On Mon, 19 Jun 2000, Amadeus Schmidt wrote:

> Whatever. The connection of saturated fat to disease is strong.
> Probably someone else can give better ideas for that.
> I bet that Todd has superb references for fat information.

Frankly, the picture is still very blurry.  Among the saturated
fats there appear to be two that are most suspected of being
problematic: palmitic and myristic acid.  Research on palmitate
suggests that it actually inhibits insulin release, causing blood
glucose levels to rise abnormally, and leading to an eventual
insulin surge to control them.  That is, palmitate appears to
increase the *amplitude* of the blood glucose curve, which is not
good.  But some recent research suggests that palmitate has this
effect only in the presence of already elevated blood glucose.
There may be wisdom in eating animal fats separate from
significant amounts of carbs.

But the truth is that no one yet understands how these fats may
contribute to disease, although there is evidence that under
certain conditions they do so.

Todd Moody
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