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Kat
This fats issue is complex and the best way to try and understand it is do some reading. The Ben Best article in the articles of interest section "The importance of omega three and six in breast cancer" is a good starting point. Print out a copy for yourself and that way it is easy to go back to. Do not worry if you do not understand a lot of it as long as you begin to get the gist. Type Ben Best into the search engine above right and look for the article and you will find a link.
Both the omega six and three familly are essential to human health. Unlike all other fats it needs the body cannot make them and has to get them from food, as do most living things. We get them from things that grow, and living organisms that eat things that grow who also concentrate them like fish.
Omega six essentially promotes inflamatory processes at a cellular level, and omega three damps them down, although it is much more comlex than that.
Omega six is essential but too much it is argued is bad news.
Historically over millenia our diets have more or less balanced the threes and sixes within maybe a range of 4:1 to 1:4. Along came better farming and machines that extracted oils from difficult sources like vegetable fats and suddenly six was cheap and everywhere and our consumption ratio of omega three to six went from say 1:1 to 1:10 to as high as 1:50.
This got mixed with high intake of saturated fats and people started getting heart conditions, but less on unsaturated oils - so the cry went out saturates bad unsaturates good, and it became a bit of a health mantra, and marketing persons dream.
Hunter gatherers had been eating saturates and doing quite well thankyou for a very long time. It is reported even in the "civilised" world in the late 1800s heart and vascular conditions were so rare students would rush to see a case so as not to miss it!
So we started avoiding saturates which contain little six or three and started gulping down polyunsaturates me included feeling very pleased with themselves.
There is now a growing band who think that the combination of the lack of threes with high sixes is a responsible factor in a lot of inflamatory diseases, and certainly a lack of three is recognised as a factor in vascular disease as a minimum.
So back to margerine. Margerine is manifactured and generally the result of high temperatures etc. Some has trans fats etc. There are those that argue this alone is a reason to avoid it. Many are made from high omega six fats.
So consuming margerine generally will push up your omega six intake. A tub is say 250grams, of which say 60% of the fat content could be omega sixes. To balance that with omega three is a lot of fish or flax oil that is the problem, even ignoring the wider question of the impact of processing.
So margerine is not all bad but it is not on my personal consumption list, and you are proably getting omega six from other sources. A scrape of butter is probably preferable as it is neutral in three six terms if it is essential for your toast.
Once you get used to it strangely you actually do not miss added fat. Before reading all of this I would happily buy feta cheese in oil, in fact everything in oil, expensive grape seed, walnut, addit to food, gently fry etc and be pleased with myself. Now about a desert spoon of olive oil a day and 5tps of fish oil is it. Everything else comes from whole food only, including nuts etc.
But as I keep regretably saying whilst there are very strong indications proof is limited as the concret crash proof trials simply have not been done, and unless funded by governments will not happen. There is no money for the drugs companies in telling you to eat better, from whole foods, so it is doubltful they will be funding it. (a whole other issue)
Trials based on reported diet are in my opinion a wate of time. I base this on my observation of human nature backed up by a tale of a student - he told me that he knew people (students) on trials simply lied if they strayed as they did not want to loose the money they were paid.
The tools are available fat biopsies and genetic arrays to see now genes proteins etc respond to fat. A fat biopsy will tell you what somebody has really eaten, not what the remember they might have eaten or think they should tell you they have eaten...and a gentic array will tell give you a good idea of you what their body is doing in response.
So its sort of back to where we started there is no real option but some reading to try and get the drift of how it fits together so you can decide what best for you, asidous label checking and getting some idea of the fat make up of food groups particularly the magor types of extracted oils.
Fats are heap powerful, and would be my number one dietary read recommendation, as would looking at balancing the threes and sixes.
Finally I am no expert I have just read quite a lot, and like others have a bit of a bee in my bonnet about it.
Do check with your advisors in planning magor dietary changes as as you wil begin to appreaciate as you read more fats are powerful factors in the body.
I hope this helps.
RB
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