Alright folks, this one’s a doozy, but I figured I’d put everything in one spot instead of spreading these articles out. Pour yourself a drink and get comfortable.
Interesting things happen in the field of nutrition. It’s really one of the few fields where people can be certified experts and say completely opposite things, and then back these opposing views up with clinical studies that show contradictory results.
Nothing in the health and nutrition world has been more controversial and more vilified than dietary fats – some claim they clog your heart, leading to cardiovascular disease and heart attacks; some claim that extracted plant and vegetable oils are better for you than saturated fats, especially saturated fats from animals; people believe that margarine is better for you than butter; and of course, almost everyone thinks that dietary fats make you fat. Personally, I’ve seen quite a bit of evidence that contradicts every statement above.
The big fat debate started in 1956 with a guy named Ancel Keys, and his Seven Countries Study. As the first international epidemiological study, it “systematically examined the relationships between lifestyle, diet, coronary heart disease and stroke in different populations from different regions of the world.”
So what were the results? This was the graph as it was first published in Time Magazine :
As you can see, as the total amount of fat consumed goes up, it appears that mortality rates go up as well. This was the image and the information that started the entire cascade of events that led to fats and cholesterol being demonized, that led to low-fat diet crazes, and that led to the widespread overprescribing of statins.
However, here’s the original, unpublished plot graph showing the results of the full twenty-two countries he studied :
As you can see, this graph paints a very different picture.
For example, compare Mexico and Israel, numbers 14 and 11 respectively, on the graph. They consume almost the exact same percentage of total calories as fat, yet Mexico ranks lowest for deaths while Israel is in the top 6.
Look at Sweden, Denmark and Norway (19, 6, 17) as well – they consume just as much fat as Americans, yet rank relatively low in the amount of deaths caused by arteriosclerosis and degenerative heart disease.
The truth is, Ancel Keys cherry-picked his data to make it seem as if the more fat you consumed, the more likely you were to die of heart disease.
This is the unfortunate truth about science and the media – the facts can be distorted and the media will run wild with whatever findings prove to be “sensational”.
Turns out, fats are absolutely essential for good health – they are a major component of the membranes of your body’s 37 trillion cells; they are a major component of the myelin sheaths that coat your nerves; fat makes up roughly 60% of your brain by weight; certain fats boost metabolism while others reduce hunger, and some fats reduce inflammation and make you smarter. The truth is you would die pretty quickly if you didn’t consume dietary fats.
Then again, not all fats are created equal. So what exactly is the truth about consuming dietary fats?
Wont Eating Fat Make Me Fat?
To put it bluntly, no. Trans fats as well as rancid omega 6 fatty acids do contribute to the development of diabetes and obesity, but healthier fats will not make you fat.
In fact, it’s becoming more and more evident that increased fat consumption in place of carbohydrates does wonders for weight loss.
A high-fat diet up-regulates the enzymes responsible for burning body fat not only during exercise, but at rest as well. This means your body will be burning stored body fat as you sit and watch t.v.
Consumption of longer chain fatty acids results in the inhibition of the release of ghrelin, the “hunger hormone”, as well as an increased release of CCK, a hunger-suppressing peptide. In short, consuming fat curbs hunger and makes you feel full.
By keeping carbohydrate intake low, insulin levels remain low. This is crucial for weight loss because fat will not be released from fatty acids while insulin is circulating in the bloodstream. By keeping insulin levels very low for extended periods of time, the body enters a state known as ketosis, where it is burning extremely high amounts of fat for energy. How is ketosis achieved? By a diet low in carbohydrates, moderate to low in protein, and high in fat.
Read Ben Greenfield’s two articles on how he became “fat adapted”, allowing his body to burn body fat as fuel during intense exercise, by keeping carbs low and consuming lots of healthy fats. Part 1 here, Part 2 here.
Types of Fat and Why Certain Ones Suck
Let’s start with naming the main types of fats we encounter in our diet – saturated, monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats. We’ll start with the most demonized of the bunch, saturated fats.
Most everyone has at least heard about saturated fats. These can come from both plants and animals and are so named because the fatty acid molecule is saturated at all points with hydrogen atoms. These hydrogen atoms are able to act as a buffer to light and heat, which have the ability to oxidize the fatty acid, turning it rancid and thus unhealthy. More on this in the polyunsaturated fat section.
Examples of saturated fats include those coming from most cuts of animal meat and wild game, from milk sources, eggs, human breast milk, coconut oil, nuts and from fish, but it’s important to note that none of these sources are 100% saturated fat.
Saturated fat has been made out to be the bad guy, when in reality they’re actually very important to your overall health. A new meta-analysis published in the Annals of Internal Medicine showed that there was no relationship between consuming saturated fats and increased incidence of heart disease or heart attacks. “My take on this would be that it’s not saturated fat that we should worry about” said Dr. Rajiv Chowdhury, the lead author of the study.
New research published in the journal PLOS ONE shows that doubling or even tripling dietary saturated fat intake does not drive up total levels of saturated fat in the blood, while consuming extra carbohydrates will.
Again, one need only look at the actual results of Ancel Keys’ study above, or at the diet of the traditional Inuit or the Masai in Africa or the Tokelau, all of whom consume very large amounts of saturated fat in their diets all while having much better cardiovascular health than Americans, to understand that simply blaming saturated fats is not the way to go.
As you can see from the following graph, there is an inverse relationship between high saturated fat intake and mortality rate from heart disease – as saturated fat intake increases, risk of death from heart disease decreases.
Further, saturated fats are essential to a wide variety of bodily functions.
- Roughly half of the membrane of each one of our 37 trillion cells are comprised of saturated fats;
- Saturated fats help white blood cells to recognize and respond to invading viruses and bacteria;
- Saturated fats help to prevent and reverse fatty liver disease, as does choline, which is naturally found in fatty foods like liver, meats, eggs, nuts and seeds;
- The majority of the brain is made up of cholesterol and fat, with the most of the fat being saturated – the less saturated fat and cholesterol you consume, the less building blocks for your brain;
- Because saturated fats are longer fatty acids and take longer to be broken down, they aid in satiety, making you feel more full for longer periods of time, and providing a steady release of energy;
- Stearic and palmitic acid are two saturated fatty acids that are found in high concentrations around the heart, and are used by the heart as a fuel source in times of stress
Clearly, saturated fats are not the devil they were made out to be. In fact, there’s very little evidence that saturated fats actually do any harm.
Let’s finish this section out with a little common sense. When a person eats too much sugar and gains weight, their body is converting that sugar into fat. What kind of fat? Saturated fat. Why would your body convert sugar into a toxic substance? Why would the average amount of fat in human breast milk be more than 50% saturated fat, if saturated fat is bad for you? Why is the heart surrounded by two saturated fatty acids, stearic and palmitic acid, which it relies on for energy in times of stress, if saturated fat is bad for you?
Monounsaturated Fats
As the name implies, monounsaturated fats have one point on the fatty acid that isn’t saturated with hydrogen.
This means monounsaturated fats are still fairly stable and most can be cold-extracted, but they’re not ideal to cook with. Examples of monounsaturated fats include olive and avocado oil.
These fats have been touted as being very heart-healthy, mainly because if you aim to increase consumption of monounsaturated fats, you’ll consume less saturated fats. But as we just discussed, saturated fat is not the problem. Monounsaturated fats from avocados and olive oil are no doubt a healthy fat, but they aren’t as essential to proper health as saturated fats are.
Polyunsaturated Fats
That leaves us with polyunsaturated fats, which have many points that aren’t saturated with hydrogen.
As discussed above, the saturation of a certain fatty acid with hydrogen is important for one big reason – once any extraction process begins, a fatty acids are exposed to light and heat. This light and heat can cause the fatty acid to turn rancid if it comes into contact with an unhydrogenated bond. This means that almost all polyunsaturated fats that have been extracted are oxidized, rancid and harmful to your health, and shouldn’t be consumed, heated or otherwise.
Let’s take a gander at the following image :
As you can see, it’s a very long process that involves solvents, heating, degumming, deodorizing and bleaching. Any food that needs deodorizing probably shouldn’t be consumed. Compare this to the steps to make butter – milk the cow, let the cream separate, skim off the cream, and finally stir the cream until it hardens.
Why are polyunsaturated fats harmful? Your body still tries to incorporate the damaged fatty acids into cell membranes, the myelin sheaths that cover and protect nerves, your brain (it is 60% fat after all) – everything the body uses fat for, it now is incorporating rancid fats into.
Further, vegetable oils are almost always extremely high in Omega 6 fatty acids. Humans need adequate amounts of both Omega 3 and 6 fatty acids, as both are essential, but a balance of anywhere from 1:1 up to 1:4 Omega 3 to 6 ratio is healthy – anymore Omega 6s in the diet and the body begins to become overly inflamed, which is now believed to be at the heart of all modern day diseases – including heart disease. Again, you need both types, but the ratio needs to be less than 1:4 Omega 3 to 6. Stay tuned for an upcoming post about the Omega 3 to 6 ratio.
Oh yeah, and cellulite? A combination of rancid fatty acids and lack of collagen. Buy quality collagen here.
Monounsaturated fats typically fair well for extraction if they’ve been cold-pressed, but for the most part still shouldn’t be heated to high temperatures, as this causes them to oxidize at their one un-saturated point. That leaves us with good old saturated fat being, in almost all cases, the only type of fat to cook with.
Note – Remember, the above applies mainly to extracted oils. Let’s take corn for example – it’s loaded with polyunsaturated fats. This means corn oil is a big no-no, but the polyunsaturated fats found in whole corn are largely safe as long as the corn isn’t over cooked, because the corn kernel comes with their own natural antioxidants to protect the oils. This also makes it important to buy high quality fish oils, ones that are extracted at low temperatures and blended with antioxidants to prevent rancidity. I recommend Carlson’s, Nordic Naturals or Greener Pastures.
So where do we encounter extracted polyunsaturated fats? All vegetable oils and vegetable oil products are concentrated rancid inflammatory Omega 6 laden fats – that tub that says “Vegetable Oil” in your cupboard is in reality a tub of rancid fat. The french fries and other fried foods you eat when you go out? Fried in rancid fats. The oils used to make almost every food product out there? Rancid vegetable oils. Even most beloved hummus products contain rancid vegetable oils instead of healthy olive oil.
Read ingredient labels – canola, soybean, corn, rapeseed, sunflower, safflower, peanut and grape seed oils should all be avoided. I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter, Crisco, Pam, “Vegetable Oil” and any other fake butter products should all be tossed and avoided. The majority of salad dressings also use these rancid vegetable oils.
What does that leave us with in terms of healthy fats and oils to use? For cooking, I recommend sticking to grass-fed butter, ghee, coconut oil, unrefined red palm oil, duck fat, and lard or tallow from from grass-fed, pastured animals. For salads, dressings and non-cooking needs, I always prefer a quality olive oil, but avocado and macadamia oils work just as nicely.
Cholesterol
There’s also cholesterol, which is a type of lipid molecule known as a sterol. Think it’s bad for you? Cholesterol is absolutely essential for
• the integrity of every cell’s membrane in your body;
• for the creation of bile salts so that your body is able to digest and absorb dietary fats along with fat-soluble vitamins;
• the direct precursor for your body to make vitamin D from sunlight;
• the precursor to sex hormones, steroid hormones and the hormones used to deal with everyday stresses;
• and is a potent antioxidant
Further, according to Dr. Harlan Krumholz of the Department of Cardiovascular Medicine at Yale University, elderly people with low cholesterol died twice as often as those with high cholesterol, from heart attacks!
If you consume less cholesterol from dietary sources, your liver will produce the amount needed by the body. Why would your body be producing something that supposedly clogs the arteries? Nature’s no dummy.
The Truth About High Cholesterol
Having high cholesterol is a warning sign that your body is under too much stress, inflammation or oxidation. The truth is that cholesterol is a major repair molecule within the body. The reason that doctors find cholesterol deposits in the arteries and heart is because it is there patching up damage done by excessive oxidation, excessive sugar intake, trans fat intake or damage caused by other stressors. If you go to the doctor and he tells you that you have high cholesterol, what he’s actually saying is that your body is in an over-inflammed and stressed out state, and is producing extra cholesterol to help mitigate some of the damage.
Let me reiterate that your body will produce its own cholesterol if it is not obtained from the diet, and the body would not produce something that would clog the arteries in the heart.
Trans-Fats
After Ancel Keys’ study came out and saturated fats and cholesterol became the most vilified fats of all, people in the Western world were confronted with a dilemma – what will I spread all over my toast and grease my pans with if butter and lard were out of the question?
Scientists finally came up with a solution. They took extracted oils from plants and added hydrogen bonds to them, which allowed these new Franken-fats to be stable at room temperature. Voila! Spreadable plant fats, known as hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated fats.
Only problem is these new fats are pretty much the worst thing you could ever consume, a main culprit leading to heart disease, increasing the likelihood of diabetes, and inhibiting the metabolism of other healthier fats.
In fact, the New England Journal of Medicine reported in a comprehensive review of trans fats that :
“On a per-calorie basis, trans fats appear to increase the risk of CHD [coronary heart disease] more than any other macronutrient, conferring a substantially increased risk at low levels of consumption (1 to 3% of total energy intake)”.
Let me repeat that – even at 1-3% of total calorie intake, there is a substantially increased risk of coronary heart disease. Talk about truth bombs..
Trans fats are found in things like shortening, Crisco, margarine, and many processed foods. Some restaurants still continue to deep fry with trans fats; for example, Popeye’s hash browns have a full 10 grams of trans fats. Needless to say, this is the one and only type of fat to avoid completely.
On labels, look for any ingredient that says hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated.
In Summary
- Other than trans fats, don’t fear fat! It’s essential for many processes within the body, including creating hormones, improving the integrity of your cellular membranes, and as basic building blocks of the brain
- Do your best to avoid consuming extracted vegetable oils or products made with them, as they are guaranteed to be rancid by the time you consume them.
- Don’t fear saturated fats and cholesterol, they are not the enemy and are in fact quite essential to good health!
- Saturated fats are the only type of fat that you should be cooking with
- Monounsaturated fats are generally healthy as long as they’re cold pressed and properly extracted, but shouldn’t be cooked with
- Try to keep your ratio of Omega 3 to Omega 6 fats as close as possible to 1:1 – more on this in a future post
- Avoid trans fats like the plague!!
If you’re interested in….
- which fats can make you smarter,
- which fat you can use to enhance cognitive power and boost energy levels for a workout
- a certain type of fatty acid which suppresses appetite, and another which helps you burn more body fat
As well as other lesser known tricks of the trade on how to lose weight, have less stress and be on top of your game both mentally and physically, contact me.