heart health

Even A Little Saturated Fat Can Damage The Heart

High-fat meals may hinder "good" cholesterol from working

HealthDay NewsNovember 3, 2011Comments

Australian scientists say eating just one piece of carrot cake high in saturated fat and drinking a milkshake can reduce the body's ability to protect itself against heart disease.

The amount of fat in these foods used in the study was equivalent to a 150-pound person eating a double cheeseburger, a large order of fries, and drinking a large milkshake, totaling about 68 grams of fat.

The saturated fat hampered the ability of high-density lipoprotein (HDL) to do its job of protecting the inner lining of the arteries from inflammatory agents that cause heart disease and promote vessel-clogging plaque. The carrot cake and milkshake also reduced the arteries' ability to expand and carry enough blood to organs and tissues.

In the study, lead researcher Dr. David Celermajer of the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital at the University of Sydney and his colleagues fed 14 healthy volunteers, ages 18 to 40, two meals eaten a month apart. The volunteers gave blood samples before eating, three hours after eating, and again three hours after that.

The meals were the same, except one was made with highly saturated coconut oil, and the other with polyunsaturated safflower oil. Each meal featured a slice of carrot cake and a milkshake.

The fat content was high—about one gram of fat for every 2.2 pounds of body weight. But the meal with safflower oil had about 9 percent saturated fat, while the high saturated-fat meal contained nearly 90% saturated fat. The bad fats are the main dietary cause of high blood cholesterol.

After three hours, the meal high in saturated fat had reduced the ability of the arteries to expand to increase blood flow. The polyunsaturated fat meal reduced this ability slightly as well, but the results weren't statistically significant.

When the researchers sampled the participants' blood six hours after eating, they found that the good (HDL) cholesterol's anti-inflammatory properties had decreased after the saturated fat meal but improved after the polyunsaturated fat meal.

The effects towards heart disease could be temporary but also could reoccur every time someone eats a meal high in saturated fats.

(Aug. 18, 2006)