Keep These Toxic Fats Out of Your Diet. Forever!

I used to believe that allowing fat in my family’s diet was tantamount to being an irresponsible mother.  No way was I going to recklessly endanger my children’s health.  That eating fat was a set up for  a slew of medical disasters waiting to cut us down in our prime.

Saturated fats were the devil, to be avoided at all costs.

So, I studied recipes and cookbooks with an eagle eye. Ever vigilant and determined, I stripped all the fat from our daily diet. I was proud that I was an accomplished low/no fat cook.

NOT ANYMORE!

Even today, if I let myself, I could spiral down the guilt rabbit hole with anger and resentment at Ancel Keyes  He is the father of the 20th century low fat movement.

He doctored his research, cherry picked and falsified his actual results.  All this in an effort to support his hypothesis that saturated fat causes coronary artery disease.

Like many Baby Boomer mothers, I was an unwitting victim of lies so HUGE and pushed so hard, they found their way into every nook and cranny of the media, popular science and even informed the recommendations of the FDA’s food pyramid.

They linger in the mind with a ferocity that’s hard to dislodge.  I had to “relearn” how to eat saturated fat because my aversion to it was grooved so deeply in my brain.

Now I know better, so I do better.

Now I subscribe to the adage: eat fat to lose fat.  But not just any fat.  I avoid PUFA toxicity and resulting inflammation by cutting out vegetable oils from my diet.

Adding saturated fat to my eating plan helped me lose over 30 lbs and keep it off for over 3 years—the longest I’ve ever gone without steadily gaining weight each year.  In fact, I’ve even continued to lose a few more pounds here and there.

Just to be clear, 21st century metabolic science has revealed the truth:  SUGAR is the most dangerous substance we can consume.  Not saturated fat.

So, let’s dive into the skinny on fats.  Which ones to avoid and which ones to use without fear in your kitchen.

Consuming seed oils weakens your immune system.

All oils are pure fat and don’t contain any carbs, but from a health perspective, some are better than others.

The average American gets 80% of their fat calories from seed oils.  They are high in unstable fatty acids.  They break down into toxins when you cook with them and eat them year after year.

Dr. Cate Shanahan, one of my all time heroes, is devoted to restoring our metabolic health. She has a lot to say about the fats we should include in our diets and those we should avoid like the plague.

Eliminate high-PUFA seed oils from your diet to reduce inflammation.

It’s the NUMBER ONE best thing you can do to  support optimal immune system function.

When it comes to beating the Coronavirus, this advice is particularly relevant.   Especially as the Delta variant continues to wreak havoc.

Here’s how Dr. Shanahan explained  it to Bill Maher.

The virus is not what’s killing most of us under the age of 65. For the elderly, or for those who are otherwise immuno-compromised, the sheer viral load can be too much for the body to deal with. But for the rest of us, the real threat is not the virus itself, but the way your body responds.

Most of the folks under 65 who have to be admitted to the ICU are there because their body fat is full of inflammation-promoting high-PUFA seed oils. In other words, if seed oils were removed from the equation, then there would be nobody under 65 in the ICU unless they’ve got a rare immune deficiency disorder or are in the middle of chemo for cancer or have something else very serious that’s going on.

What I’m talking about goes way beyond flattening the curve; the sheer volume of the curve would be reduced. If the Hateful 8 weren’t disrupting our metabolisms and forcing our immune system to produce dangerous levels of inflammation, kids are still at school, restaurants are still opened and people are still going to work.

Doctors are so poorly trained in metabolic disease that most can’t begin to appreciate how powerful the wrong dietary advice they typically dish out is disrupting your health. We tell you to avoid saturated fat and when you do you’re going to end up eating unhealthy amounts of PUFA. And so most doctors unknowingly give out nutritional advice that only makes people sicker. When our dietary advice fails to help our patients, we sometimes avoid the subject altogether by ignoring abnormal lab results and telling you “all your tests came back normal.”

That’s my best explanation for why half the adults in this country with metabolic conditions like fatty liver and prediabetes aren’t told they have the condition, and therefore don’t have any reason to believe they’re at risk for additional complications of metabolic diseases or at risk of suffering from serious infections.

Many other common conditions are also metabolic. For example, if you’re a person who suffers from frequent migraines, seasonal allergies, occasional asthma, you almost certainly have an unhealthy metabolism. These seemingly minor underlying conditions are enough to make a viral pneumonia potentially life threatening.

NEVER eat refined PUFA-rich seed oils a.k.a. “Vegetable oils.”

PUFAs are found, in abundance, in processed foods and especially in highly processed foods.  These vegetable oils are the darlings of the food industry.  They increase the shelf life of a vast array of products.