Are fats as evil as they say?

At last!  As the saying goes “The cat is out of the bag”.  It has taken a while but the truth always reveals itself.  

Once again, the Food Industry has managed to hide the real results to a scientific study and has taken advantage of the innocence of the general public.  The concept that FATS MAKE YOU FAT was an easy sell and has helped make way to a huge range of “low fat” and “light” products that have been on our supermarket shelves for decades now.  If that was so true. why are we fatter than ever?

Once you process a food and eliminate the fat content, it probably is left completely devoid of flavour.  Something has to be added to make it tase of something.   Along with artificial flavourings, in pours the sugar.  It has been proven that a diet low in added sugar is a lot more effective in weight-loss than a diet low in fats.  So, does that mean that fats are good? Are fats healthy?  What about all the bad rap that saturated fats got in the mainstream media?

What we can see now is that the very dangerous fats are the TRANS fats.  Once we refine an oil or we heat up a Poli-unsaturated fat (usually from seed sources) these fatty acids oxidise and become unrecognisable to our cells.  That is when a fat becomes toxic.  This can happen over time, with heat, light or exposure to oxygen.  Saturated fats are actually very stable to these factors and transform very slowly.  Monounsaturated fats from sources like olive or avocados are quite stable.  The most labile are the Poli-unsaturated fats like sunflower oil.  These are the exact oils that were pushed on us to replace the “terrible” saturated fats from lard, coconut oil or butter in the 80’s.

Trans fats are even more toxic to the body than refined sugar.  They can block the liver’s functions.  They can disable the body from being able to benefit from the healthy fats in our diet, like omega 3’s for example.  Trans fats also promote general inflammation which can lead to hormone imbalance, immune disfunction or chronic pain, to name a few.

I would like to end with a simple message, similar to what I usually state – try to eat your fats from natural sources.  Including them in your diet will allow you to feel full for longer, absorbe liposoluble vitamins and nutrients, and supply the body with essential fatty acids.  I would recommend foods like seed, tree-nuts, coconut, avocados, olives, ghee, extra virgen, cold-pressed olive oil, organic eggs, artisan yogurt, cheese or kefir, grass-fed beef and wild-caught fish.