Welcome back!

Well last week’s post got a few folk up in arms with their main question being:
“Do we actually have evidence that saturated fat may actually be good for us?”

The short answer is a resounding YES!!

Let’s take a look at a few examples….

The Masai, Samburu, and Fulani tribes in Africa all have diets that see them eating loads of red meat,

Fit, lean & red meat loving!!!

drinking lots of raw 9unpasteurised) milk and (ick!!) Cow’s blood. Their average saturated fat intake is about 5x that of overweight folk on the ‘healthy’ western, processed carb diet.

Now despite what our dieticians & Doctors would call a very high saturated fat intake, the people in these tribes have low body fat levels, and suffer virtually no heart disease or diabetes. (yes they tend to exercise more than us but remember you can’t out-run a bad diet!)

The same holds true for many of the Pacific Island nations whose traditional diet is very high in saturated fats such as palm, coconut, and cocoa oils. They too were lean and had virytually no heart disease or diabetes.

One last example – the Inuit – the Eskimos – are one of the best researched of all peoples in terms of the efffect of a western, processed carb and low saturated fat diet.

Like our African & Islander friends – Inuit who ate the tradional high saturated fat diet were typically free of heart disease and diabetes.

You’ll notice that I use the past tense – you see whenever any of these peoples moved to a western diet they started to experience & shaow the same diseases that we have in such abundance. Whenever tribesman  moved out of their native lands and started eating more western ‘modern’ day diet, their blood chemistry skyrocketed with heart disease risk factors. Likewise when researchers followed up with Inuit and Islanders that had moved away from their native land and adopted a typical western diet, the heart disease risk factors were through the roof.

These are good solidly researched examples of people who started to show our illness profile when they began to eat LESS saturated fat and more processed western foods and INCREASED their heart disease factors.

The usual arguments get thrown up whenever these saturated fat loving, red meat eating, healthy folk are mentioned – ‘Oh they have superior genetics.” This is absolute pap!

In the past, the Inuit were strangers to diabetes & heart disease...

Whilst it is true that saturated fat CAN increase your levels of LDL ( the bad cholesterol) , it actually increases your HDL (the good cholesterol) even further, resulting in an improved ratio and lipd profile.

It is the cholesterol ratio which has been proven to be more important that just your total cholesterol level. (actually cholesterol is not the real issue… inflammation is, but that’s a  different topic for another blog).

So what is saturated fat made up of?

Saturated fat is largely made up of different types of acids – the 3 most common types are stearic acid, palmitic acid, and lauric acid.

Animal fat & cocoa have high levels of stearic acid and research continues to show that stearic acid has no negative impacts on heart disease risks. In fact it has become to be largely viewed as either neutral or beneficial. Stearic acid is broken down your liver into a monounsaturated fat called oleic acid, which you may recognise as the same type of fat that constitutes most of heart-healthy olive oil.

Bet you didn’t know that!

Tropical oils (like coconut or palm olis) are the best sources of lauric acid.Lauric acid is a beneficial saturated fat as well. It has not only been shown to increase your HDL good cholesterol levels significantly, and it has also even been shown to have some powerful immune-boosting effects potentially. Theis fat is lacking in ost western style diets.

Palmitic acid – the other main component of saturated fat – has been demonstrated to affect the increase of HDL & LDL levels to the same extent (actually slightly more for the HDL) which makes it either neutral or beneficial, but certainly not bad for you.
So, despite the best efforts of lots of researchers over the years since Keys gained his notoriety to prove that saturated fat is linked to and a cause of heart disease they have failed. Research has time & again shown just the opposite.

NOT the result of a high processed carb, low saturated fat diet...

Diets low in saturated fat & high in processed carbs with low saturated fat intake are the ones where heart disease & diabetes are the most prevalent.

So what are the real causes of heart disease risk?

Here they are:

• Trans fats also known as hydrogenated oils
• Inflamation causing heavily refined vegetable oils such as soy, cottonseed, corn oil, etc which typically throw the omega-6/omega-3 balance out of whack..
• Too much refined sugar of any type in the diet –  especially HFCS (high fructose corn syrup)
• Too many processed, denatured refined carbohydrates such as white bread, flour, white pasta, low fiber cereals, etc
• Smoking
• Stressful lifestyle
• Lack of exercise
• Lack of sleep and Other lifestyle factors

The real FACT is that saturated fat is a neutral substance in your body, and even is beneficial at times. It is not, nor has it ever been proven to be a deadly risk factor for disease.

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