Saturated Fats? Are They Bad For You

Saturated Fats, were they ever good for us?

The traditions of our parents and their parents have gone by the way side and it’s sad to think that these traditions have robbed us as a modern society of nourishment and healthy eating.

I remember my Mum putting the milk bottles out on the front step for the next mornings milk delivery. We’d wake up to fresh bottles of milk with the cream floating on the top and the only things we worried about was whether someone would steal the milk money before morning or who got to eat the cream off the top!

Mum would cook a Sunday roast for lunch or dinner every Sunday and the drippings from the pan would get saved into a jar for cooking further meals unless someone got to the pan first with some fresh bread and soaked up all the pan juices. In summer Mum would make wonderful desserts and fruit salads with great dollops of cream and in winter it was steaming hot porridge with chunks of butter dropped on top to melt with the brown sugar and milk. Toast was spread with homemade marmalade and whipped cream.

What happened to those traditions, habits and mindsets. Why did an entire generation switch from something that they had grown up with to something that eventually led to a less than satisfactory way of eating not to mention the onslaught of disease, illness and aging. Read on to find out where the myth began about saturated fats being bad for you. See how easy it was to fool an entire generation into believing the lie about saturated fats.

A little over 100 years ago a German scientist wrote a letter to a company that made soap, and in so doing changed the way the world cooks its food. The soap company, Procter & Gamble, bought the scientist’s idea—and Crisco was born. At this time in history, people used animal fats for cooking in the form of lard and butter. And while Crisco was purposely formulated to resemble lard and cook like lard, it was nothing like lard. The rest of the story, as related in The Atlantic, is a tale of marketing successⁱ.

The Campaign against Saturated Fats

Recipe in hand, Procter & Gamble launched a massive sales strategy for Crisco that rivals even some of the biggest sales pitches today, and won over the cooks of the world. According to The Atlantic:

“Never before had Procter & Gamble — or any company for that matter — put so much marketing support or advertising dollars behind a product. They hired the J. Walter Thompson Agency, America’s first full service advertising agency staffed by real artists and professional writers.

Samples of Crisco were mailed to grocers, restaurants, nutritionists, and home economists. Eight alternative marketing strategies were tested in different cities and their impacts calculated and compared. Doughnuts were fried in Crisco and handed out in the streets. Women who purchased the new industrial fat got a free cookbook of Crisco recipes. It opened with the line, “The culinary world is revising its entire cookbook on account of the advent of Crisco, a new and altogether different cooking fat.” Recipes for asparagus soup, baked salmon with Colbert sauce, stuffed beets, curried cauliflower, and tomato sandwiches all called for three to four tablespoons of Crisco.”

Since advertising claims back then were unregulated, Procter and Gamble sold this plant-based product (known today as hydrogenated vegetable oil) as being healthier than animal fats, and consumers believed it. It took 90 years before researchers finally discovered that this new, “better-for-you” compound, which we call trans fat today, actually increases your risk of getting heart disease. As stated in the featured Atlantic article:

“It is estimated that for every two percent increase in consumption of trans fat (still found in many processed and fast foods) the risk of heart disease increases by 23 percent. As surprising as it might be to hear, the fact that animal fats pose this same risk is not supported by science.”

Not only that; research has also found that trans fats contribute to cancer, bone problems, hormonal imbalance and skin disease; infertility, difficulties in pregnancy and problems with lactation; low birth weight, growth problems, and learning disabilities in children. It’s so bad for your health that one U.S. government panel of scientists determined that man-made trans fats are unsafe atany level…

You can read the full article here: 

I first started reading the truth about saturated fats a few years ago and it’s good to see that there is a growing trend now back to the traditional foods of our parents generation. Meat, cheese, butter, lard, ghee, cream, full fat milk, coconut oil, avocado, olive oil and the list goes on.  These are the foods that will bring our diets back into balance.  Together with reducing processed foods, trans fats, and sugars will lead us back to regaining health and life.

What to remember most from this article:

• The turning point in our diet came from listening to a marketing campaign that sold us a lie in order to promote a product to make other people money!
• Research has found that Trans fats are the culprit contributing to illness and disease.
• The Truth is Saturated Fats have never been bad for us.

If you only make 2 changes in your diet from reading this article make sure they are – decreasing the processed foods, sugars and trans fats and increasing a healthy portion of saturated fats – coconut oil, butter, cream, cheese, ghee and make them full fat.