Saturated Fat and Cholesterol Health Benefits
Let me talk first about saturated fats (derived from animals) regarding historical aspects and common sense too, and then I will get to the science part of saturated fat and cholesterol health benefits!
Historical View
Humans have been consuming meat (protein and fat) from different animals for at least 200,000 years as homo-sapiens species and much longer as neanderthal and homo Erectus species.
So we are talking about hundreds of generations that consumed almost every part of an animal including saturated fats. So if saturated fats are bad for our health as many scientists claim for the last 60 or 70 years, then we would have been died out or extinct! And we did not survive let alone thrive on eating vegetables and fruits and hunters and gatherers. You don’t think so, try it yourself for a while.
There is a great book that I think should be part of any university curriculum in the nutrition program, and it is called the Nutrition and Physical Degeneration by Dr. Weston A. Price who was a dentist in Cleveland, Ohio.
Dr. Weston A. Price
Dr. Price traveled to different countries in the 1930s to find out if there were healthy people and didn't have dental health problems such as overcrowded teeth and problems in facial structures. He decided to travel because in his practice as a dentist observed an increasing number of dental problems with his patients but wasn’t sure what was the cause.
After ten years of traveling to several countries around the world, he found very healthy people with beautiful and wide facial structures and very few dental problems, and at the same time, their overall health was excellent. These societies had little interaction with the other so-called “civilized societies” which means these traditional or primitive societies consumed their traditional health-giving foods and not the highly processed western foods.
The reason I mention this book is that Dr. Price did not find any vegan group, but all ate animal food including saturated fats and cholesterol as part of their diets.
All these groups from Switzerland to Africa ate different foods and a different ratio of protein, fat, and carbohydrates. Some consumed more fat percentage in the diet than others and some more carbohydrates, and some were somewhat in the middle. But they were healthier and obviously with a much robust immune system since they had very few chronic diseases if any such as heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and Alzheimer's.
It amazes me how this book has been ignored until this day, but more people now are waking up to the fallacy that saturated fats and cholesterol are bad for your health.
Wisdom and Intelligence of Our Bodies
When your body is hungry and craving a fatty meal (in particular, saturated fat), it communicates with you by telling you to eat a nice steak with butter or sour cream on top of a baked potato. I think the body is telling us something like this, “Hello, I am your body, and I need some immune-boosting nutrients such as saturated fats, cholesterol, and these precious fat-soluble vitamins A, D, K, and E that come packaged in animal fat.”
The other component to this and let’s not forget the taste of melted butter or cheese on the potato is delicious and pleasurable because it is not the same thing as eating a plain baked potato. So what not to like about saturated fats in ice cream, chicken drumstick or thigh, melted cheese on a piece of sourdough bread, and the list goes on.
Common Sense and Taste
It amazes me sometimes how some people use willpower to eat foods devoid of fat such as:
- Eating egg whites and throwing away the yolk that is more valuable in nutrients.
- Or eating baked chicken breast and even without the skin, it is like eating sand.
- I never understood how it is enjoyable eating lean steak.
- Or even worse, drinking skim milk or nonfat cheese!
I encourage you to stop using your willpower and following the conventional and ignorant media and listen to your body and find reliable, unbiased scientific resources that have no agenda behind them.
Saturated Fats and Cholesterol Health Benefits
Cholesterol is technically not fat but heavy molecular weight alcohol with 46 hydrogens, 27 carbons, and one oxygen (C27H45OH). And because of its heavy molecular weight, it is an animal sterol.
-Cholesterol is so important to the human body and without it, not only your immune system will suffer but the whole body will suffer too, and you won’t live for long.
An informative and interesting interview of Chris Masterjohn Ph.D. with Dr. Mercola where he mentioned that when the body in a pregnant woman recognizes the fetus has some genetic defect where he/she can’t synthesize cholesterol most likely the body will abort the fetus.
And if the baby survives this phase then will have many health issues (Smith-Lemli-Opitz syndrome) and won’t survive for a long time.
-Your brain is rich in cholesterol and saturated fat thus it needs to consume cholesterol and saturated fat. Avoiding or limiting your intake of-of these two nutrients can harm your brain concerning memory and learning ability.
-And this particularly important for children’s brain development who are in the growing phase and very much need this essential nutrient for optimal health. Mother’s breast milk is a rich source of saturated fats and cholesterol.
Cholesterol is essential for tissue repair and the healing process inside your body.
-Saturated fats constitute about 50 percent of the human cell membrane and they provide sufficient stiffness, so the cell does not become floppy. Cholesterol helps too to give rigidity to the cell membrane.
-Cholesterol is an antioxidant thus helping the cell membranes from free-radical damage.
-Cholesterol in the skin is needed for the production of provitamin D when someone is sunbathing.
-Cholesterol is needed for sex hormone production.
-When you are under a certain amount of stress cholesterol in the blood increases because it is part of the healing process. Therefore, cholesterol critically helps to boost the immune system.
-Saturated fats protect the liver toxins such as the chemicals in Tylenol and also alcohol. A quick note: I can testify to this benefit noticeably when I have a glass or two of wine (alcohol) on the relatively empty stomach I always eat some cheese or butter and some crackers then the feeling of nausea or discomfort from drinking wine disappears.
- Saturated fats enhance the absorption of calcium to be assimilated into the bones.
- Saturated fats improves the immune system
- Saturated fat is your heart's favorite food to use for energy and especially during added stress.
There are more health needs to consume these two wonderful nutrients, but I hope you get the idea of saturated fat and cholesterol health benefits that are mentioned above, therefore, to boost your immune system because without including them you are missing on a lot.
Sources
- Source (1) Enig, M. G. (2000). Know Your Fats: The Complete Primer for Understanding the Nutrition of Fats, Oils and Cholesterol. Silver Spring, MD: Bethesda Press
- Source (2) Ravnskov, U. (2000). The Cholesterol Myths: Exposing the Fallacy that Saturated Fat and Cholesterol
- Source (3) Campbell-McBride, N. (2007). Put Your Heart in Your Mouth. Norfolk, United Kingdom: Medinform Publishing
- Source (4) Enig, M. G., Fallon, S. (2005) Eat Fat, Lose Fat: The Healthy Alternative to Trans Fats. New York, NY Hudson Street Press
