Want to lower your risk of heart disease and diabetes? The key may lie in how many carbohydrates you eat, say researchers.
According to new findings reported in the journal PLOS ONE, obese adults who switched to a high-carb, low-fat diet increased the amount of palmitoleic acid in their blood–an acid associated with inflammation, heart disease, and even type 2 diabetes.
The research was led by Jeff Volek, a professor of human sciences at Ohio State University.
“[The new study] challenges the conventional wisdom that has demonized saturated fat,” says Volek. “You can sort of think of this experiment as a dose-response study, where we exposed individuals to a range of dietary carb levels and monitored their fatty-acid levels to determine if they were accumulating saturated fatty acids and turning carbs into fat.”
In the study, researchers placed 16 obese adults–who had consumed a high-carb, low-fat diet prior to their research–on a high-fat diet where their saturated fat was tripled, something nutritionists usually don’t recommend. During this time, they checked the amount of saturated fat in their bloodstream, which, curiously enough, didn’t change.
Then they decided to do the opposite: Increasing their carbohydrate intake while lowering their fat intake. Again, the results showed the saturated fat in their blood wasn’t affected–something researchers expected to happen.
But what they didn’t expect was to find a substantial increase in a type of fatty acid called palmitoleic acid.
This is big news, considering this fatty acid has been linked to every health problem under the sun–including heart disease and type 2 diabetes.
“Higher proportions of palmitoleic acid in blood or adipose tissue are consistently associated with a myriad of undesirable outcomes,” say researchers. “Such as obesity, inflammation, metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes, coronary disease, heart failure, and incidence and aggressiveness of prostate cancer.”
As for the reasons why, Dr. Walter Willett, who heads the Department of Nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health, suspects that carbohydrates trigger a more serious response in the obese.
“It is difficult to make conclusions about the risk of heart disease from a study so small and short,” says Willett, who was not involved in the study. “Basically in their study they are comparing two bad diets, and the adverse of carbohydrates is likely to be particularly serious in the obese and insulin resistant population that they studied.”
But does this mean carbohydrates in general aren’t good for you? Not necessarily, says Willett–instead, it’s better to focus on eating more carbohydrates from vegetable sources instead, something shown to reduce the risk of diabetes and heart disease.
What This Means For You
It’s a confusing battle–first fat is bad, but now so too are diets high in carbohydrates. One fact remains true, though: Eat a diet rich in vegetables, fruits, lean meats, and fats from vegan sources and you’re more likely to live a healthier life, say health experts.
Readers: What is your current diet?
Sources:
Heart Disease and Diabetes Risks Tied to Carbs, Not Fat, Study Finds – LiveScience.com
Study: Doubling Saturated Fat in the Diet Does Not Increase Saturated Fat in Blood – OSU.edu
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