Lies you've been told about saturated fat

I've written many times in the last couple years about the mistaken
beliefs in society about saturated fat and the false perception in the
media AND with MOST health professionals that saturated fat is bad for
you.

If you've seen in some of my articles, I've even showed you why
saturated fat can even be GOOD for you in some cases, despite every
health/fitness professional in the world just accepting the false belief that
it's bad for you.

I have to say I was pleasantly surprised to FINALLY see a big name
publisher have some guts to publish an article about why everyone in the
world may be wrong about their beliefs about saturated fat.

I received my new issue of Men's Health magazine over the weekend (Nov
issue), and they have a huge 6-page article in there about the faulty
research in the past about saturated fat, and some new emerging research
that is showing why it may actually be more good for you than you
would believe.

I've got to give them credit... the article was VERY well researched
and put together beautifully to summarize where the studies in the past
have gone wrong, and why recent studies are showing that everyone may
have been wrong for the last 5 decades about saturated fat.

I'd highly suggest you read the entire article if you can. If not, I'm
going to try to give you a quick summary of the findings here since it
was a long article...

First of all, did you realize that although doctors, nutritionists,
fitness professionals, and the media all have told you that it's a FACT
that saturated fats are bad for you, this "FACT" has actually never been
proven!

It's actually not a "fact" at all. It was a hypothesis! This goes all
the way back to a flawed research study from the 1950's where a guy
named Ancel Keys published a paper that laid the blame on dietary fat
intake for the increasing heart disease phenomenon.

However, there were major flaws to his study. For one, in his
conclusions he only used data from a small portion of the countries where data
was available on fat consumption vs heart disease death rate. When
researches have gone back in and looked at the data from all of the
countries, there actually was no link between fat consumption and heart disease
deaths. So his conclusions were actually false.

Second, his blaming of fat intake for heart disease was only one factor
that was considered. There was no consideration of other factors such
as smoking rates, stress factors, sugar intake, exercise frequency, or
other lifestyle factors.

Basically, his conclusions which blamed heart disease deaths on fat
intake were really just a shot in the dark about what a possible cause may
have been, even though all of those other factors I just mentioned,
plus many others, may be the bigger cause.

Unfortunately, Keys study has been cited for over 5 decades now as
"fact" that saturated fat is bad for you. As you can see, there certainly
is nothing factual about it.

Since that time, numerous other studies have been conducted trying to
link saturated fat intake to heart disease. The majority of these
studies have failed to correlate ANY risk at all from saturated fat. A couple
of them made feeble attempts at linking saturated fat to heart
disease, however, it was later shown that in those studies, the data was
flawed as well.

Do we actually have evidence that saturated fat may actually be good
for you instead?

Well, let's consider a few examples...

Did you know that there are several well known tribes in Africa... the
Masai, Samburu, and Fulani tribes... where their diet consists mostly
of raw whole milk, tons of red meat, and cows blood? Despite their very
high saturated fat intake, they display extremely low body fat levels,
and heart disease to natives of the tribe is virtually non-existant.

Now most critics of this example will say that it must be related to
superior genetics... however this is false, as when they studied
tribesman who had moved out of their native lands and started eating more
modern day diets, their blood chemistry skyrocketed with heart disease risk
factors.

This is true of certain pacific island countries inhabitants as well.
Several studies have shown that certain pacific island nations had VERY
high intakes of total fat as well as saturated fat from tropical fats
such as palm, coconut, and cocoa. Despite super-high intakes of
saturated fat, these island natives were typically very lean and heart disease
was virtually non-existant.

However, when researchers followed up with islanders that had moved
away from their native island and adopted a typical western diet, the
heart disease factors were through the roof.

In fact, did you know that although saturated fat intake does increase
your LDL bad cholesterol, it actually increases your HDL good
cholesterol even further, hence improving your overall cholesterol ratio, which
has been proven to be more important that just total cholesterol level
(actually total cholesterol is an almost useless number... inflammation
is the REAL problem, but that's a whole different topic).

Another fact worth noting in favor of saturated fat...

Saturated fat is comprised of various different types... the 3 most
common types are stearic acid, palmitic acid, and lauric acid.

Stearic acid is found in animal fat and cocoa in higher levels.
Research continues to show that stearic acid has no negative impacts on heart
disease risks. If anything, it's either neutral or beneficial. In fact,
your liver breaks down stearic acid into a monounsaturated fat called
oleic acid, which is the same type of fat that makes up most of
heart-healthy olive oil. Bet you didn't know that!

Lauric acid is beneficial as well. Not only has it been shown to
increase your HDL good cholesterol levels significantly, but it is also
lacking in most Americans diet and has even been shown to have some powerful
immune-boosting effects potentially. It is even being studied
currently in HIV/AIDS research to help improve immune function in patients.

Tropical oils such as coconut and palm are the best sources of lauric
acid.

Palmitic acid is the other main component of saturated fat and has also
been shown to increase HDL good cholesterol to the same, if not
greater extent than LDL bad cholesterol, thereby making it either neutral or
beneficial, but certainly not bad for you.

So, if all of these researchers have tried so hard over the years to
point the finger at saturated fat, but have continued to fail to show a
correlation between saturated fat and heart disease risk, what are the
REAL culprits for heart disease?

Well, here are the REAL causes of heart disease risk:

*Trans fats (artificially hydrogenated oils)... see my previous article
here for a full explanation -
http://www.truthaboutabs.com/trans-fats.html

*Heavily refined vegetable oils such as soy, cottonseed, corn oil,
etc.(inflammatory inside the body, and typically throw the omega-6/omega-3
balance out of whack)

*Too much refined sugar in the diet (including high fructose corn
syrup)

*Too much refined carbohydrates such as white bread, low fiber cereals,
etc

*Smoking

*Stressful lifestyle

*Lack of exercise

*Other lifestyle factors

So why does it seem that so many attempts over the years have tried to
lay the blame on saturated fat... do you think it might have anything
to do with the muli-bil_lion dollar vegetable oil industry, which has
taken over for cooking oils for what used to be mostly animal fats and
tropical oils in decades past...

hmm... do multi-bill_ion dollar industries really have an influence on
the way data is portrayed to the public? Of course they do! And don't
even get me started on the cholesterol meds industry! Again, I digress.

I hope this article has opened your eyes about the truth about
saturated fat and how you've been misled over the years.

The true FACT is that saturated fat is a neutral substance in your
body, and even beneficial at times, not a deadly risk factor for disease.
The REAL risk factors are what I listed above.

Here are 2 more articles that are must reads about this topic if you
haven't read them before...

http://www.truthaboutabs.com/dietary-fat-article.html

http://www.truthaboutabs.com/truth-about-saturated-fat.html


Til next Ezine issue... Don't be lazy... be lean.

Mike Geary
Certified Nutrition Specialist
Certified Personal Trainer
Founder - http://TruthAboutAbs.com & http://BusyManFitness.com

PS - if you liked todays article, feel free to fwd this email on to any
of your friends, family, or co-workers that would enjoy it.


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