The What’s, Why’s and Where’s of Fat

There are three basic kinds of fat, Saturated Fat (SFA), Monounsaturated Fat (MUFA) and Polyunsaturated fat (PUFA). Fats are also called “fatty acids”, hence the term PUFA: PolyUnsaturated Fatty Acid. Fats are a chain of carbon atoms with hydrogen atoms bonded to them. Each carbon in a chain can bond to two hydrogen atoms. This …

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The French Diet in Upstate New York

In my previous post I defined The French Diet as a diet where the staples are starch and dairy fat. Cornell Cooperative Extension produced a series of informational pamphlets in the thirties and forties with topics such as “The Clovers in New York” and “Simplifying Home Sewing”. You can peruse them in the Cornell Digital …

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The Curious Case of Nanan and Huain

Another interesting finding of “Diet, Life-style and Mortality in China” is that there was a huge variation in caloric consumption in different regions of China without a corresponding difference in body weights. This is the most notable in two neighboring areas – Nanan and Huian – two places on the Southeast coast of China with …

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Chinese Office Workers Eat More Than Americans

In The ROS Theory Of Obesity I stated without providing evidence that Chinese people in the 1980s were lean while eating a high starch diet. In the comments thread, it was suggested that perhaps the Chinese were thin due to lack of available calories. There simply wasn’t enough food to go around. When I wrote …

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ROS is Satiation

Satiation is a feeling that is actually triggered in the brain by specific neurons in the hypothalamus. These neurons respond to a number of factors, including circulating levels of blood glucose, free fatty acids (ie energy availability) and hormones such as leptin. In this paper, the authors show that ROS is necessary for satiation. The …

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The Body Fat of Obese Adults is Highly Unsaturated

This paper measured the level of Stearoyl-CoA desaturase in morbidly obese adults compared to adults with a normal BMI. The obese adults produce 2-3 times as much of the enzyme as do lean adults, resulting in fat that is significantly more unsaturated. In addition, the obese adults also had much higher levels of polyunsaturated fats. …

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