Saturday, December 15, 2012

Some of us eat a high fat diet

Just a brief post while I try to think of a simple descriptor for The Goof Doctor. Oops, typo there, I think I'll leave it. On to happier subjects:

A birthday card from a few weeks ago to my wife from her best friend Karla. They both understand...



(Card from here http://www.corrinarothwell.co.uk)

However, some people don't need help with butter, except getting it on to the spoon if it has just been self-served from the fridge and is rock solid!


Peter


32 comments:

Susan M. said...

Peter,

Man, your little one is sure growing quickly! What a cutie!

Susan M.

Susan M. said...

Peter,

Man, your little one is sure growing quickly! What a cutie!

Susan M.

Elliot said...

Cute!

You know, I was just thinking to myself the other day just how few peas it takes to justify several tablespoons of melted butter...

Anonymous said...

Unfortunately it is easy to imagine a world where someone would be investigated by the 'authorities' for feeding their children such a healthy diet.

My kids don't eat margarine any more, and I have the internetz, and certain champions of truth, to thank for that. Maybe the future isn't so bleak. Maybe.

The alternative isn't worth thinking about.

D1S said...

i used to put sat stuff on top of everything... but now butter is something that merely use to keep my omelets from sticking to the pan... 15gr/day max. my fats come from , yolks, lots of dairy products, cocoa (so teh inzulinz and sugarz) peter how many grams of butter do yo eat per day?...

Zachary said...

Is that Kerrygold?

And does anyone else also feel Kerrygold is the best tasting butter around? I swear it just makes every dish I make divine.

Anonymous said...

Kerrygold is on offer at Tesco at the moment. Half a kilo for 2 quid. I alternate with Anchor depending on the discounts.
Is it logical that here in England we should buy Kerrygold in the summer and Anchor from New Zealand in the winter (their summer) when the cows will be out in the fields, so the levels of nutrients will be at their optimum? Thinking K2/omega 3 levels.

Anonymous said...

Is it logical that here in England we should buy Kerrygold in the summer and Anchor from New Zealand in the winter (their summer) when the cows will be out in the fields, so the levels of nutrients will be at their optimum? Thinking K2/omega 3 levels.

Anonymous said...

Is it logical that here in England we should buy Kerrygold in the summer and Anchor from New Zealand in the winter (their summer) when the cows will be out in the fields, so the levels of nutrients will be at their optimum? Thinking K2/omega 3 levels.

Sorry about garbling the previous comment.

Even more sorry: UK Anchor is not from New Zealand, not since August. The new improved Anchor is not worth bothering with IMO.

Anonymous said...

@sackot,
That's new to me. I'll check it out.
I'm not talking about the spreadable version in a plastic tub, as far as I know the foil wrapped slabs are still from New Zealand.
Thanks for the advice, though I hope you're wrong.

D1S said...

whe i know for a fact that
maverick > iceman. top gun reference
guess u eat a shiton of the stuff, anyway " some of us" aka the real "elite" (lol) don't even need to eat at ALL and still follow a -superior- high fat diet... others need to eat 3 or 4 times a day, and rub butter all over their body-parts in order to stay below teh "danger zone" LULZ

nancan said...

Kerrygold is the king of butters! I also taught my kids and grandkids how to make butter, just in case. I saw family members I hadn't seen in almost six years and they all commented that I seem to be getting younger. Butter, et al =the fountain youth.

nancan said...

Forgot to mention that my granddaughter would do just like your little one if given half a chance. Little kids are smart; most will go for the good fat and leave the processed junk alone if given a choice.

Puddleg said...

Peter, if you get time, can you tell me what would happen with anaplerotic succinyl-CoA feeding into the TCA cycle? This seems to me a way of increasing FADH:NADH.
L-Valine does this: with interesting results.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3506047/

Peter said...

Re post, too many typos!

George, I've seem BCAAs metioned as mitochondrial fuels but never really looked in detail. I've also looked at succinate esters as FADH2 generators but the papers never went beyond showing they increased insulin secretion. I did wonder what the whole body effect might be, suspecting insulin resistance (otherwise they would be hypoglycaemia inducing). It bends my head somewhat to try and work out whether these approaches might be having a metformin like effect on hepotocytes (and the rest of the body). Metformin looks like a drug to induce LC eating effects without the carb restriction.

If this is the case it feeds back in to ideas about iron and what is the function of iron in hepatocytes and how the body deals with caloric overload, ie glucose plus non superoxide generating lipid.

Oh, you could ask whether FADH2 generators functionally convert PUFA to palmitate, without having to admitting that cardiologists and their corn oil are the primary generators of cirrhosis!

Hmmmmm, very interesting!

Peter

We eat a lot of Kerrygold and Anchor if they are on offer at £4 per kilo. Otherwise it's Tesco economy UK butter...

SS Biker said...

I think sourcing butter according to season from half-way round the globe could be tricky seeing as it can take up to 2 months just to ship.

You don't know about storage at either end either.

Never seen a DOM on butter, so unless you peak under the wrapper for the colour it seems like a lottery.

The seasonal variation in UK sourced butter is noticeable so might be better bet to buy in bulk (depending on how much you get through of course!) and freeze - or just not worry about it!

Galina L. said...

There is another great butter in US "Pasture Butter" by Organic Valley http://www.google.com/imgres?hl=en&sa=X&tbo=d&biw=1024&bih=677&tbm=isch&tbnid=ndYp-qJx8UzmEM:&imgrefurl=http://www.motherearthnews.com/Real-Food/Organic-Valley-Pasture-Butter.aspx&docid=zMAiF4loxbWjCM&imgurl=http://www.motherearthnews.com/uploadedImages/articles/issues/2009-06-01/MEN-JJ09-gazette-pasture-butter.jpg&w=900&h=658&ei=FovQUJLoJZSm8gSm7IHQCg&zoom=1&iact=rc&dur=421&sig=117212550701420109683&page=1&tbnh=132&tbnw=181&start=0&ndsp=20&ved=1t:429,r:4,s:0,i:103&tx=145&ty=74

It is lightly salted, very delicious, made only during the time of the year when grass is growing, costs pretty much the same as Kerrygold.

Puddleg said...

Supplementary L-valine supplies significant amounts of succinyl-CoA; succinyl-CoA generates FADH2; FADH2 drives complex 2; HCV core protein inhibits complex 1; Valine spectacularly inhibits HCV - can't be a co-incidence...
HCV doesn't like FADH2 and complex 2
for some reason.

Odd chain FAs and phytanic acid also supply some succinate - both found in ruminant fat; and SFA not a bad driver of complex 2 itself so probably enhances succinate effect. Not so much glucose though.

That's what it looks like from here...

Anonymous said...

@sackot,
You are correct about Anchor no longer being from New Zealand.
So it's Kerrygold from now on.
Unsalted President butter from France is from grass fed cows but is not as available.
I value my sources of K2.
Thanks.

Puddleg said...

Aha, I think I can see how it might work in context
- the few grams of valine will not supply enough succinyl-CoA to drive complex 2 competively BUT
- will be enough to complete the FADH2 arm of the TCA cycle anapleroticaly if this has been severely restricted by removal of a prior substrate.
If HCV is skipping the succinyl-CoA>FADH2 part of the TCA cycle for its own reasons, this could be making up enough of the difference that mitochondria run properly again.

Makro said...

Warning - Wild loosely founded speculation follows!

One fun thing about the whole pathological-insulin-sensitivity / PUFA angle - it could explain why PUFA:s sometimes turn up beneficial in epidemiological studies.

I.e. PUFA:s in the context of a crappy lifestyle making it easier to clear things into fat tissue. Well, for a while, at least.

Peter said...

Makro,

Yes

Peter

Gabriella Kadar said...

In Canada we cannot buy either Anchor or Kerrygold butter. The government regulates the dairy industry preferentially. The government has contracts with pharmaceutical companies for the provision of medications for osteoporosis for those over age 65. Aside from which we have 'scientist doctors' who misrepresent statistical data to 'prove' that consumption of egg yolks will kill us.

Cheers from the land of the deformed and the disabled.

Galina L. said...

From the time when my family was living in Canada, I remember how high butter and cheese were priced compared with food prices across the border. Some of our friends went to Seattle from Vancouver once a month to get cheese and butter for whole month. We did it too couple times before we went to live in another province. Anyway, I have very fond memories of Canada.

James said...

As a fellow Canadian, I can attest to the fact that Canada has been hard hit by industrial agriculture. I take it as granted that most beef bought in grocery stores is 100% grain fed. Also, when it comes to beef, theres no regulation on hormones and antiobiotics, which is especially difficult if you follow a high fat diet because as far as i know much of this stuff ends up in the animal's fat.

However, in many ways Canada isn't as bad as our neighbours to the south. In many ways, our regulations regarding antibiotics and hormones, especially in dairy, is more stringent than in the US.

http://www.uoguelph.ca/foodsafetynetwork/safety-canadian-milk

Also, at least where i live in Ontario, there are enough well informed, health conscious people that the industry for grassfed, organic food is growing. This weekend my family is having a free range organic turkey that was bought locally. In my opinion it was quite worth the extra $$!

Puddleg said...

So maybe having something like l-Valine, that feeds a little extra succinyl-CoA into the TCA cycle, is like when you have your wheels balanced, and they clip those little lead weights on where they're needed. They don't look like much, but they're enough to stop the wheels falling off, because they're in the right place. (Yeah I know your wheels wouldn't actually fall of if not balanced, in most cases anyway).
One thing that happens is that there is now FADH2 to run the rest of the TCA cycle properly. It would be interesting to see what a mix of Valine and lipoic acid would do.

Scott Russell said...

I like the idea of considering amino acids in this equation, but I wonder how reliably we can assume they will be oxidized by the mitochondria. Absent a caloric deficit, (or a sugar deficit) I would think that most AAs would be preferentially used for structural purposes.

Or is the idea that supplementing l-valine will ensure that some will be oxidized?

This is possibly just a broader point. Although its interesting to consider what the substrate will do in the mitochondria, we also have to consider how and when it will actually get to the mitochondria. I think this was the case with n-3 FAs, and probably MCTs as well.

Puddleg said...

Yes, any excess AA will be metabolised to energy; and gluconeogenic BCAAs like Valine are rather selectively metabolised by hepatocytes, as the liver is the main source of DNG glucose, and only the TCA cycle can convert the succinyl-CoA into the correct gluconeogenic substrate.

fortune said...

Lately I'm loving this great butter from the Allagau region of the German Alps. It's more cultured than Kerrygold, so has a richer taste: http://www.fondofoods.com/products/butter/butter.html

Puddleg said...

@ Icedcoffee, the mechanisms for inserting intermediate substrates into the TCA cycle are called anaplerotic reactions:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anaplerotic_reactions

"the TCA cycle also functions in biosynthetic pathways in which intermediates leave the cycle to be converted primarily to glucose, fatty acids, or non-essential amino acids. If TCA cycle anions are removed from the cycle they must be replaced to permit its continued function. This process is termed anaplerosis"

I obviously need to read this: http://www.jbc.org/content/277/34/30409.full

Meanwhile I've blogged about it here: http://hopefulgeranium.blogspot.co.nz/2012/12/l-valine-zinc-supplementation-fructose.html

Unknown said...

I really like the card. I checked out the website and ordered a bunch of different ones month in advance, I just couldn't resist!

Puddleg said...

Let's say the TCA cycle is low in FADH2 and feeding in a little succinate from valine corrects this. What happens next? The cycle itself produces the next lot of succinate required using the FADH2.
Ergo, it seems likely that a relatively small proportion of daily energy needs coming from valine>propionate>succinyl-CoA and entering the TCA cycle anaplerotically will be adequate to supply missing reducing equivalents and cataplerotic substrates, if such was required.