ASK DR. BAUGHAN                                             October 31, 1997

FAT CHANCE

I sought out the sandwich shop in Cambridge that was the Mecca of all midnight munchie pilgrims in my college days.  It was still there.  It had expanded from 6 stools to 12.  The cook had that 25 years later but still familiar look about him.  Something was conspicuously missing from the menu.  “What ever happened to the Landsman?” I asked, remembering a massif of thickly sliced pastrami.  “Had to take it off the menu 20 years ago when everyone stopped eating fat.”

The Landsman may have vanished, but controversies in fat have not.  Just when we think life can be simpler and assume that all fat is bad, another claim or debate sizzles in the frying pan.  Here are some current issues:

MONO, POLY, AND SATURATED are not hand puppets from an old TV show now joined by the new villain, TRANS FATTY ACIDS.  These are the characters in the rerun drama, “Which is better, butter or margarine?”  The story goes like this:  Saturated fats used to be the bad guys.  Butter had more saturated fats than margarine, so use margarine.  Then the bad effects of trans fatty acids were discovered, and margarine has more trans fatty acids than margarine, so which is worse?  This is one of those lose-lose games.  Neither is particularly good, so limit use of either as much as possible.  Which is better, Mono- or Poly-unsaturated?  If you your next thought is “Saturated with what?” rather than instant recall of a chemical formula, follow Baughan’s guide to fat choices,  “If you can see through it, it is better than if you can’t.”  You cannot see through either butter or margarine (Bad).  You can see through cooking oil (Better).  You cannot see through blue cheese dressing;  you can see through vinagrette.  And there does seem something magical about olive oil, but canola is pretty good, too.  But don’t overdue it.

IS CHOCOLATE OK? (Or, please, God, please, even good for you?)  Half of the saturated (boo, hiss) fat in chocolate is stearic acid, which does not act like other saturated fats to raise cholesterol levels (cheers).  A researcher fed chocolate to young healthy volunteers, and it did not raise their cholesterol levels.  This does not imply that it does any good for people with high cholesterol levels.  It also brings up the Snickers Quandary:  it may not do you harm, but is it doing you as much good as something you could have eaten instead?  And if you need ammunition for a trivia contest:  Stearic acid is high in bison meat, so a bison burger is healthier (or less unhealthy) than a beef hamburger.

HOW ABOUT EGGS?  Can we let them out of jail?  Did they get a bum rap?  “Eggs have a quarter less cholesterol than everybody thought,” or so the claim goes.  I have yet to find who did the lousy measurements in the first place.  Even two “leaner” eggs, though, have a third more cholesterol than the daily recommended amount, so they should be limited to 4-6 per week.  (That of course is without cooking them in butter or bacon fat).  The you-are-what-you-eat-and-what-it-ate future promises chickens raised on flax that results in more omega-3 fatty acids in eggs.  When we eat the eggs, the omega-3 fatty acid in changed to EPA or DHA, which can help fight heart disease.

It is easy to get lost in the details and forget the basics.  We can agonize over food choices at home, then eat 50% or more of our meals outside the home where we know the fat percent is higher or we have no idea what the fat content is.  Most Americans still take in 50% of their calories from fat sources when we should aim for closer to 20%.  It’s a bit like debating which fuel additives are best for our cars, then putting kerosene in the gas tank.