Recap: Fat: The full story | Sarah Berry

0:00Sarah Berry:Hello and welcome to ZOE Recap, where each week we find the best bits from one of our podcast episodes to help you improve your health. Today we're talking about fat. Since founding ZOE, I've actually started eating more fat. And that might surprise you, because for decades we've been told to fear it. Fatty food will clog your arteries and send your cholesterol through the roof, right? Well, it turns out it's not that simple. How fat affects your health depends on a lot of factors, including the type of fat, the food matrix, even how it's produced. One thing is for sure, that single number on the front of a food packet isn't going to give you the full story.

0:41Sarah Berry:I'm joined by Professor Sarah Berry to dig deeper into fat, uncovering which will harm us, which can help us heal. One of the things that people often ask me is, well, how has your diet changed since you started, Zoe? And the answer is it's changed a lot. And one of the biggest ways it's changed is that I now eat a lot more fat than I did. I was absolutely sure that fat was bad for me five years ago. My dad was basically put on very low fat diet because he was told he had very high cholesterol in his thirties. So this is now, you know, sort of 40, 45 years ago. And so that means that at home, you know, we ate this very low fat diet.

1:20Sarah Berry:But as a result, we of course ate lots of carbohydrates because that's what you do to fill it in. And of course, lots of refined carbohydrates, pasta and bread and things like this. So I then did these Zoey tests and it turns out that actually my blood sugar control was really quite bad and actually my blood fat control was much better. And so that's what the advice is pushing. But I still feel really guilty when I eat cheese. Like it's even though I've seen this and I also have noticed the way that actually my hunger is lower when I'm eating these high fat foods. Like I still have this basic feeling that it's a bit naughty, isn't it?

1:56Sarah Berry:Like it's not the right thing to do. What are your thoughts on that, Sarah? I've got loads of thoughts. I'll just touch on a few that I think might resonate with people. So you mentioned about your father, for example, being put on a low fat diet because he had high cholesterol. And this is still a common perspective that lots of people have around how do I reduce my cholesterol levels. Well, let's consume low fat diets because it contains cholesterol, because it will increase my cholesterol levels. The first thing just to mention that I hope most people now are aware of, but in case they're not, is that if you consume dietary cholesterol, which is contained from some foods, dietary cholesterol doesn't increase your circulating cholesterol.

2:38So it doesn't actually increase your blood cholesterol levels, or it does only to a minimum. It's the type of fats that you're consuming that increase your cholesterol levels. So yes, we know that some saturated fatty acids might increase your cholesterol levels.

2:52Sarah Berry:And can you say what sort of foods those are, Sarah, just for those of us who don't think about things in this chemical way? Yeah, so we know that the kind of saturated fatty acids that are in butter, in palm oil, in animal fats, for example, can increase our cholesterol. Now, cholesterol is made up of good and bad cholesterol. And what we particularly don't want is an increase in good cholesterol alongside an increase in bad cholesterol. And saturated fatty acids increase our bad cholesterol. Some of them do also increase our good cholesterol. So again, it's a little bit more complicated, I'm sorry to say, depending on the type of saturated fatty acid.

3:33But what we do now know, which I don't think we were so aware of 30, 40 years ago, is that carbohydrates can have a really big impact also on our cholesterol levels and also on our circulating triglyceride levels, which we also know is an independent risk factor for cardiovascular disease. So if you consume a diet high in refined carbohydrates, and by refined carbohydrates, I mean bread, I mean pasta, I mean rice, I mean also a lot of the processed carbohydrates like snack bars, crisps that you might consume. what this does is at the level of our liver it promotes the production of lipids so this is another word for the kind of fats that are produced in our body and that increases our cholesterol levels and increases our levels of circulating triglycerides but to loop back to what you mentioned about cheese i think that's a really good example of how we need to move beyond this simplistic approach of thinking about the types of fat.

4:32So I just said that actually the type of saturated fat you have in butter is bad for us. Now, dairy cheese, so fermented dairy, such as cheese and yogurt, has a really similar fatty acid composition to butter, but actually it doesn't have the same unfavorable effects on our health as butter does. And the reason is, is because of this matrix, the kind of special structure in which the fatty acids sit within the dairy products that are fermented within the cheese and the yogurt. So you could feed people a moderate cheese diet and moderate butter diet. The cheese wouldn't have any unfavorable effects, yet actually the butter would have an unfavorable effect despite having a similar fat composition.

5:15Sarah Berry:And despite the fact that actually basically the cheese comes from the butter, right Sarah? So that's like even more surprising. Help us to unpack that a little bit. It sounds a bit magical. It is because food is really complicated and it's magical because how we process food has a huge impact on its health outcomes. So how we process dairy, whether it's butter or whether it's cheese or whether it's yogurt, can hugely impact how our body responds to it. And the same applies for how we process other foods, whether it's consuming whole fruit or consuming pureed fruit or consuming whole almonds or consuming ground almonds where you're changing the matrix.

6:03It has a huge impact on this bioaccessibility that I mentioned earlier. So the release of nutrients and how our body processes them. And I think dairy is a really nice example of how we need to look beyond the nutrients and we need to think about the food that it's actually contained within.

6:19Sarah Berry:So basically, the food labels, which a vast effort are put onto all of these foods, and which, you know, in many countries, right, the States or the UK included, talk about sort of saturated or unsaturated, are not necessarily really giving you any information that is helpful. Is that what you're saying, Sarah? Yes, in my opinion, I think it's worth mentioning that broadly speaking, epidemiological studies, so these big studies that will be following people over a number of years or looking at one point in time in thousands of people and then looking at certain health outcomes and looking at dietary intakes, they do consistently show that a high saturated fatty acid diet is less favorable than a high mono or polyunsaturated fatty acid diet at the population level.

7:09But when we do clinical trials, what we know is once we start to tease this apart, it becomes really apparent that that's too simplistic. And at an individual level and at a food level, it's again, far too simplistic that we need to consider the type of fatty acids, but more importantly, we need to consider the food it's in.

7:28Sarah Berry:And this is because you're lumping all of these different things together. So you're saying like, well, somebody who's eating lots of animal fats, and I think you still think animal fats are not particularly healthy. Is that right, Sarah? Yeah. So I would say that you could have foods that contain the same fatty acid composition. So an animal fat and some particular other tropical oils, for example, that contain the same fatty acid composition, but could have different impacts on health outcomes because of the source, because of the matrix that they're in has a huge impact. And so I do think that whilst labeling can be useful, broadly speaking, I think we need to be very, very careful to not be too caught up on labeling.

8:14And there's an example I often use to do with almonds. Now, this isn't related to the fatty acid composition, but it's related to how I think being preoccupied by labeling can actually potentially even make us select more unfavorable health choices. So if we were to consume whole almonds, almonds have a very special matrix. They have a very rigid cell structure. So what happens is, is that remains intact largely as we chew them and they pass through our digestive tract. And we only absorb about 60 % of the energy. So about 40, 30 % of the energy and fat is excreted. So it reaches our large intestine where it's great food for our microbiome, which is fabulous, but also it's a lot lower energy.

8:58Now, if we were to grind those almonds up, so we break this magic matrix, we break the cell walls, we release all the fat. We're going to absorb everything. And so that you suddenly have a food that has about a 30 to 40 % higher energy content in terms of what we're absorbing than the whole almonds. However, if I was to go into a supermarket and look at a bag that had whole almonds intact, as we typically would consume for a snack, versus the whole almonds ground up, like we might use as an ingredient, the backer pack labeling would show that they had identical energy values. they wouldn't show that per 100 grams, you had this huge difference of several hundred calorie difference.

9:41And so I think that's a really nice example of how we need to think about the food. Is it in its original matrix? Is it unprocessed? Does it contain healthy other nutrients like fiber and mono and polyunsaturated fatty acids rather than looking at that back-of-pack labeling?

9:58Sarah Berry:That's really powerful advice, right? That in general, thinking more about this as a food, rather than as the set of numbers on the back. And of course, all of this labeling, I think it was still being done with good intent, right? But actually isn't very helpful. And of course, if it had been really helpful, then we would have seen all these wonderful health outcomes over the last 30 or 40 years, which we haven't seen either. As you can imagine, hosting this podcast, running Zoe, juggling family life, it all keeps me pretty busy. So I try as best I can to stay energized and show up well in all those parts of my life by fueling my body with the right food, by exercising, and by adding a scoop of Daily 30 to my meals every day.

10:40Sarah Berry:If you haven't heard of Daily 30 yet, it's the gut supplement designed by our gut health scientists here at Zoe. It's made of over 30 high quality hand-picked plants, including seaweed, fungi, and different types of fiber. Better yet, it contains ingredients that support gut health, digestion, and energy, which is ideal for packed calendars and busy lives. Simply add one scoop a day to any meal for an extra boost of fiber and plant diversity. And because it tastes delicious on just about anything and adds a satisfying crunch, it quite quickly slots into your life, becoming a daily healthy habit you'll always have time for.

11:19Sarah Berry:By the way, whenever we talk about Daily 30 as a good source of fiber, we're required to say that it contains four grams of total fat per serving. Obviously, that's all amazing healthy fats from plants. So order yours today at zoe.com slash daily30. Thanks for listening and see you next time.