Why is fat still the enemy?

To this day, it is a largely held belief by the general public that dietary fat is to blame for obesity and heart disease.  Though research has clearly shown this to be a myth, it has taken such a deep root in our society that the mere suggestion of fat being good for you is greeted with scoffs.  Here’s a little cartoon to illustrate how this came to be:

It’s sad really.  We have spent the last few decades shaping our lives around a health myth that has in turn made us sicker.

So I ask of you (and I will probably ask this a lot), please wipe your mind clean of what you think you know about nutrition.  Let’s forget about the bad science based on cherry-picked data misshapen to fit some pre-existing notion, and instead focus on what common sense tells us.  There is no better place to look than the very place we came from – nature.

All Mammals Eat A Perfect Diet (except humans)

Mark Sisson wrote a great article recently that really played into the “duh” factor.  He asked “What do you feed a lion?”  Duh – you feed it meat.  There is no arguing that a lion is supposed to eat raw meat, but why is that so obvious?

Lions hunt and eat animals, and they and their feline ancestors have been doing so for hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of years.  Meat eating shaped the lion’s genetic makeup.  They have claws and teeth perfect for killing; a digestive tract meant for raw meat and designed to process protein and fat.

On the contrary, if a lion were given a different diet, its health would ultimately suffer.  A vegetarian diet would make a lion sick, weak, and probably overweight; a vegan diet would probably kill it.

The same goes for other animals.  Cows eat grass, squirrels eat nuts, giraffes eat leaves, and their digestive systems are set up perfectly for those diets. 

And what about humans?  We eat pizza and soda, right?  Oops…

Remember, we are animals too.  Just like the lion and the cow, we evolved under very certain conditions that shaped our genome.  Our body works best with the same foods we ate for thousands and thousands of years.  Granted, we are omnivores; we can eat a much wider variety of foods than most other animals, and our digestive systems will support that, but there are also a lot of foods that we are simply not designed to eat.

Our ancestors did not eat grains, legumes, refined sugar, or processed vegetable oils, and neither should we.  Remember, we have only been eating those foods for a relatively short period of time. 

“But humans have been eating grains for thousands of years!!”

That is correct - we have been eating grains for close to 10,000 years.  But think about it. Humans have been around for a good 200,000 years, and our ancestors before that stretch almost another 2 million years.  Humans were hunter-gatherers for a good 190,000 years living off plants and animals – not grains.  In the concept of evolution, 10,000 years is a blink of an eye.  Simply put, we have not evolved the ability to digest these foods.  (I’ll write more on this topic at another time)

So what does all of this have to do with fat?

To get back to the matter at hand, not only do we eat way too much junk that we’re not supposed to, we also resist (with an almost triumphant stance) the urge to eat nature’s best tasting, most nutritious macronutrient available – FAT!

I’ll even going to go as far as saying that I think humans should get most of their calories from fat. (gasp!) There, I said it. I must be going crazy, right?  But seriously, hear me out…

The following is from the book The Perfect Health Diet in which the authors, Paul and Shou-Ching Jaminet, describe why the perfect health diet should be structured with the macronutrient ratios close to 20%(carb)-65%(fat)-15%(Protein):

Reason #1:

"Our hunter-gatherer ancestors, from 2 million years ago until agriculture was invented 10,000 years ago, ate a diet with a macronutrient ratio of approximately 65% fat – 20% carbohydrate – and 15% protein.  Evolution may have optimized human biology for this diet."

Reason #2:

"Mother’s milk is a complete and perfect food for infants, and the perfect diet for adults must be similar.  Human milk by calories is 39% carbs, 54% fat, and 7% protein.  We can trust that evolution has designed milk to provide infants with optimal ratios.  How will the optimal adult diet differ from an infant’s? The brain is the body’s primary consumer of carbs, and the brain accounts for 50% of calorie consumption (10% of body weight) in infants but only 20% of calorie consumption (2% of body weight) in adults.  Since adults require less than half the carbs that infants do, the optimal adult carb intake is likely about 20% of total calories rather than the 39% of infants.  Starting from the human milk ratios and changing half the carb calories to fat and protein, we get a ratio of 20% carb – 64% fat – 16% protein."

Reason #3:

"You should eat what you are.  A lean human body, excluding water and minerals, is 56% fat and 44% protein by weight.  This translates to 74% fat and 26% protein by calories.  This suggests that fat and protein calories should be eaten in more or less a 74% to 26% ratio.  Why does this indicate the optimal dietary composition?  In order to add new tissue, such as muscle, your diet needs to supply the ingredients – fat and protein in a 74:26 ratio.  If 20% of the diet supplies carbs for the brain, while the rest is used to build tissue, then a 74:26 fat-to-protein ratio will make the whole diet 20% carb – 60% fat – 20% protein"

Reason #4:

"Omnivorous animals prefer and thrive on low-carb high-fat diets.  Animals instinctively eat a mix of foods that is healthy.  When scientists let mice choose their own food from an unlimited supply of carbs, fats, and protein, most strains chose to get a majority of calories from fat.  When scientists allowed a mouse strain that develops obesity and diabetes on a 40% carb – 40% fat chow to choose its own diet, it chose a diet of 5.6% carb, 82.5% fat, and 12% protein and 'proved highly resistant to the development of obesity and diabetes.'  If mice are smart enough to avoid diabetes and weight gain by eating a high-fat low-carb diet, should humans be as wise?"

Conclusion:

Eat More Fat!  Ok, granted, not all fat is created equal, but I’ll get into that at another time.  For now, ditch the canola oil for good ol’ lard, beef tallow or bacon fat; dump the skim and low-fat dairy and opt for the real stuff; and for heaven’s sake, don’t skimp on the butter!

I'd like to hear your thoughts on the matter. And stay tuned…I’ll be following up with much more on why we should no longer fear the fat.