A friend and I have been emailing back and forth about this. I’d like to put what I wrote her in a quote here. If anybody sees something I have misunderstood (because I am no biology genius for sure) I’d love the critique.
Separately: I did an experiment. I can only drink coffee like a dessert, not black. I’d like to drink some in the morning and have been considering butter coffee but honestly I don’t much care for it and coconut oil seems like it floats on the top, it just kinda turns me off. But I want to ingest cocoa butter and it’s a bit diff texture so I thought I would try it. To hot coffee I added melted cocoa butter, some quality cocoa, some powdered Swerve (stevia+erythritol), and some heavy cream and some unsweetened vanilla almond milk just to light it up a bit more. It was actually very good. And it did not have the ickiness I associate with my various butter/coconut oil prior experiments.
Yeah… my brain’s summary was kind of like:
“The more saturated the fat the better,” and if the fat in the meal one eats is not saturated “enough,” then both the fat and most the glucose (which the body turns into triglycerides) is mostly all going to store in fat cells , and then a few hours later you’re hungry because all the energy is gone into storage.
I think this concurs with the carbs/insulin hypothesis. The difference is – or rather something the C/I simply doesn’t know or address – is:
But if it’s saturated “enough” that it creates a sufficient number of ROS (reactive oxygen species), the fat cells will (and note this is a spectrum, not a toggle ) turn their ‘intake’ toward ‘off’. This will
a/ not store most that fat in the fat cells, and
b/ leave it in the bloodstream where that energy continues feeding you.
So you didn’t add fat, plus you stay satiated for way more time.
Hence you’re likely to eat less, but still feel good, and still have all your body organs get the energy they need (not be starving).
Pure stearic acid (like the manufactured product you can buy in a bag) is the most saturated. For foods, for saturated fat content, we have cocoa butter , then beef , then butterfat (and things made with it, like ghee) or things made with either/both (like chocolate).
But sugar will interfere with this trigger in its own way, so eating good fats + sugar (most chocolate) would be pointless (I guess would override or prevent the trigger). Major antioxidants interfere with this, so taking a big dose of vitamin C with dinner would also be pointless (negate the trigger) and I’m guessing those should be taken at other times.
MUFA fats (olive, avocado) from other research seems clear does not cause the damage of PUFA. However it also doesn’t create the ROS of SFA, so will store promptly like PUFA will.
Other animals than cow/bison have very poor fats now due to their feed, and their inability to convert it to SFA (the guy who wrote that blog is a scientist formerly and a pig/chicken farmer currently btw), so, sadly, it’s like PUFA even though it should be SFA/MUFA since that’s the default for animals.
But then again, chicken does not have very much fat esp if you are eating chicken breasts. And poultry does not store much fat internally, that’s why you can buy duck fat in a jar, it’s pretty easy to get the fat from them since it’s not marbled into the meat like with beef. What is on chicken breasts one can usually cut off. Overall there’d be very little fat in the meal. I suppose in that case one would just want to add fully saturated fats to the meal – maybe in a side dish or a sauce (or even a drink).