Nutrition
Five Fat Sources for Optimal Health
I find it interesting that where healthy diets are concerned there has been a huge push away from trans fats and more of a trend towards natural and organic food. While this is a step in the right direction, I also find it interesting that there is still a stigma that fat in your diet is bad for you. In reality, many fats found in food are naturally occurring and even vital for optimal health. Still people want non-fat milk, Fat Free butter substitutes, and even minimal amounts of body fat percentage on their bodies.
The use of the word fat should not be an umbrella term collecting and labeling all of the various sources as the same. Like everything in life there is the good, the bad and the ugly. In this article my goal is to give you simple reasons why you should consume fat in your healthy diet and I will list five fat sources that you should consider adding into your diet for optimal health.
Why are people still avoiding fat? Fat, also known as lipids, are everywhere in our bodies. The cells that make up our body are structurally constructed with phospholipid layers for protection. Our nerves are covered by myelin sheets (made from lipids) for insulation. Even our brains are made up of about 60% lipids.
Cell Membrane with phosholipid bilayer and Axon with Myelin Sheath
If fats make up a good portion of our cell structure then certainly not all fats are bad and we need fats to build these structurally sound cells. Besides cell building and nerve insulation, fats also attribute to:
- Absorption of fat soluble vitamins and omega 3 fatty acids
- Improved blood cholesterol and blood glucose levels
- Improved brain, heart, liver and lung function
- Reduced inflammation, cancer and heart disease risk
- Production and regulation of hormones in the body
I know what you may be thinking, “Isn’t this the exact opposite of what I have been told?” The answer really depends on the fat sources you consume. Go for those unnatural, manufactured fat choices like trans-fats, and hydrogenated oils and you will watch your health slowly deteriorate.
In my attempt to avoid a boring scientifically saturated article on the different types of fats explaining which fats are good and which fats are bad; I want to make this simple for everyone. Like I mentioned in my first installment of Should you Supplement; Think natural and you can’t go wrong. Below are five natural fat sources that you can add to your diet that will allow you to receive the many health benefits that the right fats have to offer. I have purposely left fish oil off the list because I covered its benefits in great detail in my second Should you Supplement article.
Avocados
I am very fortunate to live in California where this super fruit (yes it is technically a fruit) is abundant and extremely tasty. Avocados are loaded with the healthy oleic acid, a monounsaturated fat, which helps lower LDL cholesterol (bad) and raise HDL cholesterol (good) and reduce the risk of heart disease and diabetes.
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Like avocados, extra virgin olive oil is mostly composed (70%) of oleic acid so the positive cholesterol benefits and reduced risk of heart disease are still part of the benefits. Extra virgin olive oil has also shown to reduce the risk of colon cancer. Like many things in life, you must get good quality olive oil, so yes, buying the “extra virgin” variety is important. The title simply means that the oil has been minimally processed so many of the healthy vitamins and fatty acids remain intact.
Walnuts
Most nuts in their natural state are full of good fats and provide many health benefits; however, one may stand above all of the others, the walnut. Walnuts contain the highest amount of Omega 3 fatty acids over all of the other nuts. I discussed the necessity of having a diet high in omega 3s in my fish oil article and their healthy benefits are numerous. They play a role in lowering triglyceride levels in the blood, maintain high levels of HDL cholesterol, reduce plaque formations and the list goes on and on. We talked earlier about the brain being composed of 60% fat and walnuts have been shown to help with the brain’s growth, reproduction of cells, and its proper function. When you get walnuts, make sure you get them in their purest state, raw. Avoid “roasted, flavored, and glazed” varieties because they have been processed and all of their previous health benefits are null and void.
Coconut oil
Coconut oil had gotten a bad rap over the years which is why it is overlooked as healthy food resource. The early studies from the 1980s show the negative effects of coconut oil consumption used a manipulated form of the oil (hydrogenated); we know when things are changed from their natural state they are no longer good. Organic extra virgin coconut oil has so many health benefits you should go out to the store now to pick some up. Coconut oil has been shown to reduce inflammation and fight many diseases because of a special fatty acid medium chain triglyceride known as lauric acid. Lauric acid has antimicrobial, antibacterial and antiviral qualities which prevent and combat a ton of pathogens and diseases.
Butter
Oh no, I said the “B” word. I cringe when I hear people say things like “I ate the bread with no butter” or “At least I didn’t use butter” or my personal favorite “I used this fat-free butter substitute spread for my potatoes.” Again, butter is good for you when you get it from the right source, and when you do get the right source it should be used as part of a healthy diet. Real butter comes from cows that eat their real diet of grass. This grass feeding gives the nice, rich yellow color that indicates a dense nutrient concentration. This butter contains omega 3 fatty acids and conjugated linolenic acid (CLA) which are both absent in grain fed cow butter. CLA has numerous health benefits which include: anti cancer properties and even aids in fat loss, especially around the abdomen. If these benefits aren’t enough to get everyone to add a little bit of high quality butter into their diets I’m not sure what else will convince you.
Hopefully this eased some of your fears of fats and now you are more knowledgeable when choosing between the right and wrong kinds to consume. If you consume the right kinds of fat within your healthy diet your health and well-being will shine like never before.
Sources:
- Bowden, Jonny, The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth, Fair Winds Publishing, 2007.
- Enig, Mary, Know Your Fats, Bethesda Press, 2000.
Ask Me Anything: Muscle Cannabalism?
Hey Doug, I was wondering what “Muscle Cannibalism” is and what I should do to avoid it. Thanks.
If you want to avoid “muscle cannibalism” then avoid trekking in the Sierras with a group of people, get lost, sleep in a cave and then run out of food while waiting to be rescued. I think what you are referring to is Muscle “Catabolism” which is simply that breakdown of muscle tissue.
I’m going to keep this simple; you cannot avoid muscle catabolism because you need a little bit of it for muscle anabolism (the growing of muscle). Every time you train you will have some muscle catabolism going on and then upon proper recovery with nutrition and rest an anabolic state will occur and hopefully that process balances or slightly exceeds the catabolic process so you can maintain and/or increase your muscle mass.
Get to know your muscles and how to take care of them
The two athletic populations that are most concerned about the negative effects of catabolism are bodybuilders and endurance athletes. The primary goal of bodybuilding is to put on as much muscle mass as possible so that is why they eat a ton, take supplements and sleep as much as they can to keep catabolism to a minimum. Endurance athletes push their bodies to the limit in terms of exercise volume. They go for hours running, climbing, and riding. The amount of energy needed to maintain these tasks is huge so naturally when they run out of nutrients they consume, the proteins in the muscles are used and muscle breakdown occurs. This is why you see riders looking emaciated at the end of the Tour de France than when they started. Yes, they lost body fat too but there is some good muscle breakdown going on.
So if you are not a bodybuilder or an endurance athlete and you eat correctly, stay hydrated and get plenty of sleep, you should not have to worry about anything unless you go hiking in the Sierras in the winter, like I mentioned.
One of these after a good training session helps avoid muscle catabolism
Thanks for the question
Should You Supplement? Is Your Multivitamin Stacking Up: Part 4
We have traveled down a long road in this Should You Supplement series and hopefully the articles have helped you out by thinking more about your health through nutrition and to even take some action and make some changes to make you better. Now I am not going to lie and say I have the perfect dietary habits, I do occasionally indulge in some less than optimal food choices and I am not going to ruin a party by saying “sorry I can’t eat that.” However, I always try to moderate less than optimal choices to a bare minimum. I always try to keep my health in mind by choosing from a wide variety of healthy foods, making sure I consume plenty of essential fats and do some minor supplementation of nutrients that I feel are important to have in my diet.
In this final installment I am going to touch upon a supplement that many of you already take; a multivitamin. Taking a multivitamin is a pretty good idea and numerous studies have shown that supplementing with one helps maintain optimal health by combating free radicals with anti oxidants, building a strong immune system, and even boosts your energy. The market is saturated with different brands and even different formulas. There are some for men, women, teens, seniors. Even your pets have a multivitamin formula targeted for them. With all of these different brands and formulas how do you find a good product? The answer may be a little simpler than you think.
How does your multivitamin stack up?
First thing to understand is that like most things in life, not all multivitamins are created equal. Inferior nutrients and inappropriate amounts can create a low quality product where the nutrients are not absorbed and used properly by the body. The best place to start is to divide the multivitamins into two categories; synthetic and whole food vitamins.
Synthetic represent the vast majority of the multivitamins out there. You can spot them easily by reading the label.
Now let’s compare that to a good quality whole food label
Like other processed food we have talked about in the past; big confusing words, and a long ingredient list means the product is highly processed and, in this case, synthetic. If it does not come from a food source, you may not want to use that product.
You might be asking what’s the problem with synthetic vitamins anyway? Synthetic vitamins are composed through a variety of individually constructed compounds referred to as isolates. These isolates can be simply understood as something that works by itself and does not combine and complement with other vitamins to make for greater potency and utilization within the body.
Synthetic vitamins may also have serious side effects and health risks associated with them. Wait aren’t multivitamins supposed to enhance my health? In theory “Yes,” but sadly this is not the case for many synthetic multivitamins. For example, when reading the synthetic vitamin labels you may come across words like “acetate”, “bitartrate”, “chloride”, “hydrochloride”, “nitrate”, and “succinate.” These are all salt compounds used to increase the stability of the nutrient. When doing research for this article I found this comment from the Balanced Body Wellness Centre and if it’s not enough for you to go into your cupboard and throw out your main-stream market multivitamins then I do not know what will be.
In reality, synthetic vitamins are just safer drugs. Many are made from coal tar derivatives, the same stuff
that causes throat cancer in tobacco smokers. Like drugs, synthetic vitamins suppress the Autonomic
Nervous System (ANS) and cause the symptoms you experience when the ANS is out of balance.
However, neither synthetics nor drugs address the problem’s root cause. Synthetic vitamins — like drugs –
may improve certain conditions for a short time but they can’t nourish your body…
…some supplement companies use products contaminated with pesticides, bug parts in the herbs, or foreign
materials in the vitamins. Furthermore, some companies actually use the wrong part of the herbal plant.
And legally they can still sell it.
As mentioned earlier, good whole food multivitamins have something going for them that the synthetics don’t; the ingredients do not work in isolation, instead, they complement each other and work in conjunction to have a greater health benefit to the body. Whole food sources contain many extra co-factors and phytonutirents (compounds that effect health but are not deemed essential nutrients) that interact with each other and create a more usable nutrient with many health benefits. To understand this point further, while I was doing my research, I learned that “Carrot Root, which can be found as one ingredient in high quality multivitamins, contains over 200 nutrients and phytonutrients.” This is a great example of huge difference between isolates and whole food compounds.
When I first started college and got into the health and training world I was on a quest to find the most effective supplements on the market. My friend and I scoured the internet forums, got to know some of the best sports nutritionists in the industry and asked them about certain products. Most agree that eating a healthy and balanced diet filled with vegetables is key to health and longevity, but supplementing with a good, whole food multivitamin add some insurance in case we are deficient in some essential nutrients.
Back in college there were not as many whole food multivitamin choices around as there are today, but I still take the same one after all of these years; Catalyn by Standard Process. Catalyn is highly recommended by many top nutritionists. The product has been around since 1929 and is derived from 15 different whole food sources in small, usable doses. The product is great and I can’t recommend it more. If you want more information about the product check out the information here
As we conclude our journey through nutrition and supplementation, we can simply boil it down to this. Make sure we get our diet in check first by eating a balanced diet consisting of plenty of whole foods choices. We can then add a few supplements that our bodies need and are hard to accumulate during the day like Omega 3 fatty acids, Vitamin C, and a good quality whole food multivitamin. If we are able to do all of these things we can almost guarantee a healthier, better quality of life for ourselves.
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