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Fats and Oils
by author Siegfried Gursche, MH

There are two kinds of fats: the bad fats we must avoid because they make us sick, and the good fats and oils, which we need for our bodies to function properly and stay healthy until we die at an old age.

The problem is, most of us know very little about the good fats, and what we read and hear about the bad fats is often contradictory or confusing.

Bear with me, you are not alone. Even until 1949 scientists didn’t know much about good fats and bad fats, either. It was not possible to distinguish between the fatty acids found in lard, butter, olive oil, sunflower or flax oil, nor did anyone know about the inherent health benefits of the different types of fats and oils, whether saturated,unsaturated or polyunsaturated. What they did know was that saturated fats such as coconut butter, palm oil, suet, lard and tally, which are hard at room temperature (or, more correctly, at body temperature), so they could not absorb oxygen and get rancid. Liquid unsaturated fats are hungry to absorb oxygen, so they tend to go rancid and not last long, while polyunsaturated oils like flax oil rapidly satisfy themselves with oxygen to a point where they even dry out. For that very reason linseed oil (flax) is used as a natural base for paints. All the great paintings since Michelangelo were done with rapid-drying linseed oil.

Since the early 1900s, scientists used their limited knowledge of fats to create a new food product called margarine, of which two types were available. One was made by blending naturally hard saturated fat like stearine from whale fat with oils from sunflower or rape seeds. The other was made with artificially hardened (hydrogenated) vegetable oils. Discovered in 1896, this hydrogenation process involves filling unsaturated fatty acids with hydrogen molecules at extremely high temperatures. alive has often reported about hydrogenation and how it changes friendly fat molecules into trans fatty acids. These killer fats are responsible for most of today’s fat-related degenerative diseases, including cancer, heart and cholesterol problems, high blood pressure and arthritis.

Before the Second World War, my father, a merchant in natural fats and oils, repackaged a natural spread made from coconut and clarified hazelnut butter blended with sunflower seed oil. As a five-year-old, I used to dip my finger into the wooden tubs and scrape out the remnants. I still remember the delicious nutty flavour. It was considered a healthy nutritional margarine compared to the commercial ones made with hydrogenated oils, though no one really knew anything about essential fatty acids.

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Source: alive #245, March 2003

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