The war on fat and salt

Hello. My name is Alexandra, and I like fat. I like salt, too. In fact, I'd hazard to say that everyone does. I can't drink or eat low-fat anything. It doesn't taste good to me and something in my gut told me to trust that.


We like fats, salt, and sugar because we need them to survive. Our brain can't run without them. They also don't occur in nature in large amounts so we're programmed to crave them. So...why are we demonizing them? If you eat too much of anything, it's problematic. It's simplistic but easy to understand why fat would make someone fat, but in this case, it's not the truth!


The issue
There is fat and salt in most processed foods in places you may not even expect (same with HFCS), and our bodies did not evolve to handle that much of it. And of course, most Americans eat quite a lot of processed food. I'd love to go into how we evolved and what we ate, but I'll save that for another post.
So then what's wrong with low-fat and low-sodium? Well, I'll tell you what. If something doesn't taste satisfying, we probably won't feel satisfied. Fats help us feel fuller and satisfied for a longer period of time. Sometimes low-fat and low-sodium foods are just gross. So what happens when we eat our "Lite" soup and it tastes like watered-down vegetable puree? Well, we might add a ton of salt to it anyway just to make it palatable. Or, we might just be unhappy and unsatisfied and still feel hungry and so we'll eat another can. Or, we may even take it a step further and eat a fat- and salt-laden soup anyway. So now, we're eating more calories than we would have if we just ate the "bad" soup. Another reason is that in the absence of fat, sugar and ingredients you probably don't recognize as actual ingredients are usually added so that there is still some sort of flavor. If I eat two low-fat soups in order to feel as satisfied as if I ate one regular soup, I'd have just eaten more than twice the amount of sugar I normally would have. 


Processed foods

There are a lot of bad things about processed foods, and one of them is that they contain more sugar, salt, and sometimes fat than you probably would add if you made them yourself. It's certainly more convenient to nuke a bowl of instant maple brown sugar Cream of Wheat, but you probably wouldn't add nearly that much sugar if you bought the plain flavor and "seasoned" it yourself.








Low-fat dairy products really aren't good for you

Low-fat dairy products are touted by nutritionists as being better for you than their full-fat counterparts. The only thing they're right about is that there is less fat in low-fat products. That does not mean they're good for you! Here's a great example of what most nutritionists say; notice that the only basis they have for what makes something healthy or not is how many calories, and specifically calories from fat, is in the product. That is so over simplified!!!


Milk, as many of you know, contains lactose, a type of sugar. It also contains protein. Full-fat milk contains naturally occurring vitamins, dietary fiber, CLA, iron, and linoleic acid, an essential fat. When they remove some of the fat, it increases the percentages of carbohydrate and protein in the milk and removes all those great things I just listed. The protein content is usually improved by adding dry milk powder to the milk, which introduces more health risks. Basically, you remove fat, and you end up with more sugar in your glass of milk and fewer health benefits. If there is any ingredient that runs the risk of making you fat, it's sugar.


So...are people that are trying to lose weight by choosing low-fat dairy products eating more sugar than they would have if they didn't avoid fat? YES!


This table I copied from the VegSource is super helpful in seeing how carbs increase when you remove fat.

Now, if you really want benefits from your milk, buy raw, unpasteurized, grass-fed milk. Good luck, though, since it's illegal. The next best thing is grass-fed milk from pastured cows.


Sugar

The war on sugar is probably more justified, since overconsumption seems to be the biggest player in the obesity and diabetes epidemic our country is facing today. Again, sugar isn't automatically bad for you. Don't demonize a peach. It's the amounts and frequency with which we eat it that's the problem. We have to be aware of how prevalent added sugar is in processed food, too. Also in the case of fruits, the sugar isn't delivered to our cells the same way as it is in a processed food product. I can't really improve on this description from FreedomYou.com:
Fruit sugar, locked into the soft fibers of fresh fruit, is the most perfect fuel for the cells. Gentle, slow-releasing, and energy-sustaining, it is compounded with vitamins, minerals, water-soluble proteins, enzymes and trace elements. As the blood carries fructose to every cell, these life-giving elements are compounded with the fructose molecule, allowing the nutrients to be highly absorbable and readily used. Fructose molecules act as a delivery system to your cells.


This article helps answer the question "how does sugar get converted into fat?". It makes those sugary "fat-free" products laughable. Well yeah, fat-free now, but in about 5 minutes...


Saturated fats aren't always bad
There's also this idea that all saturated fats are bad for you. Why do we have to be food scientists to know what's good or bad for us? I'm sure that if you held an avocado in one hand and a piece of fried chicken in the other, you would instinctively know that the fat in the avocado is better for you than the fat in the fried chicken. You don't feel icky after eating guacamole, you feel clean. I do! Avocados DO have a lot of saturated fat, but it's poly-saturated fat. But, the point is, we shouldn't have to know that to know that an avocado is good for us and fried chicken is less good.

This study shows that saturated fats aren't necessarily linked to cardiovascular disease, which is what we're being fed on a daily basis.

So basically
It's not black and white. Fat doesn't automatically make a food unhealthful. Neither does salt. Fruit has sodium in it, for cracker's sake. We need to get back in touch with what  makes our body feel good and stop worrying about counting calories and trusting the ridiculous barrage of misinformation in the form of ads and food labels (which you can read more about here).


Source

6th worst article on the Internet

I discovered a link to 6 Worst Soups in America today. While their intentions are good, I still have a beef with this article. Har har. Pun totally intended. I don't like its strong emphasis on calories and its blatant disregard for nutrition.


DISCLAIMER: I am not a food scientist. I am not a certified nutritionist. All I have is what I experience, and what my instincts and common sense tell me about what I read. I am ok being wrong, but this is what I think.


It's not all about calories
The article lists six (totally unpopular) canned or restaurant soups and these key characteristics: Kind of soup, and calories, fat, and sodium per volume. It then proceeds to explain why each soup is bad. It does give you an alternative, but even those, I think, are kinda stupid, which I promise I will elaborate on. The article unrightfully puts all the responsibility of losing weight on how many calories you consume, which completely simplified, is true. But you could also eat absolute crap (literally poop, possibly) every day and lose weight if you consumed fewer calories than you burned. But, you'd also die. Because poop and crappy food have no nutrients. So you could be thin, but also wildly unhealthy. WILDLY.

This is common sense. This is instinct. 
They're not the six worst soups in America, they're the six most calorie-dense.


Full fat is better than no fat...?
The war on fat and salt regardless of amount or quality is getting out of hand. Read all about my rant on this "war" next week. It's more real than the war on religion, Rick Perry.





Sure, maybe a can of Amy's lentil soup has 460 calories, but you can bet I'll feel very satisfied with the fats (which, by the way, may be very good for me), protein, and fiber in those legumes I just consumed. Should I eat it every day? Probably not, but would you even want to? Should I eat the whole can? Not unless I'm hungry for the whole can! Eating healthfully is a balance. 
What if I get the alternative, and feel completely unsatisfied? What if I eat the whole can and still feel hungry? This is unlikely to happen with the calorie-dense soup for someone who doesn't over-eat, but over-eating's a can of worms (soup?) I don't want to open here. It'll get all over my desk.


Eating less of it
If you eat smaller portions, you will likely eat more frequently, your metabolism will speed up, and before you know it, you'll often rely on healthful, calorie-dense foods to fuel you. Well, it's not guaranteed, but it's likely that if you move your body around a little every day and don't eat more than you need, you will have a pretty snappy system. :: Eats some almonds ::


Eat This, Not That!
The problem with their recommendations in this article is that they're telling you to substitute something you like for something you may or may not like, or something that's not even the same kind of soup! And in any case, substitutions can be dangerous, because if you want a donut and someone gives you a sliced pineapple ring for a substitute, you might go "Hey, this pineapple ring is good!" But you may still very much want that donut. You might even want it until you get it.
I also dislike these kinds of comments: "Here are a few foods than contain less saturated and trans fat: Burger King Triple Whopper, 13 Taco Bell Steak Nacho Cheese Chalupas, and an entire medium-sized pepperoni pizza from Domino's. " How is that helpful? Are people now going to think that eating a Whopper is better for them than a tomato basil bisque and will help them lose weight?
Perhaps the message should be, "Eat these calorie-dense foods in moderation." Or..."Make your own, fresh soup and try not to buy processed, canned soup" or "try eating fewer cream-based soups for a little while and see what happens" (the reason being that cream-based soups often have fewer vegetables/nutrients and more "extra" ingredients like thickeners and sugar. The french eat a lot of dairy and fat, and they don't have the health problems we do...I firmly believe that dietary fat is not the enemy).

Maybe it'll help

Perhaps the problem I have with this article stems from the fact that I eat to be healthy, not to be a certain weight, and I think we should be focusing on health regardless of whether we're trying to lose weight. Losing weight is usually a fairly short-term goal and people want fast results. Health and longevity don't always show up as benefits, especially if nothing ever goes wrong. It's like not stepping in a pot hole every day, whereas losing weight is like someone giving you a present on the street every day. So, I get that my perspective may be uncommon.

It's simple, but it's not black and white

I don't think eating has to be complicated. But I also believe that when we say "fat always bad, low-sodium always good," we're cheating ourselves out of really understanding what our body wants and needs. Eating becomes complicated when it becomes solely an intellectual exercise, because it seems that we've lost touch with the instinct. Just like a woman instinctively knows how to have a baby, so do we all know how to eat food to prolong our lives and ultimately our species. You control what goes into your body, except when you're 5 and a camp counselor forces apple sauce down your throat over the water fountain while you gag.

Anyway, I believe we all somehow know what's good for our health and what's bad for our health, but we've gotten lost in a sea of misinformation, most of which is implying that we don't know how to eat.

Sources: The French Paradox