The Fat on Fats

~Please note that some of what follows might be disturbing to some, due to its graphic nature~

Have you viewed the DVD, called "Eating"? [There is another DVD, called "A Diet for All Reasons," which is equally compelling.] Well, it was enough to scare me away from overeating on fats! One part of this DVD dealt with a man who was in the process of having a heart attack. In the emergency room, the attending doctor drew this patient's blood for the usual battery of tests. Within a few minutes, the drawn blood in the beaker separated, and the excess blood fat floated to the top of the blood--just like the fat in, say, chicken broth separates and floats to the top of the broth. (I inquired about this phenomenon, called "lipemia," to a phlebotomist I knew, and she described how sickeningly disgusting and smelly this is!) One of the truly amazing things about this is that it occurs every time we overeat on fats! It isn't a slow, gradual occurrence. It happens EVERY time we overeat fats. 

The DVD also showed an example of blood fat in the bloodstream. It looked just like melted butter swishing around in the arteries. Then it showed blood fat derived from animal fat, which had actually coagulated to form a rubbery coating on the walls of the blood vessels. This is known as "plaque," and it leads to atherosclerosis, commonly known as hardening of the arteries. The surgeon on the DVD very graphically pulled this rubbery tube-shaped plaque away from the vessel walls, using tweezers. It looked just like a yellow-colored vein! Although plaque is a rubbery consistency, it eventually literally hardens in the arteries, by transforming into a thick, stony wall inside the blood vessels; hence, the literal "hardening" of the arteries.

It takes little stretch of the imagination to comprehend that, in the presence of fat swishing around in your blood, or the rubbery plaque, or stony walls of atherosclerosis, in your arteries, very little by way of oxygen, nutrients, hormones, enzymes, etc., are getting through these barriers to the cells, where they do their work. Moreover, the presence of excess blood fat can cause a backup in your blood of such things as toxins, leading to untold numbers of diseases and disorders. 

Imagine this--or better--DO this as an object lesson: Scoop up some butter, margarine, shortening, lard, vegetable oil, or other "free" fat, like peanut butter, and massage the greasy goo into your hands. Experience its stickiness and the way it coats your skin; notice how it creates an actual barrier on your skin, preventing anything else you apply to your skin from penetrating it. Now, try to rinse the fat off with water. It won't budge, will it? In fact, it seems to get slimier and stickier! Well, that's what fat is doing, quite literally, in your blood stream!

When you eat "free" (also known as, "overt") fats and eat fatty foods to excess, the greasy fat coats your blood vessel walls, enzymes, nutrients, and everything else in your blood--good and bad--and prevents their movement out of the blood to their ultimate destinations. The transfer of blood sugar and nutrients into your cells is inhibited; everything gets backed up in the bloodstream, and the proper functioning of every bodily process is thwarted. 

Dr Graham describes the consequences of a high-fat diet in his book, "The 80/10/10 Diet." He writes, "A steady flow of research comes out regularly relating high-fat diets to almost every type of digestive disturbance, blood disorder, and degenerative disease. Much of this is caused by the body's reduced ability to uptake, transport, and deliver oxygen to our trillions of cells...In addition, too much fat reduces the actual number of viable red blood cells. Excessive fat consumption may be commonplace, but it is nothing short of a nutritional disaster." 

Have I put you off of eating excessively and inappropriately of fats? No? Well, read on. Here are some more facts about fats and the consequences of its excessive consumption, in no particular order:

1. There is a difference between food fat and body fat. Optimal body fat is derived from carbohydrates, whose excess is stored as body fat; in-optimal body fat is derived from food fat, which contributes no nutrients and can only add to your health problems.

2. Although fats are important macronutrients for our bodies, we need exceptionally little dietary fat for the optimal functioning and health of our bodies--so little, in fact, that we don't have to eat any "free" fats whatsoever to get enough. ALL overeating of fats contribute nothing but problems for our bodies.

3. Fats are extremely difficult for the body to digest. They require more time than carbohydrates and proteins to digest. So, when fats are eaten with other foods, the fats delay their digestion by 2-3 hours more that it would take them to digest when eaten without fats. Meanwhile, these carbohydrates and proteins ferment and putrefy in the stomach, becoming toxins in the body.

4. It takes a full 24 hours for fat to clear from your bloodstream. On a high fat diet, more fat is coming in everyday, if not at every meal, so there is little chance of your bloodstream clearing ever of excess blood fat.

5. Due to the difficulty of fat digestion, it is possible for fats to be only partially broken down by the body. Doctors can biopsy belly fat and tell you what animal or fat source it came from!

6. Even on a "healthy" diet, tossing a vegetable salad with oil or salad dressing only serves to coat the greens and vegetables with a nasty, greasy layer of fat and prevents the breakdown and absorption of their nutrients until the fat clears. By then, fermentation has probably already occurred, so the salad ends up being a toxic mess. 

7. Food fats, in general, can be broken down into two basic categories--"fat-soluble" fats and "water-soluble" fats. Water-soluble fats are those fats found in whole, raw fruits and vegetables. You can detect water-soluble fats by the fact that they don't leave an oily residue on your hands and dishes, and they can by rinsed away easily with water (without the aid of soap). They are the optimal fats--the only fats our body uses effectively and efficiently. All other fats are fat-soluble and they only serve to wreck havoc on our bodies (not to mention dishes, dish towels, etc., without the aid of soap). 

8. Products of digestion are transported in a water medium. Since fat-soluble fats are not soluble in water and are incapable of being transported in water, they have to undergo special changes in order for these processes to occur, requiring extra metabolic steps--and hence, the waste of precious vital energy.

9.  There are 4 sources of fat in today's SAD diet. They are: water-soluble fats of whole, raw fruits and vegetables; free (overt) fats, as in concentrated oils and avocados, coconuts, nuts and seeds; animal fats; and the newest (and scariest) fat on the market: chemical fats. These are the most dangerous fats known. Chemical fats are petroleum by-products, which are found in ice cream, synthetic coffee cream, artificial butters and margarine, manufactured pastries and cookies, peanut butter, and junk foods. These fats are also known as "plastic" fats. They are dangerous because they aren't even recognized by the body as food. Additionally, since they have only been in existence for a decade or so, their effects on the body are completely unknown.

10. Studies reveal that infants fed on artificial baby formula are shown to have large amounts of cholesterol already deposited in their arteries by their first year of life.

11. Here is a non-exhaustive list of diseases and disorders associated with excess fat consumption: heart diseases, stroke, diabetes, cancers, obesity, auto-immune disease (arthritis, asthma, fibromyalgia, impaired circulation, hearing loss, mental disorders, loss of concentration, mental fogginess, baldness, hormonal disorders, shortness of breath, ageing, dizziness, tissue damage, candida, pancreatic fatigue, adrenal fatigue (aka chronic fatigue), insomnia, malnutrition...

12. Humans cannot taste fat; they can only (sometimes) detect its texture.

13. Because humans need so little fat, and because fat is found in every food known, we have no inherent craving capacity for fats; so, if you sense you crave fat, think again. It's impossible. (Although it is possible to miss the habit of feeling its greasy texture in your mouth) 

14.  Because humans aren't designed to eat fats other than the water-soluble fats of whole fruits and vegetables, we have no natural mechanism for signaling we've eaten enough (water-soluble) fats.

15.  Contrary to popular belief, oils are not good for dry skin. Dry skin is due to impaired function of the sebaceous glands and not a lack of oil in the diet.

16.  Fat-soluble fats go rancid very, VERY quickly, and become carcinogenic. Due to the rapidity of rancidity, it would be difficult to find a concentrated oil or oily food at the market that hasn't already gone rancid.

17. Cooked fats prevent the absorption of fat-soluble vitamins.

Our bodies are designed to eat a low-fat diet. When we add extra fat to our diets we gum up our beautiful bodies, inhibit their natural, healthy functioning, and set ourselves up for practically every disease and disorder known. A high-fat diet will cause us absolutely nothing but trouble! This is true even for raw-foodists who feed on exorbitant amounts of so-called "good fats." The absolute best diet we can eat is one exclusively of fresh, raw, ripe organic fruits, supplemented with adequate amounts of leafy greens and vegetables. No raw seeds and nuts are needed. This diet provides us with the exact amounts and percentages of healthful, water-soluble fats, and it presents us with extremely little chance of overeating eating fats.

But if, for whatever reason, you find yourself unable or unwilling to eat of such a diet, above all, make the first criterion of your alternate choice of diet LOW FAT. Do this as if your life depended on it!