{"id":3670,"date":"2019-10-08T07:00:45","date_gmt":"2019-10-08T11:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.chaneyhealth.com\/healthtips\/?p=3670"},"modified":"2019-10-07T15:29:12","modified_gmt":"2019-10-07T19:29:12","slug":"whats-worse-saturated-fat-or-sugar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chaneyhealth.com\/healthtips\/whats-worse-saturated-fat-or-sugar\/","title":{"rendered":"What’s Worse Saturated Fat or Sugar?"},"content":{"rendered":"

What Causes Fatty Liver Disease?<\/p>\n

Author: Dr. Stephen Chaney<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"what<\/a>The great American food fight continues. The low fat enthusiasts tell you saturated fat is going to kill you. The low carb enthusiasts tell you saturated fat is fine. It\u2019s sugar that\u2019s going to kill you.<\/p>\n

You can find studies that support either viewpoint. And the story keeps changing. One day the headlines proclaim: \u201cThe latest study shows\u2026\u201d A few weeks later you see a headline saying: \u201cWait. That\u2019s wrong. Science now shows\u2026\u201d It\u2019s no wonder you are confused and perhaps a bit cynical.<\/p>\n

So, what\u2019s worse saturated fat or sugar?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Perhaps we should step back and ask how we got to this point.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Why Is the Saturated Fats and Sugar Dilemma So Confusing?<\/h2>\n

\"saturated<\/a>To understand why the literature around saturated fats and sugar is so confusing, we need to go back to the 1950s. The first studies implicating saturated fats as a risk factor for heart disease replaced saturated fats with unsaturated fats. Everything else in the diet was kept the same. When you do that, the answer is clear-cut. Saturated fats increase heart disease risk and unsaturated fats decrease heart disease risk.<\/p>\n

When the American Heart Association first recommended a low-fat diet, they had in mind replacing saturated fats with fresh fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and beans. The remaining fat would be mostly unsaturated. Today, we would call that a Mediterranean diet, which, by the way, has been shown to reduce both diabetes and heart disease risk.<\/p>\n

Big Food Inc. took one look at that and panicked. They make their money from processed foods, not from fresh fruits and vegetables. If the American people made the changes the American Heart Association recommended, Big Food Inc. would go bankrupt.<\/p>\n

They sprang into action. They had their laboratories whip up processed foods that replaced fat with sugar, white flour, and a witch\u2019s brew of chemicals. Then they told the American people: \u201cNever fear. You don\u2019t have to give up your favorite foods. We have created low fat versions of the foods you love.\u201d<\/p>\n

That became the diet that most Americans adopted. Even worse, most Americans continued eating foods high in saturated fats. We ended up with the worst of all possible worlds \u2013 a diet high in saturated fat and high in sugar. This became the Standard American Diet (SAD).<\/p>\n

This shift has corrupted most of the recent research studies on saturated fat and sugar. Most of the studies on saturated fat or sugar have compared them with the Standard American Diet, not with a healthy diet. When you do that, your results are going to be skewed. Almost anything is better that the Standard American Diet.<\/p>\n

Why Was This Study Done?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"fatty<\/a>When we think of obesity, we think of the excess fat we can see. But what we have learned in recent years is that the fat you can\u2019t see is far more damaging to our health. I am talking about fat stores in the liver, something called fatty liver disease.<\/p>\n

Fatty liver disease has serious consequences. It causes insulin resistance and inflammation, and that increases the risk of diabetes and heart disease. Even worse, it can lead to cirrhosis and liver failure.<\/p>\n

Excess sugar is converted to saturated fat in the liver. Therefore, the popular literature attributes the epidemic of fatty liver disease to increased intake of simple sugars. But is it true? Saturated fats require no conversion. They can simply be deposited in the liver as is. Shouldn\u2019t they be at least as damaging to the liver as sugar?<\/p>\n

It turns out that no studies have actually compared the effect of excess calories in the form of saturated fat, unsaturated fat, and simple sugars on fat accumulation in the liver. This study (PK Luukkonen et al, Diabetes Care, 41: 1732-1739, 2018<\/a>) was designed to fill that gap.<\/p>\n

How Was The Study Done?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"saturated<\/a>The authors enrolled 38 middle aged (average age = 48), overweight (average BMI = 31) adults for the study. The participants were divided into three groups and were fed an extra 1,000 calories per day of saturated fat (SAT group), unsaturated fat (UNSAT group), or sugar (SUGAR group) for 3 weeks. The composition of those extra 1,000 calories was as follows:<\/p>\n