Do you still believe this myth?
A diet low in fat has now been linked with a dramatic reduction in wellness. Yes: The less fat you eat, the sicker you get.
As for cholesterol, your doctor and the popular health press may have you in a tizzy about how it will kill you. Don't believe it…
The myth dates back to the cherry picking of results in a 1950s study. Dr. Ancel Keys hypothesized that fat intake and heart disease mortality were linked to each other. Americans, who had the highest rate of heart disease of any country, ate the most fat… while the Japanese ate the least fat and had the fewest heart attack deaths. So Dr. Keys pronounced that fatty foods caused heart disease.
But when the statistics were actually analyzed for all 22 countries in the study, the link between fat consumption and heart disease was not there. Yet it's been one of the sacred creeds of the medical profession for more than half a century.
In reality, fats and cholesterol are essential for life itself. They're precursors to your hormone production. In some cases, a low-fat diet and statin drugs can reduce your cholesterol level to the point where your health is in danger.
Saturated fats are essential for your metabolism and for cardiovascular health. I'll bet that's not what you've been hearing, though.
The most "wicked" food of all
The award for the most "villainous" food almost certainly goes to butter. After all, it's been reviled for over 50 years as the food most responsible for heart disease and high cholesterol. I can remember when TV was overrun with commercials telling people to switch from butter to margarine, to keep their cholesterol down.
It was all based on bad science, but doctors and other nutritional illiterates continue to revile butter to this day.
Yet for thousands of years, people the world over treasured butter as a healthy food.
The first written reference to it was discovered on a 4500-year-old limestone tablet illustrating how to make it. In India, ghee (clarified butter) has been a symbol of purity and a worthy offering to the gods in religious ceremonies for 3000 years. The Bible references butter, when Abraham set butter and milk from a calf before three angels.
Back in 1900, heart disease was rare. But that was before Ancel Keys proclaimed that saturated fat and dietary cholesterol were to blame for heart disease…
Though it's now been proven a sham many times over, the image of butter as a killer still grips nearly everyone.
Fake butter is much more dangerous
The food industry developed margarine as an imposter to mimic butter, and propagandized it as a "health" food. Does it live up to its claims? Hardly!
Margarine is a processed food, created chemically from refined oils through a process called hydrogenation. The oils are subjected to extremely high temperatures which cause rancidity. Deodorants are added to mask the horrible smell and food coloring is used to alter the grossly unappetizing grey color of the unfinished product.
These hydrogenated polyunsaturated oils are potentially much more detrimental to you than any saturated fat. Another lie, another dollar…
Contrary to Popular Belief, Butter Has Amazing Health Benefits
Believe it or not, studies show that those who consume butter are 50 percent LESS likely to develop heart disease than those who use margarine.
Butter is a completely natural food essential to your health — especially high-quality organic butter.
The saturated fats in butter have strong anti-tumor and anti-cancer properties. Butter contains conjugated linoleic acid, which is a potent anti-cancer agent, muscle builder, and immune booster.
Butter is also rich in readily absorbed vitamin A — essential for thyroid and adrenal health. It's a terrific source of vitamins E and K which contribute to heart health.
Concerned about cholesterol? Butter is a natural non-soy source of lecithin, which aids cholesterol metabolism. And it contains an anti-stiffness factor that prevents hardening of the arteries.
The cholesterol in butterfat is essential to brain and nervous system development… and its arachidonic acid (AA) is vital to your brain, and cell membranes.
Its antioxidants protect against free radical damage that can lead to cancer, heart disease, and more. And butter is a rich source of the cancer-protective mineral selenium.
Its vitamin D contributes to healthy bones, its Activator X helps you absorb minerals, and its absorbable form of iodine is good for your thyroid.
Fats like those in butter help your body absorb the many healthy nutrients in veggies. So why not eat more veggies topped with butter?
The best butter is raw and organic, because pasteurization destroys valuable nutrients. But the sale of raw butter is prohibited in nearly every state. (If you can obtain raw milk and cream in your area, try your hand at making your own butter.)
Cultured butter is chock full of great bacteria like lactobacillus planterum and lactococcus lactis — microflora essential for a healthy digestive tract and immune system.
Give yourself permission to indulge in butter for your veggies, cooking, and whatever other healthy foods you want to enhance with its creamy goodness.
Butter's creamy cousin
You might guess that if butter is better for you than you ever expected, cream might also be, because butter comes from cream.
Cream is dense in fat-soluble vitamins, conjugated linoleic acid, and even coenzyme Q10 (Co-Q10).
But here's the rub…
Fat soluble vitamins are fragile, delicate nutrients. So they're destroyed during the pasteurization process.
Cream is often pasteurized at ultra-high temperatures. The process denatures the fats and results in a dramatically different food than the nourishing one nature intended.
If you can get raw cream, it will contain beneficial bacteria and digestive enzymes. But you may have to settle for pasteurized organic cream, preferably vat-pasteurized at the lowest allowable temperatures.
Enjoy cream with a bowl of berries or on your low-sugar homemade pumpkin pie.
Start your day with this,
And you'll find you eat fewer calories
Another highly scorned food is the incredible edible egg. It's easy on your wallet, and contains more essential vitamins and minerals per calorie than virtually any other food.
St. Louis University scientists discovered that those who eat eggs for breakfast eat fewer calories the rest of the day than those who eat bagels (which are a carbohydrate blowout.).
And you'll be happy to note that in a recent review of dozens of studies, Wake Forest University researchers found absolutely no link between egg consumption and heart disease. So you can toss out that myth too.
Eggs provide 20% of the RDA for choline, which you need for fat metabolism. But that's not choline's only benefit. It's a building block for the phospholipids used in all your cell's membranes, especially those in your brain and nerves. Choline is critical for good memory function, reduces breast cancer risk, maintains normal homocysteine levels, and lowers C-reactive protein (a marker for inflammation), tumor necrosis factor, and interleukin-6.
A recent study found that raw egg yolks contain the amino acids tryptophan and tyrosine, offering nearly twice the antioxidants found in an apple. (When cooked, the antioxidants drop in half.)
What kind of eggs should you buy?
Pasture-raised, organic, free-grazing hens produce a superior quality egg.
Perhaps even more importantly, salmonella testing revealed a whopping 5 times higher salmonella incidence with "regular" caged hens(23.4 percent of farms), versus organic flocks (4.4 percent).
This is an especially critical consideration if you consume your eggs raw — as in smoothies or homemade holiday eggnog.
Pass the guacamole, please!
The avocado has fared better in the press in recent years than butter, cream or eggs. But some people still shun it for its fat content — when really, the biggest danger may be in what you pair it with.
Avocados provide all 18 essential amino acids for a complete protein. They are readily absorbed. And they boost HDL ("good" cholesterol) -- while at the same time they reduce LDL ("bad" cholesterol) just as effectively as statin drugs. What's not to like?
Avocados are one powerful health food. We wrote about them in
Issue 195, and you may want to check it out if you missed it.
Make your own guacamole at home to avoid unhealthy food additives — or just to avoid avocados that aren't organic. It’s one of my favorite treats. It's easy to make and only takes a couple minutes of chopping two or three ingredients.
For best nutritional value, eat it like a salad, and stay away from combining it with chips — with their potentially dangerous GMO ingredients, trans-fatty acids (those really ARE the fats to avoid), and negligible nutrition. Try it as a dip for veggies or as a sauce on eggs or chicken instead.
Be careful when eating this popular fat
Almost everyone is thrilled when they learn that chocolate can be a healthy fat. The operative word here is "can". You may sense a "but" is about to follow, and you're right. There are almost too many warnings about chocolate to mention in the space we have here. So I'll stick to the most important ones.
If you want to reap its health benefits, your chocolate should be dark, dark, dark… as well as low in sugar and free of soy products and other additives.
That will narrow the playing field quite a bit. But remember… picky eating wins out over dying sooner than you have to. If you're careful about your choice of chocolate, you can reap substantial health benefits.
Chocolate may lower your risk of stroke (by 20 percent), your blood pressure, your "bad" LDL cholesterol, and your risk of heart disease, thanks to its inflammation-fighting properties. It may boost insulin sensitivity, lowering your risk of diabetes and cancer.
Cocoa has anti-clotting, blood-thinning properties that can improve circulation. It can boost blood flow to your brain and help you feel more awake and alert. It can even help you perform better on mental tasks.
And there's no denying that indulging in chocolate feels good.
Here's another saturated fat that's good for you
Coconut oil contains even more saturated fat than butter. Even better, more than 50 percent of it is lauric acid. Lauric acid helps you in a surprising way. Although it raises LDL (bad) cholesterol, it boosts HDL (good) cholesterol even more, so the result is a net decreased risk of cardiovascular disease.
Lauric acid is anti-bacterial, anti-microbial, anti-viral (perfect for fighting a cold) and anti-inflammatory.
It contains a long list of vitamins and minerals, is used in infant formula and as a treatment for malnutrition...
One Florida doctor claims she reversed her husband's Alzheimer's disease just by giving him 4 teaspoons of coconut oil per day… allowing him to resume his normal life and completely halting his brain atrophy within one year. You can read their story in our book
Awakening from Alzheimer's — along with 8 other proven, doctor-endorsed ways to cure this dreaded disease.
Coconut oil works well for cooking and baking, because heat doesn't break down its benefits. You can also add it to smoothies or take it as a supplement. I personally use it for nearly all my cooking. It's as rich and tasty as butter. For more information about coconut oil, see
Issue 126.
Nuts about nuts… and still healthy
Nuts are another healthy food that some people avoid because it's high in fat. More bad, dangerous misinformation.
Nuts are delicious, convenient, easy to travel with, and have a long shelf life, making them great for holiday travel, or any travel. I keep a variety of raw, organic nuts at my house, and I can't tell you how many times they've gotten me out of a bind because I was hungry, but too busy to cook.
Different kinds of nuts have varying nutrients. Most of them are high in omega-3 fatty acids and vitamin E.
Raw nuts, or better yet, sprouted raw nuts, retain most of their original nutrients intact.
But don't expect to see the raw sprouted variety at a holiday event — that'd be a rarity. However, even dry roasted nuts are undoubtedly a better option than the sugar-laced foods that usually grace holiday tables. They won't spike your blood sugar out of orbit, and you may still get more nutrients than any of your other party options.
How much fat do you need for good health?
Although the U.S. government is proud to claim that saturated fats should be less than 10 percent of your total diet, new evidence continues to support much greater amounts of fat. Some experts now advise 50 to 70 percent. That's a shocking figure, but it's what some people are saying.
Personally, I eat a high-fat diet and I have a healthy weight with no tendency to put on more. And I stuff myself with yummy treats like guacamole, eggs and nuts. I eat a great deal of coconut oil — it's my primary cooking oil. And it tastes great. I don't go too heavy on butter — I think coconut oil is healthier for cooking, and cashew butter or almond butter (similar to peanut butter, but healthier) are just as good on bread. But if you're eating margarine, you'd be much better off switching to real butter.
There's no small amount of evidence that the FDA's recommendations are riddled with conflicts of interest. The doctors and scientists profit handsomely from the foods and drugs they tell you are "healthy." It's a disgrace that they still propagate the cholesterol myth, urge people to take statin drugs, and command patients to eat a low-fat diet.
It's best not to use the FDA and the mainstream medical profession as your primary source of information on food.
Carbs, especially sugar, are the devil — NOT fats. The science is in, and it's not fats that make you fat and expose you to heart disease, cancer and diabetes. It's carbohydrates.
That's a big reason the whole low-fat craze has been such an unmitigated health disaster.
Saturated fats are extremely filling and satisfying, so you eat less junk. If you do get hungry between meals, why not grab a handful of healthy nuts or half an avocado? They're sure to keep you going till the next meal.
Most of all, feel free to treat yourself to some healthy fats over the holidays… now that you can leave the guilt behind.
