Fat Is Good For You

The avoidance of dietary fat has for decades now been considered essential for good nutrition.  However, this approach is sadly mistaken.  The assumption that fat goes ’straight to our rears’ is misguided.  Food is broken down into its constituent parts before being distributed and then consumed.  Whether dietary fat or any other energy gets stored as fat in our bodies is dependent on any number of variables.
The truth is that fats are eaten in abundant amounts by virtually every traditional culture, yet widespread heart disease and obesity are a phenomenon that has existed only since the 1940s and 50s.  It was in this time period that processed fats largely replaced natural fats and oils.  Margarine replaced butter and hydrogenated vegetable oils and soy oils replaced all others.
Thus, most of the supposed ill effects of fats are a byproduct of eating the wrong kinds of fats.  Butter, far from being bad for health is a healthy source of vitamin A.  Meanwhile, margarine is among the harmful fats.  It is made like so many products from hydrogenated oils.
This means oils that have been heated at high temperatures, often for long amounts of time.  This process causes the molecules of the oil to begin to dissociate.  The substance is then removed from heat while still in a state of transition from one substance to the other.  Thus, the result is known as a trans fat.  These substances are not found in nature and are widely used in the food industry because they do not spoil.  The trouble with consuming these substances in food is that the fats are still in transition.  The reaction never completed, so when one eats these fats, they are taking a proliferation of reactive species of molecules into their bodies which proceed to wreak havoc.
One striking example of the difference is the Pima Indians in Arizona, USA are the most obese population in the world with a 50% incidence of diabetes in their population.  They have adopted a Western diet and sedentary lifestyle.  Meanwhile, Pima Indians on the other side of the border live off of potatoes, corn, and lard.  However, they are lean, fit, and physically active.
Another example is the South of India where highly processed vegetable oils are a staple in cooking.  Malnutrition and heart disease are pervasive throughout their population.  On the other hand, peoples from the North of India who use ghee(butter oil) as their staple fat have few of the same problems.
 
Clearly, mainstream nutrition has been shallowly reactive in its efforts to all but obliterate fats from the diet.  Only in recent years has there been progress in the recognition of the virtues of mono and polyunsaturated fats.  Even these efforts have led to new mistakes, however.  Newly promoted products such as canola oil are often just as highly processed as their vegetable oil counterparts, and in less processed forms have the strong toxins occurring in the rapeseed plant from which the oil is derived.  Perhaps most pervasive of all is the craze surrounding products made from soy.  In traditional East Asian cultures, soy was eaten in relatively small quantities or in fermented form.  Now, soy products are pervasive among ‘healthy’ and vegetarian foods.  While soy has good properties, it also is a natural thyroid depressant and contains compounds that mimic human(especially female) hormones.  Eaten unfermented in large quantities, its toxins can be quite damaging.  Depressed thyroid function causes lethargy, loss of muscle tone, and weight gain.  The hormone imitators reinforce these effects, sending the body’s metabolism out of synch.  It is these very effects of soy that makes it highly desirable as animal feed.
Though soy has become a centerpiece among ‘healthy’ foods, it is used even more extensively in highly processed food.  A quick look at ingredients for many products will reveal the presence of soy oil.  While soy beans are beneficial in moderation, eating a concentrated essence derived from them is beyond excess and among one of the most harmful substances in highly processed food.
To progress into further error: many health trends encourage the use of many mono and polyunsaturated acids in cooking.  In many cases, such as with flax oil this is a bad idea.  Many of these oils break down quickly under environmental stresses.  This phenomenon is escalated at high temperatures and forms many harmful and carcinogenic substances of the sort found in highly processed vegetable oils.
 
At this point I have addressed many errors in popular nutrition.  Use of Omega 3 oils does, however, generally prove to be beneficial.  Oily fish, nuts, and olive oil are examples of excellent foods.  However, the irrational stigma against saturated fats continues.
Butter, especially ghee(the oils derived from butter) are conducive to good health.  Coconut oil is another saturated fat is especially healthy and possesses anti-bacterial properties and lauric acid, a substance also prevalent in mother’s milk.  Coconut oil is almost pure saturated fat yet its regular consumption often results in the loss of weight.  Rich coconut milk is a staple food in much of Southeast Asia, yet the locals are typically quite slender.  Cocoa butter, the fat of the cocoa bean is a major component of chocolate, yet varieties with low or no sugar and high cocoa content are packed anti-oxidants and conducive to weight regulation.
Oily fish, nuts, and olive oil, great sources of omega oils, are also copious sources of saturated fats, yet they are still quite healthy for the human body.
 
‘Health food’ in the West is typically thought of as being ‘light’, unappetizing, and unsatisfying.  This is in large part because of the exclusion of saturated fats.  These substances are important aids for digestion, especially when eating foods with high fiber content.
Plentiful fat is what makes a meal feel truly satisfying and puts the stomach at rest.  Ironically, a ‘healthy’ diet tends to leave one hungry and ironically leads one to grasp for foods drenched in trans fats to put these monstrous cravings to rest.  It is a diet high in fat that leaves the stomach sated and which eliminates the desire for grasping for snacks.  A high fat diet eases digestion and the frequency with which one needs to eat.  One may generally observe across cultural and political boundaries:  peoples who eat plenty of the right fats have much smoother complexions, healthier hair, and less signs of aging.  The protective effects of the right fats are becoming evident as people who eat ‘healthy’ have begun to contract cancer and heart disease at higher rates than peoples of many third world countries.  One of the tenets of Western health culture is that one must triumph against temptation.  Perhaps such views have proliferated to such an extent in the anglosphere because of the way in which they mesh with the Puritan concept of this world as a transitory plane designed to divert us from everything that is good with worldly delights.
However, any endurance athlete knows to listen to his or her body and the subtle cues and signals it is constantly giving.  It is no different when it comes to eating.  Engaging in righteous masochism when it comes to providing the body with nourishment is self defeating.  In fact, restriction of fat intake actually causes the body to slow its metabolism and retain every bit of fat it can extract from the limited diet it is given.  Forcing the body to constantly strain to compensate is of course painful and unhealthy.

Perhaps the best visible representation of what people should want to eat can be seen in children who in an earlier stage of socialization are therefore closer to acting according to their most natural tendencies.  Kids prefer pizza to celery and salad and crispy chicken skins and lard to the actual meat it’s attached to.  These parts are dense in nutrients, and more importantly easiest to digest and thus conducive to the digestion of other foods.
 
Western culture is flagrantly backwards in respect to its attitude towards nutrition, but it has shown some progress, and increasingly, there is input from organizations such as the Weston A. Price foundation that are guiding people back towards the proper eating habits that were obvious to generations of healthy people across thousands of years.  The sad part, is that what was once a matter of common sense has been transformed into an often misguided mysticism often as flawed as the profit making interests that don’t care what their food does to people so long as it sells.  Too often, the mystics and the unscrupulous food manufacturers are one and the same and in the face of such opposition, it will be long and difficult to reverse the current, destructive trends.