The following is a very interesting and well laid out article explaining the importance of consuming good quality saturated fats rather than low fat, high carb diets and polyunsaturated fats which are so loudly marketed and promoted these days. When you look back at history you can see the logic of the argument that saturated fats are an important and healthful part of our diet, one which historically has not caused health problems in the populations that consume saturated fats in even in abundance. Eg. Eskimos, Northern Europeans etc. like we are lead to believe. Sorting out our understanding of saturated fats and their importance in our diet is crucial to maintaining good health.
I would encourage you to follow the link to the Price Pottenger foundation and read the full article regarding saturated fats and health. You may be surprised to learn how good they are for you and encouraged to incorporate healthy saturated fats into your diet more.
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The Fat Controversy: An Historical Approach
by T.L. Cleave, M.R.C.P.
Noted surgeon and medical researcher TL Cleave wrote the following words in 1975. They appeared in his book The Saccharine Disease, published by Keats Publishing. Twenty years later, the American anti-animal-fat hysteria is still with us, even though a number of studies have since appeared implicating the polyunsaturated vegetable oils that he warns us about as contributing factors to heart disease, cancer and other ailments of modern civilization.
Those who incriminate animal fats in raising the blood lipids and causing coronary disease would have us stop eating the fats that we have been eating from immemorial time, such as the fat found in meat and in the butter and cream derived from milk, and eat instead a whole lot of new oils, mainly expressed from vegetable seeds, many of which oils are alien to us. The reason this substitution is recommended is because these oils contain greater amounts of polyunsaturated fatty acids, which when eaten increase the blood cholesterol little or not at all compared with their saturated analogues present in animal fats; and which are also considered to be more valuable to the body structurally. Indeed some, such as H. Malmros, would have the above substitution carried out on a national scale, and in certain countries, like Australia, the very dairy industry has been threatened. Let us therefore look into this substitution more closely, from the evolutionary point of view...
The keeping of flocks of sheep, herds of cattle and other domestic animals, in order to provide a continuity of meat and milk, started with neolithic man many thousands of years before the Christian era, and even only 1,500 years before that era Moses, in the Bible (Deuteronomy 32:14), was stating that Jehovah gave to his people to eat "butter of kine and milk of sheep with fat of lambs." It is true that the consumption of fat in some parts of the Old Testament is forbidden, but this is always in connection with the making of offerings, the fat being needed for the performance of this act. It was once explained to the author by a guide of the great temple at Karnak in Egypt that every particle of these burnt offerings was eaten by the priests. And no one reading the first ten verses of the seventh chapter of Leviticus can doubt that the guide was right. To these ancient fats we are therefore well adapted, quite apart from man, as a hunter, being well acquainted with the fat of animals in evolution, in times far more remote than the neolithic era.
Contrast with these ancient fats the new oils, mainly expressed from vegetable seeds. Not only are many of these seeds not a natural food for man (e.g. cotton seed and sunflower seed -- and, incidentally, the sunflower does not even come from the Old World, as we do in the British Isles, but from the New), but also the oils expressed from many of these never existed in any quantity before the invention of the modem hydraulic press or the new solvent procedures, and consequently were scarcely eaten in this country before the introduction of margarine, around 1916, during the First World War. Evolutionarily, these oils make us not so much men as the equivalent of a flock of greenfinches, and the evolutionary incongruity is heightened by the fact that the coronary explosion amongst us, as will be seen later, came in since the introduction ofjust these oils at the period stated, though in margarine they are often saturated by a stream of hydrogen....
Some have objected that the animal fats may be destroyed by stall-feeding of the animal themselves... However, let the battle be fought out where no stall-feeding is in question, as in the case of sheep. Not one of those who advise that animal fats be replaced by vegetable seed and similar processed oils makes an exception over mutton fat, for this is a typical saturated fat. We are advised not to eat the mutton fat of grass-fed sheep, though we may love it. And this is the evolutionary crux -- the thwarting of a natural taste for a natural food.
...There is another complicating factor to the whole dietary lipids picture that is also misunderstood. Fatty acids are essential parts of all body tissues where they are the major part of the phospholipid component of the cell membrane and are not just stored energy. Low fat diets that supply adequate calories are basically high carbohydrate diets. When the body does not get enough fat from the diet, it makes fats "from scratch" from carbohydrates. The fatty acids that the body synthesizes are saturated fatty acids -- exactly the same kind of saturated fatty acids found in butter, cream and animal fat -- and monounsaturated fatty acids -- exactly the same kind of fatty acids found in olive oil. The cell membranes are composed of a combination of saturated fatty acids, monounsaturated fatty acids and polyunsaturated fatty acids.
It happens that the more fat you consume in your diet, the less your body tissues make from scratch. But when you consume high levels of unnatural polyunsaturated fatty acids such as the kind found in commercial vegetable oils, the normal body synthesis of saturated fat is eliminated and the ingested polyunsaturated fats are used for structurai fatty acids, leading to an unnatural balance in the cell membranes.
Essentially it amounts to the following. Low fat, high carbohydrate diets cause the body to make the saturated fatty acids and monounsaturated fatty acids it needs. When the fat that is eaten is mixed and mostly saturated and monounsaturated, it is like the fat the body synthesizes. Under these circumstances, there is no problem with the fatty acid supply that the tissues have available for incorporation into the phospholipids that are an important part of the membrane structure of all cells. On the other hand, when the fat that is eaten is more highly unsaturated, the fatty acids available for incorporation into the tissue phospholipids are more unsaturated than the body normally prefers and this causes a number of differences in membrane properties that are thought to be detrimental to the regular body economy. High levels of polyunsaturates in the diet have been shown to increase cholesterol levels in tissues, increase fat cell synthesis in growing animals, alter the response of the immune system, increase peroxidation products such as ceroid pigment, increase gallstone formation, and of all things decrease HDL cholesterol in the blood.
Saturated fatty acids have recently been shown to be necessary for the proper utilization of essential fatty acids and for efficient modeling of the bones. Consumption of saturated fatty acids also results in lowering of Lp(a) in the blood. Elevated levels of Lp(a) are a marker for heart disease. The textbooks tell us that saturated fats protect the liver.
So the practice of breeding and feeding domestic animals is not to be disdained, especially if these animals are naturally and humanely raised. For thousands of years, these animals have supplied mankind with the kinds of fats that give him energy and help his body to work more efficiently.... *Article continues on website.
http://www.price-pottenger.org/Articles/FatControversy.htm#top
I would encourage you to follow the link to the Price Pottenger foundation and read the full article regarding saturated fats and health. You may be surprised to learn how good they are for you and encouraged to incorporate healthy saturated fats into your diet more.
--------------------
The Fat Controversy: An Historical Approach
by T.L. Cleave, M.R.C.P.
Noted surgeon and medical researcher TL Cleave wrote the following words in 1975. They appeared in his book The Saccharine Disease, published by Keats Publishing. Twenty years later, the American anti-animal-fat hysteria is still with us, even though a number of studies have since appeared implicating the polyunsaturated vegetable oils that he warns us about as contributing factors to heart disease, cancer and other ailments of modern civilization.
Those who incriminate animal fats in raising the blood lipids and causing coronary disease would have us stop eating the fats that we have been eating from immemorial time, such as the fat found in meat and in the butter and cream derived from milk, and eat instead a whole lot of new oils, mainly expressed from vegetable seeds, many of which oils are alien to us. The reason this substitution is recommended is because these oils contain greater amounts of polyunsaturated fatty acids, which when eaten increase the blood cholesterol little or not at all compared with their saturated analogues present in animal fats; and which are also considered to be more valuable to the body structurally. Indeed some, such as H. Malmros, would have the above substitution carried out on a national scale, and in certain countries, like Australia, the very dairy industry has been threatened. Let us therefore look into this substitution more closely, from the evolutionary point of view...
The keeping of flocks of sheep, herds of cattle and other domestic animals, in order to provide a continuity of meat and milk, started with neolithic man many thousands of years before the Christian era, and even only 1,500 years before that era Moses, in the Bible (Deuteronomy 32:14), was stating that Jehovah gave to his people to eat "butter of kine and milk of sheep with fat of lambs." It is true that the consumption of fat in some parts of the Old Testament is forbidden, but this is always in connection with the making of offerings, the fat being needed for the performance of this act. It was once explained to the author by a guide of the great temple at Karnak in Egypt that every particle of these burnt offerings was eaten by the priests. And no one reading the first ten verses of the seventh chapter of Leviticus can doubt that the guide was right. To these ancient fats we are therefore well adapted, quite apart from man, as a hunter, being well acquainted with the fat of animals in evolution, in times far more remote than the neolithic era.
Contrast with these ancient fats the new oils, mainly expressed from vegetable seeds. Not only are many of these seeds not a natural food for man (e.g. cotton seed and sunflower seed -- and, incidentally, the sunflower does not even come from the Old World, as we do in the British Isles, but from the New), but also the oils expressed from many of these never existed in any quantity before the invention of the modem hydraulic press or the new solvent procedures, and consequently were scarcely eaten in this country before the introduction of margarine, around 1916, during the First World War. Evolutionarily, these oils make us not so much men as the equivalent of a flock of greenfinches, and the evolutionary incongruity is heightened by the fact that the coronary explosion amongst us, as will be seen later, came in since the introduction ofjust these oils at the period stated, though in margarine they are often saturated by a stream of hydrogen....
Some have objected that the animal fats may be destroyed by stall-feeding of the animal themselves... However, let the battle be fought out where no stall-feeding is in question, as in the case of sheep. Not one of those who advise that animal fats be replaced by vegetable seed and similar processed oils makes an exception over mutton fat, for this is a typical saturated fat. We are advised not to eat the mutton fat of grass-fed sheep, though we may love it. And this is the evolutionary crux -- the thwarting of a natural taste for a natural food.
...There is another complicating factor to the whole dietary lipids picture that is also misunderstood. Fatty acids are essential parts of all body tissues where they are the major part of the phospholipid component of the cell membrane and are not just stored energy. Low fat diets that supply adequate calories are basically high carbohydrate diets. When the body does not get enough fat from the diet, it makes fats "from scratch" from carbohydrates. The fatty acids that the body synthesizes are saturated fatty acids -- exactly the same kind of saturated fatty acids found in butter, cream and animal fat -- and monounsaturated fatty acids -- exactly the same kind of fatty acids found in olive oil. The cell membranes are composed of a combination of saturated fatty acids, monounsaturated fatty acids and polyunsaturated fatty acids.
It happens that the more fat you consume in your diet, the less your body tissues make from scratch. But when you consume high levels of unnatural polyunsaturated fatty acids such as the kind found in commercial vegetable oils, the normal body synthesis of saturated fat is eliminated and the ingested polyunsaturated fats are used for structurai fatty acids, leading to an unnatural balance in the cell membranes.
Essentially it amounts to the following. Low fat, high carbohydrate diets cause the body to make the saturated fatty acids and monounsaturated fatty acids it needs. When the fat that is eaten is mixed and mostly saturated and monounsaturated, it is like the fat the body synthesizes. Under these circumstances, there is no problem with the fatty acid supply that the tissues have available for incorporation into the phospholipids that are an important part of the membrane structure of all cells. On the other hand, when the fat that is eaten is more highly unsaturated, the fatty acids available for incorporation into the tissue phospholipids are more unsaturated than the body normally prefers and this causes a number of differences in membrane properties that are thought to be detrimental to the regular body economy. High levels of polyunsaturates in the diet have been shown to increase cholesterol levels in tissues, increase fat cell synthesis in growing animals, alter the response of the immune system, increase peroxidation products such as ceroid pigment, increase gallstone formation, and of all things decrease HDL cholesterol in the blood.
Saturated fatty acids have recently been shown to be necessary for the proper utilization of essential fatty acids and for efficient modeling of the bones. Consumption of saturated fatty acids also results in lowering of Lp(a) in the blood. Elevated levels of Lp(a) are a marker for heart disease. The textbooks tell us that saturated fats protect the liver.
So the practice of breeding and feeding domestic animals is not to be disdained, especially if these animals are naturally and humanely raised. For thousands of years, these animals have supplied mankind with the kinds of fats that give him energy and help his body to work more efficiently.... *Article continues on website.
http://www.price-pottenger.org/Articles/FatControversy.htm#top
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