DR. MERCOLA ON “EATING FATS”
Original article written by Dr. Joseph Mercola, D.O. (Doctor of Osteopathy)
CBS News, one of the most-watched news programs in the world, recently ran a report questioning whether animal fat is as bad as ‘conventional wisdom’ would have you believe.
The answer? It most certainly is not.
The vilification of fats go back to the early 1950′s, when Dr. Ancel Keys published an influential paper comparing fat intake and heart disease mortality in six countries.
Americans, who ate the most fat had the highest heart disease mortality rate, while the Japanese, who ate the least amount of fat had the fewest heart disease deaths.
However, this was a perfect case of statistical cherry-picking to support a position.
Statistics were actually available for 22 countries, and when all 22 were analyzed and included, the link between fat consumption and heart disease was nonexistent.
The Danger of Turning a Misguided, Unproven Hypothesis into Dogma…
Unfortunately, the hypothesis presented by Dr. Keys quickly turned into the dogmatic belief that saturated fats increase your risk of heart attack and cardiovascular disease, regardless of evidence to the contrary.
Today, it’s been well-established that the only really dangerous fat out there is trans fat (margarine, vegetable oils), which initially, and ironically, were touted as the answer to that heart-harming saturated fat.
Despite this, the general belief that fat is bad for you lingers even in the highest echelons of medicine.
The truth is that your body requires saturated fats, and the ‘substantiating evidence’ pointing toward saturated fats being harmful is flimsy at best.
Gary Taubes discussed this lack of evidence in an interview I did with him a few months ago. Taubes is a science and health journalist, and author of several books, including Good Calories, Bad Calories: Fats, Carbs, and the Controversial Science of Diet and Health, and Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It. In that interview, he argued against the notion that the saturated fat-heart disease hypothesis has any scientific merit:
“Those previous studies never actually confirmed the hypothesis,” he says. “… I lectured at the NIH a couple of years ago and… talked to a guy who ran an NIA-funded childhood obesity research program. He said their primary concern with obese kids is to keep their saturated fat content down… He said there are thousands of studies… confirming the evils of saturated fat.”
I said to him, ‘The difference between you and I is I actually spent a significant portion of my life reading those studies and ‘getting’ them all.’
In 1984, when there was a consensus conference by the NIH saying every American over the age two should eat a low-fat diet, there were actually about eight or nine studies… [but] they could never show that eating a reduced saturated fat diet would make you live longer. It might reduce heart disease rates; it did in some studies, but it increased cancer rates… When you look at the meta-analyses that have been done looking at these issues, and a couple of them came out in the last two years, the results are always the same.
There is not enough evidence to say that saturated fat is bad for you, and there has never been that evidence.”
Why Your Body Needs Saturated Fat
Saturated fats from animal and vegetable sources (such as meat, dairy, certain oils, and tropical plants like coconut) provide the building blocks for your cell membranes and a variety of hormones and hormone like substances that are essential to your health. Fats also slows down absorption of your meal so that you feel satiated longer.
In addition, saturated fats are also:
- Carriers for important fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E and K, and required for the conversion of carotene to vitamin A, for mineral absorption, and for a host of other biological processes
- Useful antiviral agents (caprylic acid)
- Effective as an anticaries, antiplaque and anti fungal agents (lauric acid)
- Useful to actually lower cholesterol levels (palmitic and stearic acids)
- Modulators of genetic regulation and prevent cancer (butyric acid)
Fats also provide a highly concentrated source of energy in your diet—a source of energy that is far more ideal than carbohydrates, which is why I recommend increasing healthy fat consumption in combination with severely restricting refined carbohydrates (sugars, fructose, and grains).
There is emerging evidence that your diet should be at least half healthy fat, and possibly as high as 70 percent. Part of the reason for this is that there are powerful adverse hormonal changes that typically occur when your body burns non-vegetable carbohydrates like grains and sugars. This does not occur when you consume fibrous vegetables or healthy fats. This likely explains the mountain of scientific evidence showing that calorie restricted diets extend lifespan. Mostly likely it is not a calorie issue per se, as it is the type of calories, specifically non-vegetable carbohydrates.
As a general rule, when you cut down on carbs, you need to increase your fat consumption. Replacing it with more protein is not a wise choice as it will also have similar problems. And, while this also works in the opposite way; meaning when you cut fat, you need to replace that lost energy source with carbs, this strategy has the unfortunate effect of promoting fat storage and weight gain.
Not All Saturated Fats are the Same…
It’s unfortunate, but in today’s world of processed food-like products, it’s more important than ever to really understand what “real” food is, and not fall for the idea that you can substitute real foods with “new and improved” alternatives. Doing so can have severe health consequences. Trading naturally-occurring saturated fats for trans fats is just one example. Not understanding the inherent nutritional differences between grass-fed, organically-raised meats and that from cattle raised in confined animal feeding operations (CAFO) is another.
They’re simply not interchangeable. Neither are organic vegetables and conventionally grown—or worse, genetically modified—varieties…
As I just mentioned, when you cut carbs, you need to replace those calories with healthy fats. Both are sources of energy, but healthy fats are far more ideal than carbs. (In fact, saturated fat is the preferred fuel for your heart.) However, not just any kind of fat will do. The Atkins Diet is one popular example of a low-carb, high-fat diet that has helped many shed unwanted pounds. Unfortunately, Dr. Atkins didn’t pay much attention to the QUALITY of the fats, so while his recommendations worked in the short-term, many who tried it ended up experiencing long-term problems.
It’s important to understand that not all saturated fats are the same. There are subtle differences that have profound health implications, and if you avoid eating all saturated fats, your health will likely suffer as a result.
There are in fact more than a dozen different types of saturated fat, but you predominantly consume only three: stearic acid, palmitic acid and lauric acid.
It’s already been well established that stearic acid (found in cocoa and animal fat) has no adverse effects on your cholesterol levels, and actually gets converted in your liver into the monounsaturated fat called oleic acid. The other two, palmitic and lauric acid, do raise total cholesterol. However, since they raise “good” cholesterol as much or more than “bad” cholesterol, you’re still actually lowering your risk of heart disease.
So, What is “Healthy Fat,” and How Much Do You Need?
Sources of healthy fats include:
- Olives and Olive oil
- Coconuts and coconut oil
- Butter made from raw grass-fed organic milk
- Raw Nuts, such as, almonds or pecans Organic pastured egg yolks Avocados
- Grass fed meats
- Palm oil
- Unheated organic nut oils
Personally, my diet consists of close to 70 percent fat. I recently published a discussion between Paul Jaminet, PhD., author of the book, Perfect Health Diet, and Dr. Ron Rosedale, an expert on insulin and leptin metabolism, which compares their individual low-carb, high-fat diet recommendations. While there is mild controversy whether or not you can safely include starches like rice and potatoes in your diet, both do recommend consuming somewhere between 50-70 percent fat.
This is in stark contrast to conventional dietary guidelines issued by the U.S. government, which advises you to consume less than 10 percent of calories from saturated fats!
Saturated Fat Does Belong in a Healthy Diet
Such a low recommendation is illogical when you consider the evidence available today, which supports saturated fat as a necessary part of a heart healthy diet. For example, as discussed in a recent article by Donald W. Miller, Jr., MD, a number of indigenous tribes around the world are living proof that a high-saturated fat diet equates to low mortality from heart disease.
These include:
- Tribe Primary Diet Percentage Saturated Fat
- Maasai tribe in Kenya/Tanzania Meat, milk, cattle blood 66 percent
- Inuit Eskimos in the Arctic Whale meat and blubber 75 percent
- Rendille tribe in NE Kenya Camel milk, meat, blood 63 percent
- Tokealu, atoll islands in New Zealand territory Fish and coconuts 60 percent
And then there’s human breast milk, which contains 54 percent saturated fat. Since breast milk is the most perfect diet in existence for developing infants, the presence of high amounts of saturated fat cannot easily be construed as a “mistake.”
When you replace saturated fat with a higher carbohydrate intake, particularly refined carbohydrate, you exacerbate insulin resistance and obesity, increase triglycerides and small LDL particles, and reduce beneficial HDL cholesterol. The authors state that dietary efforts to improve your cardiovascular disease risk should primarily emphasize the limitation of refined carbohydrate intake, and weight reduction.
Dr. Pinna says:
The only studies that have never been contradicted are those of Caloric Restriction. Also, moderation in all things, including food items. In my opinion, eating 70 percent of your calories in fat is dangerous.
Dr. Mercola should see a doctor of medicine.
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