Heavy Whipping Cream

Saturated fat has been considered “bad” for health since Ancel Keys falsified data (“conveniently cherry-picked and omitted confounding data” if you prefer) in his “Seven Countries” study in 1953 as a way to corroborate his preconception that eating animal fats were bad for human health. A myriad of Senate committees, USDA policies, and other recommendations have followed – giving us the current common belief that saturated fat will “clog arteries” even though fats can’t traffic through your blood unless they are encased in a lipoprotein.

Despite all that, my blood tests on HWC look quite good; with lower triglycerides, relatively normal HDL numbers, and LDL numbers that are irrelevant to all-cause mortality but rather normal as well. =) Given the amount of saturated fat I typically consume via HWC, most diet experts would assume I would be dead already. My first blood test with HWC, I was finishing up my “weight loss” phase and had been using MCT oil with HWC – that appears to be reflected in the blood test results.

Avocado Oil

The next phase where I was using the primarily Monounsaturated fats in Avocado Oil (hereafter “AO” – thanks =) there was a serious reduction in my LDL-P, about a 30% reduction, Beverly saw a reduction as well on her second week. My Small LDL-P was a bit all over the place, and both our LDL-C reduced, likely due to the reduction in saturated fats. Unfortunately, this also meant a reduction in my HDL-C – which is a marker I very much DO care about. My Triglycerides continued going down and both of our total cholesterol also came down.

Avocado Oil with MCT Oil

Replacing 15ml (per meal) of the AO with Medium Chain Triglyceride (MCT) Oil caused a dramatic change in both of our lipid panels. I saw a 58% increase in triglycerides, Beverly saw 34% – this is particularly interesting because when I previously did a week of liquid coconut oil (which was 50% MCT) I saw a reduction in Trigs and increase in HDL, the opposite of what both of us saw with AO and MCT. I think that may have something to do with the other long-chain saturated fats present in the coconut oil. Regardless, based on what I saw and especially the abysmal HDL-C I went down to (26!?), I do not plan to use AO and MCT in the future.

Butter

Butter was an interesting experiment, I didn’t expect it to work out as fantastic as it did. Originally I thought I would need to mix up each meal warm and only would be able to use the savory flavors. Boy was I wrong! Using a blender and warm water, the acacia gum will emulsify the butter and hold it in suspension even after refrigerating. You can consume it cold as-is, or warm it up. But all of that is irrelevant if the blood test shows it to be problematic.

Most importantly (to me), my HDL-C went back up using butter (Beverly has always had amazing HDL numbers, nearly always above 90 throughout the experiment), both of our triglycerides went back down (no more MCT oil apparently does that); my fasting insulin, CRP, Remnant (VLDL) Cholesterol and small LDL-P, all came down with butter.

One of the things I like a lot about butter is its lipid composition is extremely high in very stable fats that do not readily oxidize, 63.33% of the fat is this fully hydrogenated fat. 25.92% is mono-unstable and will slowly react with oxygen, and a VERY small percentage is poly-unstable (readily oxidizes) with only 3.75% of the fatty acids being comprised of that kind (full compositional analysis is on this page ). Additionally, of the stable/saturated fats, you have a good number of short chain fats (6.45% of total fat), medium chain (7.77% of total fat), and an astounding 26.75% of the total fat content is C16 with 16 carbons. Palmitic Acid, as it’s known, has an F:N ratio of 0.48 which means it does some VERY cool stuff in your cells. If you want to really get into it, Dr. Michael Eades can explain what that all means.

Conclusion

Butter appears to be a winner