High Fat Diet Could Be a Good Idea!

Moneylife Digital Team 13 September 2017

There is never an end to arguments over the relative importance of the three macro-nutrients our body needs, namely, carbohydrates, proteins and fat. Some experts have argued that we need to be on a low-fat diet; others argue that we need to be low in carbohydrates. Within this discussion, the relationship between macro-nutrients and cardio-vascular disease and mortality is most controversial. To add more fuel to the controversy, a recent study titled “The Prospective Urban Rural Epidemiology” (PURE) came up with some results that overturn conventional ideas about fat. The results were uploaded on the website of The Lancet on 29 August 2017.

PURE is a large, epidemiological cohort study of individuals aged 35-70 years (enrolled between 1 January 2003 and 31 March 2013), in 18 countries, with a median follow-up of 7·4 years. For this study, dietary intake of 135,335 individuals was recorded using validated food frequency questionnaires. Participants were categorised into quintiles of nutrient intake (carbohydrates, fat and proteins) based on percentage of energy provided by the nutrients. The researchers assessed the association between consumption of carbohydrates, total fat and each type of fat with cardio-vascular disease and total mortality. During the follow-up, the researchers documented 5,796 deaths and 4,784 major cardio-vascular disease events. Here are the stunning results:

Higher carbohydrate intake was associated with an increased risk of total mortality but not with the risk of cardio-vascular disease or cardio-vascular disease mortality.
Intake of total fat and each type of fat was associated with lower risk of total mortality.
Higher saturated fat intake was associated with lower risk of stroke.
Total fat and saturated and unsaturated fats were not significantly associated with risk of myocardial infarction or cardio-vascular disease mortality.

Put it simply, high carbohydrate intake was associated with higher risk of total mortality, whereas total fat and individual types of fat were related to lower total mortality. The researchers note “global dietary guidelines should be reconsidered in light of these findings.” What are these guidelines? Eat less fat. A sub-branch of this approach also says eat less animal protein because it is associated with cancer. All medical practitioners and cardiologists repeat this like a mantra to their patients but a large observational research like PURE, obviously, tells us something else: fat is not so bad; high carbs are bad. In the light of the findings of PURE, many scientists have been asking whether standard dietary guidelines, that limit the total fat intake to less than 30% of energy and saturated fat intake to less than 10% of energy, should be revised.

Sugarcane for Sound Sleep

In today’s stressful world, sleep deprivation is common. Lack of sleep causes many problems such as fatigue, higher blood pressure, cardio-vascular diseases, diabetes, weight gain and so on. Sleep deprivation leads to stress; and stress itself leads to loss of sleep. The healthcare industry’s response to this has been to come up with sleeping pills that have severe side-effects. A research group led by Mahesh K Kaushik and Yoshihiro Urade of the International Institute for Integrative Sleep Medicine (WPI-IIIS), University of Tsukuba, found that a compound called octacosanol reduces stress and restores stress-affected sleep back to normal. Octacosanol is abundantly present in various everyday foods, such as sugarcane (thin whitish layer on surface), rice bran, wheat germ oil, bee wax, etc. The crude extract is policosanol, where octacosanol is the major constituent. Policosanol and octacosanol have already been used in humans for various other medical conditions.

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