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Tag Archive for: weston price

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

Best Oils to Cook With

Fats, General, Health

There is only cooking oil that can help you lose weight, have energy, and nourish your body at the cellular level. The rest will either make you gain weight, or worse, lead to array of ailments such as heart disease or cancer.

If you guessed coconut oil, you are correct! After reading Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon, I feel confident in making coconut oil my go-to oil for everything. It does not have a distinguishable odor or taste and we try to cook as much as we can with it. I use it to make my own bread, and I plop generous dollops for cooking eggs, pancakes, stir fries, and even burgers! Not only can it be used for baking and frying, but it has many other uses as well. (I love using it to make my own toothpaste.)

50 lbs of Coconut Oil from Country Life Natural Foods

50 lbs of Coconut Oil from Country Life Natural Foods

Here are some of the wonderful attributes that make coconut oil so wonderful:

  • satfatpic

    Saturated Fatty Acid

    Coconut oil is made up of 92% saturated fatty acids. Saturated fatty acids are structured so that all available carbon bonds are occupied by a hydrogen atom. This makes them highly stable and straight in shape, so that they are solid or semisolid at room temperature. As a result, they are less likely to go rancid when heated during cooking. If you keep coconut oil in its solid state (below 76 degrees) and out of direct sunlight, it can maintain a shelf life of two years.

  • Over two-thirds of the saturated fatty acids found in coconut oil are comprised of medium-chain fatty acids. When your body digests fat in the form of medium chain fatty acids it doesn’t need to be digested in the small intestine with bile acids and lipases like it does with longer-chain fatty acids, but can instead be shuttled directly to the liver and converted to quick energy. This is why coconut oil is great to use if you’re trying to lose weight. As long as you don’t eat it with any carbs it CANNOT be stored as fat! It is also a gentle way for people who aren’t used to eating fat to start incorporating it into their diets. 
  • The main medium-chain fatty acid in coconut oil is lauric acid, which is a proven antiviral, antibacterial, and antifungal agent. It is converted in your body to a substance called monolaurin, which helps you defend against viruses, bacteria, and other pathogens. Basically, it strengthens your immune system and protects you from a wide range of diseases. The only other places you can get lauric acid are in mother’s milk or in small amounts in butterfat.
  • Lauric acid is the most rapidly oxidized fatty acid. The amount of energy used by the body to oxidize it is greater than the energy it provides. Since coconut oil is comprised of 50% lauric acid, it has a “thermogenic effect” meaning that it raises your body temperature, which boosts your energy and metabolic rate. So if you were to just eat a big spoonful of coconut oil, you would actually lose more weight than eating nothing at all!
  • Palm oil is another good tropical oil, but it is only 50% saturated.
Throw Out That Crisco!

Throw Out That Crisco!

Now I can finally throw my Crisco away! I used to feel guilty about greasing my pans with my super expensive extra virgin organic coconut oil, but now that I have a fifty pound five gallon bucket at my disposal, I can use it liberally for EVERYTHING without feeling guilty and I can FINALLY throw away this Crisco that I’ve had sitting in my cupboard for more years than I’d care to admit.

In case you’re wondering, Crisco is just about the worst thing you could purposefully put in your body. It is made from hydrogenated oils (trans fats) that block your body from using important fatty acids and can lead to paralysis of the immune system, cancer, atherosclerosis, diabetes, obesity, low birth weight babies, birth defects, decreased visual acuity, sterility, difficulty in lactation, and problems with bones and tendons.

The process for making hydrogenated oil is enough to make me want to steer clear of it!

  • It begins with the cheapest vegetable oils possible (soy, canola, or corn) that are already rancid from their extraction process.
  • Then they are mixed with tiny metal particles usually in the form of nickel oxide. This nickel catalyst combined with a high temperature causes a chemical change called hydrogenation which changes the position of the hydrogen atom on the fatty acid chain from the slight bend of a double bond to a straightened molecule.
  • This trans formation is toxic to your body, but your body doesn’t recognize it as a toxin. It actually incorporates it into cell membranes and this wreaks havoc with cell metabolism.
  • After the nickel catalyst, soap-like emulsifiers and starch are squeezed into the mixture in order to give it a better consistency.
  • The oil is then steam-cleaned at a high temperature to remove its unpleasant odor and bleached, dyed, and pumped full of strong flavors to get rid of its unappetizing grey color and horrible taste. Now, doesn’t that sound yummy!

1Olive Oil is okay to use every once in awhile. It isn’t likely to go rancid and so it’s great for things like salad dressing and hummus because of its antioxidant properties, but IT WILL MAKE YOU FAT (Beware, so will other monounsaturated rich foods like nuts and avocados!) Use it if you must, but I try to use it sparingly.

  • fa_fatacids02It is comprised of 75% oleic acid, 13% saturated fat, 10% omega-6 linoleic acid, and 2% omega-3 linoleic acid.
  • Oleic acid is an 18-carbon monounsaturated fatty acid that has one double bond in the form of two carbon atoms double bonded to each other and therefore lacks two hydrogen atoms. They have a kink or bend at the position of the double bond so that they do not pack together as easily as saturated fat and therefore tend to be liquid at room temperature but solid when refrigerated. They are relatively stable and do not go rancid easily and hence can be used in cooking (Keep temperatures under 425 degrees).
  • Because it is a long-chain fatty acid, it requires bile acids and lipases from the small intestine for digestion (after they are broken down, they are reassembled as triglycerides, which is basically how your body stores fat) and is more likely to contribute to the buildup of body fat than the short- and medium-chain fatty acids found in butter and coconut oil.
  • Your body can make monounsaturated fat from saturated fat, so there is really no need to consume it if you’re getting enough saturated fat.
  • If you do consume olive oil, it should be extra virgin olive oil, which is rich in antioxidants.  It should be cloudy, indicating that it has not been filtered, and have a golden color indicating that it is from fully ripened olives.
  • The extraction of olive oil is a very gentle process. The process begins by gently by crushing olives between stone or steel rollers using low temperatures and with minimal exposure to light and oxygen, which protects its antioxidants, integrity of the fatty acids, and natural preservatives. The longer fatty chain acids found in olive oil are more likely to contribute to the buildup of fat than the short and medium chain fatty acids found in butter and coconut oil, so you’ll want to use it sparingly for salad dressings and baking, but it is still a much better alternative to the other polyunsaturates.

Polyunsaturated fats make up the remainder of the fats on my review: Canola, safflower, corn, sunflower, soybean, and cottonseed oils should be avoided at all costs. Sesame, peanut, and flax seed oil should be used sparingly if at all. Polyunsaturated fatty acids that have an imbalance of omega-6s to omega-3s are found in the remaining oils and that is why they should be avoided.

  • Polyunsaturated fatty acids have bends or turns at the position of the double bonds and hence do not pack together easily. They remain liquid, even when refrigerated. Unpaired electrons located at the double bonds make these oils highly reactive. When they are subjected to heat or oxygen, as in extraction, processing, and cooking, free radicals are formed. These free radicals can initiate cancer and heart disease as well as lead to wrinkles, premature aging, tumors, and plaque buildup.
  • omega_3The two polyunsaturated fatty acids found most frequently in our foods are linoleic acid with two double bonds (called omega-6) and linoleic acid with three double bonds (called omega-3). (The omega number indicates the position of the first double bond.
  • The polyunsaturated oils found in the following oils 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.
  • Because your body cannot make omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids, they are called “essential” and must be obtained from foods. This is how manufacturers get away with saying that these fats are “heart healthy”. However, when you consume enough saturated fatty acids, which help to retain and use essential fatty acids, your body actually needs only a very small amount of essential fatty acids (both omega-3 and omega-6 found in polyunsaturated fats). One great source for getting a perfect balance of omega-3s and omega-6s is pastured eggs.
  • The process for making vegetable oils should be enough to make you want to steer clear of them in the first place! In order to extract the oils in vegetables, they are heated and crushed, which exposes them to damaging light and oxygen. In order to get the last 10% of the oil, a solvent such as hexane (which is a constituent of gasoline) is used. The solvent is boiled off, but a portion still remains (100 parts per million). The high temperatures cause the weak carbon bonds of the polyunsaturated fatty acids to break apart (especially triple unsaturated linoleic acid) and cause dangerous free radicals. Vitamin E, which is a natural antioxidant, is stripped away by the heating process and replaced with BHA (butylated hydroxyanisole) and BHT (butylated hydroxytoluene) as preservatives to prevent fat spoilage and are suspected of causing brain damage and cancer.
  • Canola oil is the worst oil of all and should be avoided at all costs, even though it has been labeled as “heart healthy”. 
    • It contains 5% saturated fat, 57% oleic acid, 23% omega-6, and 10-15% omega-3.
    • It is made from rape seed, which is considered unsuited for human consumption because it contains a long-chain fatty acid called euric acid, which under some circumstances is associated with fibrotic heart lesions.
    • It has a high sulphur content and goes rancid easily. Goods baked with canola oil develop mold very quickly.
    • During the deodorizing process, the omega-3 fatty acids of processed canola oil are transformed into trans fatty acids. This is the worst part of all!
    • A recent study found that it actually creates a deficiency of vitamin E, which is needed for cardiovascular health.

    Safflower, Corn, Sunflower, Soybean, and Cottonseed Oils should also be avoided.

    • They all contain over 50% omega-6 and except for soybean oil, contain only minimal amounts of omega-3. (Soybean oil…and anything with soybeans for that matter, should be avoided for a host of other reasons as well, including its high estrogen content.) Safflower contains 80% omega-6.
    • These oils should never be consumed after they have been heated.

2Sesame and Peanut Oils can be used, but should be done sparingly.

  • Peanut oil contains 48% oleic acid, 18% saturated fat, and 34% omega-6 linoleic acid. Like olive oil, it is relatively stable and therefore appropriate for the occasional stir fry. But the high omega-6 presents a potential danger.
  • Sesame oil contains 42% oleic acid, 14% saturated fat, and 43% omega-6 linoleic acid. It is similar to peanut oil and it contains unique antioxidants that are not destroyed by heat. But once again, the high omega-6 is concerning.

Flax Seed Oil is a great source for omega 3s.

  • It contains 9% saturated fatty acids, 18% oleic acid, 16% omega-6, and 57% omega-3.
  • Because of its high omega-3 content, it is a great remedy for the omega-6/omega-3 imbalance that causes so many problems.
  • It should be kept refrigerated, never heated, and consumed in small amounts in salad dressings and spreads. The fat from flax seed oil WILL make you fat, so use sparingly!

For further reading:

To learn more about coconut oil, read A New Look at Coconut Oil by by Mary Enig, phDfrom the Weston A. Price Foundation website.

For more information read The Oiling of America, by Mary Enig, phD, and Sally Fallon from the Weston A. Price Foundation website.

February 1, 2018/by Stacey Maaser
https://embracing-motherhood.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/coconut-oil-1.png 400 810 Stacey Maaser https://embracing-motherhood.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/EM_Logo.png Stacey Maaser2018-02-01 01:19:222025-06-02 18:57:06Best Oils to Cook With

The Mysteries of Digestion Unraveled

General, Health, Our Bodies
Embracing Motherhood The Mysteries of Digestion Unraveled

One of the most basic functions of human physiology is digestion, yet how many of us really understand what this process entails and how it affects what we should eat?

So often, we hear about foods and ways of eating that are “healthy”, and as a whole, we have held many erroneous beliefs about what should constitute “healthy”. The science behind what makes food “healthy” or not is simplified too much and the truth is hidden behind corporate slogans rather than actual science. Once we can understand the building blocks of food, how we digest them into individual molecules, and how we metabolize those molecules to make energy, the term “healthy eating” shouldn’t be so debatable or vague.

I have been reading about this information for years in an attempt to search for and serve my family the healthiest foods possible. Reading Sally Fallon’s book Nourishing Traditions was the first thing that changed my view about food and made me realize how misguided we have been about fat and the food pyramid. (Check out the Weston A. Price website to learn more!)

In writing this article, I started with Sally Fallon’s ideas as a framework in my brain, then used a college textbook called Understanding Nutrition by Whitney and Rolfes to really delve into the scientific explanations of carbohydrates, fats, and proteins and how we digest them (throughout this article, my descriptions come from this textbook unless otherwise linked). But even this seemingly benign textbook was not written without bias and made many leaps about what we “should eat” based solely on government recommendations rather than actual science.

So after reading this textbook and using it to explain the facts, I continued to ask my own questions, do my own research, and am now presenting an in depth synthesis of what I’ve learned about the foods we eat and how they are broken down during digestion.

In a Nutshell

When we eat any food, from cookies and cakes to burgers and fries to salad and dressing, it is all broken down into single molecules before being absorbed through the small intestine and sent into the bloodstream to be used as energy, for building, or stored for later use. All food can be categorized as and broken down into:

  • Carbohydrates –> Monosachharides
  • Fat (Triglycerides) –> Monoglycerides and Free Fatty Acids
  • Protein –> Amino Acids
Carbohydrates, Fats, Proteins, and the Smallest Molecules They are Broken Down Into

Carbohydrates, Fats, Proteins, and the Smallest Molecules They are Broken Down Into

*It takes about 6-8 hours for food to pass through the stomach and small intestine. In a study with 21 participants, it took  men an average of 33 hours for the food to be eliminated from the large intestine. It took an average of 33 hours for children too, but an average of 47 hours for women. Interesting!

Digestive System

Here is a picture of the entire digestive system just to give you a visual reference for where we are going. In my drawings, you’ll notice that I have included only what is necessary and exaggerated certain things for the purposes of clarity.

digestive system

Digestive System (Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons, LadyofHats, 2006)

Carbohydrates

Carbohydrates are primarily an energy source for plants, some animals, and humans.

From Polysaccharides to Monosaccharides

From Polysaccharides to Monosaccharides

Foods with Carbohyrdates

There is a misconception (probably due to that silly food pyramid!) that carbohydrates only refer to things like breads and pastas and not things like fruits and vegetables. But the truth is that lettuce is a carbohydrate, apples are carbohydrates, grain is a carbohydrate, and sugar beets are carbohydrates.

When you look at the nutritional profile of these carbohydrates, however, you’ll notice that the amount of carbohydrates differs greatly among different food sources. Also, keep in mind that carbohydrates (which all come from plants) can be an excellent source of vitamins and minerals if grown properly and not overly processed.

  • Lettuce, which is 96% water (3 g of carbohydrates per 100 g)
  • Apples, which are 87% water (14 g of carbohydrates per 100 g)
  • Whole wheat flour (73 g of carbohydrates per 100 g)
  • Table sugar (100 g of carbohydrates per 100 g)

The total carbohydrates measured on nutrition labels include both simple sugars (monosaccharides and disaccharides) and soluble and insoluble fiber (polysaccharides).

Types of Carbohydrates 

types of carbohydrates

Types of Carbohydrates (The numbers refer to the number of molecules.)

  • Monosaccharides: Monosaccharides are one molecule of sugar. Some foods contain monosaccharides and others are created when disaccharides are broken down during digestion. They are small enough to pass through the walls of the small intestine.
    • Glucose: The primary product of photosynthesis, found in all fruits and plants, most carbohydrates that we eat are converted to glucose during digestion
    • Fructose: Found in fruits, some root vegetables, cane sugar, and honey
    • Galactose: Combines with glucose to make lactose (milk sugar), not found on its own
  • Disaccharides: Disaccharides are two molecules of sugar. Some foods contain disaccharides and others are created when polysaccharides are broken down during digestion.
    • Sucrose: Made up of one molecule of fructose and one molecule of glucose, found in the stems of sugar cane and roots of the sugar beet, occurs naturally in some fruits and vegetables alongside glucose and fructose (especially in certain fruits and carrots), table sugar
    • Maltose: Made up of two molecules of glucose, formed during the germination of certain grains, mostly barley which is converted into malt, found in beer
    • Lactose: Made up of one molecule of glucose and one molecule of galactose, a naturally occurring sugar found in milk
  • Oligosaccharides: 3-10 monosaccharides connected together.  They are not digested or absorbed in the small intestine (so they give us no calories yet give us that full feeling). Instead, they pass directly to the large intestine where they are consumed by microflora thus increasing the amount of healthy bacteria. Examples include: artichoke, burdock, chicory, leeks, onions, and asparagus.
  • Polysaccharides: Polysaccharides consist of many monosaccharides connected together.
    • Starch: Starches consist of tens to hundreds to thousands of monosaccharides connected together. They are how plants store glucose for future use. About 70% of a plant’s structure is typically made up of the starch amylopectin (which is highly branched making it easy for the plant, and for humans to hydrolyze, or break down in the presence of water) and the other 30% is typically made up of the starch amylose (which has a more linear structure that makes it easy to store, but can’t be broken down without the enzyme amylase).
    • Resistant Starch: Resistant starches cannot be broken down during digestion, and so they are sent to the large intestine where they feed the healthy bacteria residing there. Examples include: green bananas, rolled oats, green peas, white beans, lentils, pearl barley, cold potato and cold pasta (occurs due to retrogradation).
    • Fermentable Fiber: We can’t digest the cell walls of plants, but some of them can be fermented in our large intestine like fructans (that occur in agave, artichokes, asparagus, leeks, garlic, onions, and wheat), inulin (occurs mainly in chicory), pectins (occurs mainly in the skins of citrus fruits and in apples, oranges, plum, guavas, and gooseberries), and raffinose (found in beans, cabbage, brussel sprouts, broccoli, asparagus, and whole grains). This fiber is soluble, meaning that it can mix with water, which creates a viscous gel that slows down digestion as it passes to the large intestine to be fermented by the microflora that resides there.
    • Nonfermentable Fiber: Humans do not possess the enzymes to digest some components of cell walls like cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin (which provide plants with the stiffness they need to stand upright), nor do we possess the bacteria to break them down either. (Ruminants and termintes possess symbiotic bacteria that help them to break these elements down.) These types of polysaccharides will pass through us unused. They are what is referred to as insoluble fiber (not soluble in water and NOT digestible or fermentable) and what gives bulk to our stool. Examples include pretty much any part of the plant that is hard to chew such as cucumber skins, the outer hull of grains, the hull of popcorn kernels, potato skins, grape skins, 80% of lettuce, and more.

How we Digest Carbohydrates

The digestion of carbohydrates occurs mostly in the small intestine.

carbohydrate digestion

How We Digest Carbohydrates

  1. In the mouth: The breakdown of carbohydrates begins in the mouth with the salivary enzyme amylase. Amylase works to break up the starch amylose, and hydrolysis begins breaking down the starch amylopectin. Very little digestion actually takes place here, however.
  2. In the stomach: Carbohydrates are churned into a paste in the stomach, but no chemical breakdown occurs during this process. The stomach actually neutralizes any amylase that was swallowed.
  3. In the duodonom: When carbohydrates enter the duodonem (which is the beginning part of the small intestine) the pancreas releases the enzyme amylase which breaks down polysaccharides into shorter glucose chains and maltose. (Babies produce very little amylase until over the age of one. Human breast milk contains a significant amount of amylase that helps babies digest breastmilk.)
  4. Throughout the small intestine: The brush boarder that lines the small intestine performs the final breakdown of carbohydrates by releasing the enzymes sucrase, maltase, and lactase that break down the disaccharides sucrose, maltose, and lactose into the monosaccharides glucose, fructose, and galactose.
  5. Absorption: The monosaccharides of glucose, fructose, and galactose are now small enough to pass through the walls of the small intestine and enter the bloodstream. Glucose and galactose need to hitch a ride on a sodium-dependent hexose transporter which will only transport them with a sodium ion. Fructose hitches a ride on another hexose transporter and doesn’t need sodium. As the blood circulates the liver, cells there take up fructose and galactose and covert them to other compounds, mainly glucose. This is why we say that most carbohydrates are converted to glucose in the blood!
  6. In the large intestine: Within one to four hours after a meal, all of the sugars and most of the starches have been digested. What passes into the large intestine are things that could not be digested or absorbed. This includes resistant starch (such as asparagus), fermentable fiber (such as the peel of an apple), and nonfermentable fiber (which includes cellulose, one of the components of cell walls). Resistant starches and fermentable fibers are water soluble and attract water which softens the stool. They are also able to be fermented by the good bacteria that (hopefully) resides in the large intestine releasing water, gas, and short chain fatty acids.
  7. Elimination: The nonfermentable fiber merely “bulks up the stool” and passes through unchanged. (Ever notice whole kernels of corn or popcorn hulls in your poop?)

Fats

Fats are the most efficient source of long term energy storage in both animals and humans.

From Triglycerides to Monoglycerides and Free Fatty Acids

From Triglycerides to Monoglycerides and Free Fatty Acids

Types of Fatty Acids

(*The following description of fats is adapted from Sally Fallon’s book Nourishing Traditions.)

Fatty acids can be categorized by how saturated they are:

  • Saturated: All available carbon bonds are occupied by a hydrogen atom
  • Monounsaturated: Has one double bond in the form of two carbon atoms double-bonded to each other and therefore lacking two hydrogen atoms
  • Polyunsaturated: Has two or more pairs of double bonds and therefore lack four or more hydrogen atoms

In addition, they are also categorized by how long they are:

  • Short-Chain Fatty Acids: Has four to six carbon atoms (always saturated, found mostly in butterfat from cows and goats)
  • Medium-Chain Fatty Acids: Has eight to twelve carbon atoms (found mostly in butterfat and tropical oils)
  • Long-Chain Fatty Acids: Has fourteen to eighteen carbon atoms
  • Very-Long-Chain Fatty Acids: Has twenty to twenty-four carbon atoms (DHA)

How We Digest Fats

In children and adults, fat digestion occurs mostly in the small intestine (although in infants, it occurs mostly in the mouth). Most of the fat in our bodies and the fat we eat is in the form of triglycerides (three fatty acid chains attached to a glycerol molecule).

fat digestion

How We Digest Fats

  1. In the mouth: Fat digestion starts slowly in the mouth. Some hard fats begin to melt as they reach body temperature. A salivary gland at the base of the tongue releases an enzyme (lingual lipase) that plays a minor role in fat digestion in adults and an active one in infants. In infants, this enzyme efficiently digests the short and medium chain fatty acids found in milk.
  2. In the stomach: Once fats hit the stomach, they would float if it were not for the muscle contractions that direct all contents towards the pyloric sphincter at the bottom of the stomach. This churning action emulsifies the fat by dispersing it into large droplets. The gastric lipase enzyme in the stomach (that performs best in an acidic environment) starts to work on breaking these droplets down. But very little fat digestion takes place in the stomach.
  3. Bile in the small intestine: When the large fat droplets enter the duodonem (the beginning part of the small intestine), they are coated with bile. (Bile is made in the liver and stored in the gallbladder. When fat enters the small intestine, it triggers the release of the hormone cholecystokinin which signals the gallbladder to release its bile.) The bile emulsifies the large fat droplets into smaller droplets. This increases their overall surface area making it easier for the next step. (Bile acids in the bile often pair up with amino acids which have one end attracted to water and one to fat. This helps with the emulsification process.)
  4. Lipases in the small intestine: The pancreas secretes a lipase enzyme that hydrolyzes (breaks down in the presence of water) the triglycerides into monoglycerides and free fatty acids. *Infants do not secrete much of this enzyme; this is why the lingual lipase excreted from under their tongues plays more of an active role.
  5. Absorption: Monoglycerides and free fatty acids are now small enough to pass through the intestinal wall.
  6. Elimination: If you are eliminating too much fat in your stool (white poop anyone?), it is a sign of poor health (i.e. your intestines don’t absorb food, your pancreas doesn’t make enough digestive enzymes, or your gallbladder isn’t passing on enough bile).

Protein

Protein is the building block of life.

From Protein to Amino Acids

From Protein to Amino Acids

Foods with Protein

There are both animal and plant based sources of protein. Animal based sources of protein have all of the essential amino acids that we need, including the ones that we can’t make and can only get from dietary sources. Here are some examples of different foods and the amount of protein they contain:

  • Chicken (31 g of protein per 100 g)
  • Hamburger (27 g of protein per 100 g)
  • Salmon (25 g of protein per 100 g)
  • Eggs (19 g of protein per 100 g)
  • Milk (3 g of protein per 100 g)
  • Kidney beans (9 g of protein per 100 g)
  • Tofu (8 g of protein per 100 g)
  • Broccoli (2.82 g of protein per 100 g)
  • Barley (2 g of protein per 100 g)

How we Digest Protein

The majority of protein digestion occurs in the stomach. *Watch a cool video that explains the entire process here.

protein digestion

How We Digest Protein

  1. In the mouth: Protein (basically a bunch of amino acids all connected and bunched together) are crushed and moistened in the mouth, but no chemical breakdown occurs during this part of the process.
  2. In the stomach: Hydrocholoric acid in the stomach uncoils, or denatures, each protein’s tangled strands so that the digestive enzymes can attack the peptide bonds. Hydrocholic acid in the stomach also converts the inactive form of the enzyme pepsinogen to its active form, pepsin. Pepsin cleaves large polypeptides into smaller polypeptides and some amino acids.
  3. In the Duodonem: When the smaller polypeptides enter the duodenum (the beginning part of the small intestine), proteases are released from the pancreas that hydrolyze them further (break them down in the presence of water) into short peptide chains, tripeptides, dipeptides, and amino acids.
  4. In the Small Intestine: Then peptidase enzymes on the membrane surfaces of the intestinal cells split these tripeptides and dipeptides into single amino acids.
  5. Absorption: These single amino acids are now small enough to be absorbed through the small intestine and enter the blood stream. Only a few peptides escape digestion and enter the bloodstream intact.
  6. Elimination: Only a small amount of dietary protein is lost in the feces.

In Conclusion

I have been reading, learning, making big posters, drawing models, redrawing models, talking to anyone who will listen, synthesizing, and applying all that I have learned about digestion for years in an attempt to understand it as best as I can. I feel like I could keep drawing better diagrams or synthesizing the information better and further, but I have to just stop here and move on knowing that I am going to continue to dig deeper, learn more, write more, and draw more, and keep building on this with future posts.

I think that understanding digestion is one of the fundamental building blocks for understanding health, and I hope that my synthesis of this information can help you understand it better as it has helped me. I am excited to move on and keep learning! I hope you’ll join me!

See it in action! Watch a camera go inside the digestive system to see a 5 minute video of what the process looks like first hand!

February 1, 2016/by Stacey Maaser
https://embracing-motherhood.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/digestion-blog.png 400 810 Stacey Maaser https://embracing-motherhood.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/EM_Logo.png Stacey Maaser2016-02-01 16:11:422024-06-16 07:42:17The Mysteries of Digestion Unraveled

How Insulin Can Make Us Fat…and What to Do About It

General, Health, Health Science

It’s not eating fats that makes us fat, it’s too many carbohydrates that make us fat. In his book, Why We Get Fat, Gary Taubes explains how it’s not as simple as “calories in, calories out” and that it doesn’t matter how many calories we consume, but what kind.

“Not all of us get fat when we eat carbohydrates, but for those of us who do get fat, carbohydrates are to blame; the fewer carbohydrates we eat, the leaner we will be” (p.134).

So WHY DO carbohydrates make us fat, and why does eating a carbohydrate rich diet make us overeat and gain weight? In a nutshell, the answer lies with the hormone insulin. Insulin is secreted to help the body metabolize glucose that comes from the breakdown of all carbohydrates. The longer our insulin levels are raised, the less time we spend burning stored fat. If we want to lose weight and access some of the fat we’ve been storing, we HAVE to lower our insulin.

The problem is that over time, for a variety of reasons, we become insulin resistant. To be more specific, our cells become insulin resistant as they protect themselves from an onslaught of glucose. When this happens, insulin is coursing through our veins even when we haven’t eaten anything or worse, when we have eaten, but none of the glucose can get into the cells and so we STARVE at the cellular level. This makes us hungry and we keeping eating and eating and eating, but we aren’t getting satisfied.

And thus begins a vicious cycle where we’re not getting fat because we’re eating too much, but we’re eating too much because we’re getting fat.

Here is a great look at how insulin makes us store fat. This diabetic man below injected himself with insulin in the same spots on his lower abdomen for more than 30 years. As a result he got lipohypertrophy, which isn’t the result of “eating too much” but rather of insulin doing it’s job of storing fat in a central and localized area.

Location of Insulin Shots

Location of Insulin Shots (Photo Credit: New England Journal of Medicine)

Insulin’s Role in Digestion

1. The pancreas begins secreting insulin when we simply think about eating carbohydrates. We may not have been really hungry before, but once we start to think about eating a freshly glazed doughnut or a big plate of spaghetti, we realize that we are suddenly STARVING. This is the insulin doing it’s job; it’s preparing our body for what we are about to eat.

2. Insulin shuttles glucose into cells. As glucose enters our bloodstream, insulin is release. Like a traffic cop directly traffic, insulin guides the glucose into the cells. (Physical activity can also drive glucose from the bloodstream into the muscles to be burned as fuel.) If cells don’t need any glucose, insulin will guide it to be stored as glycogen in the liver and muscle. Once glycogen store are full, excess glucose is converted into fat.

3. Carbohydrates are easiest to metabolize and so they are digested first. Any fat coming in at the same time will be stored as fat and dealt with later. So if you were to eat a slice of bread and butter, the bread will be digested first and the butter will be dealt with later. Protein can be used for energy if needed, but is mainly used to build and repair and therefore typically cannot be stored as fat.

4. Insulin stimulates the lipoprotein lipase (LPL) enzyme that pulls fat from the bloodstream into the fat cells. Insulin just wants us to survive. When there is a lot of glucose coming in, it is like a squirrel storing away nuts for the winter, and it tries to store away whatever glucose isn’t immediately being needed elsewhere. When insulin is present, more LPL enzymes are stimulated to pull fat into the fat cells.

5. At the same time, insulin is also suppressing the hormone sensitive lipase (HSL) enzyme which is responsible for making fat leave the fat cells. When there are individual fatty acids in the bloodstream, they are small enough to pass back and forth through the cell membrane. But once a glycerol molecule binds together with three fatty acids, it forms a triglyceride, and a triglyceride is too big to leave the fat cell. The only way a triglyceride can be broken down is with the help of HSL. When insulin is present, it prevents the HSL from breaking apart the triglyceride so the fat remains trapped inside the fat cell, and we are unable to use it as fuel.

6. Once our blood sugar levels begin to decrease, the insulin levels will also decrease (in a normal functioning metabolism). When this happens, any fat that was ingested with the carbohydrates can now be burned as fuel.

7. What if insulin levels don’t decrease? If the body is constantly bombard with more carbohydrates than it needs, it starts to become insulin resistant. This means that the insulin isn’t able to do it’s job and so the bloodstream is flooded with excess insulin and glucose leaving a person with high blood sugar.

Insulin Resistance

  • Insulin resistance starts in the womb. As the pancreas of the child develops, it must secrete more insulin if the mother has high blood sugar. When it is born, it will have a tendency to over secrete insulin, become insulin resistant, and then become fat as it gets older. Gary Taubes points out that, “in animal studies, this predisposition often manifests itself only when the animal reaches its version of middle age” (p. 132)
  • The bottom line is that too much glucose over a long period of time is too much for our bodies to handle. Too much sugar is toxic not only to the blood, but to the cells as well. In his article on the Weston A. Price Foundation website, “Treating Diabetes: Practical Advice for Combatting a Modern Epidemic“, Tomas Cowan, MD, explains that, “The cells build a shield or wall around themselves to slow down this influx of excess sugar. Insulin resistance is a protective or adaptive response, it is the best the body can do to protect the cells from too much glucose.”
  • When insulin remains elevated, the fat in the bloodstream, the fat stored in the fat cells, the protein stored in the muscle cells, and the carbohydrates stored as glycogen in the liver and muscle tissue cannot be used as fuel. As a result, the cells find themselves starved for fuel and we get hungry…starving in fact. Either we eat sooner than we otherwise would have or we eat more when we do. Meanwhile, our bodies are getting bigger because we’re putting on more fat, and we’re also building more muscle to support that fat. Gary Taubes explains that, “As we fatten, our energy demand increases, and our appetite will increase for this reason as well – particularly our appetite for carbohydrates, because this is the only nutrient our cells burn for fuel when insulin is elevated” (p. 126). And thus, we’re not getting fatter because we’re eating more, we’re eating more because we’re getting fatter.
  • Just getting older makes us more insulin resistant. As we age, we secrete more insulin, which results in more calories being diverted to fat and fewer calories being left to fuel the body. This leaves the cells to generate less energy. So we’re not getting fat because our metabolisms are slowing down, our metabolisms are slowing down because we’re getting fat. As we become insulin resistant, a whole host of other problems start to arise: our blood pressure goes up, our triglyceride levels go up, our HDL cholesterol goes down, and so on. Tomas Cowan, MD, explains that,
  • “Having a chronically elevated insulin level is detrimental for many other reasons. Not only do high insulin levels cause obesity (insulin tells your body to store fat), but they also signal that fluid should be retained, leading to edema and hypertension. Chronic high insulin provokes plaque development inside the arteries and also suppresses growth hormone needed for the regeneration of the tissues and many other physiological responses.”

Diabetes

When either the pancreas can’t make enough insulin to deal with the incoming sugar or the cells have become resistant to the insulin over a long period of time, it can lead to diabetes.  25.8 million people in America have diabetes. That’s 8.3% of the population.

Complications from diabetes can lead to heart disease and stroke, high blood pressure, blindness, kidney disease, nervous system disease, and amputation. Gary Taubes explains how diseases such as obesity, diabetes, heart disease, hypertension and stroke, cancer, Alzheimer’s, cavities, appendicitis, ulcers, gallstones, hemorrhoids, varicose veins, and constipation are common in societies that eat Western diets and are virtually nonexistent in societies that don’t. But it’s not ALL aspects of a western diet, as mainstream nutritionists and public health officials would have us believe, that lead to these maladies. It’s the sugar, carbohydrates, and how our body reacts to insulin.

  1. “Treating Diabetes: Practical Advice for Combatting a Modern Epidemic“, Tomas Cowan, MD “Unless eaten to great excess, fats do not contribute to diabetes–with one exception. Trans fatty acids in partially hydrogenated vegetable oils can cause insulin resistance. When these man-made fats get built into the cell membrane, they interfere with the insulin receptors. In theory, this means that one could develop insulin resistance without eating lots of carbohydrates. But in practice, partially hydrogenated vegetable oils are always used in the very high-carbohydrate foods–french fries, cookies, crackers, donuts and margarine on bread or potatoes–that flood the bloodstream with sugar. Trans fatty acids in modern processed foods present a double whammy for which the human species has developed no defenses.”
  2. “During the 1980s, researchers began to ask whether obesity, coronary artery disease, hypertension and other common medical problems that occur together are really separate diseases, or manifestations of one common physiological defect. The evidence now points to one defect and that is hyperinsulinemia, or excessive insulin levels in the blood. Hyperinsulinemia is the physiological event that links virtually all of our degenerative diseases. It is the biochemical corollary or marker of the events described in heart disease.”

How to Lose Weight

So now that we know what makes us fat (insulin), what can we do about it? In terms of weight loss, there are basically three categories.

  1. People who want to lose weight (either a lot of weight or a little weight)
  2. People who don’t want to lose weight (either because they just don’t want to or they’re not fat)
  3. People who are growing (children, pregnant and lactating women, and people who need to gain weight)

For the people who want to lose weight, here is what Gary Taubes suggests that you do.

1. The first thing to understand is why the “calories in, calories out” theory is wrong. When we see ourselves putting on a little weight, there’s a little voice in our heads that tries to to motivate us throughout the day, “Just stop eating so much!” it says. But it’s not that simple.

  • Gary Taubes talks about a group of women who tried to do just that. In 1990, the National Institute of Health conducted a study that they hoped would 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. Also, they still got just as much cancer and heart disease.
  • We could cut calories to the point of starvation to try to lose weight, but our bodies would just adapt in other ways. Our body temperatures would decrease, we would expend less energy, we would be cranky, irritable, and not to mention STARVING, and then the only way we could maintain this weight loss would be to maintain a lifetime of starvation. Does that seem possible? I didn’t think so. So if cutting calories doesn’t make us lose weight, increasing calories shouldn’t make us gain weight.
  • That’s because it’s not about how many calories we eat, but what kind of calories we eat. Thinking that a person gets overweight because they can’t control their eating or that they should just be better at portion control is just plain wrong. Saying that a person gaining weight is a result of their immoral gluttony is like saying an alcoholic becomes dependent on alcohol because of the sinful act of drinking. It’s kind of like, well duh! But the real questions should be: WHY do some people overeat? WHY do some people store all of their incoming calories as fat? WHY so some people drink to excess? and WHY do some people become addicted to the altered state that alcohol brings? These questions will get us to the real root cause of the problem. If it were as simple as “calories in, calories out”, then the very act of eating one extra slice of bread over the course of twenty years would make us gain an extra fifty pounds, and conversely, we should be able to lose that extra fifty pounds by eliminating the equivalent of one slice of bread to see the pounds gradually waste away. But it doesn’t work like that.
  • Also, it’s helpful to think about growing children in this scenario. Children do not grow because they are eating too much; they start to eat more because they are growing. If you were to restrict a child’s calories, they would still grow, their growth would just come at a cost to their internal organs, brain functions, and growth quality. Children grow because of hormones. The hormones are telling their bodies where and how to grow. It is the same with adults. Male hormones tell a man to gain weight in his abdomen, female hormones tell a woman to gain weight in her hips, butt, and thighs, and the hormone insulin, stimulated by the overabundance of glucose, tells our body to store fat.

2. If you don’t want your body to store fat, then don’t eat sugar. It’s as simple as that. Sugar stimulates the “reward center” of the brain in the same way that heroin, cocaine, nicotine, alcohol, and other addictive substances will. All food does this to some degree, but sugar seems to hijack the signal to an unnatural degree by flooding the neurotransmitters with an unparalleled amount of dopamine. You can quit eating sugar, but it will take the same vigilance as a drug addict trying to kick his or her drug habit. (Actually, according to a new study, sugar is more addictive than cocaine.)  When trying to decide between eliminating carbohydrates completely or simply limiting them, Gary Taubes explains, “If you continue to eat some of the fattening carbohydrates or allow yourself some sugar (or even, artificial sweeteners), though, you may always have the cravings” (p. 123).

3. What about high fructose corn syrup? High fructose corn syrup is made up of about 55% fructose and 42% glucose. So when the glucose enters the bloodstream, it raises blood sugar, and stimulates insulin. The fructose, however, is metabolized almost exclusively in the liver. When the liver is flooded with that much fructose, it turns most of it into fat. Because insulin levels are raised from the glucose, the fat is immediately shuttled into fat cells. The more high fructose corn syrup we consume and the longer we do so creates a pattern that our bodies adapt to by converting the fructose directly to fat. Over time, this also creates a fatty liver and causes muscle tissue to become resistant to insulin. A very fascinating point made by Gary Taubes states that, “It’s quite possible that if we never ate these sugars we might never become fat or diabetic, even if the bulk of our diet were still starchy carbohydrate and flour” (p. 138). He explains further that this could be why some of the world’s poorest populations live on carbohydrate rich diets and don’t get fat or diabetic. I believe that two of the biggest culprits here are sodas and breakfast cereals. Eliminate these right away!

4. Next, cut out all carbohydrates (or greatly reduce them), and replace them with fats. And not just any fats…saturated fats.  (Read The Truth About Fats, How We Were Duped Into Thinking Saturated Fat and Cholesterol Are Bad, Butter is a Superfood, and Choosing the Right Oils to Cook With to learn more about eating the right kind of fats.) As we do this, we’re creating a radical shift in the fuel our cells will burn for energy. When we consume less than sixty or so grams of carbohydrates a day (a slice of pizza has 40 grams), our body will enter what is called a state of ketosis. Now instead of running primarily on carbohydrates, our body (and brain) must get used to running on fats…including the fat that has been stored in our body. The side effects of this transition could include weakness, fatigue, nausea, dehydration, diarrhea, constipation, dizziness, and light-headedness. But these carbohydrate withdrawal symptoms are short lived and are far outweighed by the benefits of living a longer, leaner, and healthier life.

5. What about hypoglycemia? Neither hyperglycemia (high blood sugar) or hypoglycemia (low blood sugar)  is good. When blood sugar dips too low, you can become disoriented, confused, shaky, jittery, anxious, and irritable, and if the situation persists, you can slip into a coma and die. The body reacts to low blood sugar by producing adrenaline and releasing the carbohydrates we’ve stored as fat called glucogen. As a person recovers from hypoglycemia, he or she may need to be very careful by gradually reducing carbohydrates to a safe level.

6. What about protein? One point of caution with this “Atkin’s diet” mentality is trying to eat too much protein without the accompanying fat. By keeping protein to 20-25% of the diet, symptoms like weakness, nausea, and diarrhea can be avoided. So eat the egg whites with the yolk, don’t drain the fat after browning meat, and cook your food in loads of butter and coconut oil.

7. What about vegetables? Vegetables are broken down into carbohydrates. It takes much longer for them to be digested because they contain more water and fewer digestible carbohydrates for their weight than starches like potatoes. As a result, they will have a minimal effect on blood sugar. But this effect, however small it might be, could still be a problem for some people with severe insulin resistance or diabetes.

8. What about fruit? Gary Taubes explains that, “If we’re predisposed to put on fat, it’s a good bet that fruit will make the problem worse, not better” (p. 136).

9. But if I don’t eat any carbohydrates, won’t I get constipated? Gary Taubes states that, “It is a misconception that carbohydrate-restricted diets cause constipation” (p. 222). By adding sodium back into the diet (I advice Real Salt or bone broth), he explains that this problem can be easily handled. If not, I recommend getting some psyllium husk.

10. Fasting for 18-24 hours might work to break through plateaus of weight loss, but achieving weight loss through semi-starvation can only be maintained if the dieter can keep eating less and less food. When the body is in semi-starvation mode, the fat cells will be working hard to recoup the fat they’re losing.

In Conclusion

Making a major change in diet after eating the same way for a really long time can create some radical changes in the body and being able to talk to a doctor or nutritionist during this transition is advised, but Gary Taubes points out that, “physicians who tell their fat patients to eat less and exercise more, and particularly to eat the kind of low-fat, high carbohydrate diet that the authorities recommend, will not be sued for malpractice should any of those patients have a heart attack two weeks or even two months later” (p. 216). It would be nice if doctors REALLY had our best interests in mind when “guiding us”, but they are compelled to repeat the same mantra that has misled our nation into rampant obesity, heart disease, and cancer. When it comes to the nutrition for me and my family, I prefer to be an advocate for our own health, do my own research, and whenever possible let FOOD be our medicine.

For further reading:

  • Treating Diabetes: Practical Advice for Combatting a Modern Epidemic by Thomas Cowan, MD
  • Why We Get Fat by Gary Taubes
October 24, 2013/by Stacey Maaser
https://embracing-motherhood.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/fat-belly.png 400 810 Stacey Maaser https://embracing-motherhood.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/EM_Logo.png Stacey Maaser2013-10-24 17:48:512024-06-06 14:02:08How Insulin Can Make Us Fat…and What to Do About It

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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