Separating Fact and Fiction Takes Clarifications

In an earlier post, we talked about the big three and why fat was important for the Body. If that is so, why does fat have such a bad rap? As with everything, the devil is in the details. Not all fats are good, bad, or created equal. 

Let’s start with a quick 411 on the  major types of fats

• Monounsaturated
• Polyunsaturated
• Saturated
• Trans Fats

What we found challenging was understanding what was in what. In another post, we talked about where calories hide in items like nuts. Of course, this led us to stop eating nuts since they have so much fat. Oh wait, salmon has fat as does olive oil. There goes the salmon and pesto dishes. The home-fried chicken was right out! Not so much. 

We are not going to try to explain as these fats have been studied extensively. We have linked to several really smart folks who can explain their chemistry and their impact on your body and health. All we want to do is give people a heads up of where to look why you need them and why ‘low-fat’ doesn’t always mean good for you. According to many such as Harvard Health and the USDA, you need fat as part of your DRI we mentioned in another post. Here’s the TL;DR: we walked away with:

Trans Fats Are Out

Let’s get Trans Fats out of the way first. There are two types; non-artificial and artificial. There are natural sources of trans fats that come from unaltered saturated fat. These are not the ones we have heard of as being bad for you. According to experts, while it may be best to avoid them they don’t have the same impact on our health as artificial trans fats. 

Artificial trans fats are a non-starter in terms of being good for us to the point they have been banned in some shape or form in some countries like the US. Trans fats are also known by their other name which is PHO or partially hydrogenated oils. PHO is created by putting vegetable oil through a chemical and heating process to keep the fat solid at room temperature.  Originally thought to be better than regular fats, that opinion has changed. You can make your own decisions on trans fat but they are now specifically called out on nutrition labels to help us avoid them. 

Unsaturated Fats Are Good

All fats contain the same calories per serving. It is not that one is ‘less’ fatty than the other.  Monounsaturated and Polyunsaturated fats are triglycerides your body needs. They can be grossly generalized as fats that stay liquid at room temperature. Think nuts, vegetables, and olive oil as well as fish. If the fat comes from something that grows in the ground or it swims, the fat from it is fat your body needs. The exception to this generalization is the oil of fruit of tropical plants such as coconut or palm. 

Saturated Fats Are Problematic

Saturated fats tend to come from meat, dairy, or tropical plants and are generally solid at room temperature. The labeling of unhealthy saturated fats is due to their impact on cholesterol levels. Of course, they are plentiful in some of our favorite foods like red meat, cheeses, and baked goods. 

We found some evidence that newer studies are challenging the opinion that saturated fats are 100% bad for everyone. Cholesterol, and its impact on the body, maybe as much genetics as it is the food we eat. In any case, we still want to know how much we can have since they come at a high risk-to-reward ratio.    

According to the American Heart Association, the guideline is only 6% of the fats you eat should be saturated. As usual, many health professionals disagree and we have seen as high as 10%. Let’s take the harder road and go for 6% for the sake of an example. For someone on a 2,000-calorie-a-day calorie budget that is 120 calories from saturated fat or 13 grams.  At first glance that is a terrifying number. That is about a single slice of cheddar cheese, right? 

Let’s Do Some Math

This is where we feel things get sideways. No, it is not a single slice. We need to revisit our nutrition label and do some math. Bear with me as we get nerdy with numbers and a word problem. 

Question: How much cheddar cheese can I eat if I have a 2,000-calorie-a-day budget and want to control my saturated fat?

Additional Info Needed: According to Google a single slice of cheddar cheese averages 30% or 6 grams of saturated fat per ounce. 

Answer: Right now I could eat 3 and ⅓ ounces of cheddar cheese to meet that 6 percent goal if I had no other saturated fat in my diet that day. That is simply adding up something from 30% to 100% which is straightforward.  Crisis averted. We can even have a ⅓ lb. burger made from 80/20 beef with a slice of cheddar and stay within our goals if our calorie budget allows it. 

We Can But Should We?

But should we scarf down that cheeseburger? What about switching to home-fried chicken to avoid trans fats? Empirically what we found was that we cheated on our diet less when we ate some level of fat in our meals. We found a good middle-of-the-road approach by creating that same sense of a ‘fat’ budget like our calorie budget. While that may not work for some with specific medical conditions, it worked for us. We aren’t into taking chances so we do get our cholesterol levels tested every year to make sure our choices are staying healthy. 

Closing Thoughts

We discussed many of the high-level pros and cons of fat in our diets. Based on everything we read we we learned for our goals we shouldn’t fear fat. This post gave the evidence that we used to support the decision that our bodies need some fat. We also have provided information about some of the myths of fat through the disambiguation of the different types we learned. Based on all the learning and evidence we found, we embraced fat in our diet. Armed with this knowledge you can make your own informed decision instead of simply avoiding all fats unless otherwise directed by a health professional.

The post Our New Perception Of Fats In Diets first appeared on Simplified Living Lab.

We hear all sorts of advice about making sure we eat enough protein. Previously, we discussed it as a key building block of the body. In this post, we will ask what is enough and give you some tools to answer what enough is for you. As with all things human, we found there isn’t a single answer. What is worse is that not all proteins are complete. By the end of this post, we hope to give you the tools you need to come to your own conclusion on what is enough. 

Not all Proteins are the Same

First off, not all proteins are the same. There are two basic types; complete and in-complete. To be complete the protein must contain all nine essential amino acids. What is an essential amino acid? An essential amino acid is something your body needs but cannot synthesize out of other nutrients. 

We bring protein up completeness as an FYI. Completeness will become more important to understand later as many things like nuts and legumes don’t supply a complete protein. Many people feel uncomfortable with consuming meat and dairy. If you do, it is best to know about complete vs incomplete proteins so that you can choose a balanced approach. This is a reason that vegetarian and vegan diets can be more complex to maintain. 

TL; DR; Let’s Talk About How Much

Yes, but what do I need for protein? Guess what, like all things health it changes with age, weight, activity, and other factors like pregnancy. This all sounds similar to our post on BMR which uses BMI. The general formula for adults in the US is 0.8 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight or 0.36 grams per pound.

That 0.8 is close to the 0.75 grams recommended by the British Heart Foundation. Like BMR, the devil is in the details. The good news is that the USDA has a Dietary Reference Intakes (DRI) calculator you can use. The even better news is that the calculator also shows things like carbohydrates and fiber. That’s correct, we are now talking about macronutrients. 

Back to Logging

If you read our post on being honest with calories, we discussed logging your meals in an app. If you have done that work, you can probably see the macronutrient breakdown. Some apps sell this functionality as an add-on. The important takeaway is that when you log your food, you should pick from verified sources or use the barcode. By doing that, you will allow yourself to see your macronutrients to have the data to answer if you are lining up or not with guidelines and/or your goals. 

Yes, we did say earlier we will stay away from nutrition in this blog. We just used the words nutrients. Worse still, we said macronutrients. What’s going on? After we researched calories, we realized we were no longer willing to take the nutrition labels for granted anymore. While we don’t make any assumptions about your needs or goals, we want to understand if we could remain balanced in our approach to food. The only way to know if we were getting enough was to track it so we are being as transparent as possible.

But I Want to Gain?

But this begs the question but what about those wanting to gain muscle mass? If you spend any time around time around sports training programs or gyms you will hear protein is where it is at. Mass Bingham General recommends that to gain muscle mass you may need to increase from 0.8 grams to 1.2 to 1.7 grams per kilogram of body weight. That increase roughs out to between 0.45 to 0.76 grams per pound.

Which is right for you? We feel this is where things descend into confusion. That depends on your goals. Do you want to increase or decrease your weight? We didn’t say gain muscle and lose fat in the same sentence. Of course, we all want to do that. Why is that so hard for many people? We will do another post on that later because that is called body recomposition which is complicated. It is complicated because it is applying two different processes which are contradictory. 

Let’s Stick to the Basics For Now

If we stick to DRI, we get from it a recommendation of protein. Now to figure out how to get it into our diet. Eat more steak? What about more fish and chicken? Maybe some jerky and peanuts would work. We can even substitute it with a protein shake! Each of these comes with a cost either financial or health related. That is another subject for another post.

Researching included here helped us reset our thoughts on protein. We will pause here as we, and you, now have the tools to at least determine what we all need. From here we can use these tools to help us towards our goals. We have discussed the types of proteins and some of the confusion in this area of how much is needed. We still need to address how to get them and the costs associated with them but both of those can wait for another post after more research.  

The post How To Establish Basic Protein Need first appeared on Simplified Living Lab.