Are you lino-philic? (2)

Why do Risérus, Willet and Hu get it so wrong? Apart from habit of course. Out by a Ferguson is their usual standard.

Dietary fats and prevention of type 2 diabetes

Just to regurgitate:

"Taken together, the evidence suggests that replacing saturated fats and trans fatty acids with unsaturated (polyunsaturated and/or monounsaturated) fats has beneficial effects on insulin sensitivity and is likely to reduce risk of type 2 diabetes. Among polyunsaturated fats, linoleic acid from the n-6 series improves insulin sensitivity."

Looking at this study is informative:

Substituting dietary saturated fat with polyunsaturated fat changes abdominal fat distribution and improves insulin sensitivity

Here are the intervention diets

The intervention does exactly what it says on the can. Two five week periods with crossover. The subjects were rock steady for bodyweight throughout the study. Clearly it could not be blinded and the authors speculate that caloric intake might be under reported on the high PUFA arm because there are decades of indoctrination that the PUFA period was "healthy" eating (my phraseology!). I would add that they might even have subconsciously "accidentally" genuinely under eaten rather than under reported. It was only five weeks after all.

Here are the clamp results:

I think it's worth noting that at 120 minutes (Stage of clamp 6) that the glucose infusion rate per unit plasma insulin was still rising in the PUFA period but in the sat fat period the increase had stopped. From the Protons perspective this is the onset of insulin induced insulin resistance, apparently lacking in the PUFA rich period. Not commented on by the researchers but I have the eye of faith. Nice.

Converting the above graph to actual numbers here we have the results table here:

This is all classic Protons.

Protons says insulin signalling makes you fat. Improving insulin sensitivity, ie signalling, will ergo make you fat. Linoleic acid does this better than anything else, pax glitazones. Eventually insulin resistance will occur but only when adipocytes get big enough. This takes longer than five weeks, especially if you succeed in transiently limiting calories to less than those needed to replace calories lost in to adipocytes.

Back to Risérus, Willet and Hu.

To them life appears simple. Skinny people are insulin sensitive. Fat people are insulin resistant. If you could make fat people have the insulin sensitivity of thin people they would become thin. Or at least not diabetic.

Hahahahahahahahahahahaha! Bonk.

They really need Protons.

Peter