Do Carbohydrates Turn Into Fat?

[nigma]

It appears this is basically a myth, the process of dietary carbs -> fat in adipose tissue is extremely inefficient to the point of being insignificant.

The Carb-Sane Asylum: De Novo Lipogenesis Again (and Science and Science Reporting)

From a point of view that treats the body as intelligent this makes sense, because a high carbohydrate fruit based diet is naturally found in animals that surround the equator, where heat, sunshine and fruit abound. What need is there to store calories?

 

[Gl;itch.e]

You can if you eat enough. Like A LOT! But mostly you just end up storing the fat present in the rest of your diet if you are eating high carb.

 

[Prosper]

So what actually gets stored as fat then when we over-eat? Is it the additional fat after caloric needs have been met? Some seem to be able to eat thousands of calories of fat and protein on a low carb diet while avoiding maintaining or even losing weight.

 

[Tarmander]

Yeah but the carbs can suppress the fat burning stress hormones and make you gain weight seemingly turning to fat.

 

[GAF]

So, fruit sugar does not turn into fat? Does starch turn into fat?

 

[Mito]

So, fruit sugar does not turn into fat? Does starch turn into fat?

Doesn't matter as long as it's a carbohydrate. Masterjohn did a podcast (episode 3) on this subject. De novo lipogenesis is a minor pathway in humans.

https://chrismasterjohnphd.com/2016/04/26/im-excited-to-announce-that-with-this/

"And what those studies show is that if you take healthy men on a standard Western diet, net de novo lipogenesis is 1 to 2 grams per day. If you take healthy women on a standard Western diet, it’s 1 to 2 grams per day in the luteal phase of their menstrual cycle, and it raises 3 to 6 grams per day in the follicular phase."

 

[zztr]

It's another one of these interesting but practically irrelevant things. You could theoretically maintain a stable weight while forcing four thousand calories of some sort of carefully prepared super low fat sweetened gruel down your throat every day. Good to know, but no thanks.

 

[Westside PUFAs]

Yes and it's people like Taubes, Cordain and Lustig who perpetuate this myth. They blame potatoes and "grains" but ignore the fact that people eat potatoes in the form of french fries and potato chips, which are high fat, and grains with fat. Nobody eats potatoes low fat style except for a small number of people in the HCLF camp and those people are lean. Ask obese people what their favorite foods are. None of them are going to say "I prefer my potatoes just boiled/steamed with some seasoning and no butter, no cheese, no sour cream and no oil" or "I prefer my burrito with no cheese and no sour cream." Obese people don't just drink sugary soda and eat sugary candy. They also eat lots of fat. All of the old cultures that were lean and ate high carbohydrate never added fat to their starch. They did have fat from other sources but the Native Hawaiians never added dairy fat or veg. oil to their taro and they were not fat. Same with all of the other high carb eaters around the world. Peat talks about how the pufa you eat is the pufa you wear. Well so is the mufa olive and avocado fat and SFA fats. The fat you eat is the fat you wear, only to be burned as free fatty acids or turned into ketones at a later time. The sugar (sucrose from fruit, glucose from starch) you eat is the blood sugar you constantly burn and the liver and muscle glycogen you store. That is why your fat tissue is comprised of the type of fat you eat. If you eat a lot of fish, your tissue will have a lot of omega 3's. If you eat a lot of trans fat, your tissue will have trans fat, eat pufa oil, your tissue will be pufa filled. That is proof of fat going right into storage and this is testable. Not everyone can burn dietary fat off as muscle fuel fast enough before it's stored. Most people can’t do it which is why they are walking around with excess adipose tissue and it comes from all of the dietary fat they are eating, all fat; pufa oils, SFA dairy, mufa olive oil, omega 3 fish fat, and trans fats, but mostly veg. oil and dairy fat. People who thrive off of high fat diets have some kind of mechanism, most likely enzymes, that allows them to burn free fatty acids before storing them as fat droplets in adipose tissue. But if you gain body fat easily then it's not you.

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[Milena]

.Ask obese people what their favorite foods are. None of them are going to say "I prefer my potatoes just boiled/steamed with some seasoning and no butter, no cheese, no sour cream and no oil"

Stop it dammit! You're making me hungry. I'm currently doing VLF and no starches. Now, you made me dream about the naturally creamy-textured boiled potatoes I ate as a child. We didn't add butter or cream or other oils - they were fantastic on their own. Loved them eaten cold the next morning, too.

 

[EIRE24]

Stop it dammit! You're making me hungry. I'm currently doing VLF and no starches. Now, you made me dream about the naturally creamy-textured boiled potatoes I ate as a child. We didn't add butter or cream or other oils - they were fantastic on their own. Loved them eaten cold the next morning, too.

And why can't you eat them now?

 

[Milena]

And why can't you eat them now?

I could, but I'm trying to stick to carbs as opposed to starch this month (just started trying to reverse hypothyroidism) and the varieties we ate aren't available now. Potatoes tend to get sold as generic items, now. Sometimes, I see Maris Piper on a label but rarely. Charlotte and Nicole are reasonable replacements for International Kidney (once sold by Jersey potato growers, not so delicious, nowadays)

 

[tca300]

@Milena Starch is a carbohydrate. If you like them that much, and they dont negatively effect you, maybe you should eat them ( if you can find the ones you like that is ).

 

[Milena]

@Milena Starch is a carbohydrate. If you like them that much, and they dont negatively effect you, maybe you should eat them ( if you can find the ones you like that is ).

I liked them. Haven't eaten them boiled for years other than a couple of visits to my Mum. They don't have to be eaten with oils to be delicious.

 

[Wagner83]

I see no reason not to eat them, if you love them so much they probably never led to much digestive issues.

 

[EIRE24]

@Milena Starch is a carbohydrate. If you like them that much, and they dont negatively effect you, maybe you should eat them ( if you can find the ones you like that is ).

I agree

 

[GAF]

If it's eating "fat" that makes one "fat", then what exactly happens to the "fat" one eats. Does, for example, a glob of pig "fat" somehow remain a glob of pig "fat" throughout the digestive process and somehow finds it way, as a glob of pig "fat", into a human fat cell and thus makes the human fat cell fatter and fatter and fatter. Westside PUFA always says that the fat you eat is the fat you wear. Is it true that the number of fat cells in a human adult is fixed? That would mean a fat cell just grows and shrinks according to the amount of globs of fat that one eats are inserted or removed from that cell.

None of the above sounds reasonable to me, but what do I know?

 

[Xisca]

“Niacinamide, used in moderate doses, can safely help to restrain the excessive production of free fatty acids, and also helps to limit the wasteful conversion of glucose into fat.” Ray Peat

 

[Westside PUFAs]

That would mean a fat cell just grows and shrinks according to the amount of globs of fat that one eats are inserted or removed from that cell.

Yes. The fat you eat gets packaged into LDL and then transported to the adipocyte. Whearas carbohydrates get converted into muscle and liver glycogen. MCT is the only exception to an extent.

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[lvysaur]

High sugar and less fat (I eat coconut oil and whole milk liberally) made it seem like I was losing subcutaneous fat, but gaining visceral.

My pants became looser, and I had less of a stomach paunch, but my waist also filled out more horizontally, so that it nearly looks like a rectangle. I'm just intuitively assuming this is visceral fat being synthesized.

Visceral fat is also the most highly saturated and easy to burn, so I don't see this as a bad thing. A bigger waist is probably considered more attractive.

 

[Kray]

High sugar and less fat (I eat coconut oil and whole milk liberally) made it seem like I was losing subcutaneous fat, but gaining visceral.

My pants became looser, and I had less of a stomach paunch, but my waist also filled out more horizontally, so that it nearly looks like a rectangle. I'm just intuitively assuming this is visceral fat being synthesized.

Visceral fat is also the most highly saturated and easy to burn, so I don't see this as a bad thing. A bigger waist is probably considered more attractive.

Are you saying you eat high fat and high sugar? I see your moniker, drink milk everyday-- I would say that's mine, too. Now I'm not so sure based on the discussion here....