Know Your Fats

There is no nutrient more misunderstood nor more unfairly maligned than fat. And there probably is no one better qualified to explain the virtues and vices of various types of fat than Dr. Mary Enig, a nutritionist and biochemist of international renown, and a consultant on nutrition to individuals, industries, and state and federal governments.

Only a researcher of Enig’s caliber could have enough perspective to step back and see the whole fat controversy as one big misunderstanding: “What seems so ironic, is that the very foods (saturated fats and cholesterol) that people are avoiding are the very foods that are helpful and health giving. When it comes to fat, this really has become the age of the flat earth.”

Know Your Fats features more than a few complex diagrams of the molecular structure of fat, but Enig has also intentionally written the book for a general audience and explains the following basic facts about fats in a way that the average consumer can understand.

• The structure of the molecules in fat makes them amazing in their ability to store energy, and the slow digestion of fat is a natural and appropriate process.
• Dietary fat does not automatically become a fat deposit in the body. All the nutrients in the diet go through complex chemical processes before the body uses them in many different ways.
• Carbohydrates are processed much faster than fats, and the end result of eating many carbohydrates is body fat. When people misunderstand the digestion and absorption process, they end up incorrectly blaming dietary fat for weight gain.
• Fat plays very important roles in maintaining the structure of all the cells in the body.
• Fats are important enzyme and hormone regulators, and carry vitamins and other nutrients.
• Cholesterol is technically not a fat, but it is one of the body’s primary raw materials for healing processes.
• People need an appropriate intake of natural fats found in whole foods so that they will have good satiety and be less likely to overeat.

Dr. Enig has spent a lifetime researching fats and oils and is deeply concerned about the simplistic, conventional wisdom that fat is bad, even though anyone who knows the basic facts realizes that fat is an essential nutrient. According to Enig, the main problem with nutrition science and government funded research programs is “the driving philosophy that the food industry can improve on natural foods.” She warns that the food industry funds the research and stands to make billions from it. The consumer today must wade through “nearly three decades of fats and oils propaganda that is both false and misleading.”

The best aspect of Know Your Fats is that Enig cuts through the propaganda and corrects the misunderstandings about different types of fat.

Enig backs up each of the following claims with extensive research and impeccable scientific analysis.

• The belief that there has been an increase over time in fat consumption is false. People now eat different types of fat, not more or less fat as a percentage of dietary intake.
• The differences between saturated, unsaturated, monounsaturated, polyunsaturated, and trans fats are on the molecular level, matters of chemistry that any serious nutritionist must understand.
• The practice of calling animal fats “saturated” is wrong. Animal fat always has a higher percentage of unsaturated fatty acids than saturated fatty acids.
• The claim that saturated fat leads to heart disease is simply false. It was initiated as a marketing tool to sell oils and margarine, and eventually became dogma.
• A partial hydrogenation process is used to turn liquid vegetable fats (oils) into solid (unsaturated) fats to compete with natural solid fats. It actually alters the structure of molecules in fat and creates a whole new class of unnatural fats called trans fats. Oils made into solids by man have up to 60 percent trans fat.
• When people eat fats containing trans fatty acids, the fatty acids are deposited in various tissues, and they have effects on the way organs in the body function.
• Research has shown that consuming trans fatty acids raises blood sugar levels and causes people to gain more weight than people consuming the same amount of fat that is not hydrogenated.
• 70 percent of all the vegetable oils used in foods such as crackers, cookies, pastries, cakes, snack chips, imitation cheese, candies or fried foods are partially hydrogenated.
• Large federal government studies such as the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, the USDA Food Consumption Survey, and the Lipid Research Clinics do not include any trans fatty acid data.

One of the most alarming revelations in Know Your Fats is that there is also plenty of evidence to question the biological safety of trans fatty acids. Some adverse effects of consuming trans fatty acids are the following:

• Lowers “good” HDL cholesterol and raises LDL cholesterol.
• Lowers the amount of cream in lactating females, thus lowering the overall quality of milk available to the infant, and correlates to low birth weight in infants.
• Increases blood insulin levels, thus increasing risk for diabetes.
• Affects immune response by lowering efficiency of B cell response.
• Causes adverse alterations of membrane related enzymes, and causes physiological changes in cell membranes.
• Affects immune response, potentiates free radical formation, and precipitates childhood asthma.

If that’s not enough cause for concern, Enig quotes two prominent researchers who have written, “Because trans fatty acids have no known health benefits and strong presumptive evidence suggests that they contribute markedly to the risk of developing CHD [coronary heart disease], the results published to date suggest it would be prudent to lower the intake of trans fatty acids in the U.S. diet” 1

Mary Enig has written the definitive book on fats and it has convinced many that its more important than ever to Know Your Fats. For more information, check out some of Enig’s articles at www.westonaprice.org, or read Nourishing Traditions, the cookbook she co-authored with Sally Fallon, that explains more about how to cook with healthy, natural fats.

1 Graham, Saxon, and Curtis Mettlin. “Diet and Colon Cancer.” American Journal of Epidemiology. 1979.

Know Your Fats: The Complete Primer for Understanding the Nutrition of Fats, Oils, and Cholesterol by Mary G. Enig, Ph.D, is published by Bethesda Press.