A recent study, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, has found that the fat in butter, cream, and cheese can benefit your health, despite what has been taught for decades about the artery clogging and premature death that it can cause.
New evidence shows that a diet including full-fat instead of fat-free or low-fat dairy products actually protects you from cardiovascular disease, Type 2 diabetes, and cancer, which are the leading causes of death in the world.
There are more than 1.6 million new cancer patients in the US per year, 1.7 million new cases of Type 2 diabetes per year, and 610 000 deaths per year from heart disease per year in the United States, and the numbers are only rising.
How Does Fat Intake Improve Health?
Researchers found that decreasing carbohydrate portions and increasing the intake of saturated fats, which are found mainly in full-fat dairy, meat, and tropical oils, resulted in weight loss in middle-aged overweight men, which resulted in better overall health.
Participants in the study who were not categorized as overweight were found to benefit from more balanced blood sugar levels and lower blood pressure on the same eating plan, which disproves any previous theories about saturated fat being bad for your health.
In fact, experts say that we need to monitor carbohydrate intake instead, which can cause blood sugar spikes and upset insulin levels, which risks the development of Type 2 diabetes.
Professor Sherif Sultan, a heart specialist from the University of Ireland, says: “We urgently need to overturn current dietary guidelines. People should not be eating high carbohydrate diets as they have been told to do over the past few decades. Instead, our diets should be largely based on good quality high-fat foods. This will prevent the rising epidemic of Type 2 diabetes and reverse the growing numbers of people suffering from weight-related heart problems.”
Which Fats are Good for you?
Professor Sultan says that the root of the obesity epidemic that we as humanity are currently facing is due to high-carbohydrate and refined sugar-laden diets. While it was discovered that increasing saturated fat intake can help to improve health, it does not mean that we can just grab any type of fatty food, especially not trans-fat sources like fried food. .
Scientists believe that high-quality sources of fat from full-fat cream, butter, milk, cheese, and meat absorb well into the body, whereas refined and unhealthy fats can cause severe health deterioration. For this reason, it’s important to stick to the most unprocessed sources of fat, which means organic dairy products and high-quality cuts of meat.
Dr. Simon Dankel, an associate professor at the University of Bergen in Norway and the lead author of the first study, says: “There is a tremendous focus on avoiding high-fat foods for weight control but this study challenges the notion that saturated fats have a strongly negative impact on health and weight. The men on a high fat diet not only lost weight but also became slimmer and lower cholesterol levels.”
Sources:
https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/understanding/statistics
https://www.cdc.gov/heartdisease/facts.htm
https://www.healthline.com/health/type-2-diabetes/statistics
https://www.uib.no/en/node/36362
https://advances.nutrition.org/content/5/2/131.full
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4006120/
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/what-should-you-eat/fats-and-cholesterol/
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2014/07/27/saturated-fat-cholesterol.aspx
https://www.nhs.uk/news/2013/10October/Pages/Saturated-fat-link-with-heart-disease-questioned
