More on the theme of fats – hold onto your love handles!
There is no word that causes more anxiety in the world of health and fitness than the F word. FAT! Ever since I dropped the coconut-oil bomb on people, my social media has been going crazy. Now I am going to make things a little crazier yet and toss both butter and dairy into the mix and into the frying pan. LOL!
Why does fat confuse us so? It’s because we think it is a dirty word, means only bad things and is bad for you. BAD, BAD, BAD! But I need to stop you right there. Fat is a necessity. I eat fat – specifically good fats. I eat dairy with full fat and I also eat butter with full fat. I JUST DON’T EAT VERY MUCH OF IT. And when I do consume butter or dairy I make sure my choices are impeccable, meaning that I don’t eat reduced-fat products or rancid fats. It may help you to re-jig your thinking about fat. This is the mental picture I have in my mind about fat. Imagine a lump of stomach fat. In living things, fat is the place where toxins get stored as well as performing numerous other tasks. If you plan on eating anything from an animal that is fat-based or has fat in it, dairy and butter both apply, you are going to be eating something that has potentially stored toxins in it. The more selective you are about the fat you consume, the less chance you have of eating health-harming fats. This is what I mean by sourcing your fats carefully.
I tend to choose organic, and, if possible, grass-fed sources of butter and dairy. My favorites are full-fat organic milk, plain Greek yogurt, kefir and unsalted butter. I also enjoy goat’s cheese. So delicious. You know you are dealing with excellent quality butter when the color of the butter is deep yellow instead of pale yellow. In that delicious butter and other full-fat dairy products is concentrated a bounty of nutrients including vitamins A and D and the little known but highly potent Activator X or Vitamin K (see Dr. Weston A. Price’s studies). Without fat these fat-soluble vitamins can’t be absorbed by the body, and without these vitamins minerals can’t be correctly absorbed by the body even if you do gobble down several multi-vitamins every day (that’s just making expensive pee)! Milk too has a thicker creamy layer on top of it in which lives these important vitamins. You can spoon it off and eat it up just like that. Yummy!
Humans need moderate amounts of saturated fats to be the warm-blooded folks we are right down to our tiniest cells. Our cells depend on saturated fats like those from butter and dairy in order to build and maintain the correct structural integrity. The heart loves, loves, loves small amounts of saturated fats as does our immune system, our hormones, our nerves, our brain and all other organs. The key is to consume the best-quality fats from well-sourced raw ingredients in small amounts.
My own blood work recently conducted at MedCan, proved that eating moderate amounts of healthy, saturated fats did not and has not been killing me. My blood lipids were all in the optimally healthy range, which is most impressive since there is a family history of heart disease. After my blood work I went on to do my fitness tests and tested as healthy as a 20 year old. Boom! Age is just a number and fat is not BAD!
Back to the beginning for a moment, I am not advocating eating great slabs of butter all day long. Eat these concentrated fats the way you would eat a condiment – tablespoons at a time.
And, of course, if dairy doesn’t work for you from either a lactose, casein or whey intolerance perspective than please avoid it.
Check out more healthy fat options on my healthy fats grocery list.
Eat your way to good health!
Tosca
