Entries in fats 101 (10)

Friday
Apr132012

Omega-3 Carrot Cake

The Fats of Life

One step in America’s return to healthful living is to see dietary fat as good.  Natural fats were so excoriated in the last half-century that any processed food with a “low-fat” claim was considered healthful.  This is crazy, but a society learns slowly, and changes food behavior even more slowly; it can take a generation for each step.  There is one shining light exception:  the readers of Word of Wisdom Living.  If you actively apply the 52 Healthy Changes according to your needs; you can change in a year.  In food culture, that’s like turning on a dime.

Omega-3 fats are mainly found in green plants; omega-6 fats are found in the seeds.  When people lived on the food at hand, they got lots of omega-3 in the spring and summer and more omega-6 in the fall and winter.  In fact, foods rich in omega-3, like greens, have a short shelf life.  Most omega-6 seeds can last for years if properly stored.  Because processed foods need a long shelf-life, omega-3 fats were removed from the American diet.

The 1000-Mile Cornfield

I had a wonderful adventure a few years ago with our first son.  He and his wife had finished law school and were moving to Washington, D.C.  They loaded their possessions into a big truck with a trailer attached for their car, and the son and I made the cross-country drive.  The length of the truck with trailer made turning around hard so we tried to avoid dead ends.  Once, in a small town in Tennessee, just about bedtime, we got stuck in a narrowing street.  The people may have thought that we were moving into their neighborhood because everyone came out to help.  Dads were making suggestions, excited kids were running around our big noisy truck, and dogs were barking.  The solution required waking up a lady to move her car out of the way.  I learned something about extraordinary kindness of people on that trip.  We also learned what’s between Colorado and, say, Tennessee:  corn.  We drove through a thousand miles of non-stop corn. 

Now I can see the 1000 miles of corn as a metaphor for the rise of omega-6 and decline of omega-3 in the American diet.  Corn products are high in omega-6; the leaves, which are made into animal feed, contain omega-3.  Here are some consequences, from animal studies:

  • Scientists at Wake Forest found that eating more omega-6 fat increases the build up of plaque in coronary arteries, while omega-3 reduces plaque accumulation.
  • Researchers at the Bassett Research Institute found it easy to grow cancer tumors when animals were fed an omega-6 diet (from corn oil) but almost impossible with omega-3 rich fish oil. 
  • In Australia studies show that omega-3 speeds up the metabolic rate, the speed at which we burn calories, while omega-6 slows it down.  Want to be more active and burn off that extra fat?  Eat more greens and less of the processed seeds. 

Heart Disease

Susan Allport wrote a great book with a descriptive title:  The Queen of Fats:  Why Omega-3s Were Removed from the Western Diet and What We Can Do to Replace Them.  If you want to understand the essential fats better, get this book.  The key discoveries about omega-3 fats are so recent many of the scientists are still alive, including Dr. Ralph Holman, now in his 90s. 

Allport tells about a man in Dr. Holman’s lab who was dying of heart disease.  The man had a prior coronary artery replacement surgery but his arteries were now so clogged with plaque that another was needed.  Unfortunately he wasn’t healthy enough to attempt the surgery.  Holman suggested a diet high in omega-3 fats, in addition to the customary medical care and begin to bring by his homemade flaxseed cakes.  The patient made a remarkable recovery and lived another 20 years. 

Now this was just one person and you can’t draw too big a conclusion from an anecdotal experience.  But if I were suffering from heart disease, I’d discuss my omega-6/-3 status with a qualified doctor and give serious attention to his, or her, recommendations.  Ms. Allport offers recipes that include more omega-3 here.  And Dr. Holman inspired me that we should have a healthy cake on our recipe list.

Dr. Holman's Flaxseed Cake

I looked over Dr. Holman’s Flaxseed Cake recipe with the idea to improve it.  This brought to mind a recent article in Cooks Illustrated on carrot cake.  I considered ingredients rich in omega-3 fats: eggs, fresh walnuts, flaxseed, Canola oil, and butter which though mostly saturated fat, has a healthful ratio of omega-6/-3.  I also reviewed online recipes.  Most carrot cake recipes call for pecans but we choose walnuts for their omega-3 content.  We used the best available oil—Spectrum’s expeller pressed, Organic High Heat Canola Oil; it’s a bit more costly but less than EVOO, so seemed a good omega-3 value.  Organic means non-GMO. 

Some carrot cake recipes include crushed pineapple and others add raisins.  In our tests these ingredients improved the flavor and reduced the need for sugar.  We used 1½ cups of sugar instead of the typical 2 cups; we also reduced the amount of frosting by half.  Our first batches had a nasty aftertaste that we traced to stale nutmeg and cloves.  Suggestion:  Check your spices for bitter aftertaste before using.  Because our spices weren’t that old (a year or so) I’m starting to think grinding nutmeg and cloves fresh is the way to go.  We’re probably like most people; it takes several years to use even a small container of these spices. 

Skip’s Omega-3 Carrot Cake

Cake Ingredients:

  1 cup whole-wheat flour, fresh ground (we have a hand grinder, good exercise)

  1 cup flaxseed meal, fresh ground (we use a Cuisineart spice and nut grinder, a bargain at $40)

  1½ cup sugar, either browns or turbinado

  1½ tsp cinnamon (or 2 tsp if you don’t have fresh ground cloves and nutmeg)

  ¼ tsp nutmeg, ground

  ¼ tsp cloves, ground

  2 tsp baking soda

  1 tsp baking powder

  ½ tsp salt

  1 cup cold-pressed organic canola oil

  3 or 4 eggs (we prefer omega enhanced eggs)

  1 tsp vanilla

  3 cup carrots, grated (about 4 carrots)

  8 oz crushed pineapple (with natural juice)

  1 cup raisins

  1 ½ cup walnuts, chopped (more is OK with me)

Frosting Ingredients (this is half the normal recipe)

  4 oz cream cheese, softened

  ¼ cup butter, softened

  ½ tsp vanilla

  2 cups powdered sugar, sifted (unsifted made small lumps)

Directions:

Mix dry and wet ingredients and combine.  Pour into 9” x 13” prepared pan.  Bake at 350 F about 30        minutes, until done. When cooled, apply frosting. Pretty simple.  This cake is so moist and tasty you can even eat it without frosting. 

Please comment:  How to you add omega-3 fats to your diet.  Have a favorite healthy dessert?  Please share it. 

Monday
Apr092012

Omega-3 Essential Fats

 

The quick answer:  Essential omega-3 fats are vital to your health and sources include fresh walnuts, eggs, flaxseed, seafood (especially cold water fish), and leafy green vegetables.

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Nutrition Made Simple

Nutrition can be overwhelmingly complex, but here’s some simple guidance on the three macronutrients (carbs, fat, and protein): 

  • Don’t bother with low-fat or high-protein diets. 
  • Don’t stress over the percent of fats, carbs and protein in your food. 
  • Don’t even fuss over the amount of calories you eat. 

But do eat your carbs, fats, and proteins in their natural form, as minimally processed as practical.  Eat whole foods and Mother Nature will deliver the best proportion of macronutrients, as well as fiber and micronutrients.   And this brings us to this week’s topic: fats. Though much berated they're essential to good health.

Big Fat Mistakes

Remember the biblical metaphor about “the blind leading the blind”?  Or the adage by Albert Einstein, ‘A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.  So is a lot.”  It all sums up 20th century nutrition.  Science was so popular a century ago that traditional beliefs never had a chance.  For example, traditional cooking was reinvented as “scientific cookery” and laboratory discoveries often reappeared as new food inventions. 

The invention of hydrogenation—where hydrogen gas was bubbled through heated and pressurized vegetable oils in the presence of a metallic catalyst—enabled the invention of a new family of fat products made with cheaper vegetable oils.  Here are a few examples:

  • Crisco replaced lard (and wouldn’t spoil),
  • Margarine competed with butter (and also lasted longer),
  • Bottled salad dressings pushed out traditional oil and vinegar,
  • Peanut butter (the hydrogenated oil didn’t separate and kept longer) became the most popular sandwich ingredient,
  • French fries (cooked in oils so stable they could last for weeks in heated deep fat fryers) became the #1 way to eat vegetables,
  • Packaged foods (made tasty with hydrogenated oils and sugar and long-lasting on the shelf) replaced whole foods you had to cook.

Hydrogenation could alter the properties of vegetable oils but they gave industrialized food something much more important—a long shelf life free of rancidity.  The only problem was that rancidity came mainly from omega-3 fats (when exposed to oxygen) and though you could alter these fats through hydrogenation that didn’t change an essential fact—they’re vital to our health.  The removal of omega-3 fats from our diet by the industrialization of food was a 20th century nutrition disaster!

Omega-3 vs. Omega-6

You know the phrase “alpha and omega,” Greek for first and last?  Fat molecules have a chain of carbon atoms arranged in a chain like the vertebrae of your spine.  Across the living species there’s variety in the number of vertebrae in the spine and fats are the same way.  Fats are grouped as short, medium, or long chain.  Because of this variety, scientists identify the carbons in a fat chain by counting from the tail, or omega end. (The alpha end changes with chain length so isn't a good reference point.)

Carbons in the fat chain typically have two adjoining hydrogen atoms; think of them as ribs attached to vertabrae.  When all the carbons have a pair of hydrogen atoms the fat is saturated.  If one carbon is missing hydrogen, the fat is monounsaturated.  If hydrogen is missing at several sites the fat is polyunsaturated.  The properties and functions of fats change with chain length, and saturation, but also with the location of unsaturation.   Bottom line: The body needs all these fats in the balance found in Nature.

Omega-3 fats are first unsaturated at the 3rd carbon molecule and have properties of quickness and flexibility.  For example, they oxidize quickly when exposed to oxygen.  In the body, omega-3 fats are useful where data travels quickly: in the eyes, brain, and nervous system.  They also enable the flipping tail that drives semen in their mad gallant chase to the egg.  If infertility is a concern—omega-3 fats are critical to conception.

Think you’re getting dementia?  Make darned sure you get adequate omega-3 fats.  The brain is 60% fat but ¼ is omega-3 fat. 

Omega-6 fats are first unsaturated at the 6th carbon and are characterized as solid, slow and strong.   They form the walls of cells, act as cell messengers, and enable slower reactions.  You need both omega-6 and omega-3 fats, roughly in a ratio of 2:1.  These two essential fat families compete for the same enzymes so it’s critical to have balance in your diet.  The traditional ratio of 2:1 was slowly altered through the 20th century to roughly 20:1 to improve shelf life and other properties.  This was started in ignorance, but continues now that we know better.  There’s also a seasonal pattern:  omega-3 fats proliferate in the green of spring but omega-6 dominates in the fat when life slows down for winter.

Healthy Changes

The 1st Healthy Change of the New Year got right after our sugar intake, limiting sugary drinks to one per week.  The 2nd Healthy Change addressed the trans fat problem of toxic hydrogenated oils:  “Never buy deep fat fried foods.”  This follows the Institute of Medicine guidance that the safe intake of trans fats is zero!

Now we’re back to learning how to eat healthy fats with the goal of correcting the omega-6/-3 ratio.  There are two steps to this:  1) Reduce omega-6 (mostly found in refined vegetable oils common to processed foods), and 2) Increase omega-3 by eating green foods and certain animal products, shown in the picture above. 

Basically, if you eat foods close to the form as created, and minimize industrialized foods, you should be okay.  Animal sources of omega-3 provide the long-chain variety.  The body can form these from the short-chain omega-3 found in green plants but the capacity is limited, so animal sources are also needed. 

Our goal is to include omega-3 fats in every meal.  For our Breakfast Compote, we include ground flaxseed.  Last week’s dinner menu included wild salmon plus a lunch of tuna sandwich another day.  That met our goal of two servings of fish rich in omega-3 each week.  If I don’t get two servings, I take a fish oil supplement of omega-3; not the same as eating fish but better than nothing, I think.  Most of our dinners include a green salad.

Please comment on your experience with omega-3 and omega-6 fats.  People need both, but we have to get back to a balance.  In our home we minimize refined oils in favor of traditional fats like butter and olive oil. 

Need a reminder? Download our Healthy Change reminder card. Print and fold, then place in your kitchen or on your bathroom mirror to help you remember the Healthy Change of the week.

Sunday
Jul172011

Healthy Brains

The Quick Answer: For brain health, include natural antioxidants and omega-3 DHA in your diet.
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Want to keep your wits?  Dr. Keith L. Black, chairman of neurosurgery at Cedars-Sinai Hospital recommends these five ways to care for your brain:

  1. Add omega-3 and antioxidants to your diet.
  2. Get at least 30 minutes of exercise three times per week.
  3. Sleep well.
  4. Take control of your stress level.
  5. Learn something new. 

We have discussed #2, exercise, here and here; #3 & 4 (sleep and control of stress) are planned for future posts.  So lets review #1—dietary omega-3 fats and antioxidants—in this post, beginning with antioxidants.

Glucose, Oxidation, and Antioxidants

The brain never rests so it needs lots of energy.  Though just 2% of our body weight, it consumes 25% of all glucose.  It takes oxygen to burn all this fuel, so the brain also consumes 20% of your oxygen supply.  We learned in a prior post that the body uses oxygen to burn the fuel we eat but the oxidized by-products, called free radicals, can harm cells if not neutralized by antioxidants.  Some of these toxic byproducts are called “advanced glycation end-products,” known by the acryonym, AGE.  It’s a good term because AGEs are theorized to cause the aging of cells that leads to disease and death.  For this reason, a diet rich in antioxidant sources (fruits, vegetables, and whole grains) is essential to protect against free radical aging. 

The neurons of the brains are different from your other cells.  Unlike cells which are regularly replaced, we keep our neurons for life.  So a diet lacking in antioxidants will cause the accumulation of free radicals and AGEs in the brain’s neurons and the result can be dementia.  To keep your wits, eat a diet rich in antioxidants. 

The brain is 60% fat. 

Let me introduce you to Dr. Michael Crawford, who practiced medicine for a time in Africa and studied the fats found in animals.  He learned that wild animals have mostly polyunsaturated fat while domestic animals have more saturated fat.  (He consequently wrote a controversial 1968 article in the New Scientist, “Are Our Cows Killing Us?”)  Because the brain is mostly made of fat, it was inevitable that Crawford would also study the brain.  He was surprised to find that while the composition of fat varied in the bodies of animals according to diet and activity, the brain fat of animals was remarkable consistent, with the essential omega-3 DHA fat comprising 25%.  (We discussed DHA, termed the “Queen of Fats,” in a prior post.) 

You’ll recall that certain vitamins, minerals, and amino acids are essential, meaning the body can’t make them so they must be included in the food supply.  (There are over 50 of these essential nutrients—there should be a deck of playing cards featuring each, so we can learn nutrition while playing cards.)  Among the various fats, the omega-3 and omega-6 fats are essential.  Here's the problem:  We eat too much omega-6 and too little omega-3. 

Because the omega-3 fats have a short shelf life once processed, they have been gradually removed from packaged foods.  The removal of omega-3 fats from the American diet in order to improve storage was discussed in a prior post, “The Worst Food Mistake of The Last Century?”  Dr. Crawford makes omninous comments about the shrinkage of brain mass since humans stopped eating wild meat, which is much higher in DHA than modern feedlot meat. 

There are three main omega-3 fats—known by the acronyms ALA, EPA, and DHA.  We get ALA from plants—all the green stuff we eat.  The irony of ALA is though it’s deficient in the American diet, it’s the most abundant fat on the planet.  There is true irony in this:  The richest nation misses out on the most vital fat because it's too "common."  To address omega-3 deficiency we had the Healthy Change of eating a green salad daily.  The green smoothie is another source.  

The body can process ALA into EPA, and then DHA but at a limited rate.  So for best health, we need to also eat some DHA to protect the brain, eyes, and nerves.   (DHA, ahem, plays an important role in fertility also.)  Here are dietary sources of DHA omega-3: 

  • Cold water fish (wild or even farmed salmon, tuna, trout, sardines, shrimp, oysters, and crab),
  • Eggs (especially if chickens are free range, or algae is added to the diet),
  • Meat (particularly liver, which no one eats anymore) from pastured ruminants (cows, sheep, etc.), 
  • The omega-3 fish oil capsules.

A prior Healthy Change, as noted, encouraged eating omega-3 fats daily.  This week’s change is more specific:  Be sure to also get some DHA omega-3 most days.  We try to eat fish twice a week (a tuna sandwich counts), or take a fish oil pill for each missed serving.  Maybe one of our smart readers will invent a sandwich with sardines (because of their small size they’re the safest for mercury).  We also buy the omega-3 eggs. 


Budget Wisdom
:  For the parents of newborns, there is no better value than mother’s milk.  Breast milk is high in the omega-3 DHA needed for brain development.  Dr. Crawford’s understanding of the critical nature of DHA led to a 30-year crusade to get it included in baby formula.  Finally, in 2002, DHA was approved for addition in the US, but is still not required.  As a result, for years formula-fed babies received insufficient omega-3 and studies have shown lower IQs and poorer vision as a result. 

Please comment:  For a generation we were incorrectly taught that animal fat was unhealthy, that saturated fat and dietary cholesterol caused heart disease.  Worse, man-made vegetable oils high in omega-6 and trans fats but deficient in omega-3 (due to processing and hydrogenation) were wrongly touted as heart healthy.  Today the healthiness of traditional fats, especially the omega-3s, is being rediscovered.  Please comment and share how this cycle of erroneous teaching has affected you and your family’s health, and what you are doing today to enjoy healthy fats, especially the omega-3s.

Need a reminder? Download our Healthy Change reminder card. Print and fold, then place in your kitchen or on your bathroom mirror to help you remember the Healthy Change of the week.

Friday
May132011

The Queen of Fats

The quick answer:  This post provides tips on budget, how to get omega-3 in each meal, and good fat facts.

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I try to post twice a week: the Healthy Change for the week is the Monday post; the Thursday post expands the discussion with practical tips often influenced by your comments.  (I apologize that due to other demands, this week’s Thursday post comes on Saturday.)  I gauge the success of posts by your comments and I learned a few things from this week’s comments:

1. Amy noted that omega-3 fats have a “profoundly anti-depressant effect”. 

2. Sacha observed that fish is “so darned expensive”.

3. McKenzie shared how “complicated it is to find healthy meat and eggs”.

4. Laura shared that “I stay full longer . . . when I have some good fat in my meals”.

5. Kristin said it wasn’t clear how to get omega-3 in every meal. 

6. There were fewer comments than usual, which tells me this is a difficult subject to translate to daily living.

Thinking further on your comments:

Budget Wisdom:  I had planned a post on value with the message that good food doesn’t cost more as long as you are organized (menu, shopping list) and willing to cook.  Healthy food is actually a steal if you consider the cost of dealing with chronic diseases.  Reader comments like Sacha’s have convinced me to include more frequent information on value under the heading Budget Wisdom.  

So this is the first Budget Wisdom:  Tips on affordable ways to get the omega-3s EPA (which works as an antidepressant and anti-inflammatory), and DHA (vital for brain and eye health).  EPA and DHA are found together in animal products, which can be expensive.  What is the weekly cost of DHA?  It’s not easy to figure, as the government has not yet set a recommended intake.  So I used a target of 0.1% of calories (attributed to a National Institute of Health workshop), which translates to 2 grams of DHA a week for the typical 2500 daily calorie diet.   

Here is my horseback estimate for the weekly cost of getting your 2 grams of DHA from common sources:

•  Eggs—it’s cheaper to buy the better eggs.  Two grams of DHA from Costco’s high-omega eggs (flaxseed is added to the diet) will cost $12.00.  The cost drops to $5.00 if you buy the Gold Circle eggs (algae is added to the diet).  Ordinary eggs will deliver two grams for about $20.

•  Fish—sardines are the best bargain.  Wild salmon deliver two grams for about $7; farmed salmon for $5; and sardines, the best buy, for about $3 (canned).  Tuna comes between sardines and salmon. 

It’s best to get nutrients from a variety of sources so we shoot for two servings of fish a week (perhaps salmon one meal or shrimp in a salad, plus tuna in a sandwich).   If we don’t get enough fish I take a fish oil pill; my guess is it’s better than nothing.  And we include high-omega eggs in Saturday night omelets plus hard-boiled eggs in salads or as snacks.   Following this plan, it costs only 5-6 dollars to get our weekly EFA and DHA.

Getting omega-3 in most meals:  Credit for this goal goes to Susan Allport and her excellent book The Queen of Fats; Why Omega-3s Were Removed From the Western Diet and What We Can Do To Replace Them.  The title pretty well explains the book, which I highly recommend.   A simple rule from the book is that omega-3 fats are found in greens, while seeds are higher in omega-6.  Simply put, we need to eat more greens and less foods processed from seeds (chips, crackers, cookies, seed oils).

Here is how we are trying to meet the goal of omega-3 in each meal in our home:

•  Breakfast:  The Breakfast Compote includes a generous serving of freshly ground flaxseed.  (Don’t laugh, but when I cut up the strawberries I also include those little green leaves, a good omega-3 source.)

•  Lunch:  I do the worst here because I don’t want to stop and eat if I’m working on something.  A favorite lunch for me is a slice of whole-wheat bread with tuna and/or cheese, topped with tomato and spinach. 

•  Snacks:  I include walnuts and Brazil nuts, rich in omega-3. 

•  Dinner:  We like to have a green salad with each meal plus a green vegetable.  As noted above, we try to get two servings of fish weekly, as well as 2-3 servings of eggs (two eggs are a serving for me, one egg for my wife).

Good Fat Facts:

Fats have been roughed up in the media but they’re actually vital to health and beauty.  Excuse me for noticing, but the higher fat content in women’s bodies (compared to men) makes for those lovely curves.  The wonderful flavors and appealing smells of food are found in the fat.  (Which is why low-fat foods were so unhealthy: they had to increase sugar and salt to retain taste appeal.)   A low-fat diet is not a healthy diet.  Natural fats—including butter and olive oil—have been safely enjoyed for centuries.   Good fats make for good medicine.  The omega-3 fats found in green plants (and animals that eat things green) reduce the risk of stroke and heart attack, lower blood pressure and inflammation, and improve the function of billions of (your) cell membranes.  A final reminder:  Eat more greens than seeds (especially seed oils) for a healthy omega 6:3 ratio. 

Please comment on your favorite affordable fats.

Monday
May092011

The worst food mistake of the last century?  

 Food mistakes?  We’ve made a few.  You could write a book about them.  Here’s the quick answer on fat:  The removal of omega-3 fats to improve the shelf life of processed foods may be our worst dietary mistake.   (A primer on fats is available at the bottom of this post.)

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Fats are fascinating molecules essential to life.  The industrialization of food, unfortunately, resulted in some big fat mistakes.  This post provides the last of four Healthy Changes meant to improve the fats we eat.  The prior changes:

•  Healthy Change #2:  Never buy deep fat fried foods (avoids trans fats and oxidized oils).

•  Healthy Change #11:  Enjoy traditional fats like butter and olive oil (in moderation).  

•  Healthy Change #16:  Minimize consumption of refined seed oils (reduces omega-6 fat intake). 

The purpose of this post is to restore omega-3 fats to their traditional place in our dietary.  To appreciate the vital role of omega-3 fats in our health, here are five important lessons learned in recent decades, with credit given to the pioneers who discovered them:

Lesson #1:  Two Danish scientists, Hans O. Bang and Jorn Dyerberg, studied how to prevent heart disease.  In the ‘70s they decided to investigate Greenland Eskimos because they contradicted the conventional wisdom:  Eskimos lived on a high-fat diet with lots of blubber, yet were free of heart disease.  The scientists discovered that Eskimos (who ate more omega-3 fats) had healthy hearts while Danes (who ate more omega-6 fats, especially processed foods) had heart disease.  This was revolutionary because people were wrongly being advised to replace animal fats with vegetable oils, which added to the omega-6 excess.  Bang and Dyerberg’s contribution:  Omega-3 (especially the form called EPA) protects against heart disease.  (Note: fats are known by the acronym for the number of carbons, expressed in Greek, thus EPA and DHA, etc.)

Lesson #2:  Ralph Holman, a U.S. scientist sponsored by Hormel, the maker of Spam, of all things, made the next contribution.  Holman tested the blood fat profile of people around the world and made the critical discovery that omega-3 and omega-6 fats were competitive in the body.  Holman’s contribution: If you eat an excess of omega-6 fats—a common problem in the Western diet—the omega-3 fats, even if you get enough, will be pushed aside.  Eating both omega-3 and omega-6 is essential, but balance is critical.

Lesson #3:  Dr. Michael Crawford, an English physician who studied animals in Africa, was fascinated that though body fat of animals varied with diet (not unlike humans), the fat profile in brains was remarkable constant and rich in the DHA omega-3 fat.  Crawford’s main contribution:  Omega-3 DHA is critical to cells involved in data processing—the brain, nerves, and eyes.

Lesson #4:  Dr. William Lands studied the role of chronic inflammation—the immune system’s excessive response to unhealthy modern life—in the rise of chronic diseases like arthritis, high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, and certain autoimmune diseases.  His work led to an understanding of how inflammation is driven by omega-6 and calmed by omega-3.  Lands discovery:  The high ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fat in the modern diet can cause the inflammation that leads to chronic disease.

Lesson #5: Dr. Artemis Simopoulos studied the fat profile of cultivated and wild greens and how a diet of these greens affected the fat profile of animals.  Eggs from chickens whose diet included wild greens, for example, have ten-fold more omega-3 DHA than the eggs of chickens fed a typical grain diet.  Lesson:  Animal food products (eggs, dairy, meat) will only have a healthy fat profile if the animal is fed a healthy diet (that includes greens).  This is also true for humans, by the way.

Sources of omega-3 fats are shown in the picture above.  The modern deficiency of omega-3 is a little crazy:  Because the ALA form of omega-3 is found in plants, omega-3s are the most common fat on the planet.  So we have a classic contradiction:  the modern diet is most deficient in what Nature has most generously provided.  We can get our ALA by eating green plants like spinach, and foods like walnuts and flaxseed.  (Try to eat a daily salad; the breakfast compote includes ground flaxseed, which can be added to many dishes.)

The body can convert ALA to the higher forms, EPA and DHA, but at a limited rate.  So our diet should also include EPA and DHA, available from animal sources such as cold-water fish (or shrimp) and eggs from chickens (whose diet includes greens, flaxseed, or algae).  In our home, we try to eat fish twice per week and buy eggs from well-fed chickens.  If salmon or shrimp is too expensive, try sardines (which also have less mercury). 

Fats have been vilified and villainized in the past but actually are essential to life.  Please share your thoughts on fats in your diet, or comment on ways to reduce omega-6 and increase omega-3.

Need a reminder? Download our Healthy Change reminder card. Print and fold, then place in your kitchen or on your bathroom mirror to help you remember the Healthy Change of the week.

Friday
Apr222011

visiting the egg aisle

Eggs have always been a symbol of Easter week and of life itself.  In recent years eggs have been out of favor, then back on the good listl.  Besides being a token of life, eggs are one of the best sources of needed nutrients, including:  

a)  the omega-3 fats, ALA and DHA (DHA is essential to the brain, eyes, and nerves);

b)  vitamin A, lutein and zeaxanthin, which help prevent vision problems like cataracts and macular degeneration;

c)  a complete source of the essential protein amino acids, and

c)  important antioxidants like vitamin E and selenium. 

The basic egg has been changing—we can buy eggs in five forms now:

• Regular:  The basic low-cost egg from grain-fed caged chickens.  According to the U.S.D.A., the egg contains 37 mg of omega-3s, roughly 1/4th is DHA.

• Cage free:  I bet the chickens are clucking about their new door-less cages, but they eat the same diet of grains as caged chickens.  So same egg, you just pay a little more. 

• Flaxseed omega-3 eggs:  These eggs typically come from cage free chickens fed grains plus some flaxseed to boost their total omega-3.  Some eggs claim 115, others 225 mg.  DHA, the important omega-3, gets a little boost (I have heard of 75-80 mg. but I’m doubtful as it’s not shown on the label.)

• Marine-fed omega-3 eggs:  To really boost DHA, chickens are fed fishmeal, fish oil, or micro-algae, and the DHA level can reach 150 mg.  The supplier of cultivated algae requires licensed farms to use the “Gold Circle Farms” label on the eggs. 

• Pastured eggs:  These chickens live in movable cages so get sunshine and eat pasture greens and insects supplemented with grain.  These are the healthiest chickens and eggs but are as rare as hen’s teeth.  Bad joke.

The Egg Aisle:  I did a tour of the grocery stores in my area, to see what I could find in the way of eggs, and learned a few things:

1. The best deal was Costco’s Norco Organic high-omega eggs at $3.19 per dozen (but sold in 18-count cartons).  Omega-3 content was 225 mg per egg.  I expected Costco to be cheaper, but I thought the other stores might offer a quality advantage.  They didn’t.

2. Costco also had a rock bottom price for eggs from caged chickens but we’re not going there.

3. Of the omega-3 fats, DHA is most deficient in our diet so getting more is a big issue.  I was surprised that no store I visited is offering a DHA-enhanced egg. 

4. What are the egg companies pushing?  Free-range, cage-free, or hens living with roosters.  The documentary Food Inc. gets a lot of credit but kindness to chickens now trumps nutrition. 

5. Who has the best DHA eggs?  Maybe the poultry firms licensed by Gold Circle Farms.  They claim 150 mg of DHA per egg from their special diet but I didn’t find them in the stores I searched.  I sent an e-mail to Henry’s (our whole foods market) and got a quick call from the store director saying people hadn’t been buying them (there is about a $1.00 premium, a bargain considering the higher DHA) but he would try them again.  I’ll pick some up tomorrow.

6. The best food source for DHA omega-3?  If you bought the following foods for just the DHA (not a bad idea) here is what you would pay per gram:

a. If you bought Costco’s high-omega egg, I estimate you are paying $6.00 for a gram of DHA. 

b. If you find the Gold Circle high-DHA eggs, the cost is roughly $2.50.

c. If you get DHA in Nature Made fish oil capsules, you pay $5 per gram.

d. If you buy farmed salmon you pay roughly $2.50. 

________________________________________________________________________________________________

Bottom line: Enjoy salmon (plus other cold-water fish) and high-omega eggs in your diet; the Gold Circle eggs are a bargain despite the premium and deserve our support.

Why We Need DHA:

DHA is an essential fatty acid of the omega-3 family.  It is critical to the systems in the body involved with data: the brain, eyes, and nervous system.  Deficiency is linked to depression, dementia, memory dysfunction, attention-deficit disorders, and mental diseases.  Though not proven, some theorize that obesity and violent behavior can be added to the list.  In a future post we’ll talk more about DHA—it’s the most interesting fat.

Wednesday
Apr202011

inedible oils?

Skip's Shortcut:  This is an important post on fat and your health.  You need to know this stuff, but maybe I gave too much information.  Sorry, I do that sometimes.  So here's the shortcut—read the three lessons of Dr. Holman below, skip down to the table "Healthiest Cooking Oils," then jump to Healthy Change #16.  Oh, and please don't forget to leave a comment.

 

You may take a pass on Dr. Ralph Holman’s favorite lunch—sardine and herring with canola oil on rye bread, followed by an apple—but what he learned during his career should influence what you do eat.  Holman studied the blood fats in people around the world and made three key discoveries:

1. Omega-3 and omega-6 fats—both essential to life—compete for the same metabolic space in our body.  One will crowd the other out, so to get enough of each, they must be balanced in our diet.

2. There is an annual cycle in nature:  the green plants of spring are rich in omega-3, while the seeds harvested in fall are full of omega-6.

3. Year around, Americans eat too much omega-6 and too little omega-3 and this is a known cause of depression, dementia, memory dysfunction, attention-deficit disorders, mental diseases, and vision problems.  Though not proven, some theorize that obesity and violent behavior can be added to the list. 

The culprits behind our excessive omega-6 fat intake are the “seed oils.”  Originally they were called vegetable oils, which gave them a healthy sound.  The so-called edible oil industry grew around their use.  Edible is not the best word as these oils were usually hydrogenated, but in the beginning we were ignorant of the danger of manufactured trans fats. 

The consumption of seed oils exploded in the last century with the rise of processed foods.  The first big product was Crisco, introduced in 1911 (originally made from cottonseeds, later mostly soybean oil) which handily displaced lard; next was margarine, which overtook butter in the 1950s; along the way salad oils (liquid shortening) found their way into our dietary. 

Soybeans are the dominant edible oil source.  If you check the ingredient list of chips, crackers, cookies, breads, and processed foods in your grocery store you will find soybean oil (with a little corn, cottonseed, or safflower oil).  These oils are also found in margarine, sandwich spreads, salad oils, shortenings, and mayonnaise.   They’re common to most processed foods, especially fast foods.

The War Against Saturated Fats

America got itself into a crazy mess regarding fats.  In a misguided attempt to reduce heart disease, influential scientists vilified saturated fats—like butter and lard—despite millennia of safe use.   The newly invented polyunsaturated fats—found in seed oils—were wrongfully hyped as the cure.  It made a good business but the oils were bad medicine.

Europeans, by contrast, chose to stay with traditional fats.  The French, despite their creamy sauces and butter, largely avoided heart disease.  In recent decades, heart disease in southern Europe has declined to even lower levels as prosperity put more saturated fats on the dinner table.

There is painful irony in our anti-saturated fat experiment:  In attempting to solve a problem, we made it worse.  When we reduced saturated fats, we replaced them with hydrogenated seed oils and sugar, both now implicated as causes of heart disease.  Worse, we sowed the seeds of two additional epidemics: overweight and type 2 diabetes.  It’s a big fat mess.

High-Oleic Seed Oils

For years seed oils were falsely promoted as healthy because they were polyunsaturated and certain polyunsaturated fats (omega-3 and -6) are essential to life.  Unfortunately, omega-3s are reactive to oxygen when refined so to extend shelf life they were removed by hydrogenation.  The resulting trans fats were a health disaster. 

To reduce the need for hydrogenation, seed plants are being modified through GMO (genetically modified organism) and other techniques to reduce polyunsaturated fats.  Given names like “high oleic” oil, many food products now use these new oils and products made from them proudly carry the “zero trans fats” banner.  But are these modified oils healthy enough for long-term use?  Though the FDA allows their use, some observers are uncomfortable.  After all, the FDA still allows the sale of food with trans fats.  In time we may know, but for now here are some concerns with high-oleic oils:

1. About ninety percent of the soybean and corn crops are GMO per reports.  The long-term healthiness of consuming GMOs is a hotly debated but unsettled issue.  In Europe GMOs are generally not allowed.

2. The new “high oleic” varieties are low in omega-3, and have an unhealthy omega 6:3 ratio.

3. Seed oils are refined using chemical solvents like hexane (a hazardous pollutant per the EPA) plus heat exposure (during hexane recovery, bleaching, and deodorization) that can harm the nature of the fats. 

Though approved by the FDA, we cannot be sure about the long-term healthiness of these oils.  My plan is to follow the “century rule” and avoid them as best I can.

Healthy Changes

To date, two of fifteen Healthy Changes have addressed fats.  Healthy Change #2 addressed the worst source of trans fats—deep fat fried foods.  There are still plenty of sources in the grocery store unfortunately, mainly in processed foods, particularly fast foods.  A rule of thumb is to eat nothing that has the term “hydrogenated” in the ingredient list. 

Healthy Change #11 recommended that two traditional fats, butter and olive oil, be returned to our dietary, and suggested that people reacquaint themselves with a product their great-grandmothers used—lard

Dietary fat is the subject of two more healthy changes:  this post explains how to eat less omega-6 seed oils, and a future post will show how to eat more omega-3 fats from plants and animal sources. 

Note:  If your diet is based on herbs (vegetables, legumes), fruits, whole grains, nuts and a little meat, you will automatically consume a healthy fat profile.  The problems start when we replace whole food with processed and fast foods.  Briefly, the average American should eat 1/3 as much omega-6 and more omega-3.

Please comment on how you include healthy fats and oils in your diet.

Need a reminder? Download our Healthy Change reminder card. Print and fold, then place in your kitchen or on your bathroom mirror to help you remember the Healthy Change of the week.

Friday
Mar182011

the butter aisle

Have you watched the TV program “Amazing Race” where teams race from city to city?  Same deal here, but we’re inside a supermarket.  We started in the cereal aisle and then moved to the bread aisle, searching for foods that met our health criteria of whole grains plus more natural fiber than added sugar.  Unfortunately, only a few products passed our test.  Finding healthy foods outside the produce department isn’t that easy.

Today we’re in the butter aisle.  At least I think of it as the butter aisle, but it’s mostly soybean oil.  It’s a strange world, not as simple as I thought: there are 72 different products offered.  This seems like marketing trickery: instead of offering a few healthy products at good value, there is a confusing jumble of stuff of unknown healthiness.  Butter and hydrogenated margarine products are at opposite ends of the aisle, glaring at each other over the tubs of “spreads”.  Spreads?  Spreads are the new name for what we used to call soft margarine. 

Butter:  There's a good feeling to the butter section.  The companies are old, venerable.  Challenge Dairy Products has been in business since 1911; their Danish Creamery brand has been around since 1895.  Things are simpler here; butter is mainly sold salted in cubes.  You can also buy it unsalted, whipped, or organic (Horizon Organic, or Wild Harvest).  The ingredient list is refreshingly short for butter.  Prices range from $4.49 for the store brand to $8.78 for Plugra European Style Butter, but most brands are around $5.00 a pound.  This could be all you need except some are allergic to milk products or are avoiding saturated fats (a topic for another day).  Land O’ Lakes is a cooperative offering butter but also blends it with olive oil, or canola oil (which gives an omega-3 label claim).  Life’s good in the butter section; the local Henry's even has natural cream from pasture-fed cows.

Margarine:  Margarine was a bad idea that hung around for a century.  The soft margarines were highest in trans fats and they have pretty much disappeared.  The hard margarines have trans fats too, but less, so they are still sold.  How much trans fat?  It ranges from 1.5 to 3.0 grams per serving.  Several brands claimed “zero” as allowed by the FDA but the ingredient list said “hydrogenated” so this suggests they just have less than 0.5 grams.  The Institute of Medicine recommends that we eat no trans fats so why are these products still offered?  Because some poor person will buy them—they sell at rock bottom prices, as low as $.99 per pound for the store brand.  Some day we’ll address why the supermarkets stopped caring about their customers.

Spreads in Tubs:  The old margarines are called spreads now.  In recent years a product called Smart Balance made life difficult for the bully of the spread market—the British company Unilever.  (Unilever dominates with brands like Imperial, Shedd’s Spread Country Crock, I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter, Promise, and upmarket Brummel & Brown.)  What Smart Balance did was to develop a patented method to make an oil emulsion (using soybean, palm, canola and olive oils) that didn’t have trans fats and then make a big noise about their lack of trans fats.  This put pressure on Unilever and forced them to abandon their hydrogenated products in 2010.  They replaced them with a new process that uses interesterification to blend soybean and palm oils.  Is this a healthy product?  Good question; it was good enough to pass FDA requirements, but we don’t know what the long-term effects might be.  On the other hand, I don’t have any information that the Smart Balance product is better—it has a long ingredient list too.  Prices range from $1.39 to $3.79 for a 15 oz. container.  The higher priced brands have canola or olive oil plus some synthetic vitamins added.  There’s some marketing trickery in the tub products: some use terms like “buttery” or “butter taste” but they don’t contain butter. 

The bottom line?  I’m going to enjoy butter in moderation.  If you have a milk allergy and can’t eat butter, what do you do?  I don’t have an answer because I’m uncomfortable with soybean oils.  Many of the soybeans grown are GMOs, most oils are extracted using the toxic chemical hexane, and there are concerns about thermal damage to the oils during processing.  The industry has not been open about how they process oils, perhaps to protect trade secrets, so we don’t know enough to choose their products.  Wouldn’t it be better to inform more and market less?

Question for comment:  What do you use besides butter?

Sunday
Mar132011

Is fat a four-Letter word?

It’s confusing about fats—what’s in, what’s out, and what’s okay today.  Want some lasting advice?  Eat what your great-grandmother ate.  Butter, olive oil, and lard—that’s likely what she had in her pantry.  For millennia butter was churned from the cream of pasture-fed cows.  The French not only enjoyed rich buttery sauces, they also had low rates of heart disease.  Butter makes everything taste better.

Olive oil, much mentioned in the scriptures, is another ancient food.   Unlike vegetable oils, which are chemically extracted from seeds, olive oil is pressed from the flesh surrounding the seed. The trees that provide olives may live for centuries and a branch is traditionally used as sign of goodwill.

Lard is also a traditional cooking fat.  After a century of slander, top chefs have rediscovered its merits especially as a shortening, and public interest is spreading.  Maybe your great-grandmother left piecrust tips behind, or a recipe for her lard-roasted potatoes.  Butter, olive oil, and lard—what more do you need?

In the last century each of these traditional fats fell from favor and then was rediscovered.  How did we go so wrong?  Well, when food becomes a big business, the consumer can get lost in the process.  It makes me think of the bon mot, “’Every man for himself’, called the elephant as he danced among the chickens.”  

Take soybean oil, for example.  Soybean oil is our #1 food oil; it accounts for 2/3 of the vegetable-sourced oil we eat.  It’s an ingredient in just about every processed food.  We eat more than we think, about 25 lbs. a year, or an ounce each day.   For years essentially all soybean oil was hydrogenated to remove the omega-3 fats, which extended shelf life.  Hydrogenation creates trans fats and we all grew up unaware we were eating a toxic man-made fat (plus being deprived of needed omega-3s).  Voices of protest were raised—the work of Dr. Mary Enig comes to mind—but they were ignored and even harassed.

The evidence against trans fat finally became so impossible to ignore that the FDA—rather than simply ban them as the Institute of Medicine advised—required the industry to disclose trans fats on the nutrition panel, effective 2006.  (Though they gave them a little wiggle room by allowing food with less than 0.5 grams to be labeled as zero trans fats.  So in the way that language is misused in advertising, we don’t actually know if zero really means zero without searching for the word “hydrogenated” on the ingredient list.) 

Eliminating trans fats from our diet was the goal of our second Healthy Change. To remind, trans fats move LDL and HDL cholesterol and inflammation in the unhealthy direction and are a cause of heart disease, obesity and diabetes. 

The food industry, once the defender of trans fat, is now racing to replace them with some new man-made fat.  Genetically modified soybeans with reduced polyunsaturated oils (less omega-3) have been introduced.  If you check the chip aisle in your grocery store, you’ll find that most chips now claim, “zero trans fats”.  Are these genetically modified oils healthy?  We don’t know for sure.  Concerned scientists have voiced concern but it will take time before any harm can be proven.

Likewise with margarine and shortenings, new methods of processing soybean oil are being developed.  Hydrogenation is being replaced, for example, with the hard-to-pronounce process of interesterification.  Are products with these new man-made fats healthy?  Same answer: We don’t know for sure.  It will take time before any long-term harm can be proven. 

Here is a food rule to consider:  Allow a century of use before assuming a new man-made food is healthy.  All this brings us to this week’s change:

In a future post we’ll share what we learned on a walk through the butter and margarine aisle at the local grocery.  Please share your experience with fats.

Need a reminder? Download our Healthy Change reminder card. Print and fold, then place in your kitchen or on your bathroom mirror to help you remember the Healthy Change of the week.

Sunday
Jan092011

fat city

In the last post—The Short And Sweet Of It?—we briefly discussed the health consequences of America’s love affair with sugar.  We know we eat too much sugar, it’s likely our biggest health problem, but the sugar habit is hard to break.  So this first step was proposed as Healthy Change #1If you consume sodas or other sugared drinks, limit yourself to one (12 oz.) serving per week.  We’re not done with sugar, we’ll return to reducing sugar intake in later posts.

This post gets after the next unhealthy food we persist in eating:  hydrogenated trans fat.  In the 20th century we abandoned traditional fats like butter and lard in favor of modern factory-made fats, such as Crisco and margarine.  We now know this was a very big mistake.  As our consumption of traditional fats declined in favor of factory fats, there was a parallel increase in cardiovascular disease, cancer, and other chronic diseases. 

 In the last 30 years we went on a reduced-fat binge, which meant avoiding animal fats in favor of factory-processed vegetable oils.  Another big mistake; the result was we ate more trans fats and less of the healthy omega-3 fats.  By now, just about everyone knows that trans fats should be avoided.  So here is a good start on doing this (more to come):

This means no French fries, no onion rings, no corn dogs, no donuts, and especially, no deep-fried Twinkies.  The language of this Healthy Change does leave a door open:  you can cook these foods at home, using healthy oil.  Because this is difficult, in our home we replaced French fries with oven-roasted potatoes (recipe coming soon!).

How did trans fats become so entrenched in our diet?  It started with the invention of hydrogenation and the introduction of Procter & Gamble’s Crisco in 1911.  Crisco shortening was followed by the introduction of a butter substitute, margarine.  Both these products are full of trans fats and depleted of healthy omega-3 fats.  Because hydrogenated oils are cheap and have a long shelf life, they also found their way into a multitude of processed foods and fast foods. 

What was most remarkable about Crisco was how easily it replaced a product people had used for centuries—lard.  It happened practically overnight.  A 1921 book, The Story of Crisco, tells how the product was presented:  It seems strange to many that there can be anything better than butter for cooking, or of greater utility than lard, and the advent of Crisco has been a shock to the older generation, born in an age less progressive than our own, and prone to contend that the old fashioned things are good enough.  It was a clever pitch that disarmed the wisdom of tradition and it worked.

As it turns out, the “older generation” was quite wise in preferring olden ways.  The rest of us ate Crisco and margarine for a long time before we learned how harmful trans fats were to our health.  Today the merits of the old fats—butter, olive oil, and lard—are being rediscovered. 

Need a reminder? Download our Healthy Change reminder card. Print and fold, then place in your kitchen or on your bathroom mirror to help you remember the Healthy Change of the week.