Sorry for the length of this article—I would’ve just linked to it, but I couldn’t figure out where it came from. I received it on a list I belong to.
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America in the 21st Century: Obese People and Lean Pigs
Why are Americans so overweight?
The hottest books hitting the best-seller lists for quite some time now have been diet books, promoting the latest diet trend that will supposedly help people lose weight. But one thing that seems to be glaringly deficient in much of this “new” information hitting the public is how Americans got so fat to begin with. While there are certainly many factors one could look at to understand our current state of obesity, the one food that has probably been misrepresented and politicized the most in modern dietary “wisdom” are fats.
For decades now we have been told to cut back on fat in our diet if we want to lose weight. Marketers of low-fat foods have championed this concept. So what has been the result? According to the US Center for Disease Control:
.In 1999-2000, an estimated 30% of U.S adults aged 20 years
and older – nearly 59 million people – were obese, defined as having a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or more.
Source: National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 1999-2000
.In 1999-2000, an estimated 64% of U.S adults aged 20 years and
older were either overweight or obese, defined as having a body mass
index(BMI) of 25 or more.
Source: National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 1999-2000
Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson states: “We’ve seen virtually a doubling in the number of obese persons over the past two decades and this has profound health implications. Obesity increases a person’s risk for a number of serious conditions, including diabetes, heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, and some types of cancer.”1
Obviously, low-fat diets have not helped Americans lose weight, as
today nearly two thirds of all adults in the US are classified as overweight. It’s time to “stop the insanity” about fat. Fat is not the substance making most of us fat. We need good fats in our diet, including the essential fatty acids.
When “Fat” was Good!
Fats have always been a part of human nutrition. Rex Russell, M.D.
writes:”It was 1944, and World War II was roaring. A young mother was wasting away with an infection diagnosed as tuberculosis. Antibiotics were unavailable. Her doctor prescribed (1) isolation, (2) bed rest, (3) exercise (eventually) and (4) a diet high in fat. Surprising, but true! High-fat diets were often recommended by the medical profession during those years. Before you scoff, you might want to know that this lady recovered. She is my mother, and she
has stayed on this diet through the years. Presently she is enjoying
her great-grandchildren”2 So while the experts claimed “fats are good” prior to WW2, now we hear they are bad.
So what actually constituted a “high-fat” diet back in the 1800s until the 1940s? Basically butter, eggs, nuts and animal fats such as lard and beef tallow. Margarines, which were introduced in the 1860s, were butter substitutes made with animal fats such as lard and tallow or the saturated oils from coconut oil and palm oils. These high-fat diets, considered then to be healthy, were rich in saturated fats, today seen by many as the worst possible fat one can consume. However, drastically reducing saturated fats from the modern diet has not solved any health problems, and statistics show
that obesity rates are at an all-time high. The low-fat advice is
losing credibility.
Fats and oils are technically known as “lipids.” If a lipid is liquid at room temperature, it is called an “oil.” If it is solid, it is called a “fat.” Fats can be found in many food sources in nature: animal meats (such as tallow and lard), marine animals (fish oil), vegetables and fruits (suchas olives, avocados, coconuts, etc.), nuts and seeds/legumes (sesame seeds, peanuts, cashews, grape seeds, etc.), and whole grains (wheat, rice, etc.) must contain the bran and all components to benefit from all the oils present). A diet rich in natural whole foods will be a naturally high-fat diet! It is virtually impossible to eliminate fats from our diet. And we
wouldn’t want to! Fats are an essential part of life. Without them, we could not survive.
Fats for Animal Feeds
One interesting way to study the role of fats and their affect on weight loss or weight gain is to study the animal feed industry. If ever there was a group of people with economic interest in weight gain, it is the livestock industry.
Back in the days when fat was “in,” the fatter the pig you could raise the better. Lard was a basic staple for cooking in the days of our forefathers. It was found that feeding pigs polyunsaturated fats (primarily soybean and corn oil) would put more fat on them. This is the reaction of the longer chain fatty acids found in vegetable oils, and is well documented in the scientific literature.
Today however, we’ve come full circle with our new low-fat mantra, and the consumer demand is now for low-fat meats. So how does one produce a leaner pork? Well according the Department of Animal Science of North Carolina State University, during the “finishing time” before slaughter, you stop feeding them polyunsaturated oils and start feeding them saturated fats.3 They used beef tallow in their experiment, which they found was a bit hard for the pigs to digest. So some farmers are now actually starting to use coconut oil, a plant-based saturated fat, instead.
So what are the fats found on the shelves of grocery stores today, that make up the majority of the US diet? Polyunsaturated fats: mostly soybean oil,which commonly is referred to as vegetable oil. The saturated fats, which made up most of the fats in the diet of our forefathers, have been almost banned by modern nutrition advice. The result: lean pigs and obese people!!
Low-Carb Diets: Half the Story
One of the effects of the new low-carb diet craze has been the
questioning of the validity of low-fat diets. This started with Gary Taubes’ article in the July 7, 2002 edition of the New York Times entitled “What if it were all a big fat lie?” Taubes challenged the low-fat dictum and declared carbs were the problem all along:
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While the low-fat-is-good-health dogma represents reality as we have
come to know it, and the government has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in research trying to prove its worth, the low carbohydrate message has been relegated to the realm of unscientific fantasy. Over the past five years, however, there has been a subtle shift in the scientific consensus. It used to be that even considering the possibility of the alternative hypothesis,let alone researching it, was tantamount to quackery by association. Now a
small but growing minority of establishment researchers have come to
take seriously what the low-carb-diet doctors have been saying all along. Walter Willett, chairman of the department of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health, may be the most visible proponent of testing this heretic hypothesis. Willett is the de facto spokesman of the longest-running, most comprehensive diet and health studies ever performed, which have already cost upward of $100 million and include data on nearly 300,000 individuals.
Those data, says Willett, clearly contradict the low-fat-is-good-health message ”and the idea that all fat is bad for you; the exclusive focus on adverse effects of fat may have contributed to the obesity epidemic.”5
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This started the current low-carb tidal wave because people generally have found that it is true: if you cut out refined carbohydrates you will lose weight. But just as not all fats are bad, obviously not all carbohydrates are bad either, and one must learn to distinguish between refined “simple” carbohydrates found in most commercial breads and pastas, and those “complex” carbohydrates found in vegetables, for example.
But while these new low-carb diets are now challenging the low-fat
hypothesis, there still seems to be mass confusion as to which fats and oils are actually healthy, and which ones are not. And no wonder. Probably no other food group has been politicized more in American nutrition than fats. With all the books and literature written on the subject, and each one practically contradicting each other, there is really only one book written by a lipid expert with no commercial ties to anyone in the edible oil industry. That book is “Know Your Fats: The Complete Primer for Understanding the Nutrition of Fats, Oils, and Cholesterol” by Dr. Mary Enig, a nutritionist/biochemist with her Ph.D. in Nutritional Sciences from
the University of Maryland. Much of her work is featured in the Weston Price Foundation that studies traditional foods.
Let’s face it. The low-fat dietary dictum is a multi-billion dollar
industry built upon a foundation of sinking sand. Not only does the scientific research show that the polyunsaturated vegetable oils promote weight gain, it also shows that they are not good as an animal feed either. While they do promote weight gain in livestock, they do so at the expense of another essential fatty acid: conjugated linoleic acid (CLA). CLA is found primarily in beef and dairy products, and cannot be produced in the human body. Research has shown that animals grazed strictly on grass, their natural diet, can have levels of CLA hundreds of times higher than animals raised on grain feeds. Also, in a study done by the Department of Animal
Science at Southern Illinois University in 2003, it was found that beef finished off on soybean oil directly reduced the amount of CLA produced by ruminant animals.5 What are the known benefits of CLA, now that we have almost lost it from our meat and dairy sources? Among its benefits are: it destroys cancer cells, it reduces tumors, and it promotes weight loss while increasing muscle growth.
Flawed “Science”
When a dietary philosophy has been promoted as long as the current
low-fat dogma has, and a multi-billion dollar industry feeds off it, we can expect it to die a slow death with much opposition, as America gets fatter and fatter because the popular media continues to propagate the low-fat myth. It is amazing to read new studies conducted that start with this myth as fact, and then construct their whole study to support it, never once questioning the “wisdom” behind the myth that is just accepted without question as fact.
In a study published by British Journal of Nutrition, entitled “Effects of including a ruminally protected lipid supplement in the diet on the fatty acid composition of beef muscle,” the abstract begins like this:
“Enhancing the polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA) and decreasing the saturated fatty acid content of beef is an important target in terms of improving the nutritional value of this food for the consumer.”
With this “truth” declared without any supporting evidence whatsoever, it goes on to show how one can increase the PUFA content of beef while decreasing the saturated fat content by feeding cows soybean, linseed and sunflower-seed oils. And because this entire generation has been brainwashed into believing saturated fats are bad
and polyunsaturated fats are good, this is seen as positive!
But wait, it gets even worse. Have you noticed all the news lately
about the epidemic of obesity among children? A study was published in 2003 by the Journal of the American Diet Association entitled “Soy-enhanced lunch acceptance by preschoolers.” The objective: “To evaluate acceptance of soy-enhanced compared with traditional menus by preschool children. Soy-enhanced foods were substituted on a traditional cycle menu, and the amount eaten, energy, and nutrient values for traditional and soy-enhanced
lunches were compared.” The conclusion? “Soy-enhanced foods were
successfully substituted for 23 traditional foods included in the cycle menus. Soy-enhanced foods tended to be higher in energy, protein, and iron. Traditional lunches tended to be higher in fat, saturated fat, and vitamin A.” Therefore “Preschool programs can substitute soy-enhanced for traditional foods, which will add variety to the diet without sacrificing taste, energy, or nutrient value.”6
Great! So since we start with the presupposition that saturated fats are bad and polyunsaturated fats are good, we can now design a study to “prove” we should be feeding preschoolers soy instead of
“traditional foods.” And people continue to ask why children
are so overweight today… Other concerns about soy and children are
not even addressed in this study, such as how large amounts of plant
hormones (phyto-estrogens) in soy are equal to adult levels and can cause severe damage to the endocrine system of children.7
Traditional Fats are Best
So while we wait for the science to catch up with the truth, here is a better idea. Let’s go back and eat the traditional fats our forefathers and other traditional societies have eaten for hundreds and even thousands of years, and were known to be healthy. These fats are rich in saturated fats, and include healthy traditionally raised meat, dairy, and eggs. In tropical climates it includes coconut oil and palm oil. Coconut oil is unique in nature with medium chain fatty acids that are also found in human breast
milk, with volumes of research showing that it leads to greater
metabolism and weight loss. In the Mediterranean cultures it includes the monounsaturated olive oil traditionally processed as extra virgin. These healthy fats have nourished the human population for thousands of years. In contrast, the low-fat diet dictum which is seldom challenged and has only been around for a couple decades, has now given us lean pigs and cattle, and obese children and adults.
Brian Shilhavy
References
1. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, “Obesity Still on the Rise, New Data Show,” Tuesday, October 8, 2002 Published on the Centers for Disease Control website:
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/releases/02news/obesityonrise.htm
2. Rex Russell, M.D. What the Bible Says About Healthy Living (Regal
Books, Ventura, CA 1996) p.125
3. M.T. See and J. Odle, “EFFECT OF DIETARY FAT SOURCE, LEVEL, AND
FEEDING INTERVAL ON PORK FATTY ACID COMPOSITION” 1998-2000 Departmental Report, Department of Animal Science, ANS Report No. 248 – North Carolina State University
4. Gary Taubes “What If It Were All a Big Fat Lie!” New York Times
July 7, 2002
5. Griswold KE, Apgar GA, et. al. “Effectiveness of short-term feeding strategies for altering conjugated linoleic acid content of beef.” Journal Animal Science, 2003 Jul;81(7):1862-71.
6. Endres J, Barter S, Theodora P, Welch P., “Soy-enhanced lunch
acceptance by preschoolers.” Journal American Diet Assoc. 2003 Mar;103(3):346-51.
7. For a list of studies on how soy affects the endocrine system of
infants and children, see: http://www.soyonlineservice.co.nz/baby.htm
