UKC

Can people advise me what's the latest thinking as to what foods are good or bad when it comes to fats and oils please

In reply to Pesda potato:

It is all bad. And it is all good. Listen to your body. Eat what it wants. Drink plenty of water and a little bit of everything never did anyone any harm.

In reply to Pesda potato:

http://lpi.oregonstate.edu/mic/other-nutrients/essential-fatty-acids#intro

This may answer your question to some extent.

IPP

In reply to Pesda potato:

Apparently nowadays all fats are fine but carbohydrates are evil. Probably fine if you aspire to be a perpetual plodder but rather less so if you want to perform better over a shorter time.

Seems to me to be another fad that works for just enough people to gather credibility but for the vast majority of folk it's rubbish.

Eat little and varied and - crucially - only when you're actually hungry. And be active. It's worked for most people for millennia.

In reply to Pesda potato:

http://ebookdig.biz/ebook/q/pdf/Nourishing-Traditions-Sally-Fallon-.html

Whole chapter on good and bad fats.

In reply to Pesda potato:

Very hard to get a handle on. Saturated fats used to be bad, but now they're not. I would have thought that most fats from vegetables can't do you too much harm, a lot of animal fat seems a bit wrong, and if it's come out of a lab, it's probably not good.

In reply to Pesda potato:

If the fat is in a cake it's good fat, on your belly it's bad fat. Simples.

In reply to Pesda potato:
Last I heard was olive oil is good, and saturated fats aren't the evil they were once thought to be, and that some oils when used in frying can be carcinogenic (possibly including olive oil), and lead to mood changes which aren't pleasant, and may have other negative things related to them. I'm very sure it's sun flower oil when used in frying which is thought to lead to negative mood changes (to a certain degree).

For myself, I just try and exercise a lot, and use olive oil in cooking (not frying) and eat some oily fish once a week, with bits and pieces of saturated fat in things which I fancy eating. A Mediterranean diet is ment to be particularly healthy I gather.

Edit:What Jon Stewart says has a ring of seeming true.

In reply to Pesda potato:
This is a really good read. Slightly tangential, but the point is that fats aren't the real enemy.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/apr/07/the-sugar-conspiracy-robert...

In reply to alexm198:

no i appreciate that fats arent the enemy of health, but there must be some fats that are more harmful to us than others

In reply to Pesda potato:

Yes I totally agree. If in doubt, eat avocados.

In reply to Pesda potato:

Had a piece of bread slathered in Trewithen Dairy butter this morning. Now *that* is good fat.

In reply to Pesda potato:

Surprised nobody mentioned omegas... So anyway, there are 3
2 very important classes of omega oils. Western diet is extremely high in omega 6, and very low in omega 3. Many people know this, and add omega 3 to their diet. However, what most people do not know is that this is not sufficient - the ratio of omega3:omega6 is critical, as they are bottlenecked by the enzyme. In other words, say you have your RDI of omega3 in your belly - great. If you now added lots of omega6, then most of that omega3 will not be absorbed, and will be wasted. The ideal ratio for these two is 1:1, but if you do not pay attention it’s likely to be 1:20. Flaxseed oil is what I take every now and again, as well as eating nuts.

In reply to Pesda potato:

The best advice is probably to eat a bit of this and a bit of that, not too much of this and not too much of that, if you fancy something in particular its probably your body's way of saying it needs it, so eat a bit.

Avoid things you don't like and don't fancy.

In reply to Pesda potato:

The simplistic summary is - if you eat an oil/fat as nature synthesised it - good. If the same oils fats have undergone chemical extractions, heating, or hydrogenation - bad. Step 2 (since we all like fried food) is to consider which fats are less susceptible to denaturing when heat treated (coconut, olive oil, butter).

In reply to LeeWood:
what do you class as butter - pure milk fat i.e ghee, or spreadable butters that contain other fats too?
Olive oil - which fraction are you refering to - EV, virgin, cold pressed, standard olive oil? I know EV burns more easily than regular, i dont know much about the others though

Come to think of it, I dont know what process sunflower oil, rapeseed oil, vegetable oil undergoes to be made, any idea?

In reply to Pesda potato:

I think EV is cold pressed by definition. Most cheap veg oils (not cold pressed) are extracted using detergents, from which they are then reclaimed (99.??? % pure) - along with various heat treatments. Apart from considerations of saturation (un / natural) your bodu needs Vits A+E in order to process optimally. These are normally present in whole-foods but lost thro cheap extractions.

The worst forms of fat presentation seem to be as found in snacks, cakes and biscuits - latter combined with sugar. There's no argument for moderation in these instances

In reply to LeeWood:



I hereby define a pork scratching as a 'recovery food', not a 'snack'.

In reply to GrahamD:
Pork scratchings and beer after an ultra marathon, sorted

In reply to Pesda potato:

sadly the ills of dodgy fats are often combined with BHT & BHA in snack foods - esp with flavored snacks; they have allocated E numbers but I've forgotten what they are

In reply to Pesda potato:

Father Christmas & Cyril Smith ?

In reply to LeeWood:

Except for the 'happiness benefit' to health I guess? Having had five teeth removed by the age of 36, I'm knocking things like that on the head, but it could be worth thinking about within a generally healthy diet? I guess I think there's something to be said for pleasure and enjoyment being helpful for being healthy.

Nobody ever died from eating too much Christmas Cake.

(They might have done, but you know what I mean...)

In reply to Timmd:

but they at least died happy ...

You must believe - I'm not a diehard strict disciplinarian in practice - I make many compromises for the sake of enjoyment. BUT we are tormented with a forever sliding scale of worsening values in dietary matters by reason of convenience and commercialism

In reply to LeeWood:
I guess that's why we should make things like cakes and trifles? I always know what sugar and fat and things go into the family trifle recipe I got from my Mum, being butter rather than something more processed.

Edit: Or biscuits.

In reply to Timmd:

Yes definately home produced food - worthwhile. I take great pleasure in making my own chocolate spread - confident in knowledge of ingredients. Its also nice to make things up to your own tastebuds' requirements.