Now before we delve in to the actual action steps to reverse this decline in our health
we need to clarify a few of the myths that are out there! The biggest of which is the fallacy that fat makes you fat and causes heart disease! Sadly this demonization of fat began way back in 1953, when Dr. Ancel Keys published a paper comparing saturated fat intake and heart disease mortality. His theory turned out to be flimsy, to say the least, but the misguided ousting of saturated fat has continued unabated ever since. Keys based his theory on a study of seven countries, in which higher saturated fat intake equated to higher rates of heart disease. However, he conveniently ignored data from 16 other countries that did not support his theory. Had he chosen a different set of countries, the data would have shown that increasing the percent of calories from fat actually reduced the number of deaths from coronary heart disease.
For instance if you look at the Masai Tribe in Kenya, whose diets consist of 66% saturated fat, heart disease and indeed diabetes is almost nonexistent! Likewise the Inuit Eskimos in the Arctic are dependent on whale meat and blubber and have a diet of 75% saturated fat, yet heart disease is almost unheard of. It would also be remiss of me not to mention the French (the so called French Paradox) who have the lowest rate of heart disease of any industrialized country in the world, despite the highest intake of saturated fat. I could go on however I hope you realise that the advice that is unfortunately still very prevalent today to cut out butter, red meat, animal fats, eggs, dairy and other “artery clogging” fats from their diets is WRONG! As we discussed in an earlier posting Fats are essential for our survival!
Just in case you are still uncertain or confused as to the benefits of fat in our diets and saturated fat in particular, remember that the best source of nutrition for a baby comes in the form of ……… breast milk! And guess what breast milk, contains 54% saturated fat! Is nature really that cruel and stupid to be creating an artery clogging diet from the get go? I don’t think so! And yet sadly mothers in this country are actively encouraged NOT to breast feed, rather they are advised to give their precious babies processed formula full of high fructose corn syrup! And we wonder why obesity levels in children are rising so dramatically?
In fact when you look at the statistics diabetes and obesity have been increasing exponentially since the 1980’s which is when the “low fat ” craze took hold! Is it a coincidence? In my opinion it is absolutely not. If you think about it fat provides calories and if you remove a major source of calories you have to replace it with something else, namely carbohydrates! Don’t believe me, just check the ingredients of these so called “healthy” Low Fat options; they all contain more sugar than their fat filled equivalent!
For example a low fat “healthy” muffin from Starbucks contains 1.5 teaspoons more sugar than its fatty equivalent or a low fat Tikka Masala contains 2 ½ teaspoons more, 100g of Yeo Valley natural low fat yoghurt also contains 1 teaspoon more … and so and so on! Again hopefully you get the point – low fat is NOT the healthy option. And even if they don’t replace the calories all it means is that you have to eat TWICE as much to feel satisfied!!!