Want To Be Thin? Eat More Fat

Be careful. This article is seriously in error about many things. For starters, the information about saturated fats is completely wrong.

I urge Alternet readers to go to the Weston A. Price Foundation website (westonaprice.org) and get the real facts. I have pulled a few sections from the work of Mary Enig and pasted them here.

A few excerpts:

How much total saturated do we need? During the 1970s, researchers from Canada found that animals fed rapeseed oil and canola oil developed heart lesions. This problem was corrected when they added saturated fat to the animals diets. On the basis of this and other research, they ultimately determined that the diet should contain at least 25 percent of fat as saturated fat. Among the food fats that they tested, the one found to have the best proportion of saturated fat was lard, the very fat we are told to avoid under all circumstances!
ref: http://westonaprice.org/knowyourfats/import_sat_fat.html


The following nutrient-rich traditional fats have nourished healthy population groups for thousands of years:

* Butter
* Beef and lamb tallow
* Lard
* Chicken, goose and duck fat
* Coconut, palm and sesame oils
* Cold pressed olive oil
* Cold pressed flax oil
* Marine oils

The following new-fangled fats can cause cancer, heart disease, immune system dysfunction, sterility, learning disabilities, growth problems and osteoporosis:

* All hydrogenated oils
* Soy, corn and safflower oils
* Cottonseed oil
* Canola oil
* All fats heated to very high temperatures in processing and frying

Who is Mary Enig?

Mary G. Enig, PhD is an expert of international renown in the field of lipid biochemistry. She has headed a number of studies on the content and effects of trans fatty acids in America and Israel, and has successfully challenged government assertions that dietary animal fat causes cancer and heart disease. Recent scientific and media attention on the possible adverse health effects of trans fatty acids has brought increased attention to her work. She is a licensed nutritionist, certified by the Certification Board for Nutrition Specialists, a qualified expert witness, nutrition consultant to individuals, industry and state and federal governments, contributing editor to a number of scientific publications, Fellow of the American College of Nutrition and President of the Maryland Nutritionists Association. She is the author of over 60 technical papers and presentations, as well as a popular lecturer. Dr. Enig is currently working on the exploratory development of an adjunct therapy for AIDS using complete medium chain saturated fatty acids from whole foods. She is Vice-President of the Weston A Price Foundation and Scientific Editor of Wise Traditions as well as the author of Know Your Fats: The Complete Primer for Understanding the Nutrition of Fats, Oils, and Cholesterol, Bethesda Press, May 2000. She is the mother of three healthy children brought up on whole foods including butter, cream, eggs and meat.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

The whole fat thing is getting old. Look energy is energy. To lose weight you need to control your energy. You can introduce less energy to your body by eating less calories. You can work out, converting the energy to heat or a combination. You can also eat more often to keep a high metabolism.

Transfat is a health issue but don't kid yourself that swapping it for olive oil will do miracles weight wise. Energy is still energy and fat is the most energy-rich food available to us. One gram = roughly 9 kcal, doesn't mattter if it comes scraped up from the bottom of the McD fryer or from olives.

Here's the thing about the high-fat diets. Because fat is so rich in energy, you can't eat as much of it. The protein that typically is the other part of the equation is much better at this, but the fat+protein (atkins type, GI whatever) can still be difficult to sustain if you feel hungry. Any eating habit which leaves you hungry will fail, easy as that. All diets tend to get complicated so here's my advice on it.

1. Only eat when you are hungry.

Your body is fantastic, it has build-in detectors and ways of letting you know it's time to eat. Let your own body tell you when it's time to eat. Never mind what your head says, go with your gut.

2. Stop eating when you are no longer hungry.

Notice the wording? Don't stop eating when you're FULL, stop when you are no longer hungry. If after your meal you're breathing funny and unbuttoning your pants, you're eating too much. By doing this, you will get smaller meal sizes automatically. You will be hungry again sooner, and so the cycle continues.

3. Eat slowly.

Chew your food, ok? There's no corrolation between how fast you're served and how fast you need to eat it. This will help your digestive system, and it will be easier to tell when you are no longer hungry.

4. Leave food on the plate.

Yeah... parents, the household sin of all, not finishing your plate. Who says when to stop eating? Right, your body. It's not the fault of your belly that you put too much on the plate to begin with is it? No longer hungry = stop eating. Over time you'll learn how much is appopriate. This is also great for kids because they'll learn from a young age to treat eating this way instead of forcing it down. Maybe it applied back in the days when food was scarce. Not so anymore.

5. Balance your plate.

1/2 vegetables, 1/4 slow carbs like boiled potatoes, rice, pasta and the final 1/4 protein. To get fat in there the article mentiones those good sources.

6. Drink more water

Water is great, your body needs it way more than food. You can go 2-3 weeks without food, not so with water. Drink a good amount with every meal. I promise you you're not getting enough right now.

7. Eat smaller servings of snacks and candy

Don't just stop. First, it won't last and second why would you? Live isn't about deprivation it's about moderation. Have cake, just make the slice half what you used to take and eat it twice as slowly.

8. Don't worry so goddam much about food all the time.

The diet this, dangerous that unhealthy bla bla bullshit that goes on in the media will only confuse, scare and ultimately ruin your attempts at being healthy. The best thing to tell you what to do is your very own gut. It tells you when it's happy, when it's hungry and when it's not. No science asshole or anorexic magazine columnist can do that, right?

Smaller servings
Eat only when you're hungry
Stop when you're not hungry
Balance your plate
Drink more water
Stop worrying
Try it.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

I agree with recommending finding Weston Price info, and in addition...read THE 7 PRINCIPLES OF FAT BURNING by Dr. Eric Berg. Basically he talks about healing liver before anything else will work. Re. this article:
--avocados very high in potassium in form we very much need
---before eating almost any seeds/nuts, in order to remove the enzyme inhibitor substances, soak for about 12 hours, then rinse several times, let dry at no more than 105 degrees, then keep refrigerated til eaten because they are then highly nutritious and also perishable ( OG walnuts superb, acc. to Berg)
---"new-fangled"????? Think author may mean GMO foods and cotton. Nearly 70% of all food is now GMO and this is extremely serious. Go online and get a list of what NOT to buy if you want to avoid GMO products. Basically, go for certified organic and secondly, organic and fresh, unprocessed food.
---Generally, organic food has more minerals in it also. Not as many as 25 years ago but way more than commercially grown foods (from soil depletion, an extremely serious condition at this point). Minerals are the bedrock of nutrition (pun intended)...Commercially grown produce generally can be considered to be "pretend food".

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

but I will keep on eating avocados when I can afford them because they give me pleasure. Studies are so manipulated these days it is hard to take any of them seriously. Even if they are not bought off by some special interest, the researchers bias comes into play. All we have is today, the here and now. That is the ultimate truth. So I am going to enjoy myself a bit after years of oppression from the food nags and health police.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

Feedlot /conventional fed animals lack Omega 3 fats, pastured animals are good sources of Omega 3 fats.Try to buy locally raised pasture fed beef,pork,chicken etc.Honest Organic is best, but local grass pastured meat from producers that don't feed hormones, antibiotics, synthetic protein ( urea) are good sources, try to adopt local producers of healthier raised meats, fruit, veggies.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

There is a definite lack of good fats/lipids in the modern human diet, and too many are trying to make up for it by eating endless carbs which aren't as good for you and have many fewer nutrients than good fatty/lipid-dense foods. Eating too many carbs actually makes you overweight because people have to eat so many more to get nutrients and/or feel full and they don't exercise - now, even though carbs are CALORIE dense that doesn't mean they are dense in actual nutrients.

There are definitely too many empty carbs from nutrient-scarce grains (wheat, corn, rice, etc) and other carbs along with too much refined sugar, along with the lack of good fats/lipids - MANY people these days are suffering from ‘fat starvation,’ even if they are overweight from eating WAY too many calorie-dense carbs and not exercising all of those carb-calories off.

The human brain is made up approximately 60% FAT! Thus when people starve themselves of fat with these BOGUS and DAMAGING low-fat diets it clearly lowers their mood and overall brain power - studies have shown that people’s brain health dramatically improved by intake of omega-3 fatty acids, fish oils, and other healthy fat/lipids from good fatty nutrient-dense foods.

Also, these so called ‘fat-busting’ drugs called statins have been shown to decrease the mood, memory, and overall mental capacity of people. Fat also plays an instrumental role in DNA repair and production - thus when we deprive ourselves of it too much or eat too much bad fat we are causing damage to our DNA.

Also, the problems with infertility that many couples are experiencing nowadays are likely related to low-fat/bad-fat diets - many infertile women and men put on high-fat diets showed marked improvement in their conditions by being able to conceive, and it often even cured infertility completely if the problem was not because of injury or something more serious like that: an old cure for infertility amongst some North American Indian tribes was the consumption of large amounts of very fatty foods for a few weeks prior to and when a couple was trying to conceive...sometimes they even ate raw fat from huge bears they hunted down because they claimed it cured infertility the best!

Also, as commenter s.duplantier says above, there is a MAJOR difference between the good traditional healthy fats/lipids and the new FAKE fats/lipids invented by chemists or the modern food industry. This bears repeating: the good traditional fats include butter (NOT MARGARINE or butter with canola oil), beef and lamb fat, lard (pork fat - BACON IS VERY GOOD FOR YOU!), chicken fat (chicken skin is especially dense with good fat), goose and duck fat, fats from fish like salmon or other very fatty fish, coconut oil, palm and sesame oils, cold pressed olive oil, cold pressed flax oil, marine oils, fatty nuts like almonds (check the label and see how much delicious fat is in almonds!), fat from cocoa (sugar free VERY dark chocolate is good for you), fats from avocados, and so on.

The following new fats cause all kinds of physical and mental problems because our bodies did not evolve eating them and they were in fact 'invented' in modern times (again, thanks to s.duplantier for compiling the list): All hydrogenated oils, Soy, corn and safflower oils, Cottonseed oil, Canola oil, All fats heated to very high temperatures in processing and frying.

So eat more GOOD fats everyone instead of continuing to load up on endless nutrient-scarce carbs and fake/bad fats - your body and mind will thank you for it.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

All these folk who want to diss this article have missed the simple point that the author is really only advocating a very healthy and mainly vegetarian diet. Plus she does it in a way that is not fanatically pro-vegetarian so that nobody has to line up and take sides in that 'war'.

Really, there is some great advice given in this article and it does not deserve to be trashed as is being done.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

AFTER READING THIS HAD TO GO TO KITCHEN
THREE SOFT BOILED EGGS
THREE STRIPS FARM RAISED BACON
TWO SLICES OF EZEKIEL 4:9 BUTTERED BREAD
ONE SLICED AVOCADO
BOY DO I FEEL GOOD
THANK YOU,THANK YOU

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

This article contains really dangerous misinformation. The truth is that dietary fat boosts the risk of atherosclerosis, and therefore heart disease and stroke. It also interferes with excretion of the anabolic sex hormones, and therefore increases the risk of cancer, including breast, ovary, and prostate cancer. If you look around the world, you see that the populations that are naturally slim eat a diet based heavily on a starchy staple, such as rice, potatoes, or corn, plus lots of other low-fat unrefined plant foods. The more fat they eat, the more their risk of obesity and cardiovascular disease increases. In order for a study to show an effect of a low-fat diet, the fat intake has to be about 10% of total calories, enough to lower the total cholesterol to the heart-attack-proof zone of less than 150 mg/dL. The study also has to be large enough and last long enough to show a statistical effect.

By the way, don't take the Weston A. Price Foundation seriously. They're just a trade group for ranchers, etc. They're just selling their wares. For reliable information about fat and heart disease, go to www.heartattackproof.com and ww.drmcdougall.com

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

Her parents must have named her at a wine and cheese party. Yeah, brie is one of those good fats!

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

... contain all the essential fatty acids, have more omega 3 fat than any fish and go well in waffles, pizza dough, cereal, muffins, cookies, salads. They look and taste like mini-sunflower seeds. A great way to interest even the most disenfranchised teenager in healthy food ;.)

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

This is a fascinating debate...and this thread of opinion makes for great comic material.

Step back and see a great Pythonesque sketch.

BTW, I've been inclined to accept the Weston Price view for a few years now. However, as usual, with a poll of qualified and experienced experts espousing a range of views that stretches from horizon to horizon, it is difficult to be 'certain'.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

Eat fat at the beginning of a meal and you'll fill up faster 'cos fat takes longer to digest.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

You've got to be joking about the canola oil, or Canada Oil as it really is, a process which took a poisonous product, and refined it until it was fit for human consumption. This oil was manufactured to bring wealth into the country, and make others outside the country wealthy by investment in it. Come off it! Rape seed oil is good for you???????????!!!!!!!!!!!!! Good for the Canadian economy, good for the investors in it, no disputing that, but good for our health? No way it is. Please do your homework there. Otherwise, good article. Natural is best, always was, always will be. The less tampering, the better.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

I have read the China Study, and I have read Weston A. Price material, and I don't know how to reconcile them. If anyone does, please enlighten us. What we do know is this:

1. Processed food is evil -- avoid it. It is less nourishing and frequently damaging, it is corporate, and environmentally it is worse than whole foods.

2. Plants grown in real soil, nourished in the closed cycles of traditional farms have more nutrients than plants grown in thin soil, 'nourished' with petrochemicals.

3. Whole grains are good, full of nutrients and fiber, refined grains are bad.

4. Meat, eggs and dairy, if eaten, should come from animals that eat their natural diet (not corn and soy), aren't pumped full of hormones and antibiotics, and have a decent life -- for the sake of the animals, the environment and the consumer's health.

5. GMOs are terrifying. Personally, I think the ecological consequences are scarier than the personal health risks, but really, for both of those reasons, and to fight corporate control, avoid GMOs.

What else do we know for sure about what we should eat?

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

I liked the article. I learned some new information about food and eating, and I'll do some follow-up research to see if it applies to my situation.

I think health is a personal choice, and everyone should eat what they want. It seems as if all of the information about eating that has been brought 'to light' during the last 50 or so years has only confused people. I remember as a child that some study said butter was bad for people and they should only eat margarine. My mother switched to Fleishmann's Corn Oil margarine after she heard butter was no longer good. At the time, I thought that this was just a load of crap although I didn't say it to my folks. Then, 30 or so years later, a new study says that margarine is bad. So which is it? And the list goes on and on.

I have a friend that eats nothing but the most horrible looking TV dinners, and is skinny as a rail. (She smokes, too, which is probably why she is thin.) I wouldn't eat that stuff if I were paid, too, but I would never say anything to her about it. It is her choice. I like salads, fruits & vegetables, but not all of them. I couldn't force one of those nasty little cabbages, brussel sprouts, down my throat.

Different approaches to health appeal to different people. For me, 30-45 minutes of daily exercise, 5-6 small meals per day plus two quarts of water work. I am not saying that my approach is for everyone. It was a matter of trial and error before I found what felt good.

The old saying,'different strokes for different folks,' certainly applies to all aspects of health as does common sense.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

nice topic ! thanks from plastic injection molding, regards!

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]