sugar and fat

[Guest guest]

In a message dated 6/1/02 6:52:28 PM, writes:

<< All these women are overweight adn are always snacking on itmes

simply because they are 0 fat. I say what about the sugar. They say

oh thats just burned off. >>

Unless they are marathon runners I doubt they just burn it off -- carbs that

aren't used in about 2 hours after ingestion are turned into fat. Carbs are

burned preferentially to fat, so any fat they take in, will go directly to

fat storage. If their fat intake is too low (some studies suggest less than

30%) they will turn into fat making machines. Net lipogenesis was thought to

occur only when there was a positive caloric balance, but Hudgins et al

(1996) demonstrated that fatty acid synthesis could occur in the eucaloric

situation by very low fat, high carbohydrate diets. They compared eucaloric

liquid diets composed of either 10% fat or 40% fat. The subjects on the low

fat diet made lots of new fat,(though because it was eucaloric they didn't

gain weight.) There was little or no lipogenesis on the high fat diet. In a

follow-up essay, Hirsch et al (1998) discussed the effect of both solid and

liquid low and high fat diets whose fatty acid composition was matched to

that of each subject. Because linoleic acid cannot be synthesized by mammals,

any significant lipogenesis will lead to a decline in the amount of linoleic

acid in the VLDL. This is exactly what occurred with the low fat, high

carbohydrate diets.

“It is clear, therefore, that the major components of the dietary mixture are

altered by internal biochemical processes. When a very low fat diet is fed,

the organism makes fat and the ultimate mixture available for metabolic

events is different from that eaten … Interestly, the fat synthesized is of

necessity more saturated than fat ordinarily found in the diet.†(Hudgins

et al, 1998, ) I believe we are actually hard wired to eat carbs when they

are available to lay down a fat pad to see us through the next winter --

during our evolution the period of abundant carbs would at most have been 4

months of the year (and those would have not any where near the sugar content

of modern carbo foods). Unfortunately, we have constant access to carbs all

year and a government that urges us to eat them in preference to other

macronutrients -- are they really trying to kill us!! Any wonder we're so

fat!!

Namaste, Liz