Holistic Nutrition Bytes--San Francisco Nutrition Consultation » bad fats

In Defense of Butter

admin — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 05:18:29 +0000

It’s the holiday baking season! I just saw a commercial for I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter, so I went to their website just to see what sort of ingredients they’re trying to mystify me with. Aside from the tub, it comes in sticks, too! Convenient for baking and can be subbed for butter in your baked goods. Are y’all using this stuff for your holiday cookies? Wow. Let’s review.

Here are I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter’s ingredients:
Vegetable oil blend (including Partially Hydrogenated Soybean Oil, Hydrogenated Soybean Oil, Canola Oil, Liquid Soybean Oil), Water, Lecithin, Diglycerides, Potassium Sorbate, Citric Acid, Artificial Flavor, Retinol Palmitate, Beta-Carotene

They vary according to which product you choose; there are light varieties, Mediterranean blends, sprays, tubs, squeeze, fat free, etc etc. Hold the phone here, folks. If you get nothing else from reading my website, please take one thing away with you: EAT FOOD. FOOD COMES FROM NATURE. This product IS NOT FOOD. It comes from a lab. Partially hydrogenated oils may cut down on saturated fat content in a food, but they are a laboratory-engineered product that has been altered to yield results on a label in congruence with what we’ve been led to believe: that fat is the enemy.

Better yet, on the I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter website, they have a link you can click to learn “The Big Fat Truth” about butter. This link takes you to another website, sponsored by Unilever, which is a huge multi-national food corporation that manufactures none other than margarine and other fake butter products. The Big Fat Truth website contains many half-truths about why butter is bad and Unilever’s fake butter products are good. Lesson one here: generally best to think critically, do objective research, and not trust the food industry to give you nutrition facts. Their job is to sell you products and make a profit, so guess what? They don’t really give a shit about your health. What they care about is marketing, and if they have to scare you with claims about saturated fats so that you’ll buy their fake butter products, they’ll do it. Profit over people.

With that said, let’s take a little look at butter. First off, yes, butter is high in saturated fat. Secondly, THAT’S OK. You know what? SATURATED FAT DOESN’T CAUSE HEART DISEASE. That’s another topic for another time, but take a look at The Lipid Hypothesis and The Framingham Heart Study for more info about this. Also, fat doesn’t make you fat. If you consume more calories than you burn off –of anything, be it fat, protein, or carbs– you’ll get fat.

Secondly, butter has some good, solid healing properties. Fake butter products are filled with chemicals and engineered fats that are health-robbing, not health promoting. Butter is high in antioxidants, beneficial fatty acids, and has immune-boosting properties. It contains butyric acid, which is a short chain fatty acid that is a powerful immune booster, and it reduces inflammation, and may decrease colon cancer. Butter and other saturated fats like coconut oil hold up very well to high heat cooking, meaning it’s a very stable fat and its healthy components remain intact. Other fats, such as monounsaturated (olive oil) have weaker bonds that break down at high temperatures and become damaged, which creates arterial damage over time. This is why you should never expose the delicate polyunsaturated (flax oil) fats to heat and save olive oil for medium temp cooking. Use saturated fats (solid at room temp) for high temperature cooking.

the yellower, the better = highest in nutrients

As with everything, use butter in moderation, and rotate its use with other good fats in your diet, such as coconut oil, sesame oil, olive oil, flax oil, and walnut oil. The average person’s diet should be about 25 percent to 30 percent fat each day. That’s about one to two tablespoons per meal. Choose organic butter from grass fed cows, because it has a much better and more natural fatty acid ratio–one that has not been tinkered with via grain-fed cows, victims of factory farming. Grain is not the cow’s natural diet.

Choose raw butter if possible. It has an even better nutritional profile because it hasn’t been homogenized or pasteurized, so retains its healing properties. Pasteurization kills the beneficial enzymes and immunoglobulins. Raw milk and raw milk products are very good for immunity and for the cells in your gut.

Long story short, here folks: avoid these highly processed fake foods. Your body needs saturated fats. Over half of your brain is saturated fat, and your cells are encased in a fatty membrane that needs saturated fat to remain malleable so that they are able to communicate with other cells. Trans fats found in hydrogenated oils are the real evil culprits (cause cell walls to become rigid) and are implicated in heart disease and high blood pressure and obesity. Remember when the food industry told us that saturated fat was bad, thus beginning the fat free fad of the 80s? Well, guess what? We didn’t get thinner, did we? We got fatter. And we got more heart disease, more diabetes, and more high blood pressure. Hmmmm, guess that wasn’t the problem. Whoops, it was the fake hydrogenated fat we engineered to replace saturated fat in the diet. Are we really going to wait for the food industry or the American Heart Association or whatever to tell us eggs are bad no good no butter is bad whoops hydrogenated oils are bad? You can’t go wrong by choosing foods from nature. Just don’t eat too much food, and move around more. That’s the secret.

This I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter product is not a health-producing, nutrient dense product. It is a FAKE processed food. Avoid it. Use the butter. If you don’t tolerate dairy, use ghee. Use coconut oil. Use olive oil. But don’t use this fake food crap. Seriously.

“Healthy” Foods that Aren’t (recipe included)

admin — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 03:41:35 +0000

We are bombarded by advertising and beguiling food packaging enticing us to try this or that product because it’s healthful. Maybe it’s fat free, or sugar free, or made with whole grains, or baked not fried. It can get so confusing, figuring out what to eat. What’s healthy and what’s not this week? Hard to keep up with the research.

Let me make it real easy for you. If it’s in a package or a box, it’s processed to some degree, refined–meaning it’s been stripped of vital nutrients–or refined and fortified with artificial nutrients added back in. So, you know what I’m going to say next: stick to whole foods, eat out of the box, eat what comes from nature, and you can’t go wrong. If it hasn’t been around for over a thousand years, don’t eat it. To further clear some confusion, let’s take a look at some popular foods most consider healthy.

1. Yogurt. This is one of my faves, because everyone thinks yogurt is a health food, right? There are so many options! Fat free, sugar free, low fat, fruit on the bottom, whipped. Let’s look at the label on Dannon Yogurt’s Light & Fit Cherry. Less than 100 calories!
Ingredients: Nonfat yogurt (cultured grade A non fat milk, Modified Food Starch, Fructose, kosher gelatin, Vitamin A Palmitate, Vitamin D3), water, cherries, fructose, Natural & Artificial Flavor, Aspartame, Citric Acid, Potassium Sorbate, Asulfame, Sucralose, Sodium Citrate, Red 40, Blue 1
Now, I don’t have time to get into the specifics on these ingredients, but suffice it to say that this is a highly refined and even toxic product. It’s filled with chemicals, artificial flavors, colors, and preservatives, but it also contains aspartame sugar substitute, which is a neurotoxin that can have serious side effects and long term consequences. Folks, stay away from this stuff, commonly found in diet sodas and sugar free products. Seriously, it’s better to have the sugar than to ingest aspartame.

Back to yogurt: if it’s a fruited variety, it’ll be loaded with up to 10 teaspoons of sugar per single serving if it doesn’t contain a toxic sugar substitute. Skip the non fat versions: vitamins A&D in yogurt are fat soluble, meaning you need to consume fat with these vitamins in order for your body to absorb them. Nature is funny like that: it knows exactly what we need in our food for optimal health before it’s been tinkered with in a lab.

Plain, organic regular yogurt is fine. It contains probiotics to help digestion and is naturally low in sugar. Our palates are so used to overly sweetened foods that you may need to get used to its naturally tart flavor. Add your own berries or a bit of honey and enjoy.

2. Canola Oil. This is another good one. We’re told that canola is high in omega 3 fatty acids and holds up well to high temp frying, a great choice! You know what? Not. Canola is highly refined, usually genetically modified, and heated to such high temps during its processing that any very heat sensitive fatty acids are destroyed. During the chemical extraction process, solvents and deodorizers are used. You usually get it in a plastic jug at the store, and plastic reacts adversely with fats, changing its chemical structure and leaching chemicals into the oil. ALWAYS buy cooking oils in glass, never plastic.

Canola is not a healthy choice. Use coconut or palm oil for high temp frying. For baking, use safflower or grapeseed oil if you need an oil that doesn’t impart much flavor. Stick to the healthy fats, and always choose unrefined: coconut oil, olive oil, ghee or butter, flaxseed oil (do not heat; use in smoothies or salad dressing), sesame oil, walnut oil, safflower or grapeseed (occasionally).

3. Sugar-free foods. This is kind of a no-brainer when it comes to food processing: if something is made with or exists with sugar, and the sugar is removed and usually replaced with a sugar substitute, it is a refined and chemicalized product that is no good for your health. There are many sugar substitutes out there: splenda, equal, sweet n low, to name a few, and these contain saccharin, aspartame, or sucralose. As I mentioned earlier, these sugar subs are highly toxic to your brain and can cause anything from headaches to seizures. Note to self: I think I’ll dedicate a blog post to sugar substitutes one of these days.

Anyway, refined sugar is bad in excess, yes. Use rapadura or other unrefined sugars in baking. If you’re diabetic, use stevia or agave. But for god’s sake, stay away from chemical sugar free substitutes and the products that contain them: diet sodas, candy, yogurt, cookies, gum, whatever. Seriously, it’s better to just eat the sugar. Better yet, make your own version of the product at home where you can control the ingredients when you need a treat. You can use stevia for baking.

4. Muffins. Muffins sure are tasty, I’ll give ‘em that. But they’re also loaded with calories (around 600) and unhealthy trans fats and sugar. Yes, even the bran ones that seem healthy. Avoid, or make your own. I tried a wheat, sugar, and dairy free muffin the other day: it was made with buckwheat flour, applesauce, dates, and walnuts. Here’s a great healthy muffin recipe for you.
ed. note: I was going to add several more fake healthy foods, but this is already too long so you’ll have to tune in later for more.

(Gluten Free option) Muffin Base
2 cups gluten free baking mix (such as Pamela’s) OR whole wheat flour
2 tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
2 eggs
2-3 tbsp agave nectar or honey, depending on how sweet you like
1/2 cup nut or hemp milk for dairy-free, or plain kefir or yogurt
1 tsp vanilla
¼ cup grapeseed, olive, or coconut oil
1-2 tsp spices, depending on what else you add in
optional add-ins:
pumpkin (1 cup) with cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg to taste
1 cup blueberries
dried fruit/nut combo: cranberries, walnuts, dates, anything that appeals to you
poppyseeds, bananas, apples, whatever

Preheat oven to 400. Combine flour, spices, baking powder, and salt and whisk well in bowl. Combine eggs, agave, milk, pumpkin, oil, and vanilla; add to dry ingredients. Stir until moistened. Spoon batter into muffin tins. Bake at 15 minutes or until toothpick inserted comes out clean.

Know Your Fats.

admin — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 03:41:30 +0000

Remember the fat phobia craze in the 80s that spawned a litany of low fat and fat free snack foods high in sugar and other chemicals? Fat has really been demonized, and you’ve been misinformed about its role in human health. People are confused about “good” and “bad” fats. I frequently speak with clients who consider their diets to be healthy, but they consume refined products such as packaged and processed foods, sodas, fake butter spreads, and advertised low fat products. Many admit that they have cut foods that they love out of their diets, mainly meats, butter, and saturated fats, because of media info on fat’s role in disease. We’re here to clear up your confusion.

First off, a little history. Don’t fall asleep; this is important. The vegetable oil and food industries mounted an attack in 1988 on tropical oils, the main oils in food supply, eliminating coconut and palm oils from the market and wrongly pitting them as the bad guys. These oils contain saturated fats that were (wrongly) accused of causing cardiovascular disease. The tropical oils got a bad reputation for increasing cholesterol and heart disease. An unconfirmed rumor suggests that the soybean industry financed successful campaigns against tropical fats to kill imports and raise domestic soybean oil sales.

Researchers claim that the mega oil industry relied on flawed studies and kept info about health-destroying fats from public to continue profit from newer, less expensive and refined oils such as canola, cottonseed, and soybean. Low fat products blasted into the market with a food industry boom. Ad campaigns terrified everyone into buying low fat products, loaded with sugar and unhealthy fats to replace the saturated fat. Drug companies were making a fortune with cholesterol-lowering drugs. 

Please understand: fat does not make you fat! The main culprit behind obesity and high cholesterol is too much SUGAR, soda, refined food, and man-made trans fats. Clearly, if fat was the culprit, we would all be thin and have low cholesterol thanks to the boon of fat free foods and warnings to avoid saturated fats. But we’ve never been fatter and more unhealthy as a nation.

Here is the important issue to note. You’ve heard of essential fatty acids like omega 3s and omega 6s. These are deemed essential because your body does not make them; you must get them via diet. And ideally we need an omega 6 to 3 fatty acid ratio of 2:1 in our diet for optimal health. The standard american diet is typically a ratio of 20:1, due to an increased rate of processed vegetable oils in refined foods.

Omega 6 fatty acids are high in vegetable oils and blends such as corn, peanut, safflower, grapeseed, soy, and cottonseed oils–you know, those plastic jugs of “vegetable oil” you see on grocery store shelves. Typically, these oils are processed at very high temperatures, which causes the oils to go rancid. Chemicals are used during the extraction process, and the resulting oil is then often deodorized. This makes for a highly processed and refined oil that is not health-promoting, and consuming rancid oils may actually contribute to arterial damage. Too much omega 6 in your diet can lead to diseases of inflammation such as high blood pressure and cholesterol, cardiovascular disease, and arthritis.

Omega 3s counter inflammation and have been praised for helping everything from mood swings to joint pain. Find it in flaxseed oils, cod liver oil, salmon, and walnuts. I often recommend fatty acid supplements, but you can add flaxseed oil to smoothies or take a fish oil supplement. When purchasing a supplement, remember that these oils are highly sensitive to damage from heat, light and oxygen. Choose a certified organic product that has been refrigerated and is packaged in a dark brown or green glass jar and be sure to store the product in your refrigerator or freezer.

Finally, here is the Holistic Nutrition Bytes’ Guide to using fats.

First off, purchase organic, hexane-free cold processed oils in glass bottles.
A healthy percentage of fat in your diet is about 30 percent of your total calories, depending on health and needs. Up to 70 percent has been shown to aid weight loss (oh, the irony). Special circumstances for eating more fat include blood sugar issues, infertility, epilepsy, candida, and AIDS. Therapeutic fats include fish oil, flax, borage and primrose – these can help normalize blood pressure, increases metabolism, and treat eczema.  Be aware of omega 3 to 6 ratio in your diet.

Examples of great fats from whole foods include free range eggs, grass fed beef (better omega 3 content, since grain fed is high in omega 6 fats), deep water fish, nuts, avocado, greens, and full fat dairy.

For stir-frying, you want to use stable oils that will not become rancid when heated. Saturated fats (tropical oils and butter) are the most stable, followed by monounsaturated (olive, sesame). Polyunsaturated (flax oil, hemp oil) should never be heated!
Oils for stir-frying:
BEST: stable saturated fats like butter, coconut oil, and tropical oils palm and palm kernal.
OK: Olive oil is ok for low temp sauteeing, but best used at mid to lower temps and baking.  Grapeseed oil contains omega 6 exclusively but does hold up well under high heat. Sesame oil is good as a salad oil, but also high in omega 6, so not good for exclusive use. I don’t use it for stir-frying.

Use flax oil, walnut oil, hemp oil, or olive oil for salad oils. Flax oil is great to use in smoothies for an omega 3 boost.

Avoid these oils at all cost:
Cottonseed, which is usually found in baked goods partially hydrogenated, contains toxic ingredients and pesticides and is unfit for human consumption. Soybean oil is mostly refined, often partially hydrogenated and usually genetically  modified. Avoid corn, safflower, sunflower oil due to high omega 6 content.  Avoid any hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oil!