On Tue, 29 Jan 2002, Amadeus Schmidt wrote:

> Next problem:
> If you want to equal out a moderately bad fat source like beef,
> you see it's ratio is not bad (1:1 to 1:2) but the amounts are very small.
> Particularly compared to it's MUFA plus SFA, with both can interfere with
> total EFA chemistry (by competition).
> One study Erasmus (and W.Price) quote, tells about a ratio of 15:69
> of EFA to MUFA+SFA beeing the critical borderline to "suppress EFA
> activity".
> Suggestion for this: to build a factor of PUFA/(MUFA+SFA).
> Then multiply the ratio so far by this - this will take the SFA disturbances
> into account.

Let's assume that Erasmus is right in his claim that too much SFA
interferes with EFA activity, and/or that too much SFA
contributes to insulin resistance.  The challenge, then, is to
determine what might be called the "SFA load" of a given diet,
and this is more complicated than just adding up the dietary SFA.
This is because glucose that can't be quickly used or stored as
glycogen is converted to SFA, which means that a very low-fat,
high-carb diet has a rather high SFA load, even though the amount
of SFA actually eaten would mislead you into thinking otherwise.

Todd Moody
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