutrients, and vitamin A is more easily absorbed and utilized from butter than from any other source.³ In fact our bodies have great difficulty with the carotene in plants. Our digestive system is not well equipped to convert carotene to vitamin A. Only about one-sixth of the carotene you eat may be converted, and only about one-third of that sixth is actually absorbed into the body. Much of the blindness in developing countries, which is blamed on a lack of vitamin A, is actually due to a lack of fat in the diet, so that what vitamin A there is cannot be metabolized. In an attempt to stop the blindness, rice is genetically modified so that it contains more carotene – but as it doesn’t contain fat, what’s the point?

Fats are also needed for mineral absorption.

As well as having a wide range of important functions within our bodies, eating fat with any meal slows down the rate at which food is absorbed so that we feel fuller more quickly and can go much longer without feeling hungry. And it is well nigh impossible to eat too much fat.

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