There has been a lot on the media lately about the results on studies regarding the consumption of fats. As it turns out, fats are not necessarily the enemy; in one such study there was a correlation found between children who drank only low-fat milk and obesity. After decades of avoiding fat, making adjustments to include it in out diets would be difficult, except for the fact that fat is delicious! Eating more fats is not going to be hard, the challenging part is going to be, making sure we are well informed on what the studies really have shown before making drastic changes to our diets.
One fact remains: trans-fats are toxic and linked to many chronic diseases. On the other hand, eating high-cholesterol foods has no impact on cholesterol levels (not that a clear link between high cholesterol and cardiac risk has been made) and obesity has been linked more to an addiction to carbs/sugars than to fat consumption. As a matter of fact the human body can survive with few carbs provided by the liver as needed, but cannot survive without fat. Fats are the preferred fuel not just for your body but also specially for brain function. According to Dr. Perlmutter in his book Grain Brain, a study done on the elderly compared memory function to cholesterol levels and “found that the people [..] had much better memory function if they had higher levels of cholesterol”. Dr. George Mann a researcher with the Framingham Heart Study concluded: “The diet heart hypotheses that suggests that a high intake of fat or cholesterol causes heart disease has been repeatedly shown to be wrong, and yet, for complicated reasons of pride, profit, and prejudice the hypotheses continues to be exploited by scientists, fund- raising enterprise, food companies, and even governmental agencies. The public is being deceived by the greatest heath scam of the century”. To understand how this can possibly be true you need to understand how LDL (the “bad” cholesterol) really works. LDL is a carrier that brings cholesterol to the neurons, if you have low cholesterol your neurons will be running low on gas. The problem begins when the LDL molecule is damaged which makes it less likely to do its job; this can happen through oxidation and when sugar binds to LDL it accelerates this oxidation. Oxidized LDL is what’s really at the root of atherosclerosis. So the goal is not to stop consuming cholesterol, rather to prevent it from oxidizing. Compounding the problem, when fat was taken from foods, the loss in flavor was compensated by adding sugar. If you look at the ingredients on most items bought in the supermarket you will be astounded at how many include added sugar! So the conclusion of the matter is, yes eat more healthy Fats but limit the cabs. Go ahead and use heavy whipping cream in your coffee but don’t add processed sugar! Fry your egg in butter, but don’t eat it with toast!