For those who follow this blog or have attended some of my classes, it will be a familiar topic…saturated fat. The kind of saturated fat I am talking about is from animal sources and a few plant sources such as cold pressed coconut oil and extra virgin red palm oil…not processed or hydrogenated oils, which are also considered saturated fats.
Saturated fats are part of every cell in our body. They maintain cell integrity, structure and resist oxidation. This is good. To be healthy, we need saturated fats. Additionally, saturated fats are heat resistant. On the other hand, poly unsaturated fats (PUFA’s), which the primary sources are industrialized, processed seed and vegetable oils, oxidize very easily and are not heat resistant. I explain this more in my post Healthy Vegetable Oils. PUFA’s can a be good source of Omege-6 and Omega-3’s, which are essential fatty acids (EFA’s)…meaning we have to have them, in small amounts, or we get really sick and die quicker…pretty extreme I know, but true. PUFA’s that are not processed, or come from cold pressed sources or occur naturally in nature are good sources. The biggest source of PUFA’s in the western diet is from these processed sources, which are excessively high in Omega-6’s which up-regulate inflammation…a bad thing.
The fact that these industrialized PUFA oils contain essential fatty acids is one of the “selling points” that is used to convince folks they are healthy. The problem is once they are processed, anything that was healthy about them, including antioxidants, is gone and they are rancid and toxic. And to add fuel to the fire, we cook with them! PUFA’s, EFA’s…whatever you want to call them…also occur in animal sources especially grassfed meats and wild caught fish.
So why is it everywhere we turn we are exposed to them? It may help if we understand a little history first.
We, as humans, have been here a long time and during that time we ate a lot of animal sources of protein and fat, which are extremely nutrient dense, and, according to many paleontologists, is the largest contributing factor to our brain development. During these times, meat sources were very different than those available today. They were all grassfed or pastured or wild caught, meaning their health profile of Omega-6’s, Omega-3’s and antioxidants were very high. Also during this time, we did not experience the level of degenerative diseases that we have now, if at all. Cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, obesity, arthritis, Alzheimer’s, multiple sclerosis and others were almost non-existent. The point is we ate a lot of saturated fat and were extremely healthy.
Well, during the 1800’s, PUFA’s entered into the picture. They were used in paints and varnishes because, when exposed to oxygen, they oxidize or harden very easily…yes, this is the same thing that happens in arteries. Later the PUFA industry began to struggle as they were being replaced with synthetic chemicals. So it was decided to take PUFA’s and put them in animal feed and sell them to farmers. This worked for a little while until the farmers realized that this enriched feed would fatten their animals but it would also cause them to die early. So since it isn’t good for animals what do we do with them? How about sell them for human consumption. This started to occur around the turn of the century, 1900, in
Why did we change our fat sources? Well the short answer is much of that was industry driven and several emerging scientists were looking to make a name for themselves and speculated that cholesterol is linked with cardio vascular disease. Cholesterol is found in animal sources of fat. So if we convince folks cholesterol is bad, we push them away from saturated fats and steer them to buy these “healthy” industrialized vegetable oils. And that is exactly what happened. One of these scientists was Ancel Keys who came up with the Lipid Hypothesis, which is what it remains today…an educated guess that has never been proven. I would agree a diet high in any fat, including saturated fat and PUFA’s, along with a high level of carbohydrates can have some harmful effects on our health. Carbohydrates, primarily sugar, is another topic altogether but is something that has increased several times over in the last one hundred years. One study stated that in 1900 the average American consumed about 15 lbs of sugar a year and now we consume about 150 lbs per year!!
That is a little bit of history. If you would like to read more, click on the link above for the original article or just check out the video. Until next time, get some sprints in and pick up something heavy.
Link to video:
ETFS Health and Nutrition Seminar: Ch 1 Fats
