Why saturated fat is not bad for your health

Read my lips! Saturated fat is not a bad thing for your health!

If you visit a doctor, most will give you one piece of advice that remains pretty constant. You should sharply limit your intake of saturated fats. But will saturated fats really increase your risk of heart disease and raise your cholesterol? In a word, “no.;” in fact, humans need them. Yes, I’m going on record and this will shock a lot of people, but saturated fats are not the cause of heart disease.

So what kind of foods actually do contain saturated fats? Saturated fats come from dairy, as in butter and milk. and also in meats. So I recommend the grass-fed organic beef, naturally raised lamb, and organic raw dairy products (butter, cheese, milk, cream) and coconut oil.

There are several factors that make saturated fats important:.

1. Decreased cardiovascular risk factors. Saturated fat plays a key role in cardiovascular health. The addition of saturated fat to the diet reduces the levels of a substance called lipoprotein (A) that correlates strongly with risk for heart disease. Research has shown that when women diet, those eating the greatest percentage of the total fat in their diets as saturated fat, lose the most weight.

2. Stronger bones. Saturated fat is required for calcium to be effectively incorporated into bone.

3. Improved liver health. Saturated fat has been shown to protect the liver from alcohol and medications, including acetaminophen and other drugs commonly used for pain and arthritis.

4. Healthy lungs. For proper function, the airspaces of the lungs have to be coated with a thin layer of lung surfactant. The fat content of lung surfactant is 100 percent saturated fatty acids. Replacement of these critical fats by other types of fat makes faulty surfactant and potentially causes breathing difficulties.

5. Healthy brain. Your brain is mainly made of fat and cholesterol. The lion’s share of the fatty acids in the brain are actually saturated. A diet that skimps on healthy saturated fats robs your brain of the raw materials it needs to function optimally.

5. Proper nerve signaling. Certain saturated fats, particularly those found in butter, lard, coconut oil and palm oil function directly as “signaling messengers” that influence metabolism, including such critical jobs as the appropriate release of insulin.

7. Strong immune system. Saturated fats found in butter and coconut oil play key roles in immune health. Loss of sufficient saturated fatty acids in white blood cells hampers their ability to recognize and destroy foreign invaders, such as viruses, bacteria, and fungi.

A misguided fallacy that persists to this day is the belief that saturated fat will increase your risk of heart disease and heart attacks. This is simply another myth that has been harming your health for the last 30 or 40 years.

The truth is, saturated fats from animal and vegetable sources provide a concentrated source of energy in your diet, and they provide the building blocks for cell membranes and a variety of hormones and hormone-like substances. When you eat saturated fats as part of your meal, they slow down absorption so that you can go longer without feeling hungry. In addition, they act as carriers for important fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E and K. Dietary fats are also needed for the conversion of carotene to vitamin A, for mineral absorption and for a host of other biological processes.

Most people have heard of the ”lipid hypothesis.” If not by name, you’ve certainly heard of the concept behind the “lipid hypothesis,” and that is dietary fats causes heart disease..This flawed theory was largely spread by Ancel Keys, a diet researcher for whom military K-rations are named It was because of the lipid hypothesis that Americans were soon encouraged to substitute vegetable-based fats for animal fats, and to avoid red meat completely.

However, when Keys published his analysis that claimed to prove the link between dietary fats and coronary heart disease, he selectively analyzed information from only six countries to prove his correlation, rather than comparing all the data available at the time -- from 22 countries.

As a result of this "cherry-picked" data, government health organizations began bombarding the public with advice that has contributed to the diabetes and obesity epidemics going on today: eat a low-fat diet. Of course, as Americans cut out nutritious animal fats from their diets, they were left hungry. So they began eating more processed grains, more vegetable oils and more high-fructose corn syrup, all of which are nutritional disasters.

Keys believed that dietary fat was causing heart disease in Americans back in the 1950s, and he soon got others to jump on the bandwagon. Even the American Heart Association, which concluded in 1957 that “the evidence that dietary fat correlates with heart disease” does not stand up to critical examination and changed its position in 1960.

Why? Because Keys was on the committee issuing a new report that a low-fat diet was advised for people at risk of heart disease. Sadly, the theory continued to be accepted as nutritional wisdom, even though clinical trials found no connection.

There are, however, some studies that have found a link between fat and heart disease, and they are often used by saturated fat opponents to “prove” their case. The problem lies in the fact that most of these studies make no effort to differentiate between saturated fats and trans fats. I believe this is the missing link. If researchers were to more carefully evaluate the risks of heart disease by measuring the levels of trans and saturated fat, I believe they would find a completely different story.

My next blog will discuss trans fats.