Saturated Fat Deception

You can't read an article about health these days without hearing once again how saturated fats are evil and a threat to your heart.  Butter = Bad. Cheese = Worse. Eggs = Evil.  Steak = HeartAttackOnAPlate. The deception is rampant.  The truth is that natural, saturated fats are not bad for your heart and can be quite good for you. 

A new meta-analysis published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (AJCN) this year evaluated data from 21 studies on saturated fat.  Data was compiled involving over 350,000 participants for studies covering from 5 to 25 years.  Researchers concluded there was no difference in the risk of cardiovascular disease between people with the lowest intake of saturated fat and those with the highest - as long as the fat came from natural, unprocessed foods sources.  The Framingham Heart Study is another great example, finding no correlation between butter consumption and cardiovascular illness of any kind. 

Are you surprised?  Most people are.  Natural, saturated fats have been part of man's diet as long as we've existed.  Fat tastes good, fills you up, and helps you to consume fewer calories overall without deprivation.  Some of us need a lot more fat in our diet than others in order to feel warm, maintain a healthy weight, and keep anxiety at bay.   Fat turns off our body's hunger signal and is great for stabilizing blood sugar later in the day when included in your breakfast.  Saturated fat is also a terrific source of fat-soluble vitamins like A, E, and K.  The membrane of every one of the tens of trillions of cells in your body is made of saturated fat and cholesterol.  If you eliminate it from your diet, your body is simply going to make it.  And you're going to miss out on the pleasure of eating it!  Saturated fat shows up in foods like coconut, chocolate, cheese, yogurt, eggs, milk, bison (one of my favorites!), beef, and lamb. 

Saturated fats have gotten a bad rap because many early medical studies convolved saturated and transfats and assumed the effects were the same.  Unlike saturated fats, artificial transfats have been proven over and over again to cause arterial plaquing and heart disease.  You can avoid transfats by not eating any product that includes the word "hydrogenated" in the ingredient list and by not eating fried foods in restaurants. 

Yes, saturated fats can raise your total cholesterol.  And as a nation, we are terrified of cholesterol.  But elevated total cholesterol has not been scientifically shown to drive cardiovascular problems of any kind.  Yes, I know, another shocker.  It's another fear-inspired myth.  But fear is a great marketing tool which sells a lot of cheap vegetable oils and a lot of cholesterol-lowering drugs with terrible side effects!  Cholesterol is a natural substance that your body makes daily.  In fact, your liver is capable of making much more than you could eat.  The important things are the type of cholesterol in your body, whether or not it's oxidized, and whether or not your arteries are sticky. It's a more complicated story than the media wants us to understand. Not all LDL cholesterol is bad for you.  Certainly all our bodies are unique, but t's been shown that foods like steak generally create the type of LDL that is not dangerous.   

What did the AJCN study find did contribute directly to heart disease?  Refined carbohydrates (as in sugar, other sweeteners, and white flour) and highly-processed, additive-filled meats like hot dogs and deli meats.  No surprise!  These modern, highly-processed foods cause an inflammatory response in our bodies.  Chronic inflammation is at the root of most American disease epidemics.  All of these foods are very cheap; we even subsidize some of them with national agricultural funds to keep them cheap (your tax dollars at work!).  See this month's Tell Me the Truth letter to learn more.

So give yourself an oil change!  Don't shun saturated fat from your diet.  Just make it from natural sources.  Choose organic animal foods such as milk, beef, and chicken and watch the portion size.  Choose natural, fresh cuts of meats as opposed to highly-processed ones (e.g. your typical, mainstream brands of bologna, sausage, or hot dogs) which have been shown to cause heart problems.  It's also important that you don't overcook your meat; aim for rare or medium-rare and marinate your meat before you cook it.  In general, read ingredient lists and don't buy foods that include chemicals and preservatives with long acronyms (e.g. EDTA) or things that you don't recognize as a food (e.g. autolyzed yeast extract).  Need some inspiration?  A few dark-chocolate-covered almonds are my favorite snack!