Being the beginning of the new year with everyone making their resolution to lose weight brings me to the topic of how we have gotten so fat in the first place.
Having a weight problem all my life, I have been on many of the weight lose programs that are inundating ever TV channel.
So why do I say that fats don't make you fat? It alls has to do with how we metabolize food. But before we get into the science lecture let me tell you how we got to be the fattest nation on the planet.
If you are a baby boomers I am sure that you will remember back in the 1980's a shift in dietary recommendations occurred. The theory that low fat is good and high fat causes heart disease became the rallying cry. The entire food industry changed course and the low fat craze was deemed the new way to stay healthy. I remembered when Nabisco came out with this wonderful cookie that was low fat, YEAH! We could eat more cookies because we were eating low fat and low fat is good. So many food companies came out with low fat version of all the fun foods that we loved to eat and we could eat them guilt free!
Now fast forward 25 years later. WE are the fattest nation, diabetes is on the rise, especially in children, and heart disease is still a problem. Here is a link to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showing how obesity has spread year by year.
The problem with the American diet is not fat and never was, it is SUGAR! And it is sugar that the food companies put into the foods we eat to make them taste better when they removed all the fats. We need fat in our diets. Here are some of the things that fats do for us:
- Fats make up the outer coating of all out nerve cells
- Fats line our intestinal tract, making it harder for things that shouldn't get into our system to break through
- Fat provides needed energy
- Fat prevent essential fatty acid deficiency
- Fat is needed to absorb vitamins A,S,E, K and prevent deficiencies of these vitamins
- Fats my help your body produce endorphins ( the happy feeling that your brain produces)
- Your body uses fat to make a variety of other building blocks needed from hormones to immune function.
And while we have brought into this theory have you notice all the new immune diseases that have become so prevalent? Diseases such as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Fibromyalgia, Epstein Barr, Acid Reflux Disease, and a host of others. We have also seen the rise in neurological disease like MS and Autism.
Now I not saying the their is a direct relation but it seems to me that in our quest to change our diets from something that is essential into something else has changed the course of our basic metabolism. It's not the fat but the great amount of sugar that have enter our foods that have caused a chain of events that may doom our culture to a life of chronic diseases.
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9 Comments
a very informative post you have! Thanks for the advice. I sure do have to manage my intakes for a future healthy living. And of course, exercise!
Joyce,
Good topic for discussion. It is true that fat is not the problem. But eliminating sugar is not the answer either. I was on a high protein, low carb diet and through off my metabolism in a different way. The solution is to eat the old fashioned "balanced diet" and to include complex and natural carbohydrates rather than simple sugars. Milk and cheese have gotten a bad name in our diets. Eggs have been seen as causing high cholesterol. Wheat is not good for us if we are gluten intolerant. Fat should be eliminated. Some people insist on a vegetarian diet for greater health and others believe that we need some fish and other protein sources. And some people swear that a raw food diet is the answer to health.
The most important thing to understand is how food affects us and whether we are truly hungry and whether we are really loving the food we are eating. If we eat the most seemingly perfect food and don't love it, then we will not be able to get all the nutrition that is available. And if we eat the seemingly worst food and savor every bite, we will actually receive more of whatever nutrition is available.
I am so glad you brought up this topic Joyce! We do need fat in our diets for reasons you mentioned above. It erks me when people are caught up in the "fat free" diets. When I know Sugar IS the problem.
Sugar is in almost everything in a box or a can. I consider it the nastiest drug we have. Children are weaned on sugar products! I knew this for years and the sound of an ice cream truck in the summer is like a drug pusher to me. This is one burning issue I do have because people do not realize what this can do to their bodies.
I appreciate you bringing this into light,
Donna
Hi Joyce, the ony moment I have felt great after changing and trying an infinite number of diets, was when I let go of sugar totally, eating in a balanced way veggies and protein based food avoiding as much as possible red meat.
Fat that is in salmon for example is healty as it provides omega 3 that help our system as a whole including our brain function and keeping our cholesterol levels to normality.
It's all about being informed constantly and taking care about ourselves.
Hi Joyce,
Sugar certainly is a big factor for making America the country with the most Fat people in the world but it's not the most important. It's the way of life that makes people gaining weight every year. Most people are sitting all the day (watching tv, working etc) without even walking. In my opinion all the others are just excuses…
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Thanks for the healthful advice and good vibes, These 2012 i take big place to pursue my health fitness.
I am so glad that you have posted this!! It is so scary that so many dont' realize the jeopardy we are in because of the "sugar" thing… WAY to much sugar in anything and everything… It messes with so much in the body.. and is making us a fat and diabetic nation!! It drives me crazy what they have lead us to!! I have been working with a healhty lifestyle for years and it astounds me the misunderstandings that people still have about the food and what we should consume… Hopefully the nation starts waking up to what is making them fat.. and of course the exercise thing makes a huge difference too.. Too many people are sedentary!!
Joyce,
You are so on target here. Sugar is put into everything and it's a crime. Most of us blindly put items into our shopping cart without ever reading a label. It's not rocket science, it's common sense.
Thanks,
RICK
Really important topic and interesting information Joyce. I just read yesterday an article on CNN written by health care "experts" saying that all these years the whole "eat high carb, low fat" diet was actually backwards! There's also a great TED Talk by this man who spent a year doing everything every "expert" said should be done to be healthy – he said it about killed him. Really pretty funny if you can put it into context.