Little Known Facts About Good Fats and Why They Matter
Ameer Rosic ÖŹTuesday April 15th 2014
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Few people know about healthy fats, but Cheryl Millett, a holistic health practitioner, does!
Read this article to learn more than the average bear‌roaring good information and something to sink your teeth into. For almost 20 years, I was in the food processing industry and got to see fish farming, oil refineries, flour mills, sugar refineries, chocolate factories, dairy plants, pulp and paper mills, bread/bagel/cookie manufacturing, and more. Still interested on how things are made!
What Are Good Fats?
FATS – Life is what you make it and much of the time we are learning and experiencing new things which can shape our thoughts and our diet so please read on. One key area of nutrition is “FATS.” I like to ask my audiences what one word comes to mind when I say “FATS.” What one word comes to mind for you? Most will say words, like low fat, obesity, trans fats, saturated fats and so on. These words refer to “FATS” as something negative, something to stay away from. After all, being over-weight and obese is a BIG problem these days. There are two sides to the FAT coin. There are healthy fats and unhealthy fats…with a flip of how it is processed.
Where to start? From the raw material to the types of fats, from the processing to the cooking temperature, fats will come out unhealthy or healthier for you. It is quality of the fat just before it enters your mouth that matters most. Wait for the kicker at the end of this article. (This article does not address the toxins found in our oceans and environment).
Raw Material Healthy fats include fats from whole foods like nuts, seeds, olives, grass fed meat and poultry, wild fish, and avocado, then include a saturated fat called coconut oil, and the poly-unsaturated or essential fatty acids (omega 3 and omega 6) from seal blubber. A majority of the fat from fish is located just beneath the skin…is this the part you eat? Do you eat it raw? Unhealthy fats include processed and oxidized fats such as vegetable oils (i.e. corn, canola, soybean oil, safflower, sunflower oil, etc.), grain fed animals, farmed fish (fed pellets that contain millfeeds – from wheat), over cooked fats, trans fats, etc. It is not black and white, more appropriately a scale from one side of the spectrum to another end – from great to ideal, less ideal, OK, less favourable most of the time to avoid, and so on – you get the gist.
Whole and Fresh is Better
This does differ from, food to food! For any whole foods, the shelf life can be longer. Why? The stability has not been removed from the food. Using the on-the-counter approach – take for example the whole apple versus one cut up or a fat like flaxseeds versus flaxseed oil. Either way the whole food would last longer. The seal oil from the blubber which if kept whole can maintain freshness when sitting on the counter. Wouldn’t be doing this with fish oil liquid! Besides the DHA in fish is a different molecule structure versus the DHA from seal oil. Weston A. Price talks highly about the seal oil and other healthy fats (see reference links.) The website also talks to the processing changing the quality of the fats. Best to eat your whole fresh foods quickly! What are you waiting for…instead of keeping it, eat it. One lecture I did, was to a large group of people from India and I asked this elderly gentleman ‘how did your ancestors prepare their oils/foods 100 years ago?’ He shared, they prepared them fresh every day. Buy a jug of vegetable oil today, and it was made when? How long was it on the shelves? How long did you keep it in your cupboard? Let logic enter your mind.
Processing is NOT All Created Equal If your taste buds are in good working order (and let’s just say you like the taste of coconut), you would notice the difference between raw and refined products. For example, I purchase a very good organic cold pressed coconut oil which tastes great and the colour was a beautiful white. My mother purchased an organic coconut oil which was refined (labeled for cooking – didn’t see this before I tasted it!). It looked beige compared to my white one and it tasted awful. Yuck! Most fish oils, cod liver oils and seal oils are refined, bleached and deodorized, using high heat and chemicals in the process. I know of only one seal oil company that doesn’t do this standard processing. Standards are easier, and it can be cheaper and save time to stick with the standards. Purchase organic oils because they say toxins are stored in the fat. Sure they say they remove the heavy metals but that isn’t the only toxins present. There are toxic residues from the processing. There are cold pressed oils such as olive oil, and flaxseed oil. Please understand there is still can be heat generated from the pressing machine/friction when making these oils. The high volume production can cause more friction which leads to the oxidation of the product. In this case, I can write “go small or go home.”
Test: Buy your favourite olive oil and store it in the place you usually do. Open and use as usual. Every few days taste a teaspoon in your mouth and journal. What did you notice?
Healthy saturated fats are very helpful in many ways. Here is one reason:
Trans fats inhibit the body’s use of omega-3 fatty acids and the production of long-chain omega-3 fatty acids, while saturated fats enhance the body’s use of omega-3 fatty acids and the production of the longchain versions
Cooking Dangers One more thing! The label reads what it contains at point of purchase not what happens if you put it in the oven at 350 degrees. Most processed foods do not contain trans fats but vegetable oils like canola or soybean oil. When you heat these oils past 320 degrees you actually create your own trans fats. How do you like that? I recently read a book called “Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human.” This book brought to my attention that we cook at much higher temperatures today than how they did it hundreds of thousands of years before us. In those days, they didn’t use vegetable oils, they used animal saturated fats. Ah ha! • •
Are we getting healthier? Are the cancer or disease rates decreasing?
Dangers of the wrong fat such as vegetable oils, high heated fats, and trans fats: • • • • • • • • • •
Cancer Diabetes Heart Disease Immune Function Fertility and Reproduction Lactation Development and Growth Osteoporosis Learning Disabilities Obesity
Oh my! You need to take control of your health and of your grocery shopping choices. Loblaw’s executives shared with me several years ago “we will stock what the customer is buying, what the customer wants.” So your dollars make a difference. Make them count!
Good news!
Saturated fats such as butter and coconut oil won’t hurt you but may help you, although, I know someone who could not consume coconut oil because it made her feel unwell and it was part of a raw diet. She is doing much better with some animal in her diet. Consume some mono-unsaturated fats, such as olive oil and avocado, and consume a source of polyunsaturated fats or essential fats (Omega 6 and Omega 3 in a balanced ratio). I will write more about this soon.
FATS is not a 4 letter word! Eat plenty of natural organic fats from saturated to poly-unsaturated. Your brain and other parts of your body will love you.
Ameer Rosic
Ameer Rosic is obsessed with health. A Registered Holistic Nutritionist, Functional Diagnostic Practitioner and Functional Medicine Practitioner, Ameer has spent years empowering himself with knowledge about optimal health, and now his passion is to share that with you! From interviews with top health experts to fitness and nutritional advice and more, Ameer Rosic can help you live a life of optimal health!
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