***Saturated Fat: Friend or Foe?

According to just about everything to you read or hear, saturated fat is bad, bad, bad.

Dietitians say so. Doctors, too. Magazines follow along. Televisions shows such as “The Biggest Loser” agree. It’s kind of like some sort of mantra that gets repeated endlessly.

One teensy little problem: Your body doesn’t agree. No way. No how. Not one little bit.

Without saturated fat, your brain doesn’t work.

And your endocrine glands have no raw material to make their hormones.

Plus, you’re hungry all the time.

So, saturated fat is our friend? Absolutely, but not just any saturated fat.

Can we talk about this?

First, a definition. Saturated fat is any fat that’s naturally solid at room temperature. Which basically means animal fat, although coconut oil is a saturated fat wonder, too.

When things go Nature’s way, saturated fat blesses our socks off with Omega 3 fatty acids, the stuff of strong brain cells, happy endocrine glands, energy and all sorts of good things.

Howsomever, some years back, factory farms decided to improve on Nature. Raising cattle Nature’s way, wandering around eating grass, took too much time and effort, so factory farms herded the cattle into stalls and fed them grains–mainly soy and corn.

In the history of bad ideas, this decision was notable for its wrongheadedness. For a host of reasons.

But let’s just look at one problem this decision caused: Feeding grains to animals turns their fat from the Omega 3 fat that blesses our socks off into the evil Omega 6 fat that causes inflammation throughout our bodies, leading to dread diseases such as cancer, heart disease, dementia and so on.

And all that mayhem is exactly what polyunsaturated vegetable oils are known for! Can it be that the fat from grain-fed animals is as bad for us as vegetable oils? Why, yes it can–and it is.

And the same goes for grain-fed (i.e farmed) fish.

So we want meat from grass-fed animals, butter from the milk of grass-fed cows (such as KerryGold butter), wild-caught fish, etc.And why do we want to bother with making that effort?

Omega 3 saturated fat:
• Lowers cholesterol (which isn’t the problem everybody says it is in any case, but it will keep your doctor happy).
• Helps with weight loss–and you lose fat, not muscle, which is what happens on a low-fat diet.
• Provides a banquet of delight for our brains. ADHD, depression, etc. all do better when Omega 3 saturated fat is in the house.
• Improves libido, an endocrine function.
• Treats/prevents diabetes, an endocrine function gone astray.
• Boosts our immune system, yet another endocrine function.
• Helps the pineal, another endocrine gland, get rid of fluoride and get back in the game.
• Protects against heart disease. In one study, switching from margarine (Omega6) to butter (Omega3) lowered the heart attack rate by 50%.
• Makes the thyroid, still another endocrine gland, stand up and sing.
• Improves adrenal (also endocrine glands) function.
• Blesses your liver, and a healthy liver puts zip into all of health.
• Protects against breast cancer, another endocrine problem.

Well, I could go on. And on.

Bottom line: If we get the good stuff, saturated fat is fabulous.

Saturated fat does great things, but we need to know the rest of the health story, too. That’s why I write about vitamins, minerals, amino acids, etc., etc., etc.