Deep Root Wellness: Healthy Fats Do Not Make You Fat

For more than one hundred years, the medical community has led us to believe that eating fats is making us fat; that high cholesterol is a primary cause of coronary heart disease and that any diet high in saturated fats was taking us straight to the cemetery. We bought these hypotheses hook, line and sinker.

Lenin said that “a lie told often enough becomes the truth”. (I don’t think that he had dietary fats in mind when he made this statement!) After all, it seems reasonably logical that fats would be bad for our waistline. But the body of evidence that suggests otherwise is overwhelming.

Fifty years of honest research show that:

High cholesterol is not the primary cause of heart disease.
Diets high in saturated fat and cholesterol don’t cause heart disease.
Consumption of so-called “heart healthy” vegetable oils is linked to heart disease, cancer and many other conditions.
Statin drugs don’t reduce the risk of death for most people, and have dangerous side effects and complications.

In fact, the latest research suggests that eating healthy fats can help with weight loss. Fats help slow down the food absorption, mainly the carbohydrates: you feel fuller and more satisfied than when eating a low-fat or no-fat diet.

Eggs, still Nature’s most perfect food

Are you still scared of eating eggs? Are you limiting your weekly consumption?

There is absolutely no research that links eggs to heart disease.

A review of the scientific literature published in Current Opinion in Clinical Nutrition and Metabolic Care indicates that egg consumption has no measurable impact on blood cholesterol levels in 70% of the population.
“Hyper-responders” are the other 30% of the population for whom eggs increase both circulating LDL and HDL cholesterol. However, heart disease risk is not driven by the amount of cholesterol in the LDL particle but instead by the number of LDL particles in the blood. We’ve all been conditioned to believe that foods that raise LDL cholesterol (AKA "bad” cholesterol) need to be avoided at all cost or at least limited.
By increasing the proportion of large LDL particles, the consumption of eggs may decrease the concentration of LDL particles, which is the most significant risk factor for heart disease.

What’s in an egg?
13 essential nutrients are in the yolk (much more than in the white), among them:

B vitamins needed for vital functions.
Vitamin A: essential for normal growth and development.
Vitamin E: protects against heart disease and some cancers.
Vitamin D: promotes mineral absorption and good bone health.
Betaine: Studies suggest that betaine, along with vitamins B6 and B12 and folic acid, helps reduce higher levels of homocysteine. Having high levels of homocysteine is related to a higher risk of heart disease and stroke.
Selenium: necessary for cellular functions.
Iodine: essential for making thyroid hormones.
Phosphorus: essential for healthy bones and teeth.
Excellent source of antioxidants known to protect the eye.

So don’t’ limit your weekly consumption to the 3 eggs currently recommended on the various “heart-healthy” diets. Boost your health and protection against disease In fact, consuming two to three eggs per day would provide a better boost to your health and protection against diseases than any multi-vitamin pill.

Eggs truly are one of Nature’s super-foods.

But (of course there is a but!) make sure that you buy organic, pasture-raised eggs. Commercially-raised eggs are up to 19 times higher in pro-inflammatory omega-6 fatty acids. Unfortunately, almost all eggs sold in supermarkets, even the organic eggs sold at chains such as Whole Foods or PCC are not truly pasture-raised. To find REAL eggs, check your local farmer’s market, raise your own chicken or visit the Eat Wild website to locate a source in your area.

Tropical Oils, so unfairly maligned

"Tropical oils" are oils made from palm, palm kernel and coconut.

In the 1980s, the US soybean industry concerned that foreign tropical oils would replace soy-bean oil as the number one fat (thus take money away from the American farmers) hired a public relations firm to devised a campaign that would help convince consumers that tropical oils were unhealthful. Foods made with soybean oil were labeled "contains no tropical oils." This label was later made illegal because it implied that tropical oils are harmful and there is no evidence to back it up. The whole issue was about money, not health. But the message sunk. Deep.

Fast food joints and packaged food manufacturers shifted their recipes and have been poisoning us ever since with polyunsaturated oils.

According to Dr. Mercola, Gary Taubes (leading science journalist and author) and

Mary Enig Ph.D(fats researcher), saturated fats are:

The preferred fuel for your heart, and also used as a source of fuel during energy expenditure
Useful antiviral agents (caprylic acid)
Effective as an anti-caries, anti-plaque and anti-fungal agent (lauric acid)
Useful to actually lower cholesterol levels (palmitic and stearic acids)
Modulators of genetic regulation and prevent cancer (butyric acid).

The basic four types of fats

-Saturated: coconut and palm oil, lard …nearly impervious to oxidation and degradation, which means they are stable. They are usually hard at cold temperatures and melt easily with higher temperatures.

-Monounsaturated (MUFA): such as olive oil are, slightly unstable. It’s fairly safe to cook with them but they’re best eaten in their raw form (I can hear my chef-friends grinding their teeth! What, no cooking with olive oil?)

-Polyunsaturated (PUFA): such as vegetable oils are so unstable that you should never heat them for cooking. The Standard American Diet (SAD) overall provides the wrong ratio of Omega 6 (seeds, nuts, vegetable oils) to Omega 3 (fish, flax oils)

-Trans-fats: bad news, I won’t even go there.

Every fat molecule consists of a glycerol molecule joined to three fatty acids. The degree of saturation refers to the number of double bonds between carbon atoms on a single fatty acid.

The top fatty acid doesn’t have any carbon molecule that is double bonded; all are bonded to hydrogen molecules making it “saturated” with hydrogen.

The bottom fatty acid has a single double bond, meaning that it is monounsaturated.

A fatty acid with two or more double bonds is polyunsaturated. It is these double-bonds that make fatty acids highly susceptible to attacks from free-radicals, opening the door to degradation, both in the bottle and inside your body.

Heat, light, and oxygen all cause damage to mono-unsaturated and poly-unsaturated fats.

The more unsaturated the fat is the more susceptible it is to damage.

The more saturated the fat is, the more stable it is.

No measurable damage can be found in a jar of coconut oil that has been sitting on your kitchen counter for a year.

On the other hand, polyunsaturated oils are so unstable that they must be subjected to a lot of processing to be made relatively shelf-stable. This includes deodorization and bleaching. And by stable, the industry means that you don’t get the taste or smell to warn you of the oil’s rancidity. This processing also remove most of the vitamins present in the oils.

I personally will throw a teaspoon of hazelnut or walnut oil on a salad, because it tastes fabulous. I also eat a ½ to 1 tablespoon of coconut oil before bed. Yes, straight from the jar. Organic pastured butter on that beautiful steamed broccoli. Ghee for my curry. Bacon, yes, bacon, an all-day favorite in my house (and again, from pastured pigs). Roasted chicken for dinner:? Eat the skin, as long as your bird was truly free-range and organic (so expensive anyway, why would you waste any of it?)

If the 9 calories per gram of fat seem like a lot compared to 4 calories per gram of protein and carbs, remember that when you include healthy fats in your diet, your body and your brain feel fed, nourished and loved, and you won’t overeat.

However, some people have a hard time digesting their fats. Their floating stools are the tell-tale signs that something’s no happening. Changing the types of fats you eat can help. But more importantly, being assessed for gall-bladder functions should not be overlooked.