Total Health Breakthroughs: Free Natural Health Newsletter and Alternative Health Articles

In this week’s issue of THB Undercover, I countered Dr. Shyam Kolvekar’s contention that saturated fat in the diet is to blame for the rising rates of heart disease in young people. He even recommended banning butter! To learn why he is totally off base and why you should have no fear of saturated fat, see the Wednesday issue. Today, I discuss his recommended alternatives – margarine and sunflower oil.

It is bad enough that mainstream doctors and dieticians erroneously focus on saturated fat and dietary cholesterol as the cause of heart disease – something which has never been proven. Perhaps even worse is that the alternatives they suggest HAVE been proven to cause heart disease… among a range of other chronic diseases.

In his recent calls to “ban butter,” Dr. Shyam Kolvekar suggests that it will make a “world of difference” to replace it with polyunsaturated fats like margarine or sunflower oil. He is correct. It will make a world of difference. It will dramatically increase your risk of heart disease, cancer, asthma and macular degeneration, to name just a few degenerative conditions associated with these fats.

And since Dr. Kolvekar’s concerns are “for the children”… let’s start there.

The journal Intelligence published a report last year that what children eat can have a significant impact on their intelligence. The researchers stated that they “found a number of dietary factors to be significantly associated with intelligence measures.”

So, what was their most consistent finding? It was the association between margarine consumption and lower IQ scores. The children who ate margarine every day had IQs that were up to six points lower than children who did not.

But who cares about a few points on the IQ scale, when this industrially-processed, yellow-colored, food-like substance can have such a dramatic impact on heart health and longevity?

Unfortunately, that “dramatic impact” on heart health is not for the good…

The journal Epidemiology published a study called, “Margarine Intake and Subsequent Coronary Heart Disease in Men.” Authors of the study followed participants of the Framingham Heart Study for 20 years and recorded their incidence of heart attack. They also tracked both butter and margarine consumption.

You couldn’t ask for a better study to either prove or refute the assertions of Dr. Kolvekar. And apparently this one must have escaped Dr. Kolvekar’s attention, because it directly contradicts his position.

The researchers discovered that as margarine consumption increased… heart attacks went up. As butter consumption increased… heart attacks declined.

The study also divided the data into ten year increments. What they discovered is that during the first ten years, there was little association between margarine consumption and heart attacks. However, during the second decade of follow-up, the group eating the most margarine had 77% more heart attacks than the group eating none!

“There is no safe level to consume…”

It should be noted that during the years this study took place, most margarine was made with hydrogenated oils (trans fat). All the while, these spreads were marketed as a way to prevent heart disease. Never mind the fact that the Institute of Medicine has said of this substance, “there is no safe level to consume.”

Many margarine products today are still made with hydrogenated oil. But most are made with some type of vegetable oil. And while this is an improvement, it is not “healthy” by any means. In fact, excess omega-6 fatty acids have been proven beyond any doubt to cause inflammation and oxidation in the body and increase the risk of cancer, heart disease, macular degeneration, diabetes, auto-immune disease, and more.

Are you in balance?

There are two main types of polyunsaturated fats – omega-6 and omega-3. These fatty acids are both essential, but our bodies cannot make them. We have to get them from our diet. It is also important to understand that these fats generally have opposing biochemical effects.

For example, omega-6 fats tend to encourage inflammation. Omega-3 fats inhibit inflammation. You can think of these two fats like yin and yang or weights on a balance. You don’t want to tip the balance one way or the other. So ideally, you should consume them in equal proportions.

Our ancient biological ancestors consumed these fats in a ratio of roughly 1:1. We should too. The problem is that the way our food is processed, the way our animals are raised, and the type of foods we eat we eat have caused our consumption of omega-6 fatty acids to skyrocket. At the same time, our consumption of omega-3s has gone down.

This is a recipe for disease and we are clearly paying that price. The fact that our medical authorities are actually encouraging this imbalance borders on criminal.

A little history…

The amount of fat we consume has not changed much over the last hundred years. But the type of fat we eat has changed drastically. A hundred years ago, we ate mostly animal fats, which are primarily saturated and monounsaturated.

Animal fat does contain a small amount of polyunsaturated fat. But because the animals we ate back then were raised on their natural diets, the polyunsaturated fats were in a natural healthy ratio. Today’s grain fed cows, for example, have 30 to 50 times more omega-6 than omega-3s.

But that wasn’t even the biggest change…

As the technology became available to mass produce oil from seeds and grains, our consumption of polyunsaturated fat began to increase. Then, in the 1950s, the medical establishment, the processed food industry and the government began an aggressive campaign to steer people away from saturated fats and toward polyunsaturated vegetable oils.

Consumption of vegetable oils went through the roof. At the beginning of 1900 there were almost no vegetable oils in our diet. Today, the average American consumes 70 pounds of vegetable fat!

In addition to the imbalanced fats in our meats, just look at any nutrition label. Almost invariably, you will see corn oil, soybean oil, peanut oil or any number of other polyunsaturated fats.

You are what you eat…

We are not designed to eat these fats in the quantities we do. The make-up of fat in the human body is normally about 97% monounsaturated and saturated. Only about 3% should be polyunsaturated (half of which should be omega-3 and the other half omega-6).

However, the type of fat in your diet dictates the type of fat in your cells. And if you consume extracted and concentrated plant oils, your cell membranes will incorporate these fat molecules.

The problem with polyunsaturated fats displacing saturated fats in cell structures is that these fats are highly unstable. This means that they are extremely vulnerable to oxidative stress and prone to causing inflammation.

The replacement of monounsaturated and saturated fats with omega-6 polyunsaturated fats in the cell membranes causes a host of problems in the body. One of the clearest ways we have observed this is in the formation of skin cancer.

Omega-6: The Fat That Promotes Skin Cancer

Because they are so unstable and prone to oxidation, when sunlight hits omega-6 fats, it can easily convert them to cancer-causing molecules. Among all the foods we eat, omega-6 fatty acids have been shown to be the strongest promoters of skin cancers in both people and animals.

In one study performed at the University of Western Ontario, researchers observed the effects of ten different dietary fats ranging from most saturated to least saturated. What they found is that saturated fats produced the least number of cancers, while omega-6 polyunsaturated fats produced the most. Numerous other studies have also shown that polyunsaturated fats stimulate cancer while saturated fat does not¹ and that saturated fats do not break down to form free radicals.²

In another study, Dr. Vivienne Reeve, PhD, Head of the Photobiology Research Group at the University of Sydney irradiated a group of mice while feeding while feeding different groups of them polyunsaturated and saturated fats. She discovered that the mice that consumed only saturated fat were totally protected from skin cancer. Those in the polyunsaturated fat group quickly developed skin cancers. Later in the study, the mice in the saturated fat group were given polyunsaturated fats. Skin cancers quickly developed.

But while excessive omega-6 fatty acids promote skin cancer (and a host of other health concerns), omega-3 fatty acids strongly inhibit these things.

This was confirmed in a comprehensive review of many studies published by the National Academy of Sciences in 2001.

Dr. Lesley Rhodes explored the ability of omega-3s to protect skin cells. Her research was published in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology. It showed that omega-3 fatty acids reduce the inflammation that would normally be induced by excess sun exposure. She also showed that omega-3s significantly reduced DNA damage.

In a study published in the journal Cancer Research in 2000 researchers showed that the omega-3 fatty acid DHA, inhibited the progression of exponentially growing melanoma cells. This study also noted the following:

"Epidemiological, experimental, and mechanistic data implicate omega-6 fat as stimulators and long-chain omega-3 fats as inhibitors of the development and progression of a range of human cancers, including melanoma."

I just touched on skin cancer here. But the same processes work inside your body as well.

One of the best things you can do to protect your health is to consume roughly equal amounts of omega-3s and omega-6 fatty acids. You do that by avoiding conventionally-raised meats and strictly limiting the processed and fried foods in your diet. Anytime you see soybean oil, corn oil, vegetable oil, sunflower oil, etc. on the label, do not eat that food.

Instead, consume more healthy fats (saturated, monounsaturated and omega-3s) from wild game, grass-fed beef and bison, pastured poultry, wild fish and shellfish. Take a fish oil supplement. Eat nuts. And consume olive oil, walnut oil, macadamia nut oil, avocado oil and coconut oil as liberally as you desire.

To Your Health,

Jon Herring
Editorial Director
Total Health Breakthroughs

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