Here at Gold Nugget Ghee we specialize in fat spreads. One of our biggest challenges has been to re-educate folks about the benefits of eating healthy fats. Your body NEEDS healthy fats. It's a major source of energy, it helps you absorb vitamins and minerals, helps you build cell membranes, is essential for blood clotting, muscle movement, and helps relieve inflammation.
So lets talk about fat!
Fats can be confusing, but you can generally divide fats into four types:
- Saturated fats, from animal fat and tropical oils
- Monounsaturated fat, such as olive oil
- Polyunsaturated fat, such as omega-3 and omega-6 fats
- Trans fats, such as margarine
What are Saturated Fats?
Saturated fats are common in the American diet. They are solid at room temperature — think ghee! Common sources of saturated fat include red meat, whole milk and other whole-milk dairy foods, cheese, coconut oil, and many commercially prepared baked goods and other foods. The word "saturated" here refers to the number of hydrogen atoms surrounding each carbon atom. The chain of carbon atoms holds as many hydrogen atoms as possible — it's saturated with hydrogens.
What are Unsaturated Fats?Unsaturated Fats are monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats and what we call the healthy fats like your (this is if they were all produced equal in an organic environment)
- avocados and avocado oil
- olives and olive oil
- peanut butter and peanut oil
- vegetable oils, such as sunflower, corn, or canola
- fatty fish, such as salmon and mackerel
- nuts and seeds, such as almonds, peanuts, cashews, and sesame seeds
The demonization of saturated fat began in 1953, when Dr. Ancel Keys published a paper comparing saturated fat intake and heart disease mortality. His theory turned out to be flimsy, to say the least, but the misguided ousting of saturated fat has continued unabated ever since. Fortunately, the truth is finally starting to come out, as medical scientists have begun to seriously question Keys' findings. (A good book to learn more about this is THE BIG FAT SURPRISE by Nina Teicholz!)
- Olives and olive oil
- Coconuts and coconut oil
- Ghee or organic grass-fed butter
- Raw nuts
- Organic pastured egg yolks
- Avocados
- Grassfed meats
- Palm Oil
- Unheated organic nut oils
Having the proper balance between omega-3 and omega-6 fats is also very important for optimal health. So in addition to increasing your omega-3 (which most people are sorely deficient in), you also want to decrease your consumption of omega-6, found primarily in:
- Corn oil
- Soy oil
- Canola oil
- Safflower oil
- Sunflower oil
So please remember, you do need a certain amount of healthy fat, while at the same time you'll want to avoid the unhealthy varieties. The easiest way to accomplish this is to simply eliminate processed foods, which are high in all things detrimental to your health: sugar, carbs, and dangerous types of fats.
