Saturated vs Unsaturated Fats
Enjoy this informative video that flies in the face of what most of us have been hearing for years about Saturated vs Unsaturated Fats.
This is an important topic so I have several posts on the subject with different experts in the field. Also see these related blog/videos
- Fats that Heal / Fats that Kill with Dr. Udo Erasmus
- Dr. John Douillard: Oil Processing & Health Risks – Don’t Use These Oils!
- NPR’s Splendid Table | Extra Virgin Olive Oil
- Dave Asprey: Bio Hacking with Salt, Coffee & Butter
Here’s an excerpt on saturated fats from Dr. Miller website:
“Animals and tropical plants contain saturated fats while plants outside the tropics have mostly unsaturated fats. Saturated animal fats are in milk, meat, eggs, butter, and cheese. And tropical coconut and palm oil contain a lot of saturated fat.
The food industry makes trans fats. They do this by shooting hydrogen atoms into polyunsaturated vegetable oils. This straightens out the fatty acid molecules and packs them closer together, giving vegetable oil so treated a solid texture like lard. Trans fats are used to make margarine, with yellow bleach added so it looks like butter. They are also used to prolong the shelf life of bakery products, snack chips, imitation cheese, and other processed foods.
A hundred years ago less than one in one hundred Americans were obese and coronary heart disease was unknown. Pneumonia, diarrhea and enteritis, and tuberculosis were the most common causes of death. Now, a century later, the two most common causes of death are coronary heart disease and cancer, which account for 75 percent of all deaths in this country. There were 500 cardiologists practicing in the U.S. in 1950. There are 30,000 of them now – a 60-fold increase for a population that has only doubled since 1950.
Adhering to the now well established low fat dogma, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, in 1992, published its Food Guide Pyramid. The “pyramid” arranges food in sections that convey the message, “Fat is bad” and “Carbohydrates are good.” Carbohydrate-rich bread, cereal, rice, and pasta fill the large bottom space. and are to be consumed in abundant amounts, “6–11 servings” a day. Further up, as the pyramid narrows, fruit, which is also high in carbohydrates, is accorded “2–4 servings”; whereas the portion that includes meat, poultry, fish, dry beans, eggs, and nuts is allowed only “2–3 servings.” Fats and oils are placed in the small top portion of the pyramid and labeled “Use sparingly.”
The USDA dietary guidelines and the American Heart Association group trans fats and saturated fats together and demonize them both as solid fats. The heart association’s website has a “Meet the Fats” link where the bad fats brothers are Sat and Trans – saturated fats and trans fats. The better fats sisters are Poly and Mon – polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats.
Evidence against fat wilts upon close scrutiny. In his Six Country Study, Ancel Keys ignored data available from 16 other countries that did not fall in line with his desired graph. If he had chosen these six other countries [on the left side], or even more strikingly, these six countries [on the bottom right] he could have shown that increasing the percent of calories from fat in the diet reduces the number of deaths from coronary heart disease.
In fact, it turns out that people who have highest percentage of saturated fat in their diets have the lowest risk of heart disease.
- Diets in People with the Lowest Risk of Heart Disease – Masai, Inuit, Rendille, Todelau
- The diet of the Maasai tribe in Kenya and northern Tanzania consists of meat, milk, and blood from cattle. It is 66 percent saturated fat.
- The diet of Inuit Eskimos in the Artic, consisting largely of whale meat and blubber, is 75 percent saturated fat; and they live long healthy lives free of heart disease and cancer.
- The Rendille tribe in the Kaisut Desert in NE Kenya subsist on camel milk and meat, and a mixture of camel milk and blood, known as “Banjo.” Their diet is 63 percent saturated fat.
- The Tokelau live well, without cardiologists, on three atoll islands that are now a territory of New Zealand. Their diet consists of fish and coconuts, which is 60 percent saturated fat.”
Dr. Donald W. Miller, Jr.
For 40 years, from 1974-2014, Dr. Donald W. Miller, Jr. taught and performed cardiac surgery at Seattle’s Swedish Medical Center, the Seattle VA Medical Center, and the University of Washington Medical Center. Now retired, as an Emeritus Professor of Surgery and former Chief, Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery at the University of Washington School of Medicine, Dr. Miller continues to research and write articles on fallacies that afflict modern medicine and the importance of natural and nutritional medicine for maintaining good health. He also researches and writes articles on a variety of other subjects such as climate change; water fluoridation; politics, and the U.S. economy; and Austrian economics. Dr. Miller is the author of three books: The Practice of Coronary Artery Bypass Surgery, Atlas of Cardiac Surgery, and Heart in Hand, which are available free on his website. In Heart in Hand he deals with the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer, the films of Woody Allen, and his life as a heart surgeon.
For mor information from Dr. Donald W. Miller, Jr. visit him at donaldmiller.com.
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