|
Let's Talk About...
ESSENTIAL FATTY ACIDS
 The idea that fat causes heart disease began in the late 1960s with an American scientist named Ancel Keys. After a cherry-picked study of diets in seven different countries, he found that a diet low in animal fat protected against heart disease and that a diet high in animal fats led to heart disease. As a result, representatives of the American Heart Association announced on television and in print that a diet, which included large amounts of butter, lard, eggs and beef would lead to coronary heart disease. This resulted in the American government recommending that people adopt a low fat diet in order to prevent heart disease. Nervous Americans took this low fat approach and erroneously turned it into no fat. The current diabetes can be traced to this low fat fad. By depriving foods of nutritious fats something had to be added back in to the foods to make the taste relatively tolerable.
But here are the facts: Fats are like big slow burning logs one puts on the fire to  last all night, thus creating slow burning energy. They're the best fuel source for the body. Fat satiates us, and digests slowly. This means there is a slow release of the fat molecules from the food.
A huge food crusade against dietary fat ran rampant through the 1980s and '90s, as dietary fat was indiscriminately replaced with grains, and saturated fat was replaced by unsaturated fat.
Enter corporate food. These corporations (just who you want making your food) outdid themselves replacing the satisfying taste of natural fat with weird artificial concoctions, the most notable of which is high fructose corn syrup. The food scientists use cutting-edge technology to calculate the "bliss point" of sugary beverages or enhance the "mouthfeel" of fat by manipulating its chemical structure.
(Click here to read about the new book, Salt, Sugar, Fat, How Food Giants Hooked Us, though the title is a tad misleading.)
These additives are largely in the form of simple refined carbohydrates, which--as it turns out--are exactly the foods that spike blood sugar and eventually make us fat. By the 1980s, grocery stores in the U.S were stocked with an impressive selection of unnatural foods that tasted kind of like real foods, i.e.: I Can't Believe It's Not Butter, Cool Whip, and Kraft American Cheese, to name a few.
These engineered processed foods are made with altered chemicals, addicting sugars, and poisonous additives. Without the fats to slow digestion these foods caused hypoglycemia, which prompts a person to eat more of the same thing. Now the U.S. as a nation is fatter than at any time in history.
The problem is that these foods cause  inflammation and, unbelievable as it sounds, heart disease. We also replaced healthy solid fats (see below) that had been used for frying with fragile vegetables oils, turning them into hydrogenated and saturated fats that are indigestible. When there are essential fatty acids in the small intestine, special hormones are produced that prevent the hunger contractions. Thus a careful balance of fat in the diet becomes critical for someone trying to lose weight.
 Properly prepared essential fatty acids do not turn into fat when we consume normal amounts. Fat has many jobs in the body. While unused fats may be stored as fats for slow burning energy they're main function is to rebuild healthy cells, hormone production, and protect the neurons in the brain.
The point is that eating a fat from animals not only gives a person long lasting energy, but good gut health, and it tastes good. Fat does not make us fat. Eating refined grains and sugars makes us fat.
Click here for more information on how fat is a better source of fuel than carbs: Mark's Daily Apple.
**
__________________________
| 
Dan Freeman, of Shooting Star Farm, helps the students at The Sage School in Hailey in their expansive greenhouse. Once a week he brings fresh lettuce greens, spinach and arugula to NourishMe. Catch it while the green is in stock. 