Confused About the Fats?

Today I got together with my family to celebrate March birthdays.  Here are some of the food related liners I picked up:

"Do you have any butter?"  and out goes the big tub of "I can't believe it's butter".

"Do you have any low fat milk?"  "No, there is only whole milk."

"Do you have any soy milk for my one year old?"

I said to my sister, who is getting married, "here have some of this good bread I made,"  "Oh no" she answered, "my coach won't let me, I can't have any cheese, milk, butter, meat..."   I was sorry to hear that.  I explained that in the past, brides were put on a special diet 6 moths before marriage and it looked like the opposite to that.  This was to ensure fertility.  Which is one of the reasons of marriage, to be fruitful and multiply."

Later I did get a good chance to share with some about the history and myth of eliminating fats from our diet.  We grew up learning at school that the fats, well, they just made you fat.  So the craze about "fat free" and "low fat" products became so popular that people, including me, bought into the idea that eating these products was better for you.  Well, the truth is that they have taken the fat out of our diet and yet obesity has since been at it's all time high, including heart disease.

Saturated fats like grass-fed butter, pastured lard, beef and lamb tallow from grazing animals, coconut oil, and palm oil: all of these give us nourishment in a way that other fats and low fat diets never can.  Notice that these are only certain fats.  For example, not any type of butter but "grass-fed" and the same for meats.  Vitamin K2 is abundant in butter when the cow is grass fed.

Here is a list of good fats our body needs:

• cocoa butter


• virgin & expeller-pressed organic coconut oil


• grass-fed butter & ghee, as well as raw butter, cream, and cheese


• unrefined extra virgin olive oil


• pastured egg yolks


• grass-finished meats


• fermented cod liver oil & high vitamin butter oil


• macadamia nuts


• flaxseed oil

Many would also argue that lard, tallow and duck and chicken fat are essentials to good health.  I don't prefer these fats and don't use them for nourishment.  But I am not scared of them.  With the exception of pork and lard which we completely  try avoid.

Saturated Fats Won’t Give You Heart Disease?

According to Nourishing Traditions book, these saturated fats, which are solid at room temperature, won't hurt you.

"…heart disease causes at least 40 percent of all U.S. deaths.  If, as we have been told, heart disease is caused by consumption of saturated fats, one would expect to find a corresponding increase in animal fats in the American diet.  Actually, the reverse is true.  During the sixty-year period from 1910 to 1970, the proportion of traditional animal fat in the American diet declined from 83 percent to 62 percent, and butter consumption plummeted from 18 pounds per person per year to four.  During the past eighty years, dietary cholesterol intake has increased only 1 percent.  During the same period the percentage of dietary vegetable oils in the form of margarine, shortening and refined oils increased about 400 percent while the consumption of sugar and processed foods increased about 60 percent."

Eating healthy fats is really not as difficult as people think.  They get confused because the grocery stores have a large number of choices for one product.  If I want to buy butter, there are so many different brands, each with it's own claims.  Also, there are imitation butters, buttery spreads and margarine.  We just try to eat the way God always intended it be and that is simple.