Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Replacing butter with vegetable oils does not cut heart disease risk (2016)

theatlantic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 183 posts

Re: Replacing butter with vegetable oils does not cut heart disease risk (2016)

#81

Post by lngnmn »

It obviously does not because there are whole populations, such as Tibetans, who consume butter on daily basis and are still alive and well, without any cardiovascular epidemic.

What is a risk, by the way? How it is defined, apart from a personal lifestyle, diet, habits, current set of disorders and chronic illnesses of a particular person? It is a likelihood? An average of some imagined population of which some non-representative sample is treated according to some abstract, disconnected from reality model of a few selected unproven factors in a complex multiple causation individual phenomena? How the value of that number related to anything meaningful? It passes peer-reviews because it conforms to a socially constructed consensus (the current set of memes) but no one does a review of logic and causality.

Re: Replacing butter with vegetable oils does not cut heart disease risk (2016)

#82

Post by Xdafjgneoiwe »

croon wrote: post #72
Xdafjgneoiwe wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may be so. But it's undisputed (aside from most keto blogs) that an increase in serum cholesterol and especially LDL-C increases the risk of heart disease. Studies show that you generally need a level of < 150 mg/dL to avoid heart disease. That's quite a bit below the average "normal" level. But today's average is NOT physiologically optimal.

> But it's undisputed (aside from most keto blogs) that an increase in serum cholesterol and especially LDL-C increases the risk of heart disease. Sure, but show me where cholesterol intake correlates to LDL. At some point someone managed to convince the public subconscious that food fat = body fat, and that food cholesterol = body cholesterol. And it's a ridiculous notion. I don't eat protein to become protein.

For starters, saturated fat increases cholesterol and that is almost exclusively in animal products. Animal products are basically the only products to contain dietary cholesterol. So there you have at least a strong correlation.

As for the dietary cholesterol itself, see here: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.549...

"Serum cholesterol concentration is clearly increased by added dietary cholesterol but the magnitude of predicted change is modulated by baseline dietary cholesterol. The greatest response is expected when baseline dietary cholesterol is near zero, while little if any, measurable change would be expected once baseline dietary cholesterol was > 400-500 mg/d." (That is 2 eggs or 400 g beef etc.)

Re: Replacing butter with vegetable oils does not cut heart disease risk (2016)

#83

Post by hollander »

brotherAB wrote: post #46
nmerouze wrote: post #33

Cholesterol isn't bad, it's in fact very important for the production of testosterone among other things. The problem comes from the inability to use it because the body isn't healthy. Polyunsaturated fats will produce bad byproducts when it breaks down and over time makes the body sick. We crucially lack magnesium and potassium in our diet. There are tons of studies showing the benefits of magnesium against heart di…

The grey matter in your brain is mostly cholesterol. I've personally lost 10 pounds in 10 days eating a high fat, low carb diet, with light excercise about 3 days a week. Kerrygold is my #1 choice for butter, because it comes from grass-fed cows.

What I've heard, all diets work. And they work because they let you focus on what you eat, and they let you eat less energy. The problem is what happens in the long term. If you regain your weight, you're worse off.

When you eat less, the body adapts by working more energy efficient. So you eat 10% less, meaning the body can use only 90% of the normal energy supply. It react by using only 85%, storing that extra 5% in case things get worse later on. So the body expects that later on, supply could drop to 70% or much less. Then those stored 5% are really useful.

However, when you go back to that original 100%, before the weight loss, meaning that you should go back to that weight, the body still stays in 5% save modus. The effect is that you gain weight in the long run, and it will be harder to lose weight the next time.

NB: the 5% example used here is just a guess to describe the way this works. I have no idea if this is 5% or 20%, and I suppose this is personal, depends on your history etc.

I'm thinking about doing the keto diet myself. So I'm not against it. I'm just aware of the danger of rebound, the jojo-effect.

Re: Replacing butter with vegetable oils does not cut heart disease risk (2016)

#84

Post by kaeluka »

lngnmn wrote: post #81

It obviously does not because there are whole populations, such as Tibetans, who consume butter on daily basis and are still alive and well, without any cardiovascular epidemic. What is a risk, by the way? How it is defined, apart from a personal lifestyle, diet, habits, current set of disorders and chronic illnesses of a particular person? It is a likelihood? An average of some imagined population of which some non-…

That's not at all obvious. Tibetans have a very different life style and nutrition than, for instance, westerners.

Re: Replacing butter with vegetable oils does not cut heart disease risk (2016)

#85

Post by Xdafjgneoiwe »

lngnmn wrote: post #81

It obviously does not because there are whole populations, such as Tibetans, who consume butter on daily basis and are still alive and well, without any cardiovascular epidemic. What is a risk, by the way? How it is defined, apart from a personal lifestyle, diet, habits, current set of disorders and chronic illnesses of a particular person? It is a likelihood? An average of some imagined population of which some non-…

I do not think you can generalize from Tibetans or other populations. That is because those rural populations often have a much healthier diet than the standard american diet. More vegetables, more fiber, less animal products in general. To say that this obviously shows that butter cannot be that bad is just not true.

You are right in one point: If the only thing you eat is butter with your veggies then you do not have much of a problem in terms of a cardiovascular epidemic.

Re: Replacing butter with vegetable oils does not cut heart disease risk (2016)

#86

Post by Xdafjgneoiwe »

tomp wrote: post #80
Xdafjgneoiwe wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is: Butter contains 3 % trans fats. And even keto fanatics admit that trans fats are extremely unhealthy. You could say it doesn't have a huge impact and that might be true because it's only a small part of the diet. However, any amount of trans fat is dangerous. The body's enzymes can hardly remove any trans fat build up in the arteries.

> Butter contains 3 % trans fats Source?

Normally I am all for asking for sources, but this isn't really in dispute nor hard to find. Just one of a thousand sources:

"50% of the fat content in butter is saturated fat and 4% is trans fat."

https://www.heartfoundation.org.au/healthy-eating/food-and-n...

Re: Replacing butter with vegetable oils does not cut heart disease risk (2016)

#87

Post by a_imho »

Scaevolus wrote: post #73
a_imho wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a very simple calorimetric pov 1 lbs fat ~ 4000/3500 cal, assuming using 2000 calories for normal daily activity one needs to spend an extra 2000 cal per day for 10 days, which is like running 20 mile with no energy intake whatsoever every day (for 3 days per week it is 40 miles for days when one exercises).

Most of the weight loss would be water weight from glycogen stores being depleted, not fat being burned.

Exactly, which puts things into perspective regarding claims/opinions/recommendations.

Re: Replacing butter with vegetable oils does not cut heart disease risk (2016)

#88

Post by CalRobert »

a3n wrote: post #42
fulafel wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an animal product with the obvious ethics problems and cow methane boosting the co2 footprint.

> It's an animal product For which you don't kill the animal. > with the obvious ethics problems This may or may not be "obvious" decades or more in the future, but I think people who hold this idea are in the minority at the moment. > cow methane Point taken.

> For which you don't kill the animal.

I'm not a vegetarian, but I thought dairy necessitated pregnancy, and as such went hand in hand with veal production. Is this incorrect? Input from someone with experience in the domain would be helpful.

(I've googled it but the sources primarily seem to be extremely biased).

Re: Replacing butter with vegetable oils does not cut heart disease risk (2016)

#89

Post by arambhashura »

dcosson wrote: post #41
joecool1029 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good comment. A few things: >- polyunsaturated fats are the category that includes omega 6 and omega 3 fatty acids. Even further, omega 3's can be ALA (from plants) or DHA (e.g. salmon) variety. Omega 3's and in particular DHA have been shown to have anti-inflammatory and other health properties. You missed EPA which is also in fatty fish. ALA doesn't convert very well in humans to DHA or EPA. So eating lots of flax…

Good point on PUFA, that was probably worth making it into my conclusion too. In my home cooking I've started using macadamia nut oil (similar profile to olive oil, it's high in monounsaturated fats) in place of vegetable oil. You can get it on Amazon and it has a more neutral, slightly nutty flavor and a higher smoking point than olive oil, so it's great for slightly higher temps or cooking foods that you don't want…

What about algae cooking oil?

http://www.thrivealgae.com/thrive-algae-oil/

http://markets.on.nytimes.com/research/stocks/news/press_rel...

Re: Replacing butter with vegetable oils does not cut heart disease risk (2016)

#90

Post by zurn »

thatcat wrote: post #77
zurn wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A 500 g packet of butter has a footprint of 4.7 kg of CO2 equivalent. If a car does 200 grams of CO2e / km, distance by car on the store trip would have to be over 23 km to match the butter.

Most atmospheric methane produced photo oxidizes to CO2 after about 20 years though. CH4 + 2O2 -photons---> C02 + 2H20 I'm not sure what time scale of heat per mass equivalencies are based on in your example; there is approximately 28 : 1 heat/mass eq. ratio at the 100 year scale, during which time the heating effect decreases exponentially with the decrease in methane concentration[0]. After 100 years the ratio is a…

20 years is a very relevant timescale since we need to prevent the tipping point of melting artcitc methane deposits and loss of reflection from permafrost areas.
Post reply on HN