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Lower Cholesterol Without Drugs
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Chapter 4: Fats and Oils______________________________________________________
Saturated fats are basically found only in animal foods, and cholesterol is only found in animal foods. If you didn’t eat red meat, poultry, eggs, and dairy products you wouldn’t have a cholesterol problem in the first place. Yes, fish and seafood contain some saturated fats and cholesterol, but do not raise your cholesterol or triglyceride levels. Most people are not willing to stop eating meat, poultry, eggs and dairy, and it is certainly their right to eat these foods in moderation. However, it is simply impossible for you to eat these foods as staples and maintain healthy blood lipid profiles. A breakfast of bacon, eggs and buttered toast is simply not reasonable. You can reduce the amount of animal foods in your diet and still be happy. You can certainly take the worst of these- like bacon, butter and cheese- out of your diet and replace them with other foods. Ideally you want to eat 20% or less of fat calories, and most all of these from vegetable sources. The best diet for people recovering from heart or artery disease would only be 10% fat calories. Reducing your fat calorie intake to, say, 30% is just not going to show any benefits. The magic number is 20% or less. Twenty per cent.
You may be thinking of all those low fat or no fat dairy products out there, but they all contain lactose. Lactose is the problem with dairy in addition to the saturated fat. What is wrong with milk sugar (lactose)? After the age of about three years old all babies stop secreting the enzyme lactase, which digests the lactose. No adult of any race secretes lactase and is therefore unable to digest milk sugar. Asians and Africans especially are sensitive to dairy products. Milk is the number one allergenic food on earth. There is a variety of very good tasting soy products you can replace dairy foods with. There are many varieties of soy, rice and even almond milk. Lactose reduced milk is not the answer. Meltable soy cheese comes in a variety of traditional cheese flavors such a cheddar, parmesan, mozzarella, and jack.
What oils are good for general use? Corn oil is a fine choice since it comes from grain. Safflower and sunflower oils are a good choice. Sesame is too expensive for general use. Olive oil is also a good choice, but olive oil is not “good for you” no matter what you’ve read about it. Soy oil tastes terrible unless it is so highly refined as to be nutritionless. Peanut oil comes from one of the top ten allergenic foods known and should be avoided. Cottonseed oil was never meant for human consumption and is merely sold for profit as a byproduct of the cotton industry. Walnut, avocado, almond and other gourmet oils are expensive and have limited use in salads dressings and such. Please avoid anything that is labeled “vegetable oil” or “vegetable oil blend” as this can be almost anything! Usually it is cottonseed or other cheap industrial oil in food grade. Palm and coconut oil are surprisingly not bad for you occasionally. The scare stories that circulated about them were not based on honest studies. These oils are really meant for the people in the hot, tropical areas they are grown and produced.
Now let’s talk about canola oil. You’ve seen this endlessly promoted as a healthy oil. This contradicts the facts completely. The name comes from “Canadian oil” and is from the rapeseed plant (from the Latin “rapa” or turnip), and contains less than 2% erucic acid. The normal rapeseed plant contains so much toxic erucic acid that humans and animals could not eat the oil. The plant was extremely genetically engineered to lower the erucic acid content that it cannot be called natural in any sense of the word anymore. Avoid canola oil and any foods that contain it as this is purely a promotion for profit. The rapeseed plant was never meant by nature for human or animal consumption.
Americans eat an astounding 42% fat calories, mostly saturated animal fats. Whole, natural foods supply all the essential fatty acids you need. You should take a gram (a mere 9 calories) of flax oil daily to supply omega-3 fatty acids, which are lacking in our diets. Eat as little fat in your diet as possible. It’s fat that makes you fat, not food. Read the labels of every food you buy to see the percent of fat calories. Bake and broil your food and stop frying it. Stop using fats like butter to flavor your food. Read books on healthy eating by Dean Ornish, Neal Barnard, Gary Null, Robert Pritikin, Susan Powter, Michio Kushi and Terry Shintani. You can eat all you want when you eat whole healthy natural foods like whole grains, vegetables, beans, fruits, salads and even seafood. You don’t need to “go on a diet”- you just need to make better food choices.
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