The Skinny on Fats: Overcoming Lipophobia and Fake Science PTSD
What are “good” fats and “bad” fats? Well, kids, it’s (true) story time! Our friends and clients in the medical profession will confirm that they are taught to teach you that “good fats” are unsaturated fats and “bad” fats are the saturated ones, end of story pretty much. However, this outdated hypothesis turned mainstream assumption fails to take into account current understanding of lipid biochemistry, plus there are no well-designed unbiased lab or population studies showing this to be even remotely true.
What really seems to matter about fats is the quality of plant or animal they are sourced from and whether or not they are damaged or rancid, because this causes inflammation, not only in the endothelial lining of your arteries, but throughout your body. This means that rancid, damaged fats affect, your gut, brain, liver and microbial balance (your microbiome), but it’s even bigger than that. Systemic inflammation can damage and disrupt any part of you that has cells. Just think of all the possible disease scenarios!
Let’s start with the history of this issue in the United States, although there are parallels worldwide. To this day, the top dogs of the vegetable oil industry, via their cover corporation, the American Heart Association (AHA), do not want you to eat animal fats, coconut or palm oil, because they want to sell you canola, corn, cotton seed and soybean oil. Makes good business sense, right? We think it’s brilliant, save the fact that their misinformation has contributed to the deaths of millions of people. Yes, heart disease has gone radically up, and not down, with the increase in consumption of vegetable oils and the processed foods that contain them. Anywho, back to business strategy…
Conveniently, the animal and tropical fats the clever folks at the AHA want to steer you away from contain saturated fats, so they got together and hired a scientist named Ancel Keys in the 50’s to create a study to prove their point with the end game of convincing the FDA (the Food and Drug Administration), the AMA (American Medical Association) and, ultimately the general public, that saturated fats cause heart disease. They even got him on the cover of Time Magazine. The idea was promoted that since saturated fats are solid and waxy they would somehow harden and clog your arteries, which is a funny idea considering they actually melt at body temperature.
Later, whistleblowers revealed that the “study” threw out contradictory data and just kept the statistics that matched their objective.This was only the beginning of their bought and paid for “science” that they are still pumping out today as coconut oil and grass fed butter steal the limelight once again.
Real data mapping saturated fat consumption and incidence of heart disease shows that there are populations, like the Inuit, Masai, Rendille, and Tokelau, who eat more than 50-60% of their calories from fat, much of which is saturated, and they thrive with little to no heart disease, cancer, obesity or diabetes. There are others who eat smaller amounts, like the Japanese, and they also thrive. So, it seems that we are very biodiverse and bioindividual, meaning different people thrive on different diets.
Here’s one factor that is not so different from person to person. Independent research (read here “not industry funded and, therefore, biased) has shown for decades that the following factors most contribute to the inflammation induced tissue damage at the root of heart disease:
- Rancid or damaged oils from factory farm animals and refined vegetable oils. In particular, higher ratios of omega 6 (pro-inflammatory) oils than omega 3 (anti-inflammatory oils). What is the best way to get inflammatory oils in your diet? Your guessed it! The vegetable oil industry’s beloved high PUFA (Polyunsaturated Fatty Acid) oils from, you guessed it, the refined (rancid, deodorized) vegetable oils they sell.
- Excessive processed sugars, which interact adversely with rancid or damaged oils to form AGES (Advanced Glycation End Products).
- Exposure to other toxic chemicals, most of which are synthetic.
- Stress, which causes hormonal cascades that trigger pro inflammatory responses.
To be clear, refined vegetable oils and grain fed animal fats are higher in omega 6s, leading to more inflammation. The omega 3s the vegetable oils (like soy) do contain are damaged in the refining process, making them highly toxic. Contrastingly, most unrefined vegetable oils, wild seafood and pastured or grass fed animals are higher in undamaged omega 3 fats. Grass fed animal fats are also high in CLAs (conjugated lineolic acids) which help us build muscle and burn fat, which is part of the reason fat doesn’t make you fat.
Real deal research (not the fake kind) not only shows that saturated fats are safe and do not make us fat, but that we need different kinds of fats from a variety of high quality (well sourced, undamaged) plants and animals. These foods, from avocados, olives and seeds to grass fed butter, eggs, fish and meats naturally have different ratios of saturated, monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fatty acids. By the way, no fat is 100% saturated or unsaturated. They’re all a mix.
Furthermore, if you suffer from lipophobia (fear of eating fats), we think it is crucial that you understand the following:
- Most of your body tissues are made of protein and fats. You need dietary proteins and fats as building blocks and to repair your body.
- Your cellular membranes are essentially the brain of your cells. They are made of lipids (fats) and you cannot live well or at all without them in your diet.
- Your body needs certain fatty acids to make cholesterol, which is your friend, your medic, your ally. Cholesterol is crucial for cellular integrity (the healthy form and function of cells) and used to repair tissue damage, including in the lining of your arteries. Saying that cholesterol causes heart disease is like saying bandages cause cuts. Do you want to do away with the bandages or stop the cuts? In fact, when total cholesterol goes below 200, the lower it goes, the greater your risk of neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s, multiple sclerosis (MS), Parkinsons’ and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), formerly known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease. A Japanse study found that women that lived the longest and had lowest incidences of heart disease were the ones whose cholesterol increased as they aged, which makes sense since cholesterol repairs damage. The problem is when we cause so much damage that cholesterol accumulates and blocks arteries, but, again, the root cause solution is to stop doing things that damage the arteries in the first place!
- We use the same word, “fat,” for body fat and all kinds of different dietary fats in English, which confuses people into thinking eating more dietary fat increases body fat. Well designed studies show that, metabolically speaking, dietary and body fat have a roughly inverse relationship in most people. The less nourishing fats you eat, the more likely you are to have a weight problem because your hormones will be thrown off, you will have a harder time feeling full and you will likely crave and eat too many carbohydrates and sugars as a result. The more nourishing (not junk) fats you eat, the more balanced your body will be and the healthier your fatty acid metabolism (which is also tied to your brain, gut and immune systems).
- Your hormones are made from proteins and fats, and chronically starving yourself (dieting) disrupts your ability to make them. Obesity is a hormone imbalance, in which all hormones can be implicated, but the damage usually starts with stress hormones triggering insulin, the fat storage hormone.
- A ketogenic diet is when you are predominately using fats as fuel, as opposed to carbohydrates. This metabolic state of fat adaptation can be useful in healing certain issues like obesity and metabolic syndrome.
This mess is still unresolved to this day, as we struggle to convince clients who have been programmed to fear saturated fats and eat damaged PUFAS, or avoid fats altogether (also very dangerous). This is an example of something that is, unfortunately, all too common in the field of science. So, when you read that something has been “scientifically proven,” know that it could be anywhere from three kinds of studies (of course, in reality, it’s more of a gradual spectrum and more complex):
- what we like to call conscious science, or a well designed independent scientific study that is genuinely focused on exploring truth (and is not industry funded with the bias of economic interest). Of course, all science has biases because there is no such thing as a totally objective human mind. All humans are subjective thinkers, so the closest thing we can do is be as aware as possible of our own biases. The important thing is going in with as open a mind as possible and being willing to have your mental and social world turned upside down should your findings reveal paradigm shifting outcomes. The best of these scientists are big picture thinkers and have this thing called integrity. This is how most people imagine “science” is practiced, but it is actually the least prevalent kind.
- mediocre science, or a study that is not necessarily totally corrupt, but not that well designed and built upon some of these common assumptions that aren’t really accurate. Often the investigators just want to get ‘er done and may be resistant to paradigm changing outcomes because they do not want to rearrange their personal world view or rock the boat politically and socially with their peers (kind of a more play it safe lazy “science”). This kind of science is very common.
- fake for-profit science, or as you can guess from this context, scientists that are bought and sold by companies with specific economic interest. The outcome is pre-determined and the study is designed around it. Scientists who do not cooperate are threatened with the destruction of their careers and even personal harm or worse. One example is the case of Mary Enig, Ph.D., who first discovered that trans fats cause heart disease. She sacrificed her career, despite very clear threats that she would never be hired or funded again, to publish her data to protect the public. She gave her career for us, so we really honor and respect her. Pharmaceutical, food and big agriculture companies (like Monsanto and Dow) are some of the biggest employers of rent-a-scientists to “prove” what you want the public, law makers, government agencies and court judges in lawsuits to think.
With the revolving door between politics and big pharma, there needs to be an independent gatekeeper for the funding of science in this country. The medical literature is largely funded by gatekeepers that are very dependent on the success of blockbuster medical treatments in our for profit medical system, which really explains the limitations in perspectives that are even allowed. It’s really an ethical issue, where stockholder profits have become more important than patient outcomes. Would it make sense for a car company to fund and control the research of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, which studies auto safety?
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