Why Fat Is Good.

Recording started. Hello and welcome to the Urban Vitality Blog. My name is John Limpus and today we're going to be talking about a fairly controversial topic. We're going to be talking about fat, dietary fat. Now, I'm lucky enough to have one of the, what I would say one of the leading people to speak to on this topic, really, he's US Personal Trainer of the Year in 2008. He has, in early part of his career, he actually had his clients wearing T shirts saying, my personal trainer has told me to eat more fat. On top of all that as an athlete, competed three times in the Ironman World Championships, as well as having two kids, two twin boys, and competing as a bodybuilder at college level as well. I'm delighted to have Ben Greenford on the call. Hello, Ben.

Hey, thanks for having me on.

That's quite a big intro. But the main thing is all the people at Urban Vitality would know about you because of your reverse food pyramid. And I wanted to talk about that today because obviously the conventional food pyramid has got fat right at the top as the kind of nasty thing that you should avoid. And yet your food pyramid has got it right at the foundation level as one of the things you should be getting the majority of your calories from. So obviously that's quite a controversial standpoint compared to conventional beliefs. I mean, where did you come up with that viewpoint? And why do you kind of believe so passionately that most people do need to increase the amount of fats in their diet then?

Well, it's only a relatively new phenomenon that we have been led to believe that a low fat diet is superior for anything from weight loss to health. People have known for thousands of years and have had as a part of their diet for thousands of years healthy fat, fat from animal sources, fat from vegetable sources, that provides a very concentrated, enriched source of energy in the diet. It provides building blocks for your cell membranes, for your hormones, for your hormone precursors. When you eat fats as part of a meal, it slows down the absorption of the food that you eat so you can go longer without getting hungry. And perhaps most importantly and unfortunately, most seriously for people who are on a low fat diet, fats are carriers for fat soluble vitamins like vitamin A, vitamin D, vitamin E, vitamin K, all the vitamins that I tend to see people very deficient in. And a big part of that is because they're not getting enough fats in their diet. The other component of fats, of course, is cholesterol, and cholesterol is Incredibly important. So the major idea behind the food pyramid that I did over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com was to point out the importance of these dietary fats and the relative lack of importance of things near the top of the food pyramid. Primarily things like whole grains.

Yeah, very interesting. Because I suppose what you're alluding to, especially with fat soluble vitamins, is that fat is vital if you want to be at optimum health. I suppose is that one of the things you were kind of reason you're putting it down at the bottom of your pyramid that fat is vital for optimum health.

Our bodies were designed to run on fats. Our body takes triglycerol and breaks it down into carbohydrates that can be burnt as carbohydrate based glucose for energy. Our body burns fatty acids very efficiently. Our body burns what are called ketones very efficiently. And when we begin to throw more and more carbohydrate into the mix, which is what happens on a low fat diet, we're not burning the type of fuel that the body preferentially burns. And so what happens then is we get a lot of inflammation. The cholesterol that is floating around in our bloodstream becomes, becomes inflamed and we increase our risk for heart disease along with a lot of the other chronic diseases that are diseases of affluence now, diabetes and obesity, heart disease, things of that nature.

Brilliant. So how do you, if you have a client that you look at their nutritional diet and you're sensing that they're avoiding fat, possibly because they believe that dietary fat is going to lead to an increase in body fat, what are the key kind of tools you use to kind of change that belief or help them understand that there isn't a link, you know, that dietary fat won't necessarily increase body fat?

Sure. Well, all of this started with a theory called the Lipid hypothesis. And that theory is that there is a direct relationship between how much saturated fat and cholesterol you're eating and the preponderance of things like coronary heart disease and increased body weight. And that entire theory was proposed by a researcher back in the 1950s named Ancel Keys. So up until that point, people really weren't fat phobic and didn't feel that fat was going to be much of an issue. But what happened was Ancel Keys produced a lot of articles that received a lot of publicity. And basically what his articles and his studies were proposing was that this increased saturated fat and cholesterol consumption was responsible for Heart disease and people getting overweight and things of that nature. Much of his research was publicized heavily by the vegetable oil industry and the food processing industries and the industries that would profit heavily from people beginning to eat more processed carbohydrates or people beginning to eat more processed vegetable oils and less animal based fats and butter and things of that nature. Now, the evidence that actually supports this lipid hypothesis is not sound at all. It's basically cherry picked. And many of the studies that have been done since the 50s to prove that the lipid hypothesis is true basically do things like feed people the wrong types of fats, unnatural vegetable based oils that have been heated heavily and exposed to pressures for extraction, which is not healthy. They've given people trans fats, high amounts of basically what are called unsaturated oils, like margarines and butter substitutes and vegetable oils. And there's really been no study that actually links animal fats, healthy, natural vegetable fats, and high cholesterol consumption with heart disease or weight gain. And in contrast, there have been many studies that have shown that the amount of processed sugar that you eat, the amount of starch that you eat, the amount of processed, factory processed fats that you eat, are very highly correlated with weight gain and with risk of heart disease. So when we step back and we look at fats and there's somebody that is fat phobic, the most important thing is to point out the benefits of fats. You take saturated fats, which a lot of people are trained to avoid, and you look at saturated fats, Those constitute about 50% of your cell membrane. They're what give your cells the stiffness and integrity that's required for them to function. Saturated fats are vital to the health of your bones, and the way that calcium is incorporated into your skeleton is via the use of dietary saturated fats. Saturated fats protect your liver when you're taking pharmaceuticals, when you're drinking alcohol, even when you're taking something like Tylenol. Saturated fats are what your liver uses to protect itself from these type of compounds. Saturated fats enhance your immune system. They allow you to utilize the other types of fatty acids that you get. If you're taking something like a fish oil, you got to have enough saturated fat in your diet in order to properly absorb and utilize something like fish oil and something like a coconut oil based saturated fat that has antimicrobial and antiviral properties. It protects you against microorganisms in your digestive tract and against disease. Probably the last important thing to Emphasize about saturated fats is that's what your heart primarily burns. The fat around your heart is highly saturated. And your heart likes to draw on this reserve of saturated fat. So that's kind of like the. That's one prong of the learn to love your fat approach. And the other prong, of course, cholesterol. And cholesterol you're going to get from fatty foods that go above and beyond saturated fats. And similar to saturated fats, cholesterol also gives your cell walls the stiffness and the stability that they need. Cholesterol is a precursor to all of your hormones, which I mentioned earlier. But hormones help you deal with stress, they protect your body against heart disease, against cancer, they improve your sex life, they improve the amount of muscle you could put on your body. We're talking about testosterone, estrogen, progesterone, all of these different hormones you got to have chol to make. If you're on a low fat diet, you're going to be hormone depleted. You've probably heard of vitamin D before. And cholesterol is a precursor to vitamin D, which is essential for hundreds of different reactions in the body. And you can't just pop vitamin D and be on a low fat diet. It just doesn't work. You have to be consuming enough fat. If you're supplementing with vitamin D, like using a supplement, which a lot of people do these days, your gallbladder, the way it breaks down fats is with bile salts and those are made from cholesterol. Cholesterol is an antioxidant. Cholesterol is actually used in the serotonin receptor portion of your brain, which means that it allows you to feel good. Low cholesterol levels are linked to aggression and violent behavior and depression and suicidal tendencies. If you're driving your cholesterol levels down via your diet, you're going to increase your propensity to have some neural issues. And finally we look at kids and then I'll shut up. But babies and kids, they need cholesterol rich foods. That's why mother's milk is incredibly rich in cholesterol and the enzymes that help the babies utilize and break down cholesterol. And it's what kids use to ensure the proper development of their brain and their nervous system. My kids eat a high fat diet. If mothers are feeding their kids low fat or fat free foods, they're going to increase the propensity for their kids to, pardon my expression, be stupid and not have proper neural development. So a huge amount of benefits to saturated fats and Cholesterols that go way, way above and beyond just improving your ability to stabilize your appetite or lose weight.

And that's, that's why I wanted you on this call because so many people now the arguments are turning slightly more in favor of fat, but then they say, you know, in moderation, you know, be careful, stuff like that. But actually without getting massively enthusiastic with all the vital, vital components that fat brings to the diet and with what you've explained so clearly there, it's those two, the cholesterol and the cell membrane and all those vitamins and solubility of so many vitamins, they're just vital. And so to actually get quite enthusiastic about your fats, so the complete opposite of a phobia. I mean, Ben, you clearly love your fats. What are your favorite fats? If we're looking at kind of, you mentioned coconut, there some good, really fantastic fats that people should be making sure they get in their diet.

Okay, best place to start is butter. And I start there because that's the one that a lot of people think is dangerous. When you're looking at a lot of these fat soluble vitamins like vitamin A, vitamin D, vitamin E, and a relative newcomer to the whole fat soluble vitamin family in terms of researchers just now discovering its enormous importance, vitamin K. Butter is a very, very good way to get all of these things and not just any butter. You want to get a nice deep orange grass fed unsalted butter preferably, which means a lot of times you may need to go to your food co op or a local farm or health food store and pay a little bit more for your butter. But butter contains a lot of the different kinds of fats. It's got your essential fatty acids, it's got your essential cholesterols, it's got a lot of your trace minerals, it's got arachidonic acid, which is the type of fat that your brain really, it's really a vital component of your brain in terms of an anti inflammatory component in your brain and of course all your fat soluble vitamins, as I mentioned, the A, D, the E and the K. So butter, enormously important for that type of thing. Next on the list, in terms of getting what would be considered your essential fatty acids, the stuff that most people have a very, very difficult time making, fish and fish oil, eating fish, eating sardines and anchovies, those count, eating good cold water fish, mackerel, herring, getting a good wild salmon, that type of thing along with the butter. Very important if you're going to eat a meat, go for a nice fatty cut of meat and choose grass fed meat which is going to be really high in your anti inflammatory omega 3 fatty acids. So you can do A, beef, a B, bison, buffalo, any of these. But yeah, you gotta pay a little bit extra for the grass fed. That's why we hunt down a farmer and we pay for a quarter or a half of a cow and we keep a freezer out in our garage and we just freeze all the meat out there in the garage and that's the way that we afford to be able to eat good, high quality grass fed organic beef. So you've got your meats, you've got butter, you've got fish, you've also got your really great vegetable based fats which are going to be high in minerals, they're going to have a lot more of the vegetable based cholesterols, a lot of the antioxidants in them. And you're looking at things like olives and olive oil, avocados, and if you can get your hands on it, avocado oil isn't bad. Seeds and nuts in moderation, preferably in their raw form or kind of soaked, is another good way to eat those.

Like chia seeds and stuff like that.

Flaxseeds, almonds, Brazil nuts, pretty much anything except peanuts which really aren't enough. Those are all good. And then as you start to get more down the line into your cooking oils, butter of course, which I already mentioned, works really well, ghee if you can find it, that's a clarified form of butter that's also really, really good in terms of containing a lot of these healthy compounds. And coconut oil is fantastic. Those would be the good ones. And then just avoid canola, safflower, corn, sunflower, soybean and cottonseed oil. Those would be some of the biggies to avoid.

I know you mentioned you've got it on the actual pyramid, the ones to avoid. But with regards to, if you look around, you can always find a good farm or butcher to find grass fed. But you do normally have to ask, especially at local butchers and stuff. But with regards to say the fat on non organic meat, any warnings with regards to the fat on some animal produce or what's your kind of beliefs there?

Sure. One of the issues in our diet these days is too much omega 6 fatty acids. Omega 6 fatty acids are a type of what's called polyunsaturated fatty acid. You need them in small amounts, but most of us get way too many of them. A ratio of what are called omega 6 fatty acids to omega 3 fatty acids is way, way too high. Way too many Omega 6s, not enough Omega 3s. That disruption in the ratio can lead to increased risk for blood clots, inflammation, high blood pressure, like GI issues like irritation of your digestive tract, depressed immune function, lack of fertility or sterility and weight gain. And the issue is that when you eat the fat from a cow, let's say, that's been fed with grain, that cow has significantly greater amounts of omega 6 fatty acids stored up in its fat compared to a cow that was fed on grass. You know, we can say the same about it. Say like a chicken that was fed on grain and corn versus a chicken that's free range, that's eating insects all day long. So that's kind of the issue that you're looking at Primarily is the Omega 6 issue. Now you can fight against that a little bit by including more omega 3s in your diet. Like if you just cannot get your hands on a good grass fed beef and you're really concerned about those Omega 6s, which is a legitimate concern, you could just take a lot of a high quality omega 3 rich fish oil and that would help you out a little bit. Right, because it helps out your ratio. But ultimately you're kind of just fighting against this fire that you're producing and it's better to, to as much as you can try and hunt down the grass fed beef. I've in most cases had very little trouble finding a place in the world where somebody couldn't eventually get their hands on either good grass fed beef or if they just have to cut that out of their diet and not get their hands on it. Just using coconut oil, avocados, olives and then eating fish.

Yeah, exactly. And I would say it is slightly more expensive, but it's so worth it. And also with regards to, for example, beef or something that might have has antibiotics and stuff like that, are there any dangers if it's not grass fed with regard to maybe toxins being stored in adipose tissue? Is that not an issue for you?

It is an issue. And you know, we can look at a lot of things that store toxins, you know, fat soluble poisons like ddt, those accumulate in fats and antibiotics and growth hormones, those accumulate in meat. They also accumulate in the water fraction of milk, which is a reason that you want to be careful with consuming commercialized milk. But vegetables and grains also accumulate poisons. The average plant gets about 10 applications of pesticides from the time that it's actually planted to the time that it's stored. And a lot of times cows are eating that aflatoxin, which is a fungus that grows on grain, that's a very powerful carcinogen. You can pretty much assume that just about anything that you eat, whether it's a vegetable or an animal, it's going to be contaminate, eliminated. And the solution is not to eliminate animal fats from your diet, but to just do as much as you can to seek out organic meats, organic butter from pasture fed cows and look for organic vegetables and just limit your grain consumption. And that's just the way you have to live.

That's great. And that's the way I like putting that question in there because for a lot of people, they'll worry about lots of little things. But what you've done is you've identified the major things to focus on. And I think Omega 6 with regards to the amount of Omega 6 in our diets for the amount of grain is probably a bigger factor than possible toxins, stuff like that. Then that is fantastic. People want to find out more. They can obviously find you on BenGreenfieldFitness.com Absolutely.

Of course, if you're in the US and you hear this and you want to get your hands on that food pyramid, you can just, just text the word Fitness to 411247 and you'll get the food pyramid automatically downloaded to your phone and you can throw it on your computer or wherever else. If you're international, go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com scroll down the right side of the page and it's right there. You can download it, it's free and you can study it. There's a little grocery shopping list that comes along with it and that's the best, best way to get it totally free.

That is fantastic. Ben, thank you so much for your time. You really clarified hopefully beating fat phobia. That's the main aim of this call. So appreciate your time and best luck in the future.

Awesome, thanks.

Thanks, Ben. The caller, John limited.