A friend of mine recently asked me “I know you eat double cream a lot, but it’s mostly saturated fat. So how is it good for you?”
It’s difficult to provide information which helps people to remove deeply ingrained assumptions about how fat is bad for you. Read on though, and maybe you will change your mind.
“..if we accept the premise that what we eat determines our health, then we must add the observation that in no period of our history as a nation have (we) eaten so poorly..” Sally Fallon
First of all I’d like to share with you a little about my own experience growing up with healthy nutritious food, and secondly research which explains a lot of what I attempt (before the argument starts) to tell people when they ask me this question. I hope the following sufficiently explains why saturated fats and fats in general are so essential to healthy living.
I grew up in rural Victoria and I was raised on lots of healthy natural food, which of course consisted of lots of good fats.
We ate plenty of red meat and sometimes our own chickens, eggs from our chickens, raw milk from a local farmer and a lot of cream and butter. I’m pretty sure margarine was the ultimate sin in my Mum’s opinion. My mum also made her own yogurt and Dad made ice cream! In fact, my parents rarely ever, with the exception of special occasions, allowed any sort of processed foods in the house.
Even though I have had my fair share of nasty junck foods, I am very happy to say that I would choose natural unprocessed foods over the processed, low-fat-sugar-filled junk that is so cheaply and readily available to me now.
My favourite resource for “fat facts” is Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon. Her cookbook is full of amazing recipes and it provides an incredible resource for healthy nutrition and dietary facts. I am also a fan of Gary Taubes (although many people seem to find him disagreeable). His very informative book Good Calories, Bad Calories is full of controversial information and science behind diet and health.
What can I eat which will…
- Provide the building blocks of cell membranes and hormones in my body
- Allow for the absorption of minerals
- Help to keep me feeling full for longer by slowing down nutrient absorption
- Ensure that carotene is converted to vitamin A
- Equip my body with carriers for fat soluble vitamins A, D, E and K
Yep. Saturated fats from animal and plant sources.
But my Doctor told me saturated fat is bad for me?
“Saturated fat is bad for us, makes us fat and is the obvious cause of high cholesterol which inevitably leads to heart disease.”
Very few people will agree that fat is good for you, and it is the general consensus of “health experts” and the medical establishment that your fat intake, especially saturated fats from animal sources should be reduced in order to lower the risk of chronic illness. This theory (the lipid hypothesis) is the idea that there is a direct link between the incidence of Coronary Heart Disease (CHD) and the amount of saturated fat and cholesterol in your diet.
The hypothesis was first proposed by Ancel Keys, a prominent researcher in the 1950’s. While numerous subsequent studies have pointed out the flaws in Keys’ research, his work received considerable publicity compared to researchers providing alternative views, and consequently Keys’ findings have provided us with the deeply ingrained notion that saturated fat is bad for us, makes us fat and is the obvious cause of high cholesterol which inevitably leads to heart disease.
Watch this clip from Fatheadmovie for a very succinct explanation of how we have come to this conclusion.
So you see, there is very little evidence to support this hypothesis. A reduction of saturated fat and cholesterol in the diet has never been directly linked to lowering the risk of death from heart disease or chronic illness. Good Calories, Bad Calories is also full of references which explain and prove this.
“Countries like Holland and Norway, where people ate a lot of high fat foods reported a very low incidence of CHD, while Chile, on the other hand where they didn’t eat a lot of fat, reported a high incidence of CHD.”
In his study in the 50’s, Keys took reliable statistics from six countries and found a positive linear relationship between the amount of saturated fat in the diet and the incidence of CHD. However, the original study actually involved twenty-two countries, and when these remaining countries were included in the statistics the positive correlation completely disappeared!
Countries like Holland and Norway, where people ate a lot of high fat foods reported a very low incidence of CHD, while Chile, on the other hand where they didn’t eat a lot of fat, reported a high incidence of CHD! So, Keys faced a conundrum, and like any good researcher working on beneficiaries from the American sugar and cereal industries, he removed the statistics which skewed the data the wrong way.
Subsequent studies which attempted to replicate Keys’ findings consistently refuted his hypothesis, yet it was most often claimed the findings were from untrustworthy sources, labelled irrelevant or said to be misinterpreted.
Keep in mind that a lot of what you now hear and read about regarding new research and findings on cholesterol raising “artery-clogging” saturated fat is from projects backed by funding from these same high profit industries.
“…based on the evidence available at the time, American’s should reduce their risk of heart disease by reducing fats in their diet and replacing saturated fats with polyunsaturated fats.”
In 1957 the American Heart Association actually castigated researchers like Keys for taking an uncompromising stand against dietary fat based on research and evidence that didn’t stand up under critical examination. In 1960 however, less than four years later, a change of heart was revealed when an AHA committee of six researchers (including Keys’) released a new paper claiming, based on the evidence available at the time, that American’s should reduce their risk of heart disease by reducing fats in their diet and replacing saturated fats with polyunsaturated fats. The research was released with minimal references, all of which were from recent studies on the link between dietary fat and atherosclerosis, which actually contradicted the committee’s findings!
It wasn’t until 1982 that the US Department of Agriculture, the American Medical Association and AHA really started to push a reduction in dietary fat, with the recommendation to reduce fat intake from 40 percent to 30 percent. And that is exactly what people did. They reduced their fat intake and consequently increased everything else. To be more specific, people started eating more carbohydrates and more sugar.
Obesity, metabolic syndrome, heart disease, stroke and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease all shot up. Still think it’s the fat? As Dr Robert H. Lustig says “It ain’t the fat people. It ain’t the fat!”
Have a look at this graph taken from a slide of Dr. Lustig’s speech comparing the reduction of fats in the diet and the increased incidence of obesity.
What about cholesterol?
Cholesterol is a naturally occurring waxy fatty substance which is found in every cell of our bodies and is integral to many bodily functions. There are two types of cholesterol, High Density Lipoproteins, known as the good cholesterol and Low Density Lipoproteins, more commonly known as heart attack inducing cholesterol.
“Mother’s milk provides a higher proportion of cholesterol than almost any other food. It also contains over 50% of its calories as fat, much of it saturated fat. Both cholesterol and saturated fat are essential for growth in babies and children, especially the development of the brain.” Sally Fallon
There are numerous studies which prove that LDL cholesterol does indeed correlate with CHD. However, there are two types of LDL, and one of them actually has no relationship to artery clogging plaque formation at all. Pattern A, or large buoyant LDL’s are so big and light that they simply float through the bloodstream, unable to get underneath the surface of endothelial cells in the vasculature to start the plaque formation process.
Pattern B however, or small dense LDL’s are small enough to get under the endothelial cell surface, and can cause plaque build up leading to clogging of the arteries. So, small dense LDL’s are the bad guys, and large buoyant LDL’s are the good (or neutral) guys. The problem is, when LDL in the bloodstream gets measured to do a lipid profile, both get measured together, because it is too difficult to distinguish the two.
So how can you tell which LDL you have more of?
You look at your triglyceride levels in association with your LDL measurement. Triglyceride levels will indicate which LDL is higher. What you want to have is high HDL (good cholesterol) and low triglyceride. You don’t want high triglyceride and low HDL because that means more of the small dense LDL’s are in your bloodstream, and that also means you can be pretty sure you’ll die of a heart attack. As Dr Lustig explains, HDL to triglyceride ratio actually predicts CHD better than LDL ever did.
Dietary fat has been shown to increase you large buoyant LDL, whereas carbohydrates have been shown to increase you small dense LDL’s. This is explained perfectly in the following passage from Nourishing Traditions…
“Elevated triglycerides in the blood have been positively linked to proneness to heart disease, but these triglycerides do not come directly from dietary fats; they are made in the liver from any excess sugars that have not been used for energy. The source of these excess sugars is any food containing carbohydrates, particularly refined sugar and white flour. “
OK, so I think that is probably enough information for one sitting. I hope you found this information useful. I will be back with part two explaining the different types of fats and which fats to avoid very soon. I will also explain the reasoning behind low fat diets as recommended by dieticians and nutritionists.
Sources:
Original image: Various Brennermans
Good Calories, Bad Calories. Gary Taubes
Nourishing Traditions. Sally Fallon with Mary G. Enig
The Primal Blueprint. Mark Sisson