Howdy all. Lately I have been busy organising everything for our trip
overseas. First stop will be
Asia for a few weeks to soak up some sunshine and scoff down some
durian. After that we are heading to New York City to attend and be
guest speakers at the
Woodstock Fruit Festival.
Boy I’m excited! Will keep you posted on the developments.
Over the past 2 weeks we have given two talks in Melbourne and
Sydney, Australia. It was great to meet some of our facebook friends and
fellow 30BaDers.
Durianrider had people in stitches during his talk. We
both learnt a lot of valuable lessons which we will be taking with us
into our future talks.
So onto todays topic…OIL
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about fats in the diet and especially
oils. There is plenty of confusing (mis)information about oils out
there. Some comes from well-intentioned folks and the rest from people
and companies trying to make a quick buck off us, so we really have to
sort through the rubbish to find the truth. I have gathered some pretty
substantial evidence to support the exclusion of oil in our diet, both
from experience and conclusive research.
Health food?
For a food to qualify as a ‘health food’ it obviously has to contain
health-giving properties such as micro and macronutrients. Coconut oil
is BIG in the raw food scene so I will likely put some noses out of
joint focusing on it but here goes It contains nothing that humans need
like carbohydrates, EFA’s, protein, vitamins, minerals and fibre. And
plenty of what we don’t need ~ saturated fats.
Coconut oil is not only 100% refined fat that goes straight to the
hips but it obtains over 90% of its calories from saturated fat, that’s
more than butter! Honestly if you are trying to shed some lbs, eating
pure fat (or oil) is the worst thing you can do for your ‘waste-line’. I
have heard about the supposed miraculous ‘thermogenic effects’ of
coconut oil on weight loss but all it does is create a carbohydrate
deficit in the diet (carbs are replaced with fat) which then leads to
temporary water-loss on the scales. High fat, low carb diets NEVER work
long term and are very unhealthy.
Not only that, telling a fat person to eat more fat in order to get
slimmer is like trying to put a fire out with petrol. Not Effective!
Lets employ some common sense shall we? When you consume fat calories
they go straight to your fat cells and do not change their structure, so
much so that if we had your fat stores analysed in a lab we could tell
what type of fat you eat.
Like bacon? That means your gut or butt is filled out with pig fat.
Remember, the body always prefers to store fat calories and use carb
calories for fuel. It’s not my opinion but how it works.
The Worlds leading authority on heart disease reversal – Dr
Esselystein has conducted the longest and most successful heart disease
reversal program ever. Lets say the man knows ALL about oils and what
they do to the body.
“They (oils) contain saturated fat which immediately injures the
endothelial lining of the arteries when eaten. It doesn’t matter
whether it’s olive oil, corn oil, or any other kind of oil.” ~
Dr Esselystein
Fat chart
Olive Oil:
But olive oil is a health food I hear you crying!! Well is it
really?? Or is that just what you have been aggressively conditioned to
believe?
“There is a fairly recent study done on the Isle of Crete, where
the original famous Mediterranean diet of the 1960′s came from. They
looked at 304 patients In Crete, 152 patients with heart disease vs
152 without heart disease. The patients with heart disease had
significantly higher daily intakes of monounsaturated fats (Olive
Oil). The patients without heart disease had higher intakes of
carbohydrates, fiber, folate & omega 3’s. The more mono unsaturated
fat (olive oil) consumed, the more heart disease.” Jeff Novick,
MS, RD
Here is an excellent video from Jeff Novick on Olive oil….
http://www.youtube.com/v/GfBKauKVi4M
Contained within all whole foods (and oils) are 3 types of fats ~
poly unsaturated, mono unsaturated and saturated. Each food has
different amounts of each fat. I don’t always look to ‘conventional
wisdom’ when it comes to health recommendations but sometimes they get
it right! For instance the American Heart Association says to limit our
intake of saturated fat to no more than
7% of calories.
Most people are going over this then wondering why they get fat and
sick. Not surprisingly, the only scientific documentation available
(that leads to the reversal of heart disease) has been demonstrated on
diets that obtain less than 5% of their calories from saturated fat.
“A study on humans conducted by David Blankenhorn, M.D., and his
associates compared the effects of different types of fats on the
growth of atherosclerotic lesions inside the coronary arteries of
people by studying the results of angiograms taken one year apart (JAMA
263:1646, 1990). The study demonstrated that all three types of
fat–saturated animal fat, monounsaturated (olive oil), and
polyunsaturated (EFA)–were associated with a significant increase in
new atherosclerotic lesions. Most importantly, the growth of these
lesions did not stop when polyunsaturated fats of the w-6 type (linoleic
acid) and monounsaturated fats (olive oil) were substituted for
saturated fats. Only by decreasing all fat intake–including poly-
and monounsaturated fats–did the lesions stop growing.” ~ Dr
McDougall
What about Omega 3′s?!
Oils do not contain the right balance of EFA’s, they have insufficient
Omega 3′s and an oversupply of Omega 6′s. It is extremely easy to get
sufficient fat calories on a
high carb raw vegan lifestyle. The
National Academy of Sciences says that an adequate daily intake of
omega-3 fatty acids is 1.1 grams for women and 1.6 grams for men. Which
works out to between 1-3% of our daily calories or about ¼ to 1/3 of a
teaspoon a day. Easily attained on a HCRV lifestyle or a high carb
cooked vegan lifestyle like this
one
We get all our EFA’s by eating sufficient
calories from fruits and greens (or even just fruits if you choose).
Cooking with oils?
I don’t recommend anyone uses oil when they cook (or to cook in
general!),as it creates carcinogenic chemical compounds. Cancer causing
substances such as 1,3-butadiene, benzene, acrolein and formaldehyde
have been observed. Yes there are oils (such as coconut oil) that are
stable at high heat during cooking due to its level of saturation.
However, when the goal is to DECREASE the amount of saturated fats in
the diet, consuming almost pure saturated fat in any quantity is of
course counterproductive. So what do you use for high carb raw vegan
cooking? Dr McDougall’s cook book
may help you.
I recommend you do an experiment. Take all the oils out of your
diet and replace those calories with high carb foods like
fruit/grains/root vegies (depending on what lifestyle you follow) Go to
www.cronometer.com
and aim to eat a minimum of 80% of your calories from carbohydrates and
a maximum of 10% of your calories from WHOLE food fat sources. Getting
oils out of my life was one of the best things I’ve ever done! I didn’t
realise how much I was holding myself back by including oil in my diet.
Oil consumption can and does lead to all sorts of sugar metabolic
problems because it basically turns our bloodstream into an oil slick
and prevents the sugar in the blood leaving and entering the cells. Not
to mention drastically increasing our risk of cardiovascular disease
(the number one killer).
Coconut oil is great… ON your skin, it also provides an SPF of about
8, just remember a minute on the lips, a lifetime on the hips!
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