Yep, you read it right, “Eat more fat”. Of course I’m not talking about just any kind of fat, I’m talking traditional fats – coconut oil, butter, rendered poultry fat, lard, tallow, olive oil, sesame oil, and flaxseed oil. I just finished reading “Eat Fat, Lose Fat“, which completely blows the lipid hypothesis and all the other low-fat dogma out of the water. It’s been a trick finding good quality fats (did you know those blocks of lard in the store are normally hydrogenated?), but I think I am finally pretty well set. (I do still need to render the grassfed beef tallow.)
Follow this closely with “eat fewer carbohydrates, especially processed carbohydrates and sugar”. This is the really tough part, as most of us know. If you need some inspiration, watch this lecture on The Hazards of Sugar. I was raised eating processed cereal for breakfast with a spoonful of sugar on top (not always, but generally on weekdays when I was in a hurry for the bus). Ever since I read about the cornflake experiment in Nourishing Traditions, I haven’t looked at cereal the same way.
What’s the cornflake experiment? From Nourished Magazine:
Another unpublished experiment was carried out in the 1960s. Researchers at Ann Arbor University were given 18 laboratory rats. They were divided into three groups: one group received corn flakes and water; a second group was given the cardboard box that the corn flakes came in and water; the control group received rat chow and water. The rats in the control group remained in good health throughout the experiment. The rats eating the box became lethargic and eventually died of malnutrition. But the rats receiving the corn flakes and water died before the rats that were eating the box! (The last corn flake rat died the day the first box rat died.) But before death, the corn flake rats developed schizophrenic behavior, threw fits, bit each other and finally went into convulsions. The startling conclusion of this study is that there was more nourishment in the box than there was in the corn flakes.
That is just wrong! But if you read Paul Stitt’s Beating the Food Giants, it won’t come as a surprise. Still, those cereals and snacks can be so tasty…
Number three – read even more labels! There are any number of foods that we eat or have eaten that are “supposed to be healthy”, which, upon reading the labels, turn out to be pretty darn awful. Most processed foods are full of genetically modified corn and soy and a lab full of preservatives.
Case in point: Yoplait Thick & Creamy Key Lime yogurt
Yogurt should be good for you, no? Check out the label on this beast:
- Cultured pasteurized grade A reduced fat milk (because we are told fat is evil)
- sugar (didn’t really buy it for the sugar)
- nonfat milk (because skim milk is thin – this stuff has oxidized cholesterol, which is really bad for you)
- high fructose corn syrup (undoubtedly a GMO product, and kills your liver like alcohol)
- modified corn starch (more GMOs)
- kosher gelatin (does it really matter at this point if it’s kosher with the other ingredients?)
- tricalcium phosphate (for calcium? also used to mask bitter tastes)
- citric acid (to make tart, because of all the sugar?)
- natural flavors (???)
- vitamin A acetate (supplement)
- yellow #5 (banned in other countries)
- Blue #1 (also possibly carcinogenic)
- Vitamin D3 (well, heck, now I know it’s healthy)
No wonder this doesn’t fill you up and has a strange chalky texture. I realize it’s supposed to be low fat, but you really can’t can have “rich and creamy” without some cream, at least not as far as I’m concerned.
Right now, I’m buying a few more things for the pantry, but we’re also getting rid of things I don’t intend to use anymore. Next week, I’ll try some more new recipes, like coconut crackers (from Eat Fat, Lose Fat). I may even try caviar again (it’s been around 20 years, so maybe it’ll taste better to me now).
I hope you all have a bountiful and healthy new year.
P.S.
Peaceful Acres has a great follow up to this post - Lard, the Evil Fat? that you may also want to check out.
Update: 4/22/11 – It’s over a year later, and I’ve lost close to 20 pounds since I started tweaking my diet. Bring on the fat!
WAY TO GO! Congrats on your new diet. It's made all the diff in my life, quite literally…I think I'd be dead if it weren't for finding out about WAPF! I wrote about it recently on my site. I look forward to watching your New Year progress with lots of wonderful good fats that nourish the entire body.
Diane@Peaceful Acres
http://butterfliesandbumblebees.org
Laurie, you might want to do a bit more research on eating pork lard ~ when you eat pork fat, your body cannot metabolize it (convert it to energy) and stores it as pork fat in your body! We learned this when we started following the biblical diet and quit eating pork.
Michelle – I will look into this. I picked up a copy of the Maker's Diet but haven't gotten a chance to read it. As is, I pretty much only use it for pie crust once in a while. I'm not a huge pork fan (except for bacon, that, I do enjoy in moderation).
I looked at caviar at the store today, and would you believe that both types had yellow #5 in them? I just shook my head and put them back on the shelf.
Laurie, I'm no expert, but I found fats to be one HUGE diff in the two diets. I did the Makers Diet for 40 days when I was dying of what we now know was/is Malaria/Babesia/Lyme and it nearly killed me. Once I learned of WAP I began consuming the good fats that Dr Price refers to and my health was miraculously turned around, mostly due to Cod Liver Oil and raw butter! Jordan does not avoid Canola oil, Soy oil, and other industrial waste oils, the very "bad" oils that Sally Fallon and Mary Enig warn us to stay away from. (at least not in his first edition) The canola, soy, cottonseed, corn, etc lack the fat soluble vitamins found in lard and tallow. Not to mention they are Hydrogenated. And they are most often GMO crops. For hundreds of years lard was used in cooking and heart disease was unheard of. In fact Dr Eisenhower's doctor commented that Eisenhower was his first heart disease patient and that he'd never seen before. The first heart disease patients were first seen in 1921.
Some health benefits of lard and tallow are:(source The Oiling of America)
Enhance the immune system
Build and strengthen bones and teeth (preventing cavities and osteoporosis)
Provide energy and structural integrity to the cells
Protect the liver
Enhance the body’s use of essential fatty acids
Do not become rancid easily
Do not call upon the body’s reserves of antioxidants
Do not initiate cancer
Do not irritate the artery walls
I've been freed from that bondage of believing that the Law still applies ONLY to diet. Funny huh? The NT clearly says that there is no food that is unlawful. We freely consume pork and shellfish now. Mind you they are clean meats that we choose from….milk fed, pastured pork, wild caught seafood, not farm raised. Our lard is rendered from grass-fed/pastured hogs and our tallow from grass-fed beef.
Our choice is lard, butter,EVOO, palm oil and coconut oil. Since beginning to eat traditional fats 3 yrs ago I no longer have a chronic gall bladder issue! Our obsession with fat in America is killing us!
I hope Michelle will also take a look at the work by WAPF. http://westonaprice.org
I do love your run down on yogurt!!! A great analysis!!!
peacefulacres,
I would love to hear more of your story if your willing to share. Like most folks we have some health issues as we are getting older and are trying to head others off before they start. You can email me at laurieneverman@hotmail.com. (I'm glad we have LifeLock – I spend way too much time on the web.)
I'm a fan of WAPF, as you probably guessed. Everything I've read from them makes sense to me. The main reason we don't eat much lard is that I don't care for the flavor too much and I have a hard time finding good quality product.
My mom was raised on lard and pork, along with poultry and beef, as many farm families have been. They ate what they could grow/raise on their farm. Of course, they also put in long days of very physical labor so they worked it off.
I've noticed that since I added real fat back in our diet that smaller portions are much more filling, plus they fill you up longer so snacking is less tempting. I have also lost a little weight without any other big changes, even through the holiday season.
Thanks for sharing more info.
Yum, lard. I love this stuff. Since I read it's got the Vit D from the pastured hogs, I've been using it a bit more. I'm trying to get away from non-stick skillet, so lard in a cast iron skillet is working for me to fry eggs for breakfast.
I LOL @ the yogurt run down. Add in, you pay .40 for a small cup of that, but you can make your own yogurt for .02 a cup!
My absolute favorite for frying eggs is bacon grease. Whether using the stainless steal fry pan or the cast iron fry pan, making sure it's liberally lubed is the best way to fry a perfect egg. Otherwise mine ALWAYS seem to stick.
Do you have your own milk? I haven't made yogurt yet (on the to-do list), but good milk is pretty pricey on its own.
Laurie, thanks for giving the source for that Cornflake study. I was looking for that! You and I must be on the same wavelength somehow
You're welcome, Melissa. It's one of my favorite stories to share to introduce people to the concept of real food.
I just added a huge piece of butter to my broth with meat and veggies that I am heating up for lunch. I read the corn flakes study to my kids. My teenager really needed to hear that one. One more year and it is off to college for him..
Happy Easter!
Mmmmmm…. butter…they grow up so fast! My guys will both officially be in their teens before you know it. Don't know if I'm ready for it or not.
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