When I say “fat”, you think _____.
What was your answer? Diet? Weight? McDonalds? Workout? Homer Simpson rubbing his belly and daydreaming of donuts while drooling and ignoring his wife?
My response is ‘Mmmmm’. Or, more precisely, my response is the famous opening line of James Brown’s top hit, (with an emphatic shout) “I feel good!” followed by a smooth brass groove. I can see some of my favorite foods sway in rhythm to my ‘happy healthy dance’ as my shoulders bounce and fingers snap.
Like most women, I grew up in the era of fad diets. My role models - aunties, TV characters, and older cousins - normalized these conversations. Is Atkins or Jenny Craig the superior weight loss method? Do margarine and Sweet n’ Low both steer towards slenderness?
Yuck.
I couldn’t blame them. They had been lied to. Scientists bought with the money of ill-intent had scrambled the meaning of ‘food fat’ and ‘body fat’, endorsing a reign of terror where all tasty, hearty foods met a tragic fate. Our culture became obsessed with calories, with the ‘experts’ neglecting to mention… we really need calories!
Defined, a calorie is “a unit of energy.” Did you catch that? A quick Google search can tell you that counting calories is just counting the fuel available to your body. Do you want a full tank or an empty tank?
Let’s not breeze over the fact that there are empty calories, which are the equivalent of filling your gas tank with water - useless, unsatisfying, but taking up space. These are calories that contribute to your intake but do not offer any benefit. Empty calories are running rampant on grocery store shelves and in most foods that have become popularized only recently, since processed foods have become the norm in modern homes.
When it comes to fat, it’s essential to distinguish between which fats offer empty calories, which ones offer life-giving and delicious calories, and which ones are essential to our health.
Trans fats are ‘low calorie’ and creep into a lot of foods that claim to be ‘diet’ items but are otherwise a plague upon our food supply. There are so many kinds of trans fats that it can be hard to keep up when reading a list of ingredients. Some of the common ones to identify include anything with the name 'hydrogenated' or 'partially hydrogenated' or 'linoleic acid'. Common names also include margarine, shortening, and seed oil.
Though marketed as ‘low calorie’, they actually make dieting and weight-loss more difficult. Your body has no use for empty calories, since they offer no nutritional value. It is harder for your body to process and dispose of these foods than it is to process nutrient rich, caloric wholesome fats, such as butter or olive oil. When your body can’t fully process something, it has to find a place to store it, meaning food toxins turn into belly bloat or weight gain. Beware of any oil that proudly proclaims to be ‘low calorie’ or any fat marketed as ‘long-lasting’ or ‘shelf-stable’.
As if that weren’t enough to place trans fats on the naughty list, they also increase your bad cholesterol - you know, the kind you’re supposed to worry about. To add insult to injury, they attack your good cholesterol, which is necessary for brain health, heart health, hormone regulation, nutrients absorption, and so much more. That means trans fats aren’t just clogging your arteries but are also diminishing your body’s natural ability to encourage healthy circulation.
It’s easy to brush these small threats away as ‘no big deal’, but let’s not forget to view our health holistically. That is, instead of saying “how bad can it really be?” remember that each of the parts of your body depend on one other to make the whole body run smoothly.
Imagine trying to open a jar. Maybe the lid is rusted or sticky, maybe you haven’t worked on your grip strength in years, or maybe there’s grease on your hands that makes it harder for you to grasp the lid. Any one of those things is going to make opening that jar an exhausting activity for you. Your body is no different - any one assailant, such as empty calories and bad fats, can cause the whole system to be less efficient, becoming exhausted much faster. That's energy that could have been spent pursuing your passion project, laughing with your family, or ‘getting this bread’ as the kids say.
I know - I’ve spent eight paragraphs being a huge bummer. Empty calories are everywhere. Trans fats are evil. Diet foods are insidious. The sky is falling! But there is great news at the end of this.
All those delicious, nourishing foods that you’ve brushed off for so long forgive you. They don’t mind that you believed those rumors about how dangerous they are or that you cavorted with their cheap, fake, doppelgängers. The saturated fats are happy to welcome you home - bring back Grandma’s recipe book! The unsaturated fats are at the frontlines, waiting for the call to protect your body and take back territory from all those phony fats.
But wait -
Just like in all healthy relationships, we should set some boundaries, know what red flags to look for, and put in the effort to understand the good fats.
First, let’s look at saturated fats. Examples are naturally occurring fats such as butter, ghee, bacon, and coconut oil. Basically, animal products (and coconuts?). Saturated fats are good in moderation - just like chocolate or inviting your mother-in-law over for dinner. You also want to be mindful of the quality of the source. Basically, happy and healthy cows and coconuts will give you a more quality product for a happier, healthier you. Look for grass-fed, organic products when you are able (though even a lower quality product that your body is familiar with is typically better than the heavily processed trans fats that have been stealing butter’s identity).
Why exactly are saturated fats better for you than trans fats? To start, saturated fats help your body to absorb necessary vitamins. They also strengthen your cell walls which prevents toxins from flowing into your cells and encourages the healthy production and use of energy within the cell. Saturated fats are also essential in the regulation of hormone production. But let’s not forget, moderation is key!
We all know “If you can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen,” and this is the most important part of saturated fats: They are the only heat-stable fats! That means saturated fats are the only ones you should cook with. Because of their chemical structure, they are less likely to break down under intense heat than the other types of fat are. This lowers risk of oxidation and the production of free radicals and other toxins. The wonderful, rich flavor offered by butter or tallow is like a bright neon sign telling your tastebuds “this food is mmm mm good for me.”
Intuitively, I know saturated fats are better for me than trans fats because they occur naturally and have been part of the human diet for millennia. Trans fats, meanwhile, have to be produced using scientific practices that process natural materials into highly unnatural states. Why should I demand that my body process and run on something that it simply doesn’t have the mechanisms to handle? That is a recipe for energy inefficiency.
Now we get to the heroic fats. Saturated fats may be your tasty friend who is great for a night out, but unsaturated fats are the supportive and wise friends you depend on for a sense of safety and clarity. I’m not kidding - unsaturated fats literally protect your mind and body.
Unsaturated fats are cholesterol warriors, warding off bad cholesterol and defending good cholesterol for a healthy heart and arteries. They’re packed with vitamins and Omega-3s that are necessary from your head down to your toes. These include many of the plant-based fats that are common to almost every kitchen, such as olive oil, peanut butter, or avocados.
From fighting inflammation to improving eye health, unsaturated fats are on your team. A diet rich with healthy fish, nuts, olives, and eggs is not only beneficial but necessary. Studies on Alzheimer’s are increasingly suggesting that a healthy daily dose of unsaturated fat has a long term impact preventing mental degradation with aging.
Some advocates of healthy fats, such as Dave Asprey, author of The Bulletproof Diet, suggest that both unsaturated and saturated fats, are the foundation of a healthy diet. Asprey has extensively funded research and offered himself as the subject of experimentation to demonstrate the vast and profound impact good fats can have on human capability. The highlights include encouraging weight loss and improving insulin sensitivity. This is because fat helps the body to handle sugars and carbohydrates calmly without causing the intense spikes and crashes that we often experience from snacks and meals, and increases satiety, the feeling of enduring satisfaction offered by wholesome foods.
Furthermore, good fats increase the absorption of some common polyphenols. As antioxidants and anti-inflammatories, polyphenols are essential to fighting off common disease. They help your cells to heal from the damage caused by toxins and promote the growth of the good bacteria that serves as your body’s army against invasive bacteria.
Once again, fat finds another way to aid in our body’s efficient use of energy. Broken cells require significantly more energy to do their job, and worn-down gut biomes can’t absorb nutrients or process waste as effectively as healthy ones. With a little help from the good fats, your body can spend its energy thriving, as it’s meant to, rather than constantly repairing itself and just scraping by. (Sound familiar?)
But again, let’s remember to focus on quality. Since unsaturated fats breakdown more easily than saturated, there are a few things to consider before purchasing or consuming. First, try to buy organic. The toxins that go into farming processes, including pesticides on nuts or hormones for fish and eggs, will disrupt the benefits that the food should naturally offer.
For olive oil, it’s best to buy organic oil in a very dark bottle, as it is light sensitive and can oxidize without even being opened. Beware olive oil brands that mix in other oil without listing them on the label; this is very common in the US, so do your research before dropping the big bucks! Lastly, sorry to disappoint the many lovers of Italian cooking, but olive oil (and all unsaturated fats!) is not good for cooking, but is best drizzled liberally and deliciously as a topping or dressing.
There’s a lot of information here, so when you’re writing your grocery list, think of ACED.
Avoid trans fats - processed, hydrogenated, linoleic, partially hydrogenated…the list goes on
Cook saturated fats - butter, coconut oil, beef tallow, bacon grease (yes, bacon grease!)
Eat unsaturated fats - nuts, fish, avocado, peanut butter
Drizzle olive oil - with a heavy hand
Fats have been wrongly placed under an umbrella of evil. In reality, fats are variable in nature, ranging from absolutely toxic to completely delicious and even healing. Unsaturated and saturated fats, the healthy ones, have such a multitude of benefits that it’s impossible to list them all in one blog.
As always, it’s essential to do your own research and listen to your body to know how things affect you. But it won’t take you long to find that your tastebuds aren’t the only part of your body that will rejoice when you accept healthy fats back into your life ;)
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