More Recipes With "Good" Fats

A reader who goes by healthgal asks: Dana, some, such as myself, have higher cholesterol numbers due to the high sat fat content of some recipes. I would love to see some recipes that are lower in sat fat and higher in good fats.

Health Gal, the problem is that for many, perhaps most, of us saturated fats are the good fats; I deliberately favor them because I think they're the natural fuel of human kind, and because, unlike vegetable oils, they are not inflammatory.

That said, everyone is different, and I'll keep this in mind.

In the meanwhile, a few thoughts:

1) Be aware that elevated total cholesterol has never been demonstrated to be a risk factor for heart disease in women of child bearing age, nor in women over 65. Please, take a deep breath, and point this out to your doctor.

2) If, as is the case with so many low carbers, your triglycerides are on the floor -- I've seen mine as low as 36 -- be aware that this will artificially skew your LDL number higher. Why? Because LDL is rarely measured directly, but rather is calculated using something called the Friedewald Equation. The equation goes like this: LDL = TC - (HDL + T/5). In English, that says "LDL cholesterol equals total cholesterol minus HDL plus one-fifth of your triglycerides." Apparently this equation is fairly accurate if your triglycerides are between 100-200.

But when your triglycerides drop really, really low -- a good thing -- that one-fifth of triglycerides drops, too, and there's far less to subtract from the total cholesterol number, skewing the LDL higher. Doctors know this, but seldom think of it when looking at LDL numbers that are running above what they've been trained to look for. My LDL was just a touch "high" at one point; I pointed out my super-low trigs to my doctor and said, "I could lower my LDL by raising my triglycerides." She laughed and said "Bad idea." Yet when my next blood work was done, she commented favorably on my LDL having dropped into the "normal" range -- until I pointed out that, sure enough, my trigs had gone up all the way into the 70s.

Just keep the Friedewald equation in mind, okay?

3) LDL turns out to come in more than one sort. There's small, dense LDL, which is predictive of heart disease, and big, fluffy LDL, which is not. Low carb diets tend to skew LDL toward the big, fluffy, harmless LDL. Consider having your doctor test for which type of LDL is predominant in your blood.

Having said all this, you may be a saturated fat responder, just as some people can't eat dairy, or shellfish, or whatever. I'll do some more recipes with olive oil, okay?