SATURATED FATS, GOOD; TRANS-FATS, BAD
Trans Fats Are Being Replaced with Equally Worrisome Oil
Products
The
latest issue of Wise Traditions, the Weston Price journal, has a great
article that is an excerpt from her book, in which she discusses this topic.
Most of you reading this are now well aware of the dangers of trans fats, and
that the FDA is in the process of banning them completely. That's great news,
but the question is, what is trans fat being replaced with? The answer is that
the oils they're currently using in lieu of trans fats create toxic oxidation
products, which in fact may be more toxic than trans fat.
"I
stumbled on this topic because a vice president of Loders Croklaan, a big fats
and oils producer, said to me, 'I just heard this terrifying talk by a man in a
company who does all the cleaning for fast food restaurants.'... He said they
have been having problems since restaurants started getting rid of trans fats
in their fryers around 2007... The new oils were building up gunk in the drains
and on the walls.
This
kind of gunk would harden, and workers would scrape for days and not be able to
get it off. The conventional cleaners didn't work anymore. It's turning out to
be these highly volatile airborne chemicals. When the restaurants'
uniforms would be cleaned, the chemicals were so volatile that they would
have problems of piles of uniforms spontaneously combusting in the back of
trucks. And then they would go to the dryers. The heat of the dryers, even
after the restaurant uniforms were cleaned, would cause fires." [Emphasis mine]
The
cleaning company ended up producing a more potent chemical cleaner to scrub off
the polymers off the walls and uniforms. Unfortunately, the nutrition community
is not studying these volatile vegetable oils. Others, primarily in the
molecular biology and genetics fields are, but the different fields are not
communicating with each other.
Even Low Levels of Aldehydes Cause Massive Inflammation
One
group in Taiwan is studying this issue because women have much higher rates of
lung cancer
than men. They think it may be related to the fact that women, particularly in
Asian countries, stir-fry in unventilated spaces using vegetable oils. In
Norway, there's another research group trying to assess the effects on worker
health in restaurants.
"[These
volatile compounds] are very hard to study because they are very ephemeral,
literally changing from one second to the next...They’re very unstable. They’re
hard to isolate,”
Nina explains. “One thing they did was simply to show that these products
exist. There’s a whole category called aldehydes, which are particularly
worrisome.
A
group doing research on animals have found that at fairly low levels of
exposure, these aldehydes in animals caused tremendous inflammation, which is
related to heart disease. They oxidized LDL cholesterol, which is thought to be
the LDL cholesterol that becomes dangerous. There's a link to heart disease.
There's also some evidence that links these aldehydes in particular to
Alzheimer's. They seem to have a very severe effect on the body."
One
researcher has found that aldehydes cause toxic shock in animals through
gastric damage. We now know a lot more about the role your gut plays in your
health, and the idea that aldehydes from heated vegetable oils can damage your
gastric system is frighteningly consistent with the rise we see in immune
problems and gastrointestinal-related diseases.
"When
the FDA got rid of trans fats... restaurants began to use these regular liquid
oils instead... they were the cheapest possible option to use… The FDA really
did not consider any of this literature about these oxidation products. When
you implement a law, you're supposed to look at the risks. What will happen if
you implement a new regulation? In this case, the FDA did not," Nina says.
In
hearing this, it appears as though cooking with vegetable oil could be a
"new" occupational hazard (having occurred within the last 10 years
or so) for restaurant workers. If vegetable oils volatize and gum up into polymers
that are nearly impossible to clean, and that are damaging fryers, equipment,
and causing uniforms to spontaneously combust, what is it doing to the workers'
lungs? Larger fast food chains are aware of this issue, and have implemented a
number of fixes to address it. But smaller restaurants may be unaware of this
problem, thereby placing workers at potential risk. The same applies if you're
regularly cooking with vegetable oils in your home.
Saturated Fats Are Stable, and Therefore Ideal for Cooking
Tallow
is a hard fat that comes from cows. Lard is a hard fat that comes from pigs.
They're both animal fats, and used to be the main fats used in cooking. One of
their benefits is that, since they're saturated fats, they do not oxidize when
heated. And saturated fats do not have double bonds that can react with oxygen;
therefore they cannot form dangerous aldehydes or other toxic oxidation
products.
 |
| Sheep tallow soap. |
"They're
solids at room temperature. That's why they make great cooking fats and have
always made great cooking fats. But we don't think about that. This whole chain
of events has happened because we demonized saturated fats," Nina notes.
Fortunately,
we're now seeing cracks in the prevailing dogma about saturated fats. In March
of this year, a groundbreaking meta-analysis reviewed the clinical trial
evidence and the epidemiological evidence, and came to the conclusion that
saturated fats really cannot be said to cause heart disease. Another
meta-analysis three years earlier came to the same conclusion.
Saturated Fat—It Does a Body Good...
The
benefits of saturated fat are many. Some appear to be uniquely traceable to
saturated fat. For example, you need saturated fats for brain and immune system
health. Another argument is that animal foods in general, including meat
cheese, butter, dairy, and eggs, contain high amounts of vitamins. Vitamins A,
D, E, and K are fat-soluble, and you have to have the fat that comes naturally
in animal foods along with the vitamins in order to absorb those vitamins.
"If
you're drinking skim milk, you don't have the fat you need to absorb the
vitamins in milk. Without absorbing the vitamins, you can't absorb the
minerals. These are uniquely nutrient-dense foods. Vitamin B6 and B12, you
can't get in plant foods. They're really nutrient-dense foods that come
packaged in the fat that you need to absorb them, along with protein. They're
kind of a perfect package of nutrient-dense food," Nina says.
Nina
also points out that many clinical trials over the past decade have clearly
showed that a diet higher in fat and restricted in carbohydrate results in
health improvements such as weight loss and a reduction in risk factors for
diabetes, and heart disease. A high-fat diet typically means eating animal
foods. Of course, there are very healthy saturated plant fats as well—coconut
oil and palm oil, specifically. (Avocado, another healthy fat, is unsaturated.)
"[Coconut
and palm oil] have been used for millennia in Asian cultures. They are making a
big comeback in part because vegans who don't want to eat animal products have
found that they still need a fat for cooking that doesn't oxidize when it's
heated... Coconut oil fills that function. In the food industry, they've
started to bring back palm oil, which has a lot of saturated fat in it and is a
good way to make food that lasts long on a shelf, because again, saturated fats
are more stable and long-lasting."
Healthy Eating Guidelines for the 21st Century
So,
what's the general 21st century revised rule for healthy living and eating? One
of the most important points is that you do not need to avoid saturated fats.
Saturated fats were unfairly condemned in the 1950s based on very primitive
evidence that has since been re-analyzed. The evidence now clearly shows that
saturated fats do not cause heart disease. Moreover, your body needs
saturated fats for proper function of your:
|
Cell Membranes
|
Heart
|
Bones to
absorb calcium
|
|
Liver
|
Lungs
|
Hormones
|
|
Immune system
|
Satiety to reduce hunger
|
Genetic regulation
|
"Another key piece of information is that a high-fat,
carbohydrate-restricted diet looks healthier for losing weight, and making your
heart disease biomarkers and diabetes biomarkers
look better. There's a real range in how much carbohydrates people will
tolerate," Nina
says.
Many
people need to increase the healthful fat in their diet to 50-85 percent of
daily calories. This includes not only saturated fat but also monounsaturated
fats (from avocados and nuts) and omega-3 fats. When it comes to cooking fats,
few compare to tallow and lard in terms of health benefits and safety. These
are the cooking fats that were originally used, and they're excellent frying
fats. To learn more, I highly recommend reading Nina's book The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat, and Cheese Belong in
a Healthy Diet, which contains nine years' worth of research.
We've all heard about the rising cost of health care in recent
years and many have experienced the effects in their daily lives. Well, the
Wall Street Journal is calling attention to the problem with a piece in which a doctor-lawyer tells the story of
a massive hospital bill that he received after taking his young son for a
precautionary visit to the emergency room.
