Fats and Oils and Their Impact on Health

[Guest guest]

http://www.westonaprice.org/knowyourfats/fats_oils.html

 

By Mary G. Enig, PhD

 

I want to address the topic of food fats and oils and their impact on

health, because fat represents an important nutrient that was negatively

impacted by the forerunner to the planned National Nutrition Summit,

namely, the 1969 White House Conference on Foods and Nutrition and the

resulting McGovern Committee hearings in the 1970s, which produced the

Dietary Goals. These Dietary Goals and later Guidelines have been

largely responsible for promoting an unbalanced intake of the fat

components of our diets. Natural fats such as butter, tallow, lard, and

palm and coconut oils have been relegated to the garbage heap, and the

man-made fats such as the widely-used, partially hydrogenated

shortenings and margarines, and excessive polyunsaturated oils, have

been promoted as if they were magic medicine. That is just the opposite

of what we should be doing because those natural fats and oils have

components found only in them, which are health-promoting, and their

replacements are now known to be disease-causing.

 

The 1969 White House Conference produced the New Foods Document, which

promoted the acceptance of imitation foods as if they were real foods.

This has led to a major decline in the quality of our foods and

especially in the quality of food fats. It has led to the open

promotion of genetically-modified foods that suit the production of

processed fats, and has also led to a decline in quality and uses of

our farm-produced fats.

 

Now, 30 years later, there may be an opportunity to correct some of

the mistakes. It is necessary, however, for those who will be in charge

of the forthcoming Summit to make an effort to become properly

educated as to the changes in the diet that occurred during the

intervening 30 years, which have resulted in the situation we have

today. We are confronted with the problems of widespread obesity,

runaway diabetes in adults, ever-increasing cancer incidence rates,

immune dysfunction, a continuing increase in heart disease rates, and

growth and development problems in our young.

 

In 1970, the FDA prepared an internal memo that said the trans fatty

acids in the food supply should be identified. Thirty years later the

FDA has proposed the cloudy labeling of the trans fats under an

unsuitable saturated fats umbrella. In the intervening 30 years in my

former position as a fats, oils, and lipids researcher in a university

lipids laboratory, I have frequently pointed out to various agencies,

through reports to the appropriate dockets, that ignoring the levels of

trans fatty acids in foods has prevented us from having accurate data

on fat composition of our diets. As a result of being misled, we have a

consuming public terrified of natural fats and oils—a public, which, by

its avoidance of these natural fats and oils, and consumption of

fabricated, man-manipulated fat and oil replacements, such as the

trans fats and the unstable polyunsaturates, is becoming increasingly

obese and ill.

 

This attempt by the FDA to tar the wholesome saturated fats with the

sins of the trans fats so as to promote in the minds of the consumers

the idea that they are both the same, is not supported by real

science. Biologically, the saturates and the trans have totally

opposite effects; the effects of the saturates are good and those of

the trans are undesirable.

 

By considering a proposal which would put trans fats and saturated

fats together on nutrition labels, the FDA is simply responding

favorably to a petition by the Center for Science in the Public

Interest (CSPI), which is a transparent and ingenious effort by the

CSPI and its mostly vegetarian nutritionist staff to malign the dairy

and meat industries by having consumers incorrectly associate animal

products with trans fat.

 

Many of you at this meeting may not have been born by 1969. Those of

us who were adults at that time know the extent to which the “new foods”

really are imitation foods even though they are not labeled as such.

 

 

 

About the Author

Mary G. Enig, PhD is the author of Know Your Fats: The Complete Primer

for Understanding the Nutrition of Fats, Oils, and Cholesterol,

Bethesda Press, May 2000. Order your copy here: www.enig.com/trans.html.