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Tag Archive for: ancel keys

The Truth About Fats

Fats, General, Health
truth about fats

Like many adolescent girls, I feel like my obsession with weight began with that awkward phase known as puberty. I began to equate being skinny with being hungry, and I began to notice things like “grams of fat” and “total calories” on packaged food. I knew without knowing that fat was bad, and so I avoided things like whole milk, butter, and mayonnaise. I remember reading somewhere that if you stopped putting mayonnaise on your sandwiches, you could lose something like two pounds every year!

I was able to remain thin quite easily (thanks to an efficient metabolism), but as I got older, and especially after having kids, my old strategies for keeping the weight off just weren’t working anymore. Then I discovered this crazy idea that fat is actually good for you. Say whaaaaaat??? And not just any fat, but the so-called “artery-clogging” saturated fat I’d ruthlessly avoided my whole life. On top of that,

I learned that the polyunsaturated fats I’d always heard labeled as “heart-healthy” can actually CAUSE heart disease and cancer.

“BOOM!” (That was the sound of my mind exploding.)

When I read Sally Fallon’s book Nourishing Traditions, it literally changed my life. I’ve never had one book so completely consume me and motivate me to change everything about the way I ate. In this blog, I hope to summarize what I have learned from Nourishing Traditions, in addition to Weston Price, Gary Taubes, and Fathead, and explain the real TRUTH about fats.

The reason why it seems like “common knowledge” that saturated fat and cholesterol are bad isn’t because they ARE bad, but rather because a man named Ancel Keys THOUGHT they were bad and so he made an assumption. It “made sense” to him that saturated fat and cholesterol led to heart disease and so he cherry picked six countries that matched his theory to be part of his Lipid Hypothesis and he left out the remaining sixteen countries that didn’t. He didn’t have any credible scientific proof to back up his hypothesis, but that didn’t stop him from becoming a leading member of the American Heart Association, landing on the cover of Time magazine in the 1970s, and becoming “the father of dietary wisdom”.

After Ancel Keys and his buddy Jeremiah Stamler were a part of the American Heart Association, the AHA (who originally opposed the Lipid Hypothesis and any ideas like it) flipped their stance and supported it, with the caveat that research was pending. Soon after, senator George McGovern published his Dietary Goals for the United States, which followed Keys’ recommended of a reduction of fats along with a drastic increase in carbohydrates.

So then the National Institute of Health decided that they’d better drum up some actual research to support the hypothesis everyone was already promoting, (Seems like a pretty biased way to conduct research if you ask me.) no compelling research emerged. In fact, the research they hoped would support their hypothesis actually showed quite the opposite. The Framingham Heart study states,

“we found that the people who ate the most cholesterol, ate the most saturated fat, ate the most calories, weighed the least and were the most physically active.” (JAMA Internal Medicine)

But it was already too late. The idea that saturated fat and cholesterol were bad was barreling down the American ideology track like a freight train…and gaining momentum too. In 1980, the USDA released their official Dietary Guidelines for Americans (which were VERY similar to George McGovern’s guidelines). These guidelines have since been republished every five years with very little changes. And that’s that. Now every government agency, every doctor, and every American wrongly assumes that saturated fat and cholesterol are bad. (For a more thorough description of this story, check out my blog post How We Were Duped Into Thinking Saturated Fat and Cholesterol Were Bad.)

The term “artery-clogging saturated fats” isn’t true. When the fat in artery clogs is studied, only about 26% is saturated and the rest is unsaturated, with more than half of that being polyunsaturated. Saturated fats have been wrongly demonized when the truth is that we really NEED them as they play many important roles in our body chemistry. 

  • Cell membranes must be comprised of at least 50% saturated fatty acids in order to maintain their stiffness. (Without stiff cell membranes, arteries become weak and flabby and THAT is when cholesterol comes to the rescue to repair the damage that has been done. This becomes the plaque that clogs arteries, increases blood pressure, and leads to heart disease.)
  • Unless 50% of the fats we consume come from saturated fat, we cannot properly absorb the calcium we need.
  • Saturated fatty acids are made up of short and medium chain fatty acids that are not stored as fat, but used as quick energy.
  • They protect the liver from toxins.
  • They enhance the immune system.
  • They protect us from harmful microorganisms in the digestive tract.
  • They have important antimicrobial properties.
  • They are needed to properly utilize fatty acids like omega-3s.
  • The fat around the heart muscle is highly saturated and draws upon that fat in times of stress.

Not only is saturated fat good for you, but cholesterol is too! Say whaaaaaat??? It’s true. This idea of “good cholesterol” and “bad cholesterol” is totally wrong. LDL cholesterol (the “bad” cholesterol) is REPAIRING damaged arterial walls. In her book, Nourishing Traditions, Sally Fallon explains how,

blaming cholesterol for it’s correlation with clogged arteries is like blaming the police for their correlation with crime. (i.e. A high crime area will have an increased number of police officers just like clogged arteries will have an increased level of LDL cholesterol, but the high crime isn’t CAUSED by the police and the clogged arteries are not CAUSED by the cholesterol. Just because two things are correlated doesn’t mean that one thing causes another.)

Arterial plaques themselves contain very little cholesterol. Cholesterol is needed for many functions in our body and the only people that benefit from the misconception that we should lower our cholesterol levels are the multibillion dollar drug corporations that create cholesterol lowering drugs called statins (like Lipitor) and the doctors who get kick backs called “research study” funds for every new patient they can con to take them.

  • Cholesterol is needed along with saturated fats to give cells their stiffness and stability. When a diet contains too much polyunsaturated fatty acids, the cell walls actually become flabby and cholesterol is used to make them strong again.
  • It is the precursor needed to make sex hormones like testosterone, estrogen, and progesterone.
  • It is a precursor to vital hormones called coriocosteroids which are needed to help us deal with stress and protects the body against heart disease and cancer.
  • It is a precursor to vitamin D, which is a fat-soluble vitamin needed for healthy bones and nervous system, proper growth, mineral metabolism, muscle tone, insulin production, reproduction, and immune system function.
  • Bile salts are made from cholesterol. Bile is vital for digestion and assimilation of dietary fats.
  • It helps to maintain the health of the intestinal wall. This is why low-cholesterol vegetarian diets can lead to leaky gut syndrome and other intestinal disorders.
  • It is an antioxidant that protects us from free radical damage that leads to heart disease and cancer.
  • Cholesterol is needed for proper function of serotonin receptors, the “feel good” chemical, in the brain. When cholesterol levels are low, there are behavioral links to depression, suicidal tendencies, and violent and aggressive behavior.
  • Mother’s milk is especially rich in cholesterol (as well as saturated fat). Babies and children especially need cholesterol rich foods for optimal brain and nervous system development. Yet, the American Heart Association is now recommending a low-cholesterol, low-fat diet for children! Most commercial formulas are low in saturated fats and soy formulas are completely devoid of cholesterol. A recent study linked low-fat diets with failure to thrive in children.
  • Beware of damaged cholesterol! Just like fats, cholesterol can be damaged by exposure to heat and oxygen which can lead to to the arterial cells as well as a buildup of plaque in the arteries. Damaged cholesterol is found in powdered eggs, powdered milk, skim and low-fat milks (which has powdered milk added to it), and in meats or fats that have been heated to a high temperature.

History shows that when people stopped eating saturated fats and cholesterol (because they were tricked into thinking they were bad), they replaced them with polyunsaturated fats such as canola oil and trans fats such margarine. Modern diets include up to 30% polyunsaturated fats when the ideal should be about 4%. Excess consumption of polyunsaturated oils has been shown to contribute to a large number of diseases including cancer and heart disease, immune system dysfunction, damage to the liver, reproductive organs and lungs, digestive disorders, depressed learning ability, impaired growth, and weight gain. Polyunsaturated fats (WRONGLY marketed as “heart healthy”) and hydrogenated oils, known as trans fats (marketed as a “healthy alternative” to butter) should be avoided at all costs and are one of the TRUE causes of heart disease and cancer.

  • Polyunsaturated fats tend to become oxidized or rancid when exposed to heat, oxygen, and moisture from cooking and processing. Rancid oils contain free radicals that damage cell membranes and red blood cells. This leads to wrinkles, premature aging, tumors, and plaque buildup.
  • Polyunsaturates also contain a high amount of omega-6 linoleic acid and a low amount of omega-3 linoleic acid. This imbalance disrupts prostaglandins that leads to blood clots and inflammation, high blood pressure, irritation of the digestive tract, depressed immune function, sterility, cell proliferation, cancer, and weight gain.

After learning all of this, I initially felt a bit overwhelmed when I thought of all the things we were going to have to change about our eating habits. We didn’t change everything all at once. We simply picked one thing to research further and learn more about, and then we gradually implemented one change at a time. Looking back, we have done a lot to add foods rich in saturated fats and eliminate foods with polyunsaturated fats. Here are some of the things we have implemented so far.

  • We started by drinking raw milk. If there is only one thing you can do to help the health of your family, do this! We bought a cow share and consume six gallons of the freshest, creamiest, best tasting raw milk we’ve ever had every week.
  • We go through about ten pounds of non rBST (bovine growth hormone) butter a month.
  • We just purchased our first grass-fed half of a cow, which is about 160 pounds of the best ground beef, steak, roast we’ve ever had!
  • Every week we get three dozen pastured eggs with dark yellow yolks from the Amish farm where we get our milk.
  • We also recently got our fifty pounds of coconut oil that I will use for cooking, baking, and natural products.

Learning about our health has become like a full time job for me, and I am always learning something new or learning about something I had a preliminary knowledge about at a deeper level. It makes me feel so good to know that we are feeding ourselves with nutrient dense food that will heal us from the inside out. To know that as our children are growing, their bodies are being constructed with the best nutrients possible that will enable them to grow into adults free from the plagues that a poor diet will bring. We truly believe that food is our medicine, and every day we are taking steps to ensure that we are taking the best medicine we possibly can.

A few of my favorite studies:

  • In his book, Why We Get Fat, Gary Taubes explains how in 1990, the National Institute of Health conducted a study that they hoped to answer whether low fat diets prevented heart disease or cancer. So they spent one billion dollars and had 20,000 women eat a low-fat diet rich in fruits, vegetables, and fiber. These women also cut their caloric intake by about 360 calories per day. After eight years, they lost an average of two pounds each and their waist circumference increased, meaning that the weight they lost was lean muscle.
  • In another study, Taubes explains how a two million dollar government funded study through Stanford University called the A to Z Weight Loss studied four diets. 1) Atkins Diet: Subjects had twenty grams of carbohydrates for the first three months and then fifty grams, with as much protein and fat as they wanted. 2) A Traditional Diet: Subjects had restricted calories, carbohydrates made up 55-60% of all calories, fat was less than 30% of the caloric intake, saturated fat was less than 10%, and regular exercise was encouraged. 3) The Ornish Diet: Fewer than 10% of all calories subjects ate came from fat, subjects also meditated and exercised. 4) The Zone Diet: Subjects consumed 30% of calories from protein, 40% of calories from carbohydrates, and 30% of calories from fat. After one year, the Atkins dieters lost the most weight (10 pounds), their triglycerides went way down, their blood pressure went down, and their HDL cholesterol went up (which is good).
  • In her book, Nourishing Traditions, Sally Fallon describes a multi-year British study in which several thousand men were asked to reduce their saturated fat and cholesterol in their diets, to stop smoking, and to increase consumption of unsaturated oils such as margarine and vegetable oil. After one year, the group that reduced their saturated fat had 100% more deaths, even though the group that did not still smoked!
  • In another study, Fallon describes a study comparing Yemen Jews who ate only fats from animal origin and no sugar to Yemenite Jews living in Israel who ate margarine, vegetable oil, and sugar equaling 25-30% of their carbohydrate intake. The Yemen Jews had little to no heart disease or diabetes, but the Yemenite Jews had very high incidences of both.
  • Sally Fallon also discusses the Masai African tribes that subsist largely on milk, blood, and beef. They are completely free from heart disease and have low cholesterol levels. When Ancel Keys heard about this study, he purposed that they inherited some sort of genes to help them become immune to such ailments. But as the Masai began eating a western diet, they got heart disease at the same rates as everyone else.

For more reading on this subject, check out the following articles.

Digestion and Absorption of Food Fats by Mary Enig, phD

Why the Current US Dietary Guidelines are Making Americans Fat by Mary Enig, phD

Skinny on Fats, by Mary Enig, phD and Sally Fallon

February 1, 2018/by Stacey Maaser
https://embracing-motherhood.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/truth-about-fats.png 400 810 Stacey Maaser https://embracing-motherhood.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/EM_Logo.png Stacey Maaser2018-02-01 23:40:342018-02-02 09:50:06The Truth About Fats

How We Were Duped Into Thinking That Saturated Fat and Cholesterol Were Bad

Fats, General, Health

How did this information slip under my radar for so long? Why isn’t it “common knowledge” to eat saturated fats and avoid polyunsaturated fats? The answer is rich and complex and for further reading I highly recommend you read everything by Gary Taubes in addition to Nourishing Traditions of course, but here it is in a nutshell. This is how we were duped into thinking that saturated fat and cholesterol were bad. 

Ancel Keys, who was a physiologist from Minnesota and famous for his development of the “K-rations” used during WWII and his human starvation studies, spoke with another physiologist from Naples, Italy who boasted that his country had a low rate of heart disease and consumed very little animal products. This cocktail conversation led Keys to form his Lipid Hypothesis.

So Ancel Keys set out to prove that there was a direct correlation between animal fat and coronary heart disease and conducted an observational study (which means that he just looked at a bunch of data). The data was all over the place for the 22 countries he originally looked at, so he did what any good scientist would do and threw out the data that didn’t match his hypothesis. The six remaining countries showed the correlation he was looking for and that is where we get the Lipid Hypothesis that has permeated our mainstream culture and forced us to believe that saturated fat and cholesterol cause heart disease.

His Seven Countries Study was even more acclaimed, but once again, he only chose the seven countries that he knew would fit his hypothesis and left out countries like France or Switzerland that have a high rate of fat consumption and a low rate of heart disease.

When institutions like the American Heart Association (AHA) put their little “heart healthy” label on things like Coco Puffs and Lucky Charms, we don’t even bat an eye!

We just blindly BELIEVE that of course these big companies are looking out for our best interests, but they are just another cog in the wheel of false information that has gotten out of control. The truth is that the AHA originally opposed Ancel Keys and all ideas that were like his. In 1957, they even wrote a 15 page paper explaining why. But then ten years later, they did a wonderfully political thing and flipped their stance. Not after any new research was uncovered, not after analyzing the reports again, but simply because Ancel Keys and one of his buddies became two-sixths of the AHA, and then BAM! suddenly they were behind his ideas 100%.

Soon after in 1961, Ancel Keys was featured on the cover of Time magazine as the new father of dietary wisdom. The article discussed Keys’ idea of a heart-healthy diet as one in which nearly 70% of calories came from carbohydrates and just 15% from fat.  Despite the fact that there was ZERO evidence from clinical trials to back up this claim, the article only contained one short paragraph explaining that Keys’ hypothesis was

“still questioned by some researchers with conflicting ideas of what causes coronary heart disease.”

During this time, the AHA was courted by two major vegetable oil and margarine companies who helped to distribute a “risk handbook” to doctors all over the country, and the doctors in turn spread the message to all of their patients. This alliance dissolved after research showed that polyunsaturated fats from vegetable oil and margarine could cause cancer in rats. But by then, the AHA was a trusted source and now anything low in saturated fat and cholesterol could be labeled “heart healthy”.

In 1977, a Senate committee led by George McGovern published its ”Dietary Goals for the United States,” advising that Americans drastically increase their carbohydrate intake and reduce their fat consumption. Was George McGovern a scientist? No. A nutritionist? No. Making his decision based on research? No. Maybe he thought he was qualified to tell a nation what to eat because he was trying to stop the lofty problem of world hunger. Maybe he saw the cover of Time and thought, well that Ancel Keys sure is a popular fellow, I’m sure he knows what he’s talking about!

Before this, the government had never told us what to eat, but now there are a myriad of government agencies that have all bought the same pack of lies.

(Watch a short clip from the documentary Fathead summing up the McGovern Report here.)

The National Institute of Health – it has a nice ring to it, right? You would think an institute with such a fine name would have our best interests in mind right? But no. Rather than set out to conduct unbiased research in an attempt to objectively find the BEST dietary advice, they decided to find proof for what they already believed to be true. So they conducted a few small studies, including one in Framingham, Massachusetts, that they hoped would provide evidence that consuming animal fat had a direct correlation to heart disease.

Did they find the proof they were looking for? NO!!! In study after study concluded, the opposite was actually found to be true. But that didn’t stop them from somehow still using the studies to prove that there was in fact a correlation. The Framingham Heart study actually states,

“we found that the people who ate the most cholesterol, ate the most saturated fat, ate the most calories, weighed the least and were the most physically active.” (JAMA Internal Medicine)

I mean come on! What’s going on here?!?!

In her book, Nourishing Traditions, Sally Fallon discredits study after study that set out to prove a correlation between saturated fat, cholesterol, and heart disease. One study in particular that is most cited by the experts to justify low-fat diets and prove that animal fats cause heart disease is actually a study falsely bolstering the effects of a cholesterol lowering drug. (I’m sure the drug companies had nothing to do with this…wink!) The $150 million Lipid Research Clinics Coronary Primary Prevention Trial (LRC-CPPT), put both the control group and the test group on a low cholesterol, low saturated fat diet. One group was given a cholesterol lowering drug and the other was given a placebo.

OK, wait a minute, this sounds like a test measuring the effectiveness of a drug, not an unbiased attempt to find out the true meaning of heart disease.

Then they claimed that there was a 24% decrease in the rate of coronary heart disease in the group who took the cholesterol lowering drug even though independent researchers who tabulated the results of this study found no significant statistical difference in coronary heart disease death rates between the two groups. So how does this prove that a low fat diet is better again? Aye-ye-ye!

Even after these failed research attempts, the USDA still drafted its first official Dietary Guidelines for Americans in 1980 with recommendations that were very similar to those of McGovern’s Dietary Goals for the United States. Why? Did they just see the momentum behind these false notions, think it made sense, and chose to go with something people would simply latch onto as “common sense”? These guidelines have since been republished every five years with very little changes. After their initial publication, the facts leading up to their decision were not even questioned as every major institution latched onto them with reckless abandon.

Even such trusted names as The American Cancer Society, the National Cancer Institute, and the Senate Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs all claimed that animal fat was linked with not only with heart disease but with various forms of cancer. Yet when researchers from the University of Maryland analyzed the data they used to make such claims, they found that vegetable fat consumption was actually correlated with high rates of cancer and animal fat was not. How can this be? Is there no one out there who will tell the emperor that he has no clothes??? Are we all such sheep that we will just believe this garbage because everyone believes it?

So if the government’s recommendations to cut down on fats and increase carbohydrates were in our best interests, then how come obesity rates have soared and deaths by heart disease have increased? Before the 1920s, clogged arteries and heart disease were a rarity. Since then, the proportion of traditional animal fats has declined from 83% to 62%. Butter consumption plummeted from 18 pounds per person per year to four. On the other hand, the percentage of dietary vegetable oils in the form of margarine, shortening, and refined oils increased by 400% and the consumption of sugar and processed food increased by about 60%. Hmmmmm…it makes you think doesn’t it? Could the very things that we’re eating in an attempt to “be healthy” actually be making us sick, overweight, and dead?

Ancel Keys, the McGovern report, the American Heart Association, a population concerned with global issues of famine, USDA Dietary Guidelines, the National Institute of Health and biased test results, and products designed to meet the new low-fat recommendations have all led to this horrible misconception that ALL fats are bad for us.

In conclusion, there is obviously a paradigm shift going on here. I am not the only one who thinks this way. In fact, by the time our children are grown, HOPEFULLY common knowledge will have swung the pendulum back the other way and they will think it was silly that people actually thought that eating cereal was better than eating butter, but for now, we have to be diligent in what we consume and WHY we consume it. We only get one life to live, why not make our food our medicine and make this the best life possible.

February 1, 2013/by Stacey Maaser
https://embracing-motherhood.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/saturated-fat.png 400 810 Stacey Maaser https://embracing-motherhood.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/EM_Logo.png Stacey Maaser2013-02-01 17:16:482020-11-08 15:31:54How We Were Duped Into Thinking That Saturated Fat and Cholesterol Were Bad

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Stacey Maaser

Stacey Maaser author of Embracing Motherhood

Author of Embracing Motherhood

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Hi, I’m Stacey Maaser,

author of Embracing Motherhood! I am a stay at home mother of 5 with 7 years of teaching experience and a Master’s degree in Curriculum and Instruction. I am passionate about teaching my children, feeding them healthy food, learning the truth about things (not just what is popular opinion or counter culture), and sharing what I’ve learned and experienced with others. Thanks for stopping by!

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