Six Pack Abs Expert

Unsaturated fats

Since the 1950’s, plant-based unsaturated fats have become the answer of the food industry and government to our health problems. Why then have these problems only increased since that time? Let’s first look at the financial benefits to using unsaturated vegetable fats versus saturated fats like butter. Take a cookie, for example. Butter comes from cows and cows cost money. More money than having a field of sun flowers or corn from which you can press oil. Butter also has a shorter sell-by date. That’s why cookies are no longer made from butter. You will often find the very vague description ‘vegetable fats’ on the label, meaning they chose the cheapest unsaturated fat available at the time.

So there’s a clear commercial reason for using unsaturated vegetable fats. If this had a positive effect on our health this of course would be no problem. Trouble is, it doesn’t. Did you know that margarine is inferior butter which was originally used to fatten up animals for slaughter? Margarine has a grayish color and needs to be dyed to give it the color of butter. In fact, margarine is only one molecule removed from plastic! The powerful food industry is selling us this just to save a buck. They don’t give a hoot about your health and your government won’t protect you either.

There is some confusion about monounsaturated and polyunsaturated vegetable fats. Examples of monounsaturated fats are olive oil, sesame oil and peanut oil. Polyunsaturated fats include sunflower oil, corn oil and soy oil. You may recognize the polyunsaturated fats as ingredients in many commercial food products. That’s because they’re dead cheap and have many applications, not just for the food industry but also the cosmetics and pesticide industries, to name but a few. Polyunsaturated fats contain inflammatory omega-6 fatty acids. Monounsaturated fats contain anti-inflammatory omega-3 fatty acids.

There’s a growing awareness about the health-giving effects of omega fatty acids. The food industry cleverly plays on this awareness by putting slogans like ‘contains omega fats’ on their labels. They’d rather not distinguish between omega-3 and omega-6, just like they talk about ‘vegetable oil’. The omega-3 to omega-6 ratio we are supposed to consume should not exceed 1:4. Due to extensive use of the cheaper polyunsaturated fats our modern foods have a ratio of 1:20, sometimes even 1:50.

Something else is also going on. Most plant oils do not lend themselves to be heated. The burning point of virtually all vegetable oils is much lower than saturated fats, which makes these plant fats good for cold use only. But bear in mind that the balance should be in favor of omega-3. Omega-6 fats are not necessarily bad, though, it’s about balance. Healthy omega-3 rich oils are olive oil, walnut oil and flaxseed oil. Healthy omega-6 oils are sesame oil and wheat germ oil.

Besides sugars, grains also contain lots of omega-6 fats. For this reason, a salad (complex carbs) with green leafy vegetables and sprouts (omega-3) is infinitely healthier for you than all this bread (sugars, omega-6). Frying in vegetable oil results in carcinogenic substances due to burned oil. Only olive oil, sesame oil and peanut oil allow themselves to be heated, olive oil being the healthiest of the three because the other two contain omega-6. Saturated fats can all be heated very well.

Whatever you do, don’t go over 350 degrees Fahrenheit, preferably below that. Use a low to medium flame when you’re cooking. Low and slow is best. Even the most heat-resistant fats will burn if you go over 350 Fahrenheit. For that reason a microwave oven, which heats food ultra fast on a molecular level, is a definite no-no. Viewed under a microscope, microwaved food shows ruptured, broken and even exploded cells. This has been known since World War Two. Pity you have to hear it from me.