Oct 04, 2019

What are The Good Fats?

For over 50 years, saturated fats have been demonised due to their supposed links to obesity and Coronary Heart Disease (CHD). We have been thoroughly conditioned to believe that butter, cream and animal fats are plaque-building poisons and that margarines and monounsaturated vegetable oils are the safe alternative. Despite this dietary dogma we continue to become more obese and heart disease remains our largest killer. Something is wrong with this equation and the greatest flaw in the “killer fat” hypothesis is the fact that our Great Grandparents consumed almost double the amount of saturated fats and yet CHD and obesity were a non-issue!

We all need good fats in our diet. Our brains are 60% fat by dry weight and the membranes of all ten trillion cells in our body are made primarily of fat.

Many of us are now aware that the Essential Fatty Acids (EFAs) in our bodies and food need to be in balance to be effective. The balance between omega 6 and omega 3 fats should ideally be 2:1 (in favour of omega 6), but in this country, the imbalance has ballooned out to 20:1 (while in the US it is 26:1).

Four Reasons To Scrap Unsaturated Cooking Oils

1) Reclaiming EFA balance – most of us suffer an omega six excess which sponsors inflammation, so we need to pull these omega 6-dominated oils from our diets. They are found everywhere, including in all fast foods, most commercial cakes and biscuits and, of course, in most of the multiple vegetable cooking oils lining the supermarket shelves.

2) Avoiding transfats – many of the polyunsaturated vegetable oils, including the canola, sunflower and safflower oils that are so widely favoured by the food industry, have been partially hydrogenated to extend their shelf life. Transfats are an inevitable consequence of hydrogenation. Polyunsaturated oils are notoriously unstable and, ideally, they should not be stored or used for cooking.

3) Dumping the easily damaged – Most of the unsaturated cooking oils have relatively low smoke points so they are easily damaged during cooking. This means that they are rapidly oxidised on the stove and the food in which they are cooked features high levels of free radicals. This problem is seriously magnified during the constant reheating involved in commercial deep-frying. Even the all-popular olive oil should really only be reserved for stir-frying for very short periods. Olive oil is a great oil for salads and dipping but it should be consumed raw as it has a low smoke point and is easily oxidised.

4) Unsaturated fats can make you fat – overconsumption of polyunsaturated vegetable oils is very hard on the thyroid gland. A slow metabolism and rapid weight gain are two of the consequences of a sluggish thyroid. Decades ago, American livestock producers found that the fats in soy and corn could compromise the thyroid and increase weight gain with less food. These two inputs remain the staples of commercial meat production when you are seeking more weight for less cost. Unfortunately we have ignored the obesity link to consumption of polyunsaturated fats in humans. Thyroid malfunction is absurdly common in the Western world, as is associated weight gain.
So if the common cooking oils are off the list, with what do we fry our food? The answer is saturated fat, and the healthiest sources come from the fruit of certain palms. Check out the article entitled “Getting The Good Oils".