Not All Fats Are Bad Fats :: Food and Nutrition :: Fats and Oils

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Not All Fats Are Bad Fats
by author Udo Erasmus, PhD

Most people know only the negative half of the fats story.

The gist is that fats are bad. This one-sided presentation is hype that serves the industry’s need for food products with long shelf lives. Research proves much of the hype completely wrong. Yet it has led to rampant fat phobia. And that, in turn, has caused an epidemic of low- (and no-) fat diets that are dangerous to health.

Used long term, a no-fat diet will kill you. A low-fat diet can make you very ill. It sets you up for cardiac arrest, stunts the growth of children and harms the liver, kidneys and brain as well as the immune system and gland and organ functions. In adults, early signs of insufficient healing fats include dry skin and low energy levels.

What we need is a "right fat diet" that emphasizes green foods, herbs, protein, minerals, vitamins, fibre, bowel flora, enzymes, antioxidants and optimum intake of the fats that heal.

The foundational truth about fats that kill is that most of the health problems blamed on fats result from destructive processing to increase shelf stability. This industrial consideration works against health. Destructive processing can change healing fats into killing fats, serving convenience and keeping ability at the expense of the body’s needs.

Destruction takes place because, while being essential for life, the fats that heal are sensitive to light, oxygen and heat. When we fry or partially hydrogenate oils, a percentage of the healing fat molecules they contain become chemically changed, damaged, unnatural and toxic. When industry deodorizes oils to make the odourless, colourless and tasteless oils found without refrigeration on the shelves of supermarkets and corner stores, healing fat molecules are changed into unnatural molecules with toxic properties.

Frying increases cancer and cardiovascular problems. Partial hydrogenation produces trans-fatty acids, which, according to the Harvard School of Public Health, double the risk of heart attack and kill at least 30,000 North Americans each year. Colourless, odourless, tasteless oils (especially derived from those high in the w6 essential fatty acid, such as corn and safflower) promote the growth of tumours.

Good Fats

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Udo Erasmus is the author of Fats That Heal and Fats That Kill. He resides in Vancouver, BC.

Source: alive #223, May 2001

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