Fat Doesn’t Make You Fat, Sugar Does.

For Most People Low-Fat Diets Are A Mistake

It’s counter-intuitive, and for most of us it’s going to take a long time to get used to the conclusions of scientific analyses: eating healthy fats don’t make us fat. Furthermore, they are not directly linked to heart disease, according to one British Medical Journal study, among others¹. You would think fat in the diet would turn to fat on the body, but this is where our reasoning goes wrong: It doesn’t.

While excess fat on the body can lead to various illnesses and shorten our lifespan, it does not come directly from the fat in our diets. Sugar is the main culprit. According to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA),² sugar triggers our fat-storing hormone, increases inflammation in the body as well as our risk for cardio-vascular disease, dementia and heart attack.

Since 1980, the U.S. Dietary Guidelines (followed by many countries around the world) have been promoting a low fat diet. However, Americans have never been more overweight and sick than they are today. In 1960 1 in 7 Americans was obese. Today 1 in 3 Americans is obese. In 1960 1 in 100 Americans had Type 2 Diabetes. Today 1 out of 10 Americans and (in 2008) almost 1 out of 4 teenagers in the U.S. was pre-diabetic or had Type 2 Diabetes.

In fact, you can trace the beginning of the obesity epidemic in the US to the beginning of the marketing of low-fat and 0% products. So what happened?

Low -fat diets leave people feeling unfulfilled so consumers replaced the fat in their diets with carbohydrates, a known cause of weight gain, particularly belly fat. Secondly, as so many products had zero fat and low calories, people thought they could eat more of them than they should, leading to over-eating.

However, in 2015, the U.S. Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, in a spectacular reversal, stated that dietary cholesterol is no longer a concern. The Committee no longer recommends limiting dietary cholesterol or dietary fat, apart from saturated fat³.

This is confusing, to be sure. Not all fat is created equal: there are trans fats, which are used by industrial food companies because they are cheap and don’t spoil quickly (for example, those used in solid magarine in stick-form). However, trans fats have been shown to be dangerous for your health⁴. To make things more complicated, there are also monounsaturated fats, polyunsaturated fats, saturated fats and cholesterol. Healthy forms of fat are now known to be needed for maintaining brain and cardiovascular health. In the fields of Psychiatry⁵ and Cardiology⁶ Omega 3 supplementation is recommended.

 

 

So what are the fats that are good for you? Here is a quick list:

Healthy fats to add to your diet are:

-Plant-derived fats generally contain healthy fats: olive, walnut, coconut, almond, hazelnut and pistachio oils.

-Foods such as avocados, nuts and seeds are healthy sources of fats.

-Animal-derived fats found in grass-fed organic beef, wild salmon, anchovies, sardines, eggs, organic butter from grass-fed cows are also healthy.

Unhealthy fats to avoid are:

-refined vegetable oils used in industrially prepared foods such as corn, canola and safflower oils

-any trans fats (used in stick or hard margarine).

Were you aware that the scientific community’s opinion towards fat has changed?

Do you consume more healthy fats in your diet today? If so, how has it changed your health or the way you feel?

To learn more on this subject, here are 2 books I recommend:

1. Dr. Mark Hyman,”Eat Fat, Get Thin” ( Little, Brown and Company; February 2016)
2. Dr. Joseph Mercola, “Fat for Fuel” (Hay House, Inc.; May 2017)

Sources:

1. Aseem Malhotra, et al.“Observations from the heart: saturated fat is not the major issue”, BMJ, October 2013; 347:f6340.
2. Quanhe Yang, PhD, et al. “Added Sugar Intake and Cardiovascular Diseases Mortality Among US Adults”, JAMA Intern Med, published online February 03, 2014. doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2013.13563
3. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and U.S. Department of Agriculture. 2015 –2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans. 8th Edition. December 2015. Available at http://health.gov/dietaryguidelines/2015/guidelines/.
4. U.S.FDA:https://www.fda.gov/Food/PopularTopics/ucm292278.htm://www.fda.gov/Food/PopularTopics/ucm292278.htm
5. US National Institutes of Health: Omega 3 Fatty Acids and Major Depression, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC533861/
6. American Heart Association: Kris-Etherton PM, Harris WS, Appel LJ, et al. “Fish consumption, fish oil, omega-3 fatty acids and cardiovascular disease.” Circulation.  2002; 106:2747-2757.