There are a number of little issues that I'm curious about when it comes to real food. Fat wasn't originally one of them. Everyone knows that fat, though tasty, is bad. End of story. Right?
Well, as I was reading through Real Food by Nina Planck, I discovered that the story is much more controversial than that. She goes into all the details about the different types of fats, but to be honest I never really pay attention to the whole saturated vs monounsaturated vs polyunsaturated, let alone trans fats, omega-3s vs omega-6s, types of fatty acids and so on. It's too much for me to bother to remember. So while I paid enough attention to it while reading so I could understand, I was looking for easy rules.
So imagine my delight when it seemed like the easy fix was just to eat as much fat as you wanted in foods like steaks and dairy products! And to cook with lard of all things!!
But there was of course a caveat. You can indeed eat fatty food without concern – but if you’re going to eat “real” fats then they need to come from “real” animals, as opposed to say factory-farmed animals or industrial inventions.
Why the focus on grass-fed?
I always ignored the whole grass-fed, free-range stuff because I figured it was some poorly-disguised PETA ploy. It turns out, though, that it’s about much more than animal’s quality of life. Planck points out that “With animal fats, the breed and especially the animal’s diet affect fatty acid composition and nutritional value. In other words, all beef fat is not identical” (172). And perhaps more importantly, there’s the risk of “the “bioaccumulation” of carcinogens in the fat. As toxins travel up the food chain, they become more concentrated, and they lodge in fat. A feedlot steer contains a great deal of grain, most of it grown with chemicals, which means you ingest more chemicals from a steak than from a slice of bread. Any toxins in the beef fat, in turn, accumulate in your fat, which might explain the rise in fat-related cancers” (116-7).
So unless I’m willing to shell out for the free-range, looks like I should keep cutting off the layer of fat. (Okay, in all honesty, I usually don’t bother trimming the fat from my pork chop. It’s so tasty! But I usually do feel guilty about it, at least.)
What about fat in dairy?
Again it’s healthiest to get dairy products from grass-fed cattle, but from what I’ve read it still seems like you’re better choosing your store-brand whole milk over skim. (Here’s a good post about choosing what kind of milk to buy.) You need fat to absorb the good stuff in dairy products, like calcium and vitamins.
The fats in my kitchen, from best to worst.
Wait, vegetable oil is a fat?
I’m a bit dense, because I totally didn’t realize this. But the difference between whether something is classified as a fat or an oil is simply if it’s solid or liquid at room temperature.
Anyway, refined vegetable oils (industrial fats) are major villains in the real food circles. For one thing they’ve only been around for less than a hundred years. But more importantly, they’re actually not healthy. How serious is this? Planck actually goes so far as to say:
“If you can’t find the perfect version of a food – say, 100 percent grass-fed beef – look for the next best thing. Any version of the traditional fats will be better for you than any version of the industrial fats. Those you must avoid like the proverbial Black Death.” (173)
So here’s the gist on fats, from a real foods perspective: Eating fat doesn’t make you fat. Grass-fed animal fats are perfectly healthy in moderation. Industrial fats (refined vegetable oils) are completely unhealthy.
Importance Level: Fairly high.
Simple Solution: Use real butter instead of margarine and olive oil instead of vegetable oils. Don’t be afraid of full-fat dairy.
Thorough Approach: Eat only grass-fed fats. Ban industrial fats and anything with the word “hydrogenated” from your kitchen.
Range of Options:
That Married Couple’s Conclusion:
We already use real butter, because my husband prefers its taste, and I do most of our cooking in EVOO. I was buying almost exclusively skim milk before, with the occasional half-gallon of whole milk for my husband, but after reading about the virtues of full-fat dairy, we’re going all in with whole milk. I hadn’t drunk it in probably 15 years – it is so thick compared to what I was used to!
I have yet to decide what if any changes we will be making to our meat and egg purchases, so we won’t be eating too much straight animal fat just yet.
And what about the oh-so-evil industrial fats? We don’t actually eat much packaged food, which are laden with them, so we’re good on that front. Realistically, the oil is probably not leaving my kitchen anytime soon, though I am hoping to slowly transition away from it. I threw out my shortening after taking the above picture and also replaced the vegetable oil with canola oil. I know sometimes you can replace oil with applesauce when baking, but none of the real food folks mention this – probably because they wouldn’t approve of what I’m baking in the first place! But the thing is, I really like cake. And I’m not so sure about the coconut oil they keep talking about (and by not sure, I mean not sure that my grocer will carry it or that I’ll be willing to pay for it). So we’ll see how that goes – we are certainly a work in progress!
What kind of fats and oils do you use in your kitchen?
Related:
Since I didn’t actually explain the scientific reasons behind why fat is actually healthy, I encourage you to investigate it for yourself!
Kitchen Stewardship is a wonderful blog and has quickly turned into one of my go-to sources on a natural lifestyle. It’s a bit overwhelming, but she really does her research. And since she provides baby steps, keeps money in mind, and most importantly practices NFP, I trust her. She’s written about the whole gamut of real food topics, among them a whole series on fats. Here’s her baseline chart on the subject.
And from The Weston A. Price Foundation, another real food advocating website: Know Your Fats Introduction, The Skinny on Fats, and The Rise and Fall of Crisco.
There’s also a plethora of resources out there on how awful margarine is (even if the label now boasts "trans-fat free"). I’m trying to figure out how to break that to my parents!