Do you ever wonder if your body has an immediate effect after eating a fast food meal? This news clip shows a visual effect of increased triglycerides and shows how much harder your heart has to work to pump blood. Go watch this 2 min news clip and come back to share your thoughts.

In this news video about fast food and its affect on triglycerides they demonize saturated fat. But we know that from this study and many low carb dieters that triglyceride levels go down when restricting carbohydrates.

Here Dr. Briffa writes about a group of McMaster University researchers in Ontario who reviewed all the scientific nutritional evidence linking to heart disease. They found saturated fats to not be on that list.

Some dietary factors were associated with an increased risk of heart disease. These were:

A higher intake of trans-fatty acids
A higher intake of foods of high glycaemic index or high glycaemic load

Please note the absence of saturated fat in this list. In other words, this review shows the totality of the evidence does not support a link between saturated fat and heart disease. By the way, higher intakes of meat and eggs were not associated with an increased risk of heart disease either. And neither was total fat consumption.

Most fast food is detrimental to your health because of rancid vegetable fats like canola, corn and soy. These oils are the omega 6 oils that are highly unstable.

One reason the polyunsaturates cause so many health problems is that they tend to become oxidized or rancid when subjected to heat, oxygen and moisture as in cooking and processing. Rancid oils are characterized by free radicals-that is, single atoms or clusters with an unpaired electron in an outer orbit. These compounds are extremely reactive chemically. They have been characterized as “marauders” in the body for they attack cell membranes and red blood cells and cause damage in DNA/RNA strands, thus triggering mutations in tissue, blood vessels and skin. Free radical damage to the skin causes wrinkles and premature aging; free radical damage to the tissues and organs sets the stage for tumors; free radical damage in the blood vessels initiates the buildup of plaque. Source: The Skinny on Fats By Mary Enig PhD and Sally Fallon

Trans fats have also been used in the fast food industries because they are cheap and make food taste good as well as increasing the shelf life of vegetable oils. Although some cities have banned the use of trans fats for frying deep fried food, restaurants may still serve margarine instead of real butter. Trans fats can also be hidden in pastries, peanut butter, pizza dough and cookies. So unless you are reading labels on your fast food, you can’t be certain that you are eating a trans fat free meal. Trans fats can have a negative effect on heart disease, cancer, diabetes, immunity, reproduction and lactation, and obesity. Source: Mary Enig PhD  Dangers of Trans Fats.

Some healthy choices for restaurant food:

• is baked fish with lemon and herbs
• bunless burgers (check for fillers)
• grilled steaks
• baked chicken
• vegetable stir fry’s minus rice cooked in butter

There must be more healthy options but I can’t think of anything else.

My question for you:

What are your healthy restaurant food options?

This post is part of Real Food Wednesday hosted by Kelly The Kitchen Kop

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In today’s culture of the low fat movement, the idea of slathering, eating and cooking with saturated fats is disgusting to most. To lose fat we need to eat light, light and even lighter. Popular weight loss shows demonize meats and saturated fats and forbid egg yolks and encourage anything lean.  So what else are we to think?

Low Fat Dogma!

If we eat light – we will be light, have a lighter carbon footprint, love our animals, and have clearer minds to see and know our inner spiritual selves and god.

What this is is an ideology. It is all perception.

When it is portrait on television as healthy, the government reinforcing it in food guides, doctors and nutritionist telling their patients, magazines touting it as the greatest way of losing weight and product manufactures jumping on the “lean” bandwagon it is no surprise that everyone would try to adopt this way of living.

It is easy to vilify the meat and fat as artery clogging.

Eating “light” saves the animals. Eating meat “murders” animals (I do own a t-shirt that reads “meat is murder”).

Heavy, greasy saturated fat is bad. Light vegetable polyunsaturated oils are good.

We know that studies have shown the opposite –  that saturated fats are good and vegetable fats (polyunsaturated fats) are bad. Meat does not cause heart disease.

We have evidence all around us. Obesity is epidemic. Never in history has obesity been so prevalent. Obesity has created new industries – new drugs and supplements, weight loss clinics, food products, food addiction centers etc. Do you think that spouting the truth, that eating saturated fat will decrease appetite and help folks lose weight is going to happen? No. There is too much money now in the weight loss industry and in the drug industries.

Just remember how persecuted Dr. Atkins was. Nobody wanted to hear his science. The perception of eating bacon and eggs as being healthy was laughed at.

How do you change this “low fat” and “eating light” perception? You can start by enjoying your saturated fats and not feeling guilty by doing so. If you have vegetarian ethics (and even if you don’t!), I recommend that you find a good organic farmer that loves their animals. You can find out how the animals are handled, what they are fed, if they get to hang out in the pasture fields and eat good healthy bugs.

Don’t forget that it is carbohydrates in all forms that increase insulin and get stored as fat (fruit, grains, breads, beans, lentils and sugars etc). To get the fat loss benefits of saturated fats, carbohydrates should be restricted.

When you eat meat and saturated fats you can

• be as spiritual as a vegetarian
• love your animals
• you can have a low carbon footprint by selecting food from local organic farms
• you can feel “light” by breaking your food addictions, feel satisfied after eating meals and stop carbohydrate cravings
• you can feel great and have lots of energy and a “clear mind” (brain fog is a symptom of candida  yeast which thrives on carbohydrates and sugars)

You can enjoy your bacon and eggs (yolks and all), lose weight and be healthier for it!

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So it has seemed that in the last week that I have gotten some flak for posting this series. I will address some concerns. Like I have reiterated in my previous blog posts about the veggie diet is that this series is inspired by health problems I have seen in my own daughter and the same problems I see in other vegetarian children. These children have no choice in being vegetarian even though it is their health that is at stake.

The Low Carb Fibre issue

The Low Carb diet is not deficient in fibre. Actually fibre reduces net carb counts and you can get plenty of fibre from ground flax seeds, coconut, nuts, seeds and vegetables.

Saturated Fats And Cholesterol

The comments that I received about saturated fats and cholesterol were that they are not healthy, that the low carb movement is a fad and “plain out of style”. All of this is false. Saturated fats are very healthy and cholesterol may actually be an anti-oxidant.

As for the low carb diet being a fad, Gary Taubes writes in his book Good Calories, Bad Calories that the Low Carb diets can be traced all the way to the 1800’s and they are still around to this day in many different forms:

The Mercola Diet, Susan Sommers diet, The Paleo Diet, The South Beach Diet, Protein Power Diet, Dr. Atkins Diet, The Leptin Diet, Dr. Richard Bernstein Diabetes Solution, Dr. Al Sears the Author of “The Doctor’s Heart Cure” and many more… All of these except the Susan Sommers diet have medical doctors who stand behind them. I believe Susan Sommers referred to nutritionists and dieticians to help her outline the principles of Sommercising.

So if you still think that these diets are “fads” let me refer to this study that was performed for 12 months (which is one of the longest and largest studies performed) and found that the Atkins Diet was the healthiest.

The results of the study:

At the end of a year, the 77 women assigned to the Atkins group had lost an average of 10.4 pounds. Those assigned to LEARN lost 5.7 pounds, the Ornish followers lost 4.8 pounds and women on the Zone lost 3.5 pounds, on average. In all four groups, however, some participants lost up to 30 pounds.

After 12 months, women following the Atkins diet, relative to at least one of the other groups, had larger decreases in body mass index, triglycerides and blood pressure; their high-density lipoprotein, the good kind of cholesterol, increased more than the women on the other diets.

The Atkin’s Diet is a High Fat, medium protein, low carb

The Ornish Diet is a Low Fat, vegetarian diet, high carb

This study is comparing the Low Carb Atkins diet and the High Carb Vegetarian diet together. And as you can see it is the Atkins diet that turned out to be healthier. This study was published in the March 7, 2007 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Saturated Fats are traditional fats and have been used since the times of Jacob, Issac and Moses.

In previous generations we have never had so much heart disease. But now we have introduced a lot of vegetable oils into our diets and guess what?? Heart disease has skyrocketed! Why? Because saturated fats are stable fats, they don’t oxidize and vegetable fats are easily oxidized.

Polyunsaturated vegetable fats are one of the greatest contributors of heart disease. Not only that but they also greatly contribute to increased cancer, immune system dysfunction, damage to the liver, reproductive organs and lungs, digestive disorders, depressed learning ability, impaired growth and weight gain. Source: Nourishing Traditions, Pg 10

I did call this article Low Carb Diet Vs. The Vegetarian Diet so I will give you another example…

Many people would say that Dr. Atkins died from eating a low carb diet which caused heart disease. But actually he died because he slipped and fell on some ice and hit his head.

There is even an online copy of his death certificate which states his death as a “blunt impact injury of head with epidural hematoma.”

As many people have vilified Dr. Atkins as having heart failure, I do have to mention the death of Jay Dinshah who was the founder of the American Vegan Society in 1960. He was born to a vegetarian family and had become vegan. His parents had congenital heart problems and he died of a heart attack at the age of 66.

It makes me question if these heart problems in the family could have been caused by oxidized polyunsaturated vegetable fats???

There is a lot of disagreement and just pure lies about what is healthy and what is not healthy. It is your choice what you feed your family. But our children need the best nutrition to thrive.

My daughter was not thriving on a vegetarian/vegan diet. We were able to heal her cavities, uncontrollable crying, and failure to thrive by following the dietary principles founded by Weston A. Price and written in Nourishing Traditions.

To your health and wellness,

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There is no need to be scared to eat saturated fat. There are actually proven health benefits to eating saturated fat. Here is my top ten reasons for eating fat at every meal!

1. Fat is satisfying and it slows digestion for vitamin absorption
2. Saturated fats make everything taste better.
3. No need to overeat because fat satiates hunger!
4. Increases the immune system because fats have antiviral agents (Lauric, capric and caprylic acids). Breast milk, coconut oil, palm oil and butter are high in those acids.
5. Fats are building blocks for cell membranes. They compose 50% of the cell membrane. If we are lacking in saturated fats then the cell membranes will lose their integrity and become more susceptible to disease and bacterial and viral infection.
6. Saturated fats are a preferred fuel for the heart and can lower cholesterol
7. 50% of calories of a mother’s breast milk comes from fat. The amount of cholesterol in breast milk is much higher than in a lot of foods we eat. Babies need saturated fat and cholesterol to feed their growing brains and nervous system. If babies need it, why should their mommies restrict their fat intake??
8. Saturated fats prevent osteoporosis. Essential vitamins such as A, D, E and K are only fat soluble. Fat is needed to be able to utilize and absorb these vitamins.
9. Did you know that Cholesterol is an antioxidant? It protects us from free radical damage just like berries!
10. Saturated fat is the most stable fat to cook with. It does not go rancid. This is a very healthy trait! Polyunsaturated vegetable oils such as canola, corn, safflower are highly reactive and should not be used for cooking. These oils go rancid very easily. Rancid vegetable oils are a major contributor to heart disease.

This is just a short list of benefits of saturated fats. There are many more. Don’t let anyone fool you into “the low fat diet is healthy” myth. Fats are integral part of a healthy diet and weight loss. Let saturated fats be the healthy choice.

To your health and wellness,

Catherine Osthaus

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