By Raine Saunders

Are you a person who believes low-fat foods are healthier than those with fat in them? Have you ever starved yourself or limited your calories thinking that if you did this, you would lose weight? It has become a common misconception that if people eat low calorie and fat-free foods they should be able to lose weight because they are eating less fat.

Although in theory, this sounds like a logical conclusion, nothing could be further from the truth! With that idea in mind, have you ever wondered whether the food in your kitchen that reflects those ideas is healthy to eat? It can be confusing to try and sift through all the information available on food and nutrition. So much is available. How do you know what to believe? Don’t worry, I’ll answer this question later on in this post.

Right now, let’s go over some of the most common myths about nutrition as well as detailed explanations as to why those are untrue.

Here’s a short quiz you can take to determine how nutritionally aware you are about the foods in your kitchen:

• Do you eat low-fat or non-fat foods?

• Do you count calories?

• Do you believe “lean meats” are healthy to eat?

• Do you believe red meat is not healthy to eat?

• Do you believe saturated fats and cholesterol are bad for your heart?

• Do you eat soy products because you’ve been told they are health foods?

• Do you maintain a vegan diet?

• Do you eat boxed cereals because the labels read “low-fat”, or “high-fiber”, “all-natural” or “no sugar added”?

• Do you believe eggs and butter are bad for your health?

• Do you choose vegetable oils because you have been told they are healthy to consume (canola, cottonseed, corn, and safflower oils)?

• Do you take synthetic vitamin/mineral/dietary supplements to “fill in the gaps”?

• Do you pay no attention to organic, sustainable, antibiotic/hormone/spray/pesticide-free meats and produce because conventional is “cheaper” and “it doesn’t really make a difference”?

• Do you buy processed foods such as enriched breads, crackers, cereals, bagels, English Muffins, pretzels, rice cakes, tortillas, croissants because you believe they are low-fat and healthy?

• Do you eat highly-processed lunch meats, sausages, hot dogs and other similar items?

• Do you eat products containing hydrolyzed proteins or protein powder?

• Do you buy “food” and “protein” bars and powdered drink products because you believe they are an acceptable substitute for a real, balanced meal?

• Do you believe that raw milk is unsafe to drink, and pasteurized is superior?

• Do you buy factory-produced eggs and industrially-produced meat?

• Believe salt is bad for your health?

If you answered no to most of these, hopefully you are on the right track!

If you answer yes to more than 2 of these questions, it might be time to re-evaluate what you are keeping in your cupboards and refrigerator.

Here are some things you may not know about the food you eat:

• Fats and cholesterol are healthy and necessary for your health. All humans need real, unadulterated fats in their diets. Fats contain some of the most necessary nutrients and enzymes for us to maintain all types of bodily functions – even more than many vegetables, believe it or not!

• Butter is good for you! A slice of real butter is delicious, filling, and provides Vitamins A & D, and K, and also Omega 3 essential fatty acids – especially butter from healthy cows on pasture.

• The kind of meat you eat is important – learn the differences between conventional and sustainable-raised, grass-fed meats. Conventional meat is really the culprit of many of our health problems.  Animals in conventional environments are usually fed grain, soy. These animals are not made to eat these substances – but should be eating grass instead. As a result, animals become ill and often develop the pathogenic variety of E. coli and other diseases, are administered antibiotics to keep them from getting sick, are given growth hormones to make sure they grow fast enough to turn a profit quicker. The balance of Omega 6s to Omega 3s in conventional meat is grossly out of balance, and eating this kind of meat causes degenerative disease over time.

• As a rule, supplements don’t replace healthy eating.

• Remember when grandma used to give you cod liver oil?  Cod liver oil with butter oil is really good for you, and is an important source of Vitamins A , B, C, & D. Cod liver oil with butter oil contains the important Vitamin K that is so lacking in much of our diets. Fermented cod liver oil is the best type of this oil to consume.  

• Sprouted, soaked, and fermented grains, nuts, and seeds are more digestible to the human body. Have you ever stopped to wonder why there are so many grain and food allergies, and why obesity, heart disease, and other illnesses are so prevalent? In modern times, the grains most of us consume are processed and extruded. Extrusion involves grains being forced through a very small hole in a machine and subjected to extremely high temperatures, which damages the grain. For thousands and thousands of years, our ancestors prepared grains by soaking and sprouting to increase the digestibility of these foods.  When eaten in moderation and properly prepared, grains, nuts and seeds can be a part of a truly healthy diet.

• Eating healthy doesn’t have to cost an arm and a leg.

• Cheap food is not really cheap – cheap foods are full of chemicals and toxins, and are not really food – so you can eat it all day and not be full.  We are seeing more and more of these foods on recall lists every day. Eating these kinds of foods will actually result in a net deficiency of nutrients stored in your body. In the end, you will spend more money for less food, and then you will pay in health costs later.

• The Food Pyramid (designed by the USDA) actually tells us to eat the wrong foods!

• The most unhealthy oils to consume are those that are the cheapest (such as canola, cottonseed, and soybean) – and you will find these everywhere you look : in grocery stores, restaurants, and in processed foods everywhere.

• The healthiest oils are virgin and extra-virgin olive oil, coconut oil, and palm oils from a sustainable-source.

• Soy is not a health food unless it is in fermented form. Ninety percent or more of soy sold on the market is highly-processed, industrial waste – and beyond that can cause severe disruptions in the body in the reproductive, digestive, endocrine, nervous, and cardiovascular systems. Soy milk, cheese, fake meats, most tofu and soy sauces, soy “mayonnaise”, and soy filler ingredients you will find on the market are not good for your health, despite the claims made by food companies on labels. Natto, tempeh, and miso that are naturally fermented are good choices for health.

• Table salt is an industrial waste product – the heating process during refinement takes temperatures upward toward 1200 degrees in processing, which destroys the majority of naturally-occurring elements. Mostly comprised of sodium chloride and no more than one or two other elements, table salt is toxic to our bodies. Unrefined sea salt has a balance of trace minerals our bodies need, which we currently don’t get from many of the foods we eat. Because conventional farming methods destroy our soil and mineral levels, the earth becomes depleted of many important nutrients that would otherwise greatly improve the nutritional content of foods that are grown (produce, grains, legumes, etc.) and raised to graze (animals for meat and meat products). The best choice is a good quality unrefined sea salt.

Overwhelmed? Confused? You are not alone!

Modern food processing methods remove nutrients from foods and denature them so that our bodies cannot recognize those substances. Modern food processing uses heat, pressure, and industrially-produced oils and fats to make foods more convenient and easier to package and sell. If your digestive system cannot absorb something, it will have a difficult time delivering something nutritious that will actually do your body benefit. What’s more, these foods can actually increase the toxin load and deplete existing nutrients, which cause long-term health problems.

Remember at the beginning of this post – I asked a very important question - how do you know what to believe?

When you aren’t sure, a good rule of thumb to follow is that if your grandmother doesn’t know what it is, you probably shouldn’t be eating it!  People have eaten real, traditional foods for thousands of years and survived very well.

It’s only been in the last 160 years or so that human beings have developed processing and automation to mass produce packaged foods. And yet since that time, disease rates and illnesses have changed considerably. For example, our records in the study of heart disease show that death from heart problems was a rare occurrence in pre-industrial societies.

Since the advent of the Industrial Revolution (19th century), the incidence of heart disease began to increase sharply, and since then more people have died from heart-related disease.  If you are a person that needs statistical data to be convinced, just take a look at this graph of statistics on heart disease from Google showing heart disease rates since the 1860s to now. It’s quite startling to see the change in this disease since that time on this graph.

Source: AgricultureSociety.com

Here are a couple vids that get to the point rather well.

The Cholesterol Myth exposed – Dr Malcolm Kendrick speaks about World Health Organisation data gathered in their MONI-CA study. MONItoring Trends in CArdiovascular Disease

Clip from the documentary “Fat Head.” Guess what? Fat and cholesterol don’t cause heart disease. The theory was based on bogus science from the very beginning.

The Untold Story of BUTTER by Sarah Pope

Fifty years ago, a sea change began to occur in the perception of nutrition in America, and hence, the entire Western World. It started shortly after World War II when butter and other saturated fats became public enemy #1 through the apparent link between their consumption and heart disease. Cholesterol rich foods such as egg yolks and liver joined the list of vilified foods during the 1970’s as the public was told by doctors, nutritionists, and the limited media outlets at the time (network TV and radio) that these foods were clearly linked to the epidemic of heart disease.

The discovery that artery clogging plaques – the main cause of heart attacks – were found to primarily contain cholesterol sealed the deal. Never mind that the oxidized cholesterol found in processed foods (particularly skim milk) was the real culprit in the heart disease war. Common sense seemed to dictate that avoiding all cholesterol rich foods such as butter, liver, and egg yolks would somehow reduce one’s chance of a heart attack. Foods rich in saturated fat and cholesterol, oxidized or not, became inextricably linked to bad health, clogged arteries, and heart attacks in the psyche of most Westerners.

Flawed Science Discovered by Fats Researcher

About the same time the war against eggs heated up, a young scientist named Mary Enig discovered during her research that a serious mistake had occurred with regard to the studies linking saturated fat to heart disease. She discovered that the analysis had incorrectly grouped saturated fat along with trans fat (partially hydrogenated fats). How had this happened? The mistake evidently occurred because factory synthesized trans fats are very similar in chemical structure to saturated fats. So similar in fact, that researchers had grouped them together for analytical purposes.

Problem is, the seemingly insignificant, minor chemical difference between saturated fat and factory fat (trans fats) made all the difference in the world to the conclusion of the research. Dr. Enig found that when saturated fats and trans fats are separated into different groups, saturated fats were found to have NO LINK to heart disease while trans fats were found to have a very strong link!

Mortified, Dr. Enig tried her best to rectify this mistake by notifying her superiors and others in the industry, but found that the freight train against saturated fat had already left the station. Dr. Enig eventually paid for her forthrightness with her career. Blackballed by the edible oil industry who aggressively opposed her findings as a threat to their profits and bottom line, she found herself unable to get grants, funding, or even a job within the industry to continue her work on the effect of fats on the human body.

Food Industry Won’t Let Hypothesis Die

The highly successful campaign to demonize butter as a food loaded with saturated fat and therefore, a contributor to the heart disease epidemic, paved the way for the edible oil industry to create an entirely new line of products: margarine and other fake butter spreads. These “not butter” products began to line the supermarket shelves and Americans scooped them up in the name of better health. Butter substitutes are very cheap to produce – much cheaper than real butter. Replacing butter with margarine in the American diet proved to be a very smart marketing move for the edible oil industry and they rode this wave of profits for many years all the while falsely touting the certain improvements in public health that would result.

Butter is Shunned, While Heart Disease Skyrockets

Problem is, even with the abandonment of butter in the modern diet, Americans continued to get fatter and fatter and the epidemic of heart disease showed no signs of abating. Ironically, the very margarines the public so willingly purchased instead of butter are loaded with trans fats, the very fats that ARE strongly linked with heart disease. How the edible oil industry managed to successfully demonize butter and all saturated fats all the while slowly and purposefully integrating trans fats into every nook and cranny of the entire processed foods industry is certainly an amazing marketing feat! Pepperidge Farms changed its wonderful line of cookies from using coconut oil to trans fats. McDonald’s changed the oil it used for making french fries from beef tallow to trans fats. It seemed the entire world had bought into the story that all saturated fats are bad for you.

Well, not everyone. Dr. Enig had quietly continued her pioneering work on fats and was now on the board of the Weston A. Price Foundation (WAPF) which was founded in 1999. Even after the dangers of trans fats to health finally started to be exposed in the late 1990’s through the work of the WAPF and others (reaching a crescendo with the addition of trans fats to product labels just a few years ago), the edible oil industry refused to stop the campaign against butter.

Read more at: The Untold Story of Butter by Sarah Pope