Clearing up the Ooey, Gooey Mix-Up about Oils

The proverbial "they" say that it takes approximately 16 times longer to unlearn something as it does to learn it.  Once a certain message or habit is in our head, it is simply harder to "unwire" or "rewire" than it was to put the original wiring in place.  

Perhaps this explains why we, as a nation on average, still have "fatophobia."  We can't seem to get the "fat is bad" myth out of our heads despite a good deal of new publicity surrounding the healing effects of certain oils.  I still hear people talking generally about the virtues of a low-fat diet, and many gasp when I tell them that I regularly eat a half of an avocado with a meal, that I actually lost weight about 12 years ago when I increased the percentage of certain oils in my diet, and that, these days, I've included organic coconut oil as a regular part of my eating.  

Don't get me wrong.  I cut my professional teeth in the early 1990s working for Dean Ornish, MD, whose work I still greatly admire, right in the middle of the no-fat and low-fat craze, and in his program, I watched many grateful people with heart disease dramatically reduce their arterial clogging and many of their symptoms on his extremely low-fat (10%), vegetarian diet.  (What is less widely known is that his program also included training in meditation, moderate exercise, yoga, and required participation in group support, all of which might have played an integral role in the improved health outcomes his program has consistently produced.) 

Dr. Ornish's work still stands as a testament to the value of examining the role of fat in the diet, and I would aree that for a person consuming large quantities of "bad fats," namely the artificially hydrogenated trans fats that keep our cookies edible on shelves for 75 years plus, overall reducing fats would be likely to produce real health benefits.  To hear highlights of his work, check out his interview on the Kathleen Show or go pick up one of his books, Starting with Reversing Heart Disease and ending with Love and Survival!  

However, research currently points to an extremely important role for healthful fats, which can do everything from actually lowering inflammation (in the skin, the arteries, and joints, for example) to lowering total cholesterol levels while increasing the good lipids (HDL).  Healthful oils improve cognitive functioning and mood, reduce blood sugar levels in people with diabetes, and some of them just might increase, yes INCREASE metabolism.  In other words, not getting enough of the healing oils and fats might actually make it harder for you to lose weight, harder to reduce heart disease, harder to have healthy joints or smooth, clear skin, and even harder to maintain a balanced mood or a good memory.  How about that for a list of reasons to get interested in the oils you consume?

Of course, there is still the question of how much.  In relative terms, most of us can probably consume approximately 30% of our daily calories from healthful fats.  (If you eat 2000 calories a day, that's 600 kcals of oil, or just shy of 70 grams, which is roughly 5 Tbsp of olive oil.  Pretty impressive, right?)   And while I am generous in my encouragement for people to get good fats, I am equally clear in my directions to stay away from the other kinds.  I have very few absolute food rules, but one of them is that if a package says "cottonseed oil," I just don't eat it--unless I am truly desperate, like I was on call at the hospital. (I won't get into the irony of having health-ruining snacks at the hospital.  Fodder for another blog...)

Anyway...what are the good fats?  The one most widely available is olive oil.  Get organic, first cold pressed.  It's more expensive, but worth the investment.  In general, almost all oils retain more of their healthful properties when not heated to high temperatures, but some are reasonably stable for low to moderate cooking (like sauteing veggies). Olive oil, an omega 9 fatty-acid, is one of these.  Other oils you can use for low-moderate heat cooking include organic coconut oil, a medium-chain triglyceride which is readily metabolized  and which is slightly sweet in asian dishes and baking.  Avocado oil is safe to very high heats, and sesame oil, too, has a high smoke point, but unless you can find organic, it may be low quality.  Canola oil is a tough case.  Manufactured to be safe for baking, it still comes largely from Genetically Modified sources and might be linked to respiratory illnesses, although we need significantly more research before this can be confirmed.  In general, I'm not buying it until more data are in.

Beyond these oils that you can use for cooking, there are many oils that are tremendously nutritious if used raw.  These include the very fragile flax seed oil, hemp seed oil, and other nut oils like walnut or pumpkin seed.  If you want to use these oils in a warmed dish, try this hint:  Start the dish cooking in a bit of vegetable broth or chicken stock (mixed with a bit of olive oil if necessary) to keep things moist.  When you are near the end, drizzle on these wonderful but fragile oils so you can get the flavor but not ruin their health-giving properties with cooking.  

Finally, we've all heard about fish oils and their healing affects on arteries, cholesterol levels, and even brain function in newborns and aging adult alike.  The jury is really out on the best sources, as we know that the oils directly from fish like salmon, tuna, and sardines are easiest to absorb compared to absorption from most capsule-based formulas (again, the alchemy of the oil in relationship to the whole food may be important.)  Yet, it isn't always easy or environmentally sustainable to have regular intake of certain kinds of endangered fish.  The mercury content is equally worrisome for capsules that do not list any sort of distillation or purification process.  This has been a real source of "eater's paralysis" for me.  I want to have fish oil.  I don't want to pollute my body or be the cause of a fish's disappearance.  For now, I am limiting my fish buying to sources of salmon and other non-steak fish wild-caught from Alaskan or northern Pacific waters and to certain Scottish and Norwegian farm-raised fish not fed grains or kept in horrifically over-crowded pens.  (Who would want to eat a fish that was swimming in copious fish waste?  Yuck!)  For detailed guidelines, check out the EPA's site: http://www.epa.gov/waterscience/fish/advice/   Moreover, I'm not opposed to the capsules, and according to recent consumer reports, Swanson's is one of the most reliable and cheapest sources of mercury-free supplements.

Finally, what about saturated and trans fats?  Well...here's the scoop.  Saturated fats, such as those found in animal fat and others, like coconut oil, which are all solid at room temperature, have gotten a pretty bad rap in the past.  Some of the reasons for the bad rap were right on.  These fats do provide lots of calories, and when we stopped working so hard in our farm fields and doing manual chores around home over the last century, but kept (or increased) our consumption of meat, we gained weight and got heart disease.  This is pretty clear. On the other hand, I believe that we will continue to find that they way we now raise much of our meat contributes to the harmfulness of the fat our meat contains.  On antibiotics and growth hormones, not to mention ingesting the other things we spray on our grains and grasses, it seems likely that the animals we eat would be storing stuff we don't want or need in their fat cells, and this could be making us fatter and sicker--with higher incidences of childhood obesity, antibiotic resistance, and hormone disorders.  I keep saying "could" because the science is so preliminary and there are so terribly many factors to consider that large-scale studies are still coming out with weak or possibly indirect effects.

On the other hand, my personal and professional opinion is that if you can get ahold of meat from healthier sources, for example organic, grass-fed beef or chickens that are actually allowed to walk around outside and eat from the farm fields where cows have roamed, the animal is much less likely to have built up and stored unwanted toxic by-products in their fat cells, and hence, we are likely to benefit more from them.  A specific example is conjugated linoleic acid, a substance possibly related to reduced incidence of many cancers as well as reduced heart disease and improved weight control, is found mostly in the fat of cows raised on real grass. [Zulet MA, Marti A, Parra MD, Martínez JA, September 2005. "Inflammation and conjugated linoleic acid: mechanisms of action and implications for human health". J. Physiol. Biochem. 61 (3): 483–94.]  Likewise, with organic virgin coconut oil, there is some possibility that it's anti-inflammatory and anit-oxidant properties and ready digestibility will mean that moderate amounts are actually good for health, especially in lowering dangerous cholesterol levels and protecting good cholesterol. [Nevin KG, Rajamohan T.Beneficial effects of virgin coconut oil on lipid parameters and in vitro LDL oxidation. Clin Biochem. 2004 Sep;37(9):830-5.]

What is best of all, some evidence suggests that eating a moderate amount of healthful oils significantly reduces overall blood sugar levels, even in people with diabetes.  This is real news.  Personally, as I mentioned above, I used to fight cravings for sugary and bready-type snacks throughout the day.  Part of getting over that was purely the psychological understanding that I was feeding emotions and not hunger.  But the second part was actually changing my diet to include more, not less, oil--of the healthful kind.  I eat more oil now and just don't fight my weight.

I hope this inspires you to make a few changes and enjoy the benefits (tastes, healthier bodies, better brains and all) of this essential part of our diet.  

Now...repeat 16 times!

Comments

[Fan of Coconut Oil]

This is a great and very balanced overview of the fats available for cooking- I'm a big fan of coconut oil myself- it just adds a great taste to Asian dishes in particular.

[hatha yoga poses]

What about grapeseed oil? Can you cook with it?