Healthy Fats and Oils.......IMO!

[DrakeMaiden]

I agree with you Free, I have never heard of natural trans fats and it makes me suspicious.

Hydrogenating fats (chemically adding hydrogen to turn an unsaturated fat into a more saturated one) kinks the fat molecule structure into a wonky position that is not found in nature. These are called trans fats because they are not in the proper conformation that is found in nature and to which bodies are adapted to processing.

Could a fat be hydrogenated in nature and become a trans fat? I suppose it is possible. I don't know if it is likely. JMO.

Edited for spelling.

 

[freemotion]

Trans fats are to saturated fats what a car that went through a flood is to a car that did not. Or a car frame that was bent and then straightened as opposed to one that was never bent in the first place. They may both seem the same now, but they most certainly are not, and will not behave in the same way.....when the changed one will cause problems is anyone's guess, but the guarantee is that there WILL be a problem, and a big one.

 

[FarmerChick]

yes natural trans fats occur

simple google explains that


here is example
http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-he-eat19-2008may19,0,846200.story


but when we "hydrogenate" it becomes a whole different story.

man made processing of anything is the worst of course..LOL

 

[reinbeau]

Thank you, Karen. See this quote from this link:

There is another class of trans fats, vaccenic acid, which occurs naturally in trace amounts in meat and dairy products from ruminants......

Trans fats from partially hydrogenated oils are more harmful than naturally occurring oils.[4]

 

[DrakeMaiden]

So this must be a fairly recent discovery. I notice it is only naturally occuring in trace amounts, which probably explains why it wasn't known about before.

 

[Wifezilla]

Yes there are naturally occurring transfats and yes, they are in trace amounts. No biggie. Now pass the butter

Does anyone need to fry food? No

::faints::

I need to fry food. It TASTES good and I like it

It's all a matter of using oil with the correct smoke point and the correct temperature.

I know raw food is a big thing right now, but cooking foods is one of the things that allowed humans to develop our big brains.

"Cooked food does many familiar things. It makes our food safer, creates rich and delicious tastes, and reduces spoilage. Heating can allow us to open, cut or mash tough foods. But none of these advantages is as important as a little-appreciated fact. Cooking creates increases the amount of energy our bodies obtain from our food.

Our ancestors therefore responded to the advent of cooking by biologically adapting to cooked food. Cooking re-shaped our anatomy, physiology, ecology, life-history, psychology and society. Signals in our bodies indicate that this dependence arose not just some tens of thousands of years ago, or even a few hundred thousand, but right back at the beginning of our time on earth; at the start of human evolution, by the habiline that became Homo erectus. ..."
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/27/books/27garn.html?_r=4&pagewanted=2

"Wrangham begins by effectively proving that eating raw food is time-consuming, inefficient and not especially healthy. If this annoys members of the raw-food movement, he'd be delighted, I think. An adult chimpanzee, he tells us, spends six hours a day chewing food. This has very high "digestive costs," meaning that large amounts of energy are used up simply in digestion. By cooking food we've already completed the first stage of the digestive process. The calories in cooked food are therefore extracted more easily, saving time and energy. And what did our ancestors do with that surplus time and energy? According to Wrangham they used it to evolve big brains."
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/06/05/RVMH17MK52.DTL

 

[reinbeau]

Seriously, naturally occurring trans fats is not a new discovery at all, it just isn't talked about, because it is in small amounts. The point is it is naturally occurring, and we as humans can process it without raising our blood cholesterol or any of the other rotten things man-made trans fats do to us. I switched over to butter over 30 years ago, I hated margarine and I read somewhere way back when about a more natural diet, and it just made sense to me. I am not afraid of fats, other than if I eat too much of certain fatty foods I'll send my bowels into an IBS tizzy, so I tend to avoid a lot of fat.

 

[freemotion]

OK, as promised, how to make your doctor cry. This only works if your doctor really wants to heal people and has an open mind....open even a crack will work, if he/she remembers this stuff from med school.

I was meeting with a doctor who was interested in incorporating wellness programs into her practice....she worked in a women's health practice and also at a very large assisted living center. I'd met her when my vet asked me to lecture to a group of her clients on home-made diets for cats and dogs! I'd made a couple of cracks about how "your doctor won't know this, they are not taught this in med school..." not knowing she was a doc. When I found out, I apologized, but she assured me that it was true. That led to this appointment.

We met at her office at the nursing home part of the complex. I was emphasizing the need for her to get some CME's (continuing medical education....workshops that many licensed health professionals need to take regularly to keep their licenses current) so that SHE could guide her patients, rather than leaving it up to a high school student at GNC! I used this example:

Statin drugs are prescribed to protect the cardiovascular system of many of her patients. They work by blocking production of cholesterol in the liver. But when mevalonate is used to produce cholesterol, CoEnzyme Q10 is also produced. When cholesterol production in blocked, CoEnzyme Q10 production is also halted.

Depletion in CoQ10 leads to congestive heart failure. So the drug used to prevent heart failure.....can cause heart failure!

When she realized the truth in that statement, I could see that she was suddenly questioning SO much....and thinking of her many very elderly and fragile patients that she was treating right there. She actually slumped in her chair and stared at the notes I was holding. I offered her a copy, emphasizing the need to recommend supplementation with patients on statin drugs......just one of many, many examples of meds that cause dangerous depletions. Depletions that cause symptoms that are usually treated with more meds. Here is a nice article, very user-friendly for the patient: http://www.cholesterol-and-health.com/Coenzyme-Q10.html

I have yet to meet an MD who learned any of this stuff in med school. There are now some CME course being offered, and it is encouraging to me to see docs taking them.

What is not encouraging, is sitting with the docs in the course and seeing them playing on their laptops, reading magazines, signing in then leaving and still getting the CME certificate. At one course I took, we were divided into little groups to work with some case studies. Here I was, a massage therapist, put with two MD's. How intimidating was that!

Well, after the first one, the two of them were asking ME what to do with each subsequent case study.....and I nailed every one, recommending every regimen that was suggested when the teachers discussed the answers. I should be proud, but it really saddened me, that it is almost impossible to find an MD who knows the first thing about wellness. They are taught the sickness business....how to cut, inject, prescribe. Not how to prevent.

One thing I really liked about the vet I mentioned is that she would change the diets of every new pet that was brought in to see her. Unless there was an acute issue, she would give them three months on the new diet to see if the health issues resolved. Almost every case did, needing no meds. She had been recommended to me by a friend when I left the practice I'd been using, finally getting sick of getting yelled at by vet techs for feeding my dog raw food, when no one at that multi-vet practice could help his diarhea and drastic weight loss. Reversed in one day with chicken wings! The evidence was before them, yet they refused to see it. In six weeks, he was no longer a walking skeleton. They said I must've been feeding him junk, and when I finally stopped, he got better. Yeah, the junk was the commercial diet they recommended!

Oh, and fats. When I defatted the broth in my homemade catfood, my first batches, the behavior of my cats changed, one in particular. He became obsessed with saturated fats, forgetting many years of good behavior and jumping up on the stove to lick out frying pans that were barely cool, and stealing butter by the stick and dragging it off to hide with it at any opportunity.

When I added half of the chicken fat back into the food, this behavior stopped, and there was a noticable difference in the coats and behavior of both cats. The playing and wrestling and galloping around increased in our teenaged kitties. The older one hadn't initiated play in many years, and would whine and hiss when the other one tried to get him to wrestle. Now he was (is) initiating wrestling matches and games of chase, and a good gallop...just because....several times a day. And he is a very healthy and muscular weight for the first time since he was a kitten.

That says more to me than any study.

 

[ORChick]

freemotion, this is a very interesting thread; thank you for all you have written. But I have a question for you that may be somewhat off topic - please forgive me. Your last post had comments on feeding your cats. I have a 10 year old cat who is overweight - around 16 lbs, when he should be closer to 12; he has been for years. He was on the stuff the vet recommends for several years, with no change. And then I studied a bit more about it, and realized that that food wasn't good for a number of reasons. He, and the rest of my cats, is now eating a better quality food, but also low calorie. It doesn't seem to make any difference with him, though the others are all at a healthy weight on it. I am seriously concerned that he will keel over and die in the not too distant future, and I don't know what to do about it. Do you have any advice for me?

 

[big brown horse]

freemotion, this is a very interesting thread; thank you for all you have written. But I have a question for you that may be somewhat off topic - please forgive me. Your last post had comments on feeding your cats. I have a 10 year old cat who is overweight - around 16 lbs, when he should be closer to 12; he has been for years. He was on the stuff the vet recommends for several years, with no change. And then I studied a bit more about it, and realized that that food wasn't good for a number of reasons. He, and the rest of my cats, is now eating a better quality food, but also low calorie. It doesn't seem to make any difference with him, though the others are all at a healthy weight on it. I am seriously concerned that he will keel over and die in the not too distant future, and I don't know what to do about it. Do you have any advice for me?

May I freemotion?

About a month or two ago I put my hefty cat on freemotion's cat food recipe. I would never have thought it would work, but it did! He acts like a kitten again and he is actually happier and more alert. He walks with me out to the garden now and plays a bit with the St. bernards. A CHANGED CAT!! Scroll down the recipe list here and you will find a GREAT thread on freemotion's cat food recipe!!