Heath Nut My story part 4 Saturated Fat

Fat is your friend. The brain thrives on a fat-rich, low-carbohydrate diet. David Perlmutter
Your levels of cholesterol are primarily dependent on your own body's production rather than the result of eating animal fats. Moreover, some forms of cholesterol are heart healthy. Harley Pasternak
Thin people are beautiful, but fat people are adorable. Jackie Gleason

Note:  This post is not meant to be medical advice.  It is only my experience with and observations about saturated fat.  Always include your doctor in the discussion before you make changes.  

     I was going to write one more post about my food journey in this Health Nut series, but when I was watching a documentary about diets and saw a doctor deriding folks who put butter in their coffee--thereby endangering their lives with saturated fat, I got a little angry. The Low Fat Diet is such an old story that doesn't hold water--it never did and I get tired of hearing it. I decided that saturated fat needed its own post.

     So where did all this hoopla about cholesterol and saturated fat come from?  Not from a distinguished research team who did studies and trials on the effects of fat on people, but from only one man, Ancel Keys. Certainly one man can have a good idea that changes the world, but one person can also be totally wrong and use the power of his or her personality to persuade others...cult leaders are an example.  By studying eating habits in different nations, Mr. Keys became utterly convinced that the epidemic of heart disease was caused by saturated fat and cholesterol.  He wasn't a doctor but a an aggressive and persuasive scientist who pushed his findings until he got the ear of the World Health Organization and the American heart Association.  Once the medical community was on board Ancel's ship, the government changed its diet guidelines and food pyramid while the food industry was revolutionized, totally changing our heath and our way of eating.  Opposing opinions to the saturated fat theory were silenced or ignored but today there those who dispute Mr. Keys' findings saying that he cherry picked his data, while others still defend him. However, I will leave that for now and focus on my own experiences with and observations about saturate fats.

     I have questions.  Since heart disease was a rare condition in the early 1900's and became the number one killer by 1950, why did Mr. Keys blame the fats?  While there were big changes to the American diet by then such as an increased intake of sugar, white flour and processed food, the dietary fat intake was pretty much the way it had always been.  Why was it suddenly the culprit? If we look at our ancestors--and I don't mean the paleolithic cavemen types--but our immediate ancestors, what where they eating during the decades of virtually no heart disease?  I know that my grandparents and beyond were mostly farmers.  Farmers ate food they raised themselves and most weren't vegans.  They ate bacon and butter, red meat and lard.  Have you ever been to a hog butchering? I have.  While the men dressed out the meat, the ladies took care of the lard rendering.  We cut the pork fat --and there was a lot of it-- into little pieces and placed it in a large cast iron kettle over a fire in the yard, where it was cooked down.  It took a long time and required a lot of pot stirring and gossiping, but in the end we wound up with a pot full of lard and a bi-product of "cracklin's (think pork skins.) which was considered a delicious snack.  The lard was packaged up and put in the freezer along with the meat and it was used to cook with.  When I got married and moved South near my husbands people, you could buy lard in the grocery store and every kitchen had a canister for bacon grease that had a special straining lid. No one threw away bacon grease!  And everyone ate bacon...except for maybe me.

     Then all of that started to change after Ancel Keys research. Doctor's prescribed low fat diets. The food industry heavily advertised low fat.  It was suggested that you drink 2% milk with your low fat cake--cake made with applesauce instead of butter.  Butter had to give way to margarine; to cut back further on fat there was diet margarine. Lard was replaced by Crisco and vegetable oil. They even made turkey bacon! No one considered it harmful to remove fat from foods, increasing the carbohydrate content or that margarine contained a myriad of strange  ingredients including trans-fat. 

     Since I was a chronic dieter I got 100% on board with the low fat movement. I bought the vegetable oils but used them sparingly; I cooked stir fry in chicken broth. I used low fat salad dressing (salads will make you skinny, right? No. They only made me hungry for cheeseburgers!) I ate diet margarine, and bought skinless, boneless meat and cut back on eggs. I used low fat coffee creamer and anything else I could get low fat. Oh yeah! low fat cheese! (yuck!)There was no grease clogging up the stove vent in my kitchen!  The main thing I remember about those decades was that I was always hungry. Always. Hungry. I have never forgotten the hunger and every time I see a misinformed doctor or diet guru talk about low fat, I still get a clutch in the gut.  

     So what did all that low fat dieting do for me? Lose weight? No. Create delicious food? No. Satisfying meals? No. Improve my mood and energy? No. Lower cholesterol? NO! Really, the answer to that one is no.

     I started rebelling in small ways in the early 90's while at a weight watcher's meeting the leader said we should eat the egg whites and throw away the yolks because the whites have a substance that lowers cholesterol.  What? Really? I had an epiphany. I looked around the room at the others listening in rapt attention and realized that they didn't get what I just got. The egg white cancels out the cholesterol in the yolk! GOD DONE TOOK CARE OF THE EGG! I started eating eggs again.

      Not long after I gave up on weight watchers, I was scolded by a doctor for high cholesterol. I couldn't believe it. This is when I was on a plant based diet, eating a lot of rice with a little fish.  She put me on a statin which caused side effects I couldn't live with so I stopped taking it.  Then I reread Dr Adkin's Diet Revolution (I read it once before the low fat era).  He said that you don't get cholesterol by eating it. I had another epiphany!  Wait! Beef has cholesterol.  What does beef cattle eat?  Other beef? NO! Grains! Carbs! Beef are fed grains! To fatten them up! Do you get it?  I hope you're getting it.  That is when I stopped the diet margarine and started...eating... butter!  Then about 7 years ago I learned that the vegetable oils that were low in cholesterol are too high in Omega 6 which are dangerous to the heart and they were heavily processed to boot.  I was a faithful canola oil user!  Well, I knocked that off and bought some olive oil.  Later I started using coconut oil (a super food with healing properties) and now I mainly use avocado oil--lots of it. Yes I hear you. That is SATURATED FAT!  Yes'm it is.

      So what has saturated fat done for me?  My cholesterol is normal--really it is.  All the time. I stopped gaining weight and started very slowly losing.  I eat healthy, yummy food. I actually cook avoiding fast or processed food. I have good moods and energy. I AM NOT HUNGRY!  I repeat! I am not hungry!  So I eat less.  I don't get up starving so I can skip breakfast.  I never liked to eat in the morning and I no longer listen to the misinformed push the idea that breakfast is the best meal of the day.  

      So that is my spiel. I am only one woman who's not a scientist or doctor, so I don't want to push this on anyone.  I just hope this makes you think or check out the links below or open up discussions with your doctor and love ones.  

      Then again, feel free to dismiss all this and just enjoy the picture.

      And yes, it's true. I put butter in my coffee.

It happened in Mexico Pencil 3 x 4

https://www.amjmed.com/article/S0002-9343(14)00354-4/fulltext
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancel_Keys
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/saturated-fat-good-or-bad#section2
https://www.makelifenatural.net/superfood-coconut-oil-30-uses-benefits/