Fats!

Yes, fat is indeed a fun topic. You may have heard many things about fat. Perhaps you heard that fat is bad in general, and that eliminating fat would be the healthiest way to live. Or maybe you know that some fats are good, like avocado and fish, but to avoid the bad fats. One thing that makes fats exciting is the misinformation.

Lets get right to it. Fat is a macro-nutrient, and has roughly 9 calories per gram (5 more calories per gram than its siblings protein and carbohydrate!) So does this mean that fat makes you fat? Is going on a low fat diet healthy? Short answer is, no and no. Fat is a great way to help keep you full, and a great way to help you absorb vitamins and minerals, especially the fat soluble vitamins A, D, E, and K. So that low fat milk you may be drinking is a good way to not absorb the vitamin D that was put into it. And I can tell you, when I was eating low fat for the 6 months of my minor eating disorder, lets just say I was weak, felt sick, and had no sex drive. (This could be due to the low calories and high energy output as well.)

We need to break down fats into 4 categorizes, and if you are familiar with nutrition you should know them. Mono-unsaturated, poly-unsaturated, saturated, and trans fat. If you follow mainstream you may believe that saturated fat can clog arteries, and that you should only be consuming unsaturated fat. The USDA even recommends only less than 10 percent of your diet comes from saturated fat! (Future reference..don't listen to the USDA) Thats not a lot of coconut products at all. Another short answer that I'll get into another time - saturated fat is not bad for you, and although it raises HDL cholesterol, having high cholesterol does not mean you are going to have a heart attack (Heart attacks happen at both high and low total cholesterol levels.)

So, as far as I am concerned, saturated fat does not have any negative effects to the body, and according to Dr. Mary Enig and Sally Fallon, saturated fat has health benefits.  Saturated fat is found in many animal products like meat and dairy (butter, cheese etc). It is also found in tropical oils like coconut and palm oil.

Mono-unsaturated fat is another healthy fat, which can be found in many plant products like avocado and olives (olive oil), and in some animal foods (for example beef). This seems to be the fat that almost everyone agrees is healthy.

Poly-unsaturated fat, in my opinion a driving force in many modern diseases, is where the confusion comes in. The fat, as can be seen by its name, is made of mainly two fatty acids, omega 3 and omega 6. Both are essential, and a balance of 1:1 is ideal and natural. Our ancestors probably had a 1:1 balance. Due to our screwed up food system today, it is extremely hard to find that balance, and shit vegetable oils which are subsidized and pushed as "healthy" like canola, corn, and cottonseed oil are cheap and abundant. They are rancid at room temperature and prone to even more oxidation when exposed to heat and pressure. That, in addition to how conventional meat and eggs are raised, and the amount of junk food many people eat, leads to the imbalance being up to 25:1 in some individuals. This inflammation, in my opinion, is a main force in heart disease. According to Dr. Chris Kresser, disease like heart disease, type 2 diabetes, obesity, metabolic syndrome, and more are caused by this inflammation and imbalance.

Finally, trans fat, is what many can agree is no good to eat at all. An unnatural fat, it is the result of vegeatble oils which have been partially hydrogenated in order to make the liquid oil solid at room temperature. Think of margarine, a liquid turned solid to resemble butter (which is healthy for you.) This process of hydrogenation is foreign to the body and unnatural. Look out in many processed foods, partially hydrogenated oil is everywhere. Food labels can say "no trans fat" if the grams of partially hydrogenated oil are less than .5 per serving. When saturated fat got the bad rap in the 60s (more on this later), hydrogenated oils started replace healthy coconut oils and animal fats like lard in modern restaurants and food establishments. Sadly, many places still use trans fat, although NYC establishments have banned it.

Well hopefully that was interesting.