Just one meal? Really?
17th Nov 2006, 01:52 GMT
Filed under: Diet, Research, Nutrition This is where connotations of certain words become very tricky. I say the word: Fat. You think? What? You tell me. I'm guessing that at least some of you associated the words Slow Moving with it. And if not, I doubt that you mentally connected the words Fast Acting with it. Frankly, until I came across the information which I am about to highlight, I wouldn't have associated the word Fat with Fast Acting either. It appears that it may take as little as eating one meal that is high in saturated fat for it to have an affect on your arteries and good (HDL) cholesterol levels. Additionally, it can happen in a matter of hours!! How do I know this? Because a little bird called the Journal of the American College of Cardiology told me so. You see, the whole thing went down like this: 14 adults were given a piece of carrot cake and a milkshake that had been switched with one that contained either saturated (bad) or polyunsaturated (good) fat. While this may seem like some bizarre set-up for a Folgers commercial, it actually returned some interesting results with respect to how fast, and how dramatically, these fats can affect your cardiovasular well being. As it turns out, in merely three hours, the particpants that had consumed the shake containing saturated fat had significantly narrowed large blood vessels. Three hours after that, the benefits of good (HDL) cholesterol showed a marked decrease in these same individuals. Those individuals who consumed the polyunsaturated (good) fat did not exhibit any signs of such physical detriment. Based on the remainder of the article, it seems as though it is unclear as to why or how saturated fats act as quickly as they evidently do. Just the same, it stands to reason that you should seriously consider keeping your sat fat intake under control. Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments