This is radio. 2 thank you very much for joining us. I've. So the. This is. You can see a lot of dapper black and white securities this time of year and knowing their car will help you identify the different species for example if you live in the Pacific Northwest when a black capped. You may find its cousin the back to tag. This bird has a similar black head with a large white patch but its back and sides are a rich brown It's called a slightly different as well if you can tell the calls apart and give you a hint the call of the Black Cat particularly follows the familiar. Pattern. Now listen to the chosen a back call its higher pitched her and has a quality. Once again the Black Cat chickadee. Now the chestnut back to getting. A good bird watcher can identify a bird by its call alone this is handy when he little birds high in the trees dangling off branches but while we delight in their musical talents the birds are engaged in more serious business they're keeping their flock together. Here the cause of all 7 species of chicken is at our website bird not dot org I'm Mary McCann. Hi welcome to food sleuth radio where we help you think beyond your plate. A registered dietitian and investigative nutritionist on in mission to connect the dots between food and agriculture and find food truth and today I am honored to welcome my guests Dr Martha blurry. A professor of nutrition at the Ohio State University where her research seeks to identify specific facts that modify energy metabolism and inflammation in health and. In particular her research group looked at the mechanisms of how different fatty acids gene expression and metabolism. And heart muscle I happened to meet her on an airplane she was going to the American Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics annual conference in Chicago this past fall where spoke about the different kinds of fatty acids and to try to put some of the misconceptions and confusion at rest her work has generated over $100.00 peer reviewed research articles with continual funding support from a variety of respected agencies including the u.s.d.a. NASA the American Cancer Society and the American Institute for Cancer Research thank you so much for being with me Dr blurry. Thank you so much for having me pleasure to be speaking with you today but I'm curious to know you know since I don't know if I mentioned that you are also in addition to being a researcher and professor and researcher at the Ohio State University but you're also a fellow dietitian and I think it's so interesting to see how our careers move forward or progress from our education and you have developed a strong interest and expertise in dietary How does that happen well I was actually studying to be a dietician I went to diversity Texas in Austin and one of the professors came in to one of our classes and said There's this fellowship for undergraduate researchers everybody's applied and nobody applied but me so I got it and I worked with a group of professors who were working on how dietary fat affect information and tumor formation and they were doing that in mouse models for cancer to understand how dietary fat could impact basically the risk for cancer in the mouth model. That's fascinating especially because I think if we look at some of the headlines in the media today there are certain terms that bubble up to the top so kind. Whether it's Should I be consuming butter coconut oil What about vegetable oil omega 3 a make a 6 but also this idea that we probably should all be focusing on reducing inflammation that would be a really good idea in addition to reducing obesity and so on so I think it's interesting that you looked at how fatty acids in particular influenced the progression of cancer what were your take home messages from that research. Really fascinating it was a great lesson for me as a 1st an undergraduate student and then a doctoral student and I went to that same lab to work as a doctoral student to learn that the pathway that we thought was so simple and that we would solve with a few mouse studies and it being so much more complicated so we were studying how omega 3 fatty acids could be due to inflammation to reduce the risk for tumor formation and lo and behold in the types of tumors we were studying there was no effect at all and of course the doctoral student the 1st thing I thought was oh my gosh how am I ever going to publish this but I had a great mentor who said you know I get data are negative data we just get out there and it's not easy to publish the positive data because you kind of have to have more proof that it really was negative and it wasn't just because he didn't set the experiment up correctly but we published the data and lo and behold years later we have learned that omega 3 fatty acids do seem to be protective against some types of cancers may not be protective for all types of cancers and not other types of fatty acids may also unfun cancer. What kinds of cancers do you see Omega 3 fatty acids seem to be helpful in preventing. Well it turns out that some of the cancer is most closely linked with most studies and again there's almost never a universal finding for things but might be colon cancer and breast cancer. I think those are the 2 main ones that I can think of for a make it 3 where both mouth studies and clinical studies and by clinical I mean epidemiological studies especially for cancer prevention because it hard to do a controlled trial but so from our studies and epidemiological studies I think if we seem to continue to be mostly associated protection against or lowering your risk of cancer you know and then there's also the whole area of research for protecting against heart disease and we want to be able to tweak our dietary fat to prevent heart attacks and diabetes and cancer and all of the chronic diseases that seem to plague our country what would you tell people in terms of reducing risk for heart disease. Well it turns out it's actually the types of fats that could be protective against heart disease and again many many studies show that so that's why I would say that but most of the evidence that says that omega 3 fatty acids and omega 6 fatty acids there protective against heart disease so now we broaden the scope a little bit and omega 6 fatty acids are in plant oil for the mega 3 the long to make it 3 fatty acids are more in fish oils so you know you can start to see that you can pull together more types of oils in your diet to help protect against her to see which is still the leading cause of death and older adults and we're having this conversation about omega 3 you know make a 6 because I myself have certainly been confused by the data I think that if we look at how many dieticians attend these sessions on fatty acids that are professional meetings I know that I'm not alone. And the research is continuing to add to our knowledge base and I think that when we change our minds or change our messages sometimes that frustrates the average consumer because it's like well you know I was eating margarine years ago thinking that that was so great for me and now I find out that the salad vegetable oils are not so good to me so I can understand how the public is very much confused but that's the beauty of nutrition is that we it's a science we build on the data that we had and we know more tomorrow than we did yesterday so absolutely yeah yeah thought I'm glad you're here all right we should probably step back and let's give our audience a little bit of an understanding of these omega 30 make a 6 you mentioned that the omega 6 fatty acids come from plant oils the omega 3 s. Come from fish they're also a mega 3 we hear about different plants so walnuts for example I know have been identified as a good plant source as people are on vegetarian diets do you want to talk a little bit about how the omega 3 Omega 6 mix of fat end up in our diet and we've heard people say well we said Eat less Omega 6 more omega 3 does the ratio matter how should we be encouraging people to eat better around these 2 fatty acids. Yeah Ok Well let's step back to one more step before even talking about some of those good questions and remember that there are 2 essential fatty acids in the diet there's a little lack acid which is an 18 carbon omega 6 fatty acid and then there's also a little Lennox acid which is an 18 carbon 3 fatty and both of those 18 carbon fatty acids we get primarily from plant to plant seeds have a lot of fat as we know because the embryo of the plant seed the germ actually is full of fat and so those things come from plants and both of those are essential meaning we have to have them in our diets we cannot make them in our bodies we think right now although there is not in our d.n.a. There's not a recommendation for intakes that either the essential fatty acids I hope there will be one day but there isn't yet we have adequate intakes for both which is basically reflecting what the population consumes that shows there's no deficiency so is that optimal We don't know but at least with a certain level it's not being associate with deficiency in different ages and of course both men and women so we have now the kind of I guess the most simple make a 6 and I guess 3 they don't like acid and Alpha let alone i guess. So those are from plant seeds then the long chain omega 3 s. That I was talking about earlier with being associate with reduced risk for some types of cancers and perhaps reduced risk for heart disease are actually not from that we can tell and there's there's really very weak evidence for the alpha linolenic acid being protective against heart disease it seems to be the longer chain products of alpha then I guess that which come from fish oils we can make some of that but we don't make it very well fish make it a lot better there's a reason they do but it doesn't really matter so cold water fish have a lot of these longer chain omega 3 fatty acids e.p.a. And the ha and those are associated with reducing the risk for some of the diseases . Back to literally I guess that's that 18 carbon to make a 6 that yet that that one has been for a very long time in the main unsaturated fat in the u.s. Diet it's actually the major polyunsaturated fatty acid that we consume and it's been historically and the toils that software oil sunflower seed oil canola has a quite a bit of it would be no oil corn oil even in the summers and so those will have provided to make a success that's where we haven't really thought in the past we were deficient and little and. So again an adequate intake is that and it seems to be that people are showing deficiency of that that literally I guess it is what is associated with reduced risk of heart disease specifically and the longer chain products of linoleic acid it turns out we're kind of were some of these men started that. Omega 6 fatty acids are all pro-inflammatory and could be harmful again it turns out we don't make a lot of the flying tomato make a sick products and mash your body needs them so like I was saying what do you make of 3 fatty acids we don't make a lot of those long chain e.p.a. D.h. Say we don't make a lot of long chain arachidonic acid again and very natural. Yeah Ok so now we've got the major central fatty acids from different plant sources. If we have a lot more omega 6 coming in than omega. Are we less likely to have the benefits of omega 3. Well I mentioned affably and I when I got it did not seem to be associated this typically with reducing risk for cancers so if you pit one against the other it might not be that one is going to cancel out the other because we don't feel a big benefit of Alpha liniment account that we don't see any harm as far as I can really see in the literature and perhaps we haven't tested it well enough and that's true for a lot of nutrition where we haven't really talented Alpha little manic out on but I want to remind you that it could actually be that boat type of boat you may get sick with an Omega 3 s. Are helpful for reducing our risk for certain types of diseases in fact heart disease really it seems to be both when only that you make a 6 fatty acid and some of these longer chain omega 3 fatty acids could be helpful for preventing heart disease risk and hard to the. Excellent Ok good to know now I have another question that has to do with some of the recent reports that have come out looking at saturated fat and we see a big craze now for coconut oil and we see the Time magazine last year came out with I think it was a cover story butter is back and we even had some professors at major university saying. The plant oils are better than butter but butter is better than cornflakes it was that there was a quote in one of the popular magazines. How does the consumer make sense of all this when we've been told for so many years to avoid animal fats. Well and as they Titian's we're all pretty familiar with the cycles of what messages consumers have gotten about fat in the sixty's and seventy's that would eat more Cornell to reduce your risk of heart disease because of the effects of a little leg acid to lower cholesterol especially l.d.l. Cholesterol and maybe even rates raise h.d.l. Then we had the low fat diet recommendation for I don't know 1015 years and then we had the trans fat discovery that trans fats really do promote the risk of heart disease and heart disease that it's pretty clear in the evidence in the literature so then we had to have all the food kind of revamped to have lower trans fats I can understand consumers and dieticians getting tired of the messages but in fact we are just discovering new things and we learned low fat diets don't work we now allow trans fats are really kind of harmful for increasing risk so here we are talking again about animal and plant to write fats and I think some of that is kind of a rebound from the trans fat worry because trans fats form from vegetable oils that are hydrogenated the byproduct is the trans double blind and it's not intended product it's a byproduct that happens during the chemical process think to make an oil more solid. So people have gravitated more toward animal fats I think in part because many but not all are saturated and so that saturated quality we know is important for certain food products that everybody consumes not just because it's but saturated fats are important and some things like texture mouthfeel etc for many types of foods I think part of the migration now toward animal fats again is about the trans fat kind of rebound. I think you're right let me take one break and remind our listeners that if you're just. Joining us you are tuned into radio and our guests Dr Martha fuller nutrition professor at the Ohio State University her area of expertise is dietary fat or what we also call dietary liquids that modify energy metabolism and inflammation in health and well let's also talk about coconut oil because this is such a range now I think I've read where people are putting it under their tongues for amount of time I mean there's just all kinds of health practices being promoted around coconut oil I find it to be very tasty Sometimes I think it can be beneficial from a taste and mouthfeel perspective but I just hate to see people being misled into thinking that oh my gosh we found the silver bullet of fats and this is the one we have to be eating all the time. Yeah good question well most of the saturated fats in our diet are still highly heated and. Randomized control trials are really even associated with increasing the bad cholesterol increasing inflammation and coconut oil is probably along those fat that have the types of saturated fat that do that so again backing up a step one such effect that does not seem to promote after the core of the plaque formation in animals and increase about l.d.l. Cholesterol and maybe promote things like fatty liver is Dirac acid that's an 18 carbon adjective fat but the shorter ones 16 carbon 14 carbon 12 are actually the fatty acids when saturated that could be quite quite harmful and it's not raising the bad cholesterol but it seems to be that those types of that should have that can lead to fatty liver can lead to visceral fat accumulation that adipose accumulation that we tend to see that where you gain weight around your Met All right. And actually could lead to infant resistance which is probably part of that fatty liver problem so coping to the oil I have not seen any data that support the idea that Coke and healthful for reducing risk of heart disease diabetes and or even backing in your abdominal region which nobody wants exactly and I think you bring up a really good point in that we've often studied people and there are different body types you gain weight in the abdominal area you're called an apple in the hips or title appear and that people who gain fat around their middle seem to be at increased risk for our number of chronic diseases so you mentioned that the 16 carbon 14 carbon 12 carbon fatty acids when saturated are harmful take me into the kitchen and tell me which specific stats that would be. Generally And again there is that one area that 18 carbon that doesn't seem to be harmful doesn't seem to have any protective effect but it might be a neutral and I try acid Yeah but any of your fat in your pantry that are saturated every year are generally solid that they're going to be. Better for your heart your diabetes or your metal Ok you know and if we wanted to reach for consumers to a resource where they can get some of the. Topics explained in a way that we can apply them in our own kitchens do you have any favorite resources for that. I really don't I myself even have to really carefully look at things that are in advertisement and in the research because even kind of research journals might not always have truly evidence based research they might be promoting a letter to the editor which is an opinion not not necessarily related to. And so after work really carefully I don't know of a good story that kind of clutters all of the messages that are coming out now that yeah it's really complicated I think for the consumer in the marketplace and I think that our diets have changed over the years and you spoke about that at the Academy of Motion in dietetics meaning I think it would be interesting to take a little historical course a little historical past through our dietary habits so you know I think back oftentimes my grandparents who were immigrants to this country you know what did they eat and what did they eat in Europe where they came from what were some of our ancestral diets and how have they changed what are we eating as a new.