Not all Fats are Bad

Fats have been unfairly lumped together as being all bad for too
long. Fat doesn’t necessarily cause disease, and can actually
cause a role in its prevention. The truth is that some fats are
very bad for us and some fats are actually very good for us.

Time has shown us that diets that restrict all fats fail in
terms of weight loss. Since the end of World War II, Americans
have been told that they need to restrict saturated fat in their
diets. So we switched to margarine from butter, and did what we
could to restrict fat. We have been constantly told that the
reason for our health problems is that we still eat too much
fat, especially saturated fats.

Since Americans have been told to eat a low fat diet to lose
weight, the results are that nearly two thirds of adult
Americans are now classified as overweight and more children are
overweight now than ever before. Obviously something is wrong.
That is because we need special kinds of fats in our diets that
we are not getting.

If you are like me, you grew up being told that vegetable oils
were the good oils and saturated fats were the bad ones. Now we
are finding out that it is just the opposite. Diets that are
moderate to high in “good” saturated fats and oils such as
coconut oil and olive oil are actually very good for us. They
raise good cholesterol levels and lower bad cholesterol, blood
glucose and blood pressure. As a matter of fact, people who
started adding at least 4 tablespoons of coconut oil to their
diets every day, have found that they can now lose weight when
they could not before on a fat restricted diet. Sometimes the
addition of these oils even helps with their health problems.

It turns out that the bad guys are polyunsaturated oils, which
carry toxic fatty acids (long chain fatty acids or LCT’s). These
LCT’s tend to produce fat in the body. Polyunsaturated oils are
the vegetable oils we commonly see in the grocery store, such as
soy, corn, cottonseed, rapeseed and safflower.

We have been told that they lower cholesterol, but they way that
they do is not healthy, as it ends up collecting in the liver.
These oils are easily oxidized and damaged by free radicals.
When cooked they become rancid in a few hours, even in the
refrigerator. This causes damage to our body at a cellular
level, the end results showing up as problems like diabetes,
cancer, hypothyroidism and heart disease. And if that is not
enough, these oils help us to get fat, lower the metabolic rate
in our bodies, help suppress the thyroid function and cause our
skin to age quicker.

Trans-fat is one of the worst bad guys. Trans-fatty acids often
appear on ingredient labels as hydrogenated or partially
hydrogenated vegetable oils. It is what they do to vegetable
oils to make them into hard fats such as margarine and vegetable
shortening. It is used in the prepared food industry in baked
goods like cookies, crackers, and most supermarket peanut butter
to prolong the shelf life. These bad fats are used almost
exclusively in fast foods that are fried. When heated and eaten,
they turn into something like poison in your system, because
your body can not process this kind of chemically made fat.
Trans-fats not only increase levels of bad cholesterol, but they
will decrease levels of good cholesterol in the blood stream and
trans-fatty acids have been linked to heart disease, cancer and
diabetes. Fats such as margarine and shortening should be
totally avoided, as well as foods items that contain them.

The United States FDA is finally catching up to this truth, and
by January 2006 they will be requiring food products to label
the amount of trans-fat they have in them.) What is frightening
is that trans-fats are found in over 40% of the products on our
supermarket shelves.

The fatty acid chains in coconut and olive oil are medium-chain
fatty acids (MCT’s) and they promote weight loss by increasing
the body’s metabolism to create energy. Coconut oil has become
popular lately, because it has been discovered that coconut oil
is nature’s richest source of MTC’s. If you decide to add
coconut oil to your diet, it is recommended that you purchase
virgin coconut oil (VCO), usually found in health food stores,
because it from the best part of the coconut and has not been
chemically bleached and heat processed. It is better for cooking
than olive oil, because olive oil can be damaged by the heat of
cooking, making it similar to the other vegetable oils in the
body when cooked.

Even saturated fat from animals is not as bad as it once was
thought to be, especially if it is from organically raised
animals (free range and grass fed). Organic butter has a very
high conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) content, which helps us lose
weight and gain muscle. But non-organic meats may still be
dangerous because of the way the animals were raised or fed.
Most grocery store meats are filled with hormones, pesticides,
medicines and unhealthy fat that gets transferred to us when we
eat it.

Organic grass fed and free range meat and eggs avoid these
problems, and give us a much healthier source of protein and
saturated fat. Organic saturated fats and oils are actually good
for you and should be eaten daily. The body needs these fats for
healthy functioning.

So, forget the guilt and fry up that range-fed chicken in some
coconut oil and enjoy!

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