Low fat is bad news
Fortunately, the low fat dogma of the late 20th century and early 21st century is sloooowly being accepted as the awful nutrition advice it really is. As a matter of fact, Sweden recently became the first Western nation to adopt a low-carb, high-fat approach to nutrition. Way to go, Sweden!
When I explain the importance of dietary fat to my curious friends and clients, I prefer a simple explanation from a biological standpoint, which I share in this post. I find this is more effective than handing them a thick stack of the controlled studies showing that saturated fat consumption doesn’t cause heart disease. But if you want the studies, take a look at this huge meta-analysis from 2010 and this other gigantic one from 2014. They both show that saturated fat intake has no correlation with heart disease!
If you are currently paranoid about eating fat, this post will give you the knowledge and due sense of urgency to correct your diet. If you already consume a balanced-fat diet, this post will provide you with information to share with those who are curious or suspicious of your unconventional eating habits.
1. Healthy bile release requires fat
The gallbladder stores bile, which digests fats. The presence of fats in a meal signals the gallbladder to release bile into the digestive tract, and the bile emulsifies the fat so we can absorb it.
But what happens when we only have a few measly grams of fats in our meal? Bile release isn’t signaled, so bile sits in the gallbladder, turning thick and viscous. In a vicious cycle, it becomes more difficult for the gallbladder to release bile when bile is thick, so it just gets thicker in the gallbladder. Then, if we do eat a meal heavy in fat, the gallbladder can’t squeeze out the thick bile and the fat passes through our digestive tract undigested and unused for critical tasks in the body.
To make matters worse, the body becomes increasingly toxic because the bile stores toxins and hormones that need to leave the body. If we don’t get rid of that bile, those toxins and old hormones just sit there and can be recirculated.
2. Gallbladder health requires fat
When it comes to the gallbladder, the rule is “use it or lose it.” This makes sense, as we see soaring numbers of gallbladder removals from people who have consumed a low fat or poor fat diet in the past. What happens to the gallbladder after months or years on a low fat diet? After a short stint on a low fat diet, we can create serious gallbladder congestion due to that thick, sticky bile sitting in the gallbladder. Eventually, gallbladder attacks and gallstones occur.
If you currently experience gallbladder problems or have had your gallbladder removed, you should gradually increase your fat intake and take targeted supplements, including ox bile. I recommend working with a nutritional therapist or naturopath to address the problem.
3. Fat-soluble vitamins are found in fat
Vitamins A, D, E and K rare found in fatty foods, because they require lots of fat for absorption. As recorded by nutrition pioneer Weston Price, traditional diets of cultures from around the globe contained 10 times the amount of fat soluble vitamins than the modern diet. The nourishing animal foods considered sacred by traditional cultures, such as dairy products, fish roe, and organ meats, deliver the these vitamins along with the fat needed to absorb the vitamins.
As one example, we can only obtain vitamin A from naturally fat-rich sources like cod liver oil, grassfed dairy, liver, and egg yolks. That’s right, carrots and other vegetables will not provide you with vitamin A!
4. Cholesterol balance requires plenty of good fats
The roles of cholesterol in our body is catastrophically misunderstood thanks to a lot of propaganda by industries that prioritize profits over the the health of their consumers. As evidenced by the eating habits of traditional cultures from across the globe, good health relies on an adequate intake of cholesterol from animal fats.
Science tells us that cholesterol does not cause athersclerosis. As a healing agent in the body, levels of cholesterol rise during periods of stress or when inflammation is present. Providing cholesterol through good quality fats, such as pastured egg yolks and grassfed butter, allows the body to use cholesterol to help address the inflammation.
As a matter of fact, low blood cholesterol levels are associated with (but not proven to cause):
- A higher risk of mortality (1, 2. 3)
- A higher risk of depression (4, 5)
- A higher risk of committing violent crime and suicide (6, 7)
- A higher risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease (8, 9)
One area of confusion is the labeling of LDL as “bad cholesterol” and HDL as “good cholesterol.” We know that high levels of HDL cholesterol is beneficial and we know there are subtypes of LDL cholesterol. The large, fluffy LDL particles are benign but the small, dense LDL is correlated to heart disease.
Sources of saturated fats (like butter, animal fats, and coconut oil) change the dense LDL to fluffy LDL and raise HDL cholesterol… both health protective factors! Processed grains (like cereal) and vegetable oils, however, turn the fluffy LDL into the dense LDL, increasing the risk of heart disease (Source).
For additional information on cholesterol, statin drugs, and cholesterol testing, I highly recommend signing up for Chris Kresser’s newsletter. You’ll get free, instant access to his ebook The Diet-Heart Myth, which clears up cholesterol confusion in plain english. Also, I recommend his book Your Personal Paleo Code to fine-tune your diet into a truly heart-healthy protocol.
5. Blood sugar balance requires fat
Whenever we eat a source of carbohydrate, it should be accompanied by a quality source of fat. Fat slows down the absorption of glucose into the bloodstream and prevents sugar highs and sugar crashes. This keeps us full longer so we can reach or maintain a healthy weight.
When food producers and healthy cookbook authors jumped on the low-fat bandwagon, they realized that reducing the fat in food eliminated moisture and flavor. So, they compensated by increasing the sugar content. Increased sugar and decreased fat means bad, bad news for blood sugar regulation. No wonder we are seeing skyrocketing numbers of diabetes!
6. Protein utilization requires fat
Adequate fat is necessary for the proper digestion and utilization of proteins. Frequent consumption of protein without fat depletes fat-soluble vitamins, including vitamin A. According to nutrition expert Sally Fallon:
Protein cannot be adequately utilized without dietary fats. That is why protein and fats occur together in eggs, milk, fish and meats. A high protein, low fat diet can cause many problems including too rapid growth and depletion of vitamin A and D reserves. Source and read more.
If we examine the eating habits of our parents and grandparents (and great grandparents, for those in my generation) , we see that lean protein is a thoroughly modern invention. Great-grandma would never serve egg white omelets, for goodness sakes! After all, the vitamins and fatty acids in the yolk are required to utilize the protein in the white.
7. Hormone balance requires fat
We must consume sources of cholesterol-rich saturated fats to provide the building blocks for sex hormones, including testosterone, estrogen, and progesterone. Without enough dietary cholesterol, women often become very deficient in progesterone. For men, a low fat diet means low testosterone… and you know what that means, guys!
Low fat diets also undermine balanced hormones by preventing the detox of excess hormones, particularly estrogen. When there is excess estrogen in the body, it is packaged into the bile so it can be excreted with food waste. If bile is not being released, then old estrogen sits in the liver and gallbladder and can be recirculated in the body.
Modern lifestyles lead to estrogen dominance for many men and women, since stress and poor diet increases estrogen synthesis and reduces detox of old hormones. For women, estrogen dominance means PMS and menopausal symptoms. For men, this often manifests as erectile dysfunction or “man boobs.”
8. Detox requires fat
The liver acts like a toxin filter for our entire body. After collecting toxins, it packages them in bile. If things work correctly, the gallbladder releases bile when we digest our food and the toxins in the bile leave the body with the feces.
If we aren’t consuming adequate to signal bile release, however, then the toxins build up in both the liver and gallbladder. The toxic load increases overtime and the body can reabsorb these stagnant toxins.
You may not see a knob of butter as a detox-promoting food, but it actually is! By stimulating bile release, good sources of saturated fats like butter encourage detox, balanced hormones and weight loss.
9. Weight loss and weight management requires fat
What happens when you reach for a few rice cakes or a low-fat protein bar as an afternoon snack? You feel ravenous and desperately crave sugar in under an hour. When we take a calorie-for-calorie approach, 200 calories of coconut oil is going to keep you full for at least 2-3 hours, while those 200 calories of whole-grain cereal and skim milk will leave you starving an hour later.
Fat signals satiation because it digests slowly, providing long-burning energy. Also important, it makes food taste delicious so that we end a meal with thoroughly satisfied taste buds. Additionally, it supports detox – a key part of losing stubborn weight.
If you want to lose weight, adequate fat MUST be part of the picture! Not only will it leave you feeling full, it supports detox and liver health… two necessities for weight management.
10. Fat makes food taste good
Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, fat makes food enjoyable. If you browse cookbooks from the 1800’s, you’ll find that every vegetable recipe contains copious amounts of butter, lard, egg yolks, pork, and/or cream. Plain steamed vegetables would be a completely foreign concept to home cooks of that era. Homemakers understood that plenty of whole food fats created delicious meals and, as a result, each family member eagerly finished off a serving of spinach… because it was swimming in fresh cream and dollops of butter.
Nourishing sources of fats makes healthy food taste delicious. It isn’t a shame that butter and egg yolks taste so good… it’s nature’s way of telling us that these foods are good for us!
How much fat is enough?
As a general rule of thumb, we should eat no less than 40% of our calories as fat. Many individuals thrive on a 50% fat diet and some people feel best on as much as 60% of calories as fat.
For a 2,000 calorie diet, obtaining 40% of calories from fat means eating about 90 grams of fat. Over the course of the day, if we are eating real foods prepared from scratch, an example looks roughly like:
- 2 Tbs. butter
- 1 Tbs. coconut oil (coconut oil is extremely healthful but it will not stimulate bile production, according to my extremely knowledgeable mentor. Consume it in addition to animal fats)
- 2 whole eggs
- 1/2 avocado
- 1 serving fatty steak (grassfed, of course!)
- 1 cup whole milk
- 1/4 cup macadamia nuts
As you can see, the fats in this example are primarily saturated fats from the coconut oil, dairy, eggs, and meat. The avocado and macadamia nuts provides healthy monounsaturated fats. Vegetable oils such as canola oil should be completely avoided, because the high ratio of omega-6, polyunsaturated fats is unnatural and inflammatory.
Use the sharing buttons below to help dispel the low fat myth!
Hi Lauren! I’m wondering if you can direct me to your source for this claim:
“Whenever we eat a source of carbohydrate, it should be accompanied by a quality source of fat. Fat slows down the absorption of glucose into the bloodstream and prevents sugar highs and sugar crashes.”
Thanks! 🙂
Hannah
HI Hanna, I am not sure if/or how much fat slows down glucose absorption into the blood stream. The important thing is that adding fat removes carbohydrates for same satiety. Type of calories matters an awful lot, and we tend to eat less calories automatically when sufficient amount of (good) fats are added.
And less carbs in any meal means lower postprandial blood sugar spikes. Cardiologist (and author) William Davies has written lots about post meal glucose spikes, something that can damage blood vessels immediately and damage insulin sensitivity in the long run, then increasing risk for quicker immediate damage and earlier heart disease and/or diabetes-2. So it is always good to swap carbs for fat, but not omega-6 or transfats. These fats cause inflammation and heart disease, and even vegans adopt it today!
The low fat craze is probably the main culprit behind both obesity and rise of chronic disease in the Western world. And the calories from fat are completely different from those from carbohydrates as the former never raise blood sugar!
Was that supposed to answer Hanna’s question?
Hello I don’t have my goldblooder. To late for me. But now I have the beginning of breast cancer. I have eaten organic food for the past 3 years. I need a guidance on a diet to help me now please and thank you. I love the information.
Giselle, I hope you are doing well and see this. For you as a person without a gall bladder, take Ox Bile with each meal that contains fat. It will be your gall bladder in a pill.
Thin bile and add to it with oxbile and maybe taurine, but primarily by increasing dietary fats, natural fats. not margarin or cholesterolreducing as cholesterol is necessary to build better protection of the antioxidants you can add aonce the fat intake has increased. All supplements and fruit in direct connection with main meals.. Use organic products as much as you can since there can be cancer causing chemicals in the none organic. GMO is a big nono as they are either engineered to have built in pesticides (Bt-toxin) or withstand spraying which means they can have been sprayed several times during cultivation. The main pesticide used today, Roundup, has been classified as a probable cancer causing chemical, also seen in longer independent trials on mice.
StenB, So much outdated baloney still being posted in other online sites that promote old science studies. Thanks for all your very simple to understand info.
Hi Lauren. Thanks you SO MUCH for the education on “Fats”!!
I’ve been having issues for almost 2 weeks with a sour / bile taste in my mouth. No burning of chest / abdomen that is so often associated with acid reflux, etc. I know that because I’ve had those problems in the past. This is just a “taste in my mouth with slight nausea feeling”. So, I started wondering if this was an onset from my type of diet. Most days I have a frozen organic Amy’s meal. Which I know can be low in fat….but now I just noticed “how low they are in fat…some only 3g of fat. Could that be the culprit…..maybe excess bile build-up because there’s such a low amount of fat to be emulsified and all the extra bile that would be used to breakdown fats is backing up. Possible?
This all started within 1 day after I had ate at a Chinese Restaurant. Food was so-so and I only had a fried, greasy egg roll & 2 fried pot stickers. Yikes!! So, I started once again taking my Himalaya “LiverCare” capsules and my Enzymedica “Lypo Gold” that I had stopped taking a while back. They seem to help a little with the bile taste…but not totally gone.
I’ve also ordered the Biotics Bile Salts, but is that the same as what I’m already taking, or useful in other ways?
And I’ve had constipation…hard stools and bloated mid-section even though I’ve lost some pounds and usually my stomach goes down….but not this time. Does this further info give you a better grasp on what you think may be happening ??
I had full physical in October ((blood panel, urine test, EKG, good bone density) and all is good! I’m a 66 yr old female and I am on no medications at all for anything!! However, I have been inactive due to a “non-union” fracture (3) of my 5th meta-tarsal & wearing a medical boot for past 10 months. That I can deal with because I can understand that. But, now , I’m just worried about the possible severity of what is happening to me because of this bile taste.
I’m leaving for Europe next week….so no time to see doc now. but will make appointment when I return 3 weeks later if this has not gotten better. Hoping to hear from you with sharing of your thoughts ……thank you so much!! Kerry
Maybe you have SIBO ( small intestinal bacterial overgrowth)
THANK YOU Lauren, for your excellent clear article refuting many outdated medical “facts” promoting fear of fat.
http://nutritionfacts.org/video/the-saturated-fat-studies-set-up-to-fail/
So I looked into the studies you listed and found that they were summarized from cross sections of older studies to make it appear there is no correlation between saturated fat and heart disease. Even though the American heart Association has increased their recommended restrictions. This advice is repackaged Atkins diet which all the people from the 90s who jumped on that band wagon can prove that diet isn’t sustainable or healthy. I was delighted to add butter and coconut oil into my diet. After two year, not only to I have more health issues but I’m also fatter than ever. I cook 90% of meals at home of high quality foods. All recommendations you listed above and my blood test have come back with worrisome results. Hormone imbalances and very low vitamin D even though you recommend eating fat will help vitamin D absorption. I have always ate by listing to my body, stop when full, eat when hungry and maintained the exact same body weight year after year. Then only change has been my increased use of fats. So I’m sorry but I cannot support this post or most of your recommendations as they are poorly scientifically backed that will lead many into heart disease and obesity. You want true health science, follow the Dr in this video. He has made it his career to study scientific evidence and who has been bought out to further big business.
I think really it comes down to bioindividuality. Everyone is different and what work for one person wont work for another. Inuit have a gene for tolerating high fat (like 80%.) Meanwhile I was just told today that Japanese women are genetically? set up to tolerate soy, and it makes them less prone to cancers and such. Might not be correct, just passing along what I was told. Many tropical people do better with higher carb, etc. I would go by how you feel, your test results and your ancestry. The more I hear how different people react to different studies, the more I am convinced that the reality is it’s not one size fits all. For me, I do better on higher fat, but others do not. I accept that and encourage self experimentation.
It’s also important to note that in terms of nutritional biology, things are not so easily divided into “good” and “bad.” The studies referenced here say that saturated fat is not always “bad” and that it doesn’t cause heart disease. That doesn’t necessarily mean that fats are GOOD, and it definitely doesn’t mean we should eat a lot of them. Any ingested substance will be bad when consumed in excess. Fats are more calorie-dense than carbohydrates so a high-fat diet can absolutely lead to weight gain. Mice in the lab are given 80% fat diets to induce obesity and it works very fast, simply due to the calorie surplus.
Please tell me if it is possible to correct Estrogen Dominance if one has PBC (Primary Biliary Cirrhosis, stage 4, compensated, MELD 7, Child Pugh Class A) through diet and supplements?
With havin so much content and articles do you ever run into any problems
of plagorism or copyright violation? My site has
a lot of completely unique content I’ve either created myself or outsourced
but it looks like a lot of it is popping it up all
over the web without my agreement. Do you know any techniques to help prevent content from
being ripped off? I’d really appreciate it.
I’m trying to understand your remarks about cholesterol not being responsible for the development of atherosclerosis, I really want to believe this! Can you direct me to your source for this finding? What puzzles me is if cholesterol is not responsible for clogging the arterial walls, which leads to stable angina, why is the condition improved by lowering cholesterol?
Please direct me to your source for this finding.
Science, but not the practice of medicine, has known for decades that cholesterol is not actually the _cause_ of atherosclerosis.
One major cause of heart disease, though, is high levels of circulating insulin which damages the artery walls. Insulin is like sandpaper and cholesterol is like a scab over the wound. Cholesterol is a protective mechanism, not the cause of heart disease.
Have you ever wondered _why_ cholesterol builds up on the artery walls? Everyone consumes some cholesterol and, in fact, the body makes cholesterol. When blood tests are performed you _always_ have some cholesterol in the blood. If cholesterol is just predisposed to attaching to artery walls all on its own, then _everyone_ should have at least some plaque build up.
But they don’t.
There is a reason, and that reason is inflammation of the arterial walls. For most people the primary culprit, then, is high sugar and refined carbohydrate consumption that spikes blood sugar, which then spikes insulin. That in itself is not bad, but our modern carb rich diets where people graze all day and night elevating their blood sugar, yields chronic, elevated levels of insulin. And insulin is inflammatory. But if the insulin levels stay low or if it spikes infrequently, such as with low glycemic diet or intermittent fasting, then the vessels have plenty of time for healing in between. Just imagine if you rubbed your arm raw with sandpaper. It would scab and take some time to heal. But what if you constantly rubbed the same spot with sandpaper several times a day, every day. It would never have time to heal. Your body can withstand some abuse and is designed for it, but not too much.
Your question was specifically about stable angina. This page (https://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/000198.htm) lists a variety of causes for stable angina that don’t require narrowing of the arteries.
Note that chronically elevated insulin is not the only source of inflammation in the arteries. Cigarettes, trans fats (which _should_ be avoided), stress, some omega-6 fatty acids, chemicals, and more can all cause inflammation.
Also, heart disease is, quite simply, not improved by lowering cholesterol. There is zero scientific evidence for people who haven’t had a heart attack that taking statins reduces their likelihood of having a heart attack or having heart disease. For those who have had a heart attack, statins reduce their likelihood of having another heart attack by a couple percent. But it increases all cause mortality.
So, if you’ve had heart disease and you take a statin, you’re slightly less likely to have another heart attack, but you are more likely to die. Great. Makes sense to me.
Meanwhile things like exercise, controlling your stress, regulating vitamin D levels and getting good sleep all contribute significantly more to the reduction of heart disease.
And finally, the majority of people who _do_ have a heart attack have normal cholesterol levels!
I know you’re not going to believe me on this one, so here’s a reference: http://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/majority-of-hospitalized-heart-75668.
Wo how does a high fat diet help someone who had congestive heart failure and has to lose 100 pounds?