If you’ve been following my columns the last two weeks, you’ve come to learn that a diet high in animal fats (which are all saturated fats) is a primary cause of type 2 diabetes. Saturated fats, which are all solid at room temperature, have been labeled as “bad fats” because of the role they play in the development of several diseases including type 2 diabetes. It isn’t hard to understand how that label came about.
Saturated fat raises total blood cholesterol levels and especially the type of cholesterol that has been labeled as bad cholesterol. This bad type is called low-density lipoprotein or LDL cholesterol. This bad cholesterol is responsible for the formation of a hard, thick substance called cholesterol plaque on the inside of artery walls. The arteries begin to narrow and the heart has to pump harder to push the blood through the narrowed arteries. The first problem that this causes is high blood pressure. Eventually coronary heart disease and heart attack strike and too often they kill. And too much saturated fat is the bad guy that does these dirty deeds.
But all this talk about good fat versus bad fat, and good cholesterol versus bad cholesterol is a bit simplistic. It might not even be an exaggeration to call these ideas about fat, and its cousin cholesterol, a big fat lie. Fat is essential for the proper functioning of the body. Fat is involved in the control of inflammation, in the proper clotting of blood, and in normal brain development, to mention only a few examples. And the truth is that all dietary fats are a combination of both saturated and unsaturated fat in different proportions. You can’t get one without the other. Since a certain amount of fat is essential in our diet, then a certain proportion of that dietary fat has to be saturated fat, even if you were a strict vegetarian. It simply is not possible or desirable to eliminate all saturated fat from the diet. Both saturated and unsaturated fats are part of a healthy diet. Therefore saturated fat is not automatically a bad thing.
The same is true with cholesterol. Both HDL and LDL cholesterol, which are labeled good and bad cholesterol, are essential to the normal functioning of the body. For example, one essential function of the so-called bad cholesterol, LDL, is to transport cholesterol from the liver to tissues and incorporate it into cell membranes. HDL cholesterol carries worn out cholesterol, which has been discarded by the cells, back to the liver where it is either recycled or excreted.
Studies have found that LDL cholesterol protects red blood cells from toxins produced by infectious bacteria that would otherwise kill them. Now that’s not a particularly bad thing. As a matter of fact, it’s a very good thing to keep your red blood cells from being killed off by bacterial infections. LDL cholesterol is the one that does the good deed. But HDL, the so-called good cholesterol, does not provide this vital protective function.
So which cholesterol is good and which is bad? The truth is that both are good and essential to good health. All the cholesterol that the body requires for good health can be manufactured by the body. It is not absolutely essential to have it in the diet. But the body can handle low levels of dietary cholesterol with no problem. Its when the level of dietary cholesterol and saturated fat exceed the levels that the body can safely handle that severe health problems begin to develop.
So the real problem is not with saturated fat or cholesterol themselves. Saturated fat is not bad fat. Neither is LDL cholesterol bad cholesterol. Both are required for normal, healthy functioning of the body. But when the diet contains too much saturated fat in proportion to the unsaturated fats, and when the total fat and cholesterol intake are too high—that is when serious health problems develop.
So what we need to understand is which foods contain fat that is mostly saturated, and which foods contain fat that is mostly unsaturated. Then we need to arrange our diets so that we are eating a larger proportion of the second group of foods—the foods that contain fat that is mostly unsaturated. The first group of foods—the foods that contain fat that is mostly saturated, should be eaten very sparingly if at all.
So here’s a simplified breakdown of these two food groups.
The highly-saturated-fat food group contains almost all animal foods like fatty meats, whole milk, cheese, cream, and ice cream. Almost all these animal foods contain fats that have more saturated than unsaturated fat. But one popular plant food has an even higher proportion of saturated versus unsaturated fat than animal food. That food is chocolate. This is just one of several reasons why chocolate is not properly classified as a health food. Coconut is another plant food that contains a type of saturated fat, but it is a completely different kind of saturated fat than meat and chocolate contain. Coconut has many marvelous health benefits and as long as the rest of the diet is not excessively high in saturated fat, the saturated fat in coconut will do you only good and not harm.
On the other hand, the highly-unsaturated-fat food group contains almost all plant foods like nuts, seeds, pulses (beans, lentils etc.), grains (rice, oats, wheat, etc.), fruits, and vegetables. Almost all these vegetable or plant-based foods contain fats that have more unsaturated than saturated fat. So the healthiest diet will be a diet that has a higher proportion of plant foods than animal foods, so that unsaturated fats can be maximized and saturated fats can be kept to a minimum.
There is actually another health issue with animal fat that is rarely mentioned. All animal fat, including our own human fatty tissue, is the primary designated storage place for toxins that have not been excreted. Toxins are poisons and poison causes cell damage and cell death. This is why too much toxin in the body is a major cause of many diseases. The more animal fat you eat, the more you are loading your body up with disease-causing poisons that are stored in the fat. This is very likely the reason why God originally declared to His people that no animal fat or blood should ever be eaten (Leviticus 3:17; 7:23, 24).
The bottom line, if you want to avoid many killer diseases, is to limit as many of the highly saturated fat foods in your diet as possible, and even eliminate those that are most unhealthy entirely. Those are subjects we’ll look at in future columns—how to proportion fats, carbohydrates and proteins in your diet for the most health-producing results, and which foods are so bad they should never be considered as part of your healthy, disease-preventing diet.
Besides the issues we’ve just looked at, there is another way that even too much unsaturated vegetable fat in the diet can cause disease. To understand how too much of even the healthiest kinds of fat can become a problem I need to explain how fat is digested and absorbed. When food is eaten, the digestive system breaks the food down into simple components that can be easily absorbed into the bloodstream and then reconstituted into the various components of the body. Fats cannot dissolve in water. As a result, the digestion and absorption of fat is different from that of other nutrients.
Fats must be emulsified before they can be digested and absorbed. This means they have to be broken up into tiny particles that can be surrounded by water. Fats are emulsified in the intestines by the addition of bile and lecithin. The presence of these emulsifiers makes it possible for the water-soluble enzymes in the intestine to do their digestive work, even in the presence of fat.
As the intestines churn the food, these emulsifiers break the fat up into droplets. These tiny droplets are then broken down into fatty acids, monoglycerides and diglycerides by enzymes called lipases which are released by the pancreas. The bile works on these breakdown products of fat and turns them into even tinier droplets. When these fatty acid droplets are absorbed by the intestines they form protein-coated droplets known as chylomicrons.
Close to 80% of these chylomicrons find their way into the lymphatic system while the other products of digestion, such as the sugars and amino acids remain in the bloodstream. The lymphatic system filters the fatty acids to remove harmful residues and bacteria before returning them to the bloodstream. Eating an excessive amount fat of any kind therefore puts a severe strain on the lymphatic system which in turn makes you more susceptible to disease and to common ailments like tiredness, headaches, colds and flu. These facts are detailed in the textbook, Diet and Health by South African professor, Walter J. Veith, PhD.
Until next week, be wise, be healthy and God bless!
Saturated fat raises total blood cholesterol levels and especially the type of cholesterol that has been labeled as bad cholesterol. This bad type is called low-density lipoprotein or LDL cholesterol. This bad cholesterol is responsible for the formation of a hard, thick substance called cholesterol plaque on the inside of artery walls. The arteries begin to narrow and the heart has to pump harder to push the blood through the narrowed arteries. The first problem that this causes is high blood pressure. Eventually coronary heart disease and heart attack strike and too often they kill. And too much saturated fat is the bad guy that does these dirty deeds.
But all this talk about good fat versus bad fat, and good cholesterol versus bad cholesterol is a bit simplistic. It might not even be an exaggeration to call these ideas about fat, and its cousin cholesterol, a big fat lie. Fat is essential for the proper functioning of the body. Fat is involved in the control of inflammation, in the proper clotting of blood, and in normal brain development, to mention only a few examples. And the truth is that all dietary fats are a combination of both saturated and unsaturated fat in different proportions. You can’t get one without the other. Since a certain amount of fat is essential in our diet, then a certain proportion of that dietary fat has to be saturated fat, even if you were a strict vegetarian. It simply is not possible or desirable to eliminate all saturated fat from the diet. Both saturated and unsaturated fats are part of a healthy diet. Therefore saturated fat is not automatically a bad thing.
The same is true with cholesterol. Both HDL and LDL cholesterol, which are labeled good and bad cholesterol, are essential to the normal functioning of the body. For example, one essential function of the so-called bad cholesterol, LDL, is to transport cholesterol from the liver to tissues and incorporate it into cell membranes. HDL cholesterol carries worn out cholesterol, which has been discarded by the cells, back to the liver where it is either recycled or excreted.
Studies have found that LDL cholesterol protects red blood cells from toxins produced by infectious bacteria that would otherwise kill them. Now that’s not a particularly bad thing. As a matter of fact, it’s a very good thing to keep your red blood cells from being killed off by bacterial infections. LDL cholesterol is the one that does the good deed. But HDL, the so-called good cholesterol, does not provide this vital protective function.
So which cholesterol is good and which is bad? The truth is that both are good and essential to good health. All the cholesterol that the body requires for good health can be manufactured by the body. It is not absolutely essential to have it in the diet. But the body can handle low levels of dietary cholesterol with no problem. Its when the level of dietary cholesterol and saturated fat exceed the levels that the body can safely handle that severe health problems begin to develop.
So the real problem is not with saturated fat or cholesterol themselves. Saturated fat is not bad fat. Neither is LDL cholesterol bad cholesterol. Both are required for normal, healthy functioning of the body. But when the diet contains too much saturated fat in proportion to the unsaturated fats, and when the total fat and cholesterol intake are too high—that is when serious health problems develop.
So what we need to understand is which foods contain fat that is mostly saturated, and which foods contain fat that is mostly unsaturated. Then we need to arrange our diets so that we are eating a larger proportion of the second group of foods—the foods that contain fat that is mostly unsaturated. The first group of foods—the foods that contain fat that is mostly saturated, should be eaten very sparingly if at all.
So here’s a simplified breakdown of these two food groups.
The highly-saturated-fat food group contains almost all animal foods like fatty meats, whole milk, cheese, cream, and ice cream. Almost all these animal foods contain fats that have more saturated than unsaturated fat. But one popular plant food has an even higher proportion of saturated versus unsaturated fat than animal food. That food is chocolate. This is just one of several reasons why chocolate is not properly classified as a health food. Coconut is another plant food that contains a type of saturated fat, but it is a completely different kind of saturated fat than meat and chocolate contain. Coconut has many marvelous health benefits and as long as the rest of the diet is not excessively high in saturated fat, the saturated fat in coconut will do you only good and not harm.
On the other hand, the highly-unsaturated-fat food group contains almost all plant foods like nuts, seeds, pulses (beans, lentils etc.), grains (rice, oats, wheat, etc.), fruits, and vegetables. Almost all these vegetable or plant-based foods contain fats that have more unsaturated than saturated fat. So the healthiest diet will be a diet that has a higher proportion of plant foods than animal foods, so that unsaturated fats can be maximized and saturated fats can be kept to a minimum.
There is actually another health issue with animal fat that is rarely mentioned. All animal fat, including our own human fatty tissue, is the primary designated storage place for toxins that have not been excreted. Toxins are poisons and poison causes cell damage and cell death. This is why too much toxin in the body is a major cause of many diseases. The more animal fat you eat, the more you are loading your body up with disease-causing poisons that are stored in the fat. This is very likely the reason why God originally declared to His people that no animal fat or blood should ever be eaten (Leviticus 3:17; 7:23, 24).
The bottom line, if you want to avoid many killer diseases, is to limit as many of the highly saturated fat foods in your diet as possible, and even eliminate those that are most unhealthy entirely. Those are subjects we’ll look at in future columns—how to proportion fats, carbohydrates and proteins in your diet for the most health-producing results, and which foods are so bad they should never be considered as part of your healthy, disease-preventing diet.
Besides the issues we’ve just looked at, there is another way that even too much unsaturated vegetable fat in the diet can cause disease. To understand how too much of even the healthiest kinds of fat can become a problem I need to explain how fat is digested and absorbed. When food is eaten, the digestive system breaks the food down into simple components that can be easily absorbed into the bloodstream and then reconstituted into the various components of the body. Fats cannot dissolve in water. As a result, the digestion and absorption of fat is different from that of other nutrients.
Fats must be emulsified before they can be digested and absorbed. This means they have to be broken up into tiny particles that can be surrounded by water. Fats are emulsified in the intestines by the addition of bile and lecithin. The presence of these emulsifiers makes it possible for the water-soluble enzymes in the intestine to do their digestive work, even in the presence of fat.
As the intestines churn the food, these emulsifiers break the fat up into droplets. These tiny droplets are then broken down into fatty acids, monoglycerides and diglycerides by enzymes called lipases which are released by the pancreas. The bile works on these breakdown products of fat and turns them into even tinier droplets. When these fatty acid droplets are absorbed by the intestines they form protein-coated droplets known as chylomicrons.
Close to 80% of these chylomicrons find their way into the lymphatic system while the other products of digestion, such as the sugars and amino acids remain in the bloodstream. The lymphatic system filters the fatty acids to remove harmful residues and bacteria before returning them to the bloodstream. Eating an excessive amount fat of any kind therefore puts a severe strain on the lymphatic system which in turn makes you more susceptible to disease and to common ailments like tiredness, headaches, colds and flu. These facts are detailed in the textbook, Diet and Health by South African professor, Walter J. Veith, PhD.
Until next week, be wise, be healthy and God bless!
