LCHF

It seems as though this blog will only focus on fat.. Hrmm.

Not quite, but fat is such a big issue in nutrition today. You could say it’s a hot subject.

Because here comes yet another update on fat.

There is a way of eating (I refuse to call it dieting since there are people who eat this way regularly, no matter weight, disease or lack of disease) called LCHF, which stands for Low Carbohydrate High Fat. This way is also called Stone Age diet. It all comes down to eating the way our ancestors supposedly ate. High amount of natural fat, low amount of grains, starch and sugars.

Unlike Atkins LCHF is about eating only natural fats, this means what you get from your animals or nuts and seeds, LCHF is also about eating organic food, no synthetic sweeteners to compensate for the lack of sugar. Margarine, aspartame, glutamate etc are all seen as unnatural products.

The idea is that by eating this way, you will lower the amount of insulin (the hormone that regulates your blood sugar, but also the way you store fat in your body) in the blood, thus causing less fat to be stored in the body.

I’ve started a separate blog about me and LCHF which can be found at http://lchffood.wordpress.com, there is also a link to it in the list.

http://lchffood.wordpress.com/2009/05/09/lchf/

An Update on Butter and Margarine

The other day I was doing research for a presentation I’m doing on butter, and lo and behold when I find a couple of articles on butter and margarine and their effects on the body. I yet have to find the actual studies proving it all, but it ties in with what my lecturer said when she quoted the study.

In short, the polyunsaturated fatty acids that has been said to be so great for our bodies have been proved to be less good, the unsaturated fatty acids are still the “good” ones and the saturated ones are now deemed as neutral. They are also making studies on whether the cholesterol is such a bad thing. If your body is healthy and fine it’s supposed to regulate the absorption of cholesterol and in that case eating food high in cholesterol is not a problem as your body will only use what it needs. Cholesterol has also been shown not to be the big villain in cardiovascular diseases. Stress, smoking, obesity and lack of exercise are all considered much worse. Of course it could be discussed whether the high amount of fat and cholesterol leads to obesity. But some claim it doesn’t, that people eat much more processed carbohydrates today which leads easier to obesity than the actual fat does. That is however a discussion for another post.

All in all, this actually supports my own personal idea, that if your body is healthy and in balance you can eat a lot of things, but your body will only absorb what it actually needs.

Butter vs Margarine

“You can’t believe it’s not butter?! Well, I can.”

- Anthony Bourdain, Kitchen Confidential (paraphrased).

I agree so much with this that I had to start this next chapter on my food crusade with it. I really can’t believe how people can’t taste the difference between margarine and butter, because it’s vastly different.

I will state this to begin with, I’m very much opposed to margarine, it’s pretty much the devil when it comes to cooking and I think it destroys more than it helps, but I am going to discuss the positive and the negative sides with both butter and margarine (and I’ll probably throw in something about oil too, as it’s closely related to the subject).

I know not all of you who read this have studied organic chemistry or nutrition, so I will explain a little bit to you first about fatty acids so all my words further on will make sense (I hope!).

There are three kinds of fatty acids, saturated, unsaturated and polyunsaturated.

Saturated fatty acids are very stable and is the fatty acid that takes the longest time to get rancid, both in- and outside the body. They’re most commonly found in meats and butter fat.

Unsaturated fatty acids are the most common ones in vegetable oils, they’re not as stable as the saturated fatty acids and should preferably be kept in a cool, dark environment, they exist in all fats to some amount, but vegetable oils are made up of mostly unsaturated fatty acids.

Last there is the polyunsaturated fatty acid, the most fickle and delicate of the fatty acids, it will go rancid easily if not kept in cool, dark places. It’s also the one that can form a trans conformation, due to having two “open spaces” on its molecular structure it’s very easily prone to tack on hydrogen atoms that aren’t supposed to be there, thus changing the structure (this is what is used when you make margarine). All vegetable oils contains a small amount of polyunsaturated fatty acids, fat fish is also a very good source.

Margarine

What is margarine essentially? To make margarine you take vegetable oils and vegetable fat with a high amount of unsaturated fatty acids, process them so they harden to a desired point, mix them with cream and/or skim milk (or yogurt in some cases), an emulsifier *, water, salt, coloring, A and D vitamins and preservatives. The exact ingredients will vary depending on country, brand etc, but they are pretty much the same.

Butter

Butter contains cream, salt and sometimes lactobacillus. The U.S uses pasteurized cream while Europe uses unpasteurized cream, thus leaving a slightly different quality to the butter. The European version is more yellow and distinct in taste while the U.S butter is whiter in color and lighter in taste. In my opinion the European butter also gets a creamier, richer texture.

Pro Margarine

Margarine is made with mostly vegetable fat, making this a good source for unsaturated and polyunsaturated fatty acids. It’s easy to design for different purposes. You want a fat that can stand higher temperatures, that will have a high browning point and low smoke point? Voilà, it’s easy to create. Want a fat that’s specifically made for puff pastry? It exists! This is one reason today that so many industries have a hard time going away from certain kinds of fats (that may contain trans fatty acids), since it was designer made for their kind of product basically. It can be lower in fat and it’s also cheaper than butter.

The not so pretty side of margarine

It’s made chemically, it may not contain plastic like some critics claimed and today most margarines actually won’t contain trans fats either, but it was still industrially designed, you need to bring it through the process of hardening relatively good vegetable oils, thus lowering the quality. You add preservatives, emulsifiers and coloring to make it a  usable product. It’s got an artificial taste, an oily texture to it, it won’t heighten the flavors of your other food and it brings a dull sort of feeling to the food it’s used in. Due to containing preservatives it’s less likely to go rancid, but the added water makes it more prone to mold.

Pro Butter

It’s a very simple product made out of cream and salt basically, you can make it at home in your own kitchen, it’s been around as long as people have used dairy. It’s a natural flavor enhancer that can turn the most dull food into something quite marvellous. You need quite small amounts of it to get the flavor benefit.

The dark side of butter

It contains mostly saturated fatty acids and is very low on polyunsaturated fatty acids, it’s got a lower smoking and burning point than margarine and oil, making it a bit less suitable for frying in high temperatures. It’s high in fat content (80%).

Controversy

Saturated fatty acids have a long time been seen as the devil when it comes to modern nutrition, it’s considered one of the main factors for cardiovascular diseases and is known to “clog” up the vessels. But a recent study (and I really do wish I had a link for it here, but it was mentioned in class by my lecturer and I forgot to ask her about which study it was) has shown that there are certain benefits to eating saturated fats, it is more stable in its form, even in the body, it’s less prone to go rancid which means the body can benefit from it longer. This does, however, not mean that we should increase our doses massively, just that we can use it with a little less caution since it’s actually doing less damage in the body than what was commonly believed. The recommended amounts of a daily intake does stay the same so far.

My own view on the matter

I’ve tried to (I said tried, never said I managed 100%) stay as unbiased as I could, but this is the part where I get to say what I think. I think the ultimate fat is a combination between butter and oil, these are the only kinds of fat I use in my cooking. I use different fats for different purposes. I have four kinds, I use butter, olive oil, canola oil and clarified butter (ghee).

Butter and olive oil (extra virgin) are for flavoring purposes only and are used in quite small amounts (and never heated really). Canola oil and clarified butter are for frying mostly. Canola oil is low on polyunsaturated fats which means it can take heat pretty good, clarified butter is butter that’s been cooked so the water, proteins, lactose and salt went away, it’s 100% fat, but butter fat. It’s suitable for all kinds of cooking (except deep-frying) and baking.

Taste and texture wise, I prefer butter to margarine, I also like to know what’s in the stuff I eat, and I feel that I have that controlled with butter, much less so with margarine. Health wise it still needs to be discussed whether margarine is actually better for you, from a fat point of view, yes, but looked at from a quality vs quantity point of view I wouldn’t agree that margarine is better for you, butter contains less additives and is effective in smaller amounts.

Conclusion

Margarine is probably better for you fat wise, but if you stick to smaller amounts of butter (to get that nice flavor), you’re fine. Quality wise, I’d argue that the fat used in margarine is of lower quality than the cream used in butter. I am also suspicious of the process of hardening the vegetable fat for margarines, even though they now claim that the process won’t risk turning the polyunsaturated fatty acids into trans fatty acids.

In the end however, you shouldn’t eat massive amounts of fat as it is, chosing good quality fats in low amounts is what I advocate, and if I’m only going to eat a little, at least I want it to be good.

* Margarine is what we call an emulsion, it’s a mix between two things that wouldn’t normally blend and stay that way, to make them mix you add an emulsifier that will keep them together. Egg yolks contain lecithin and is commonly used in restaurants as an emulsifier, while soy lecithin is the most common emulsifier in the industry (look at your package of chocolate next time for example, unless it’s VERY good quality of dark chocolate, like Michel Cluizel etc, there will be soy lecithin). If you want to mix water and oil, it might mix if you shake it well, but the moment you stop it will separate, due to the water and the lipid (fat) receptors repulsion for each other, adding an emulgator will stabilize it and keep them together (make a vinaigrette and add mustard – which has an emulsifying agent in its shell – it will stick together). Examples of emulsions are; chocolate, mayonnaise, Hollandaise and milk.

The Hows and Whys of Taste and Flavor

Everyone knows that you can’t taste much when you have a clogged up nose, but most people don’t know why. I remember a class we had a year back in sensory that related to this.

Our lecturer brought in nose clamps and small tubes of a powder, she handed us one each, told us to put on the nose clamps and pour the powder into our mouths. As we did all we felt was a very sweet flavor, that was it, absolutely nothing else. Then she told us to remove the clamps and as we did our mouths were filled with a strong cinnamon flavor (the tube contained cinnamon powder and sugar).

Now, you would think that with such a strong flavor, it would shine through, but it really didn’t, we had absolutely no idea what was in our mouths until we removed the clamps.

So how was it that we could taste the sweetness of the sugar but not the cinnamon?

To start off we have our taste buds that are situated on the tongue. They register the five basic tastes that are sweet, salt, sour, bitter and savory/umami*. These can all be registered even if your nose is clogged up**, they also have in common that they are water soluble, this is the reason you can taste them the moment they hit your tongue.

The rest are however fat soluble which means that you will need to smell them in order to taste them. If you combine the basic taste of a food and the smell of it, which is registered by the olfactory epithelium, you get a flavor. In order to completely register this flavor you need to be able to both smell and taste your food.

An unknowing test person was served a delicious chocolate mousse, while he was eating someone passed him with a piece of cloth smelling of garlic, the test person swore that there was garlic in the mousse.

*Umami is a relatively new taste that was added to the basic tastes,  you get it mostly from the chemical MSG (monosodium glutamate), a kind of salt that is added as a flavor enhancer, it used to be more common in asian food, today it’s used throughout the western world too though, mostly in pre-made food, MSG exists naturally in mushrooms.

** Here it could be discussed where the spicyness, the heat, that you get from spices such as chili and peppers should be placed as the heat is noticeable even if you can’t smell it. I will say that I don’t know, but I intend to find out.