Holiday Food

Tips to eat right this holiday season. By Bruce Weaver, MPA, PA-C, Owner, AAging Better In-Home Care.

With the holiday season approaching, food will be a focus in most holiday planning. It presents the perfect time to address a topic that has received much publicity over the decades—fats.

As far back as the 1960s, public health officials and nutritional “experts” recommended switching from saturated fats like butter and lard, to polyunsaturated fats like vegetable oils (canola, safflower, corn, sunflower, peanut, soybean), which stay liquid at room temperature. These vegetable oils happen to be very high in omega-6 fats. When artificially hydrogenated, these liquid oils turn into solid or semi-solid fats, products like shortening and margarine. When contrasted with naturally occurring solid fats like butter, lard and coconut oil, these vegetable oil versions were touted as a huge improvement in our diets, one that would decrease cardiovascular disease and cholesterol levels. But this proved to be vastly overrated.

Not only have we seen cardiovascular disease spike over the ensuing decades, we’ve also seen associated epidemics of diabetes and obesity. Part of the problem is that our bodies were never designed through evolution to handle large amounts of omega-6 fats, something we find in abundance in nearly every American diet today. Before chemical solvent extraction and refining methods were developed, we didn’t have the ability to extract oils from foods such as corn and soybeans. People got their omega-6 fats in small amounts from natural, whole foods—seeds, greens, grains and nuts—which contain antioxidants and other nutrients that nourish our bodies. This isn’t the case with modern, conventionally produced vegetable oils.

After the “saturated fats are bad” message went out to the American public, particularly around 1980, vegetable oils began to be used in virtually every processed food found on our grocery shelves. Restaurants, too, switched to vegetable oils—from fast-food joints to fine-dining establishments. Decades later, the result is increasingly overweight senior and pediatric populations—along with many middle-age adults—and unprecedented levels of diabetes, autoimmune disorders and allergies that is unparalleled in our history. It would appear that big agribusiness “science” may have gotten it all wrong.

Everyone needs the essential fats—both omega-6s and omega-3s—in a balanced intake, a balance between 1:1 to a 4:1 ratio. Today’s American diets lie between a 10:1 to 25:1 ratio. Omega-3 fats (just as critical to humans as omega-6 fats) are found in cold-water fish, flaxseed and raw nuts and help the body produce anti-inflammatory compounds. When omega-6 becomes the predominant fat in our diets, as it has over the past 20-30 years, it can encourage the production of inflammation, which can play a major role in the development of cardiovascular disease and other major health problems. There is an important message in this. Getting back to eating fresh local fruits and vegetables in season, switching from grain-fed to grass-fed beef and wild game, and eating free-range chickens, all seem to be the healthier idea. And bringing back butter, along with whole or 2% milk into our diets would be far more preferable than skim milk.

When our grandmothers made their pie crusts and cookies with butter rather than shortening and margarine, they probably knew all along what was really best for their families and loved ones.

#health