Hey kids! I know last week I
promised I’d finally get to what we’ve all been waiting for—what everything
we’ve learned so far about fats means for our food and our health—but
we’ve got some more business to attend to first.
If last week’s post about trans fats has you reading food labels
more than usual, great! We should all be on the lookout for partially
hydrogenated oils. They are nasty, nasty things. (I realize I didn't actually get into why last time, other than how they're made. I will...eventually.) But maybe you’ve heard that
some of the foods I regularly talk about as being good for us—like butter, cream, and beef tallow—also contain trans fats. Aaaaah!! Amy, what are you doing
to us?!
Fear not, dear readers. I am
not leading you astray, and I have not been sniffing the Elmer’s. It’s true
that some animal fats contain trans
fatty acids. But we do not
need to worry about these or avoid them at the table. In fact, we’d probably
all do well to go out of our way to add
them to our diets. Say what now? Keep reading.
There is a type of naturally occurring trans fat called conjugated
linoleic acid. (We’ll call it CLA, ‘cuz that is a mouthful!) It is found in the fat of products from ruminant animals consuming
their natural, species-appropriate diets. That is, things like cows, sheep,
goats, deer, elk, and buffalo eating grasses and greens, and not being fed grains and/or byproducts
from the snack food industry as happens in the industrial feed lots—alas, even more corn, wheat, and soy. (Animals who
eat grains do produce CLA, but way, way less of it than their grass-fed
counterparts.) Please note that I said naturally occurring trans fat. This
is something that results when animals eat what nature intended them to eat, as indicated by their own physiology…they
don’t have that huge ruminant GI tract for nothing!
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| Mmmmmm...CLA. |
(I realize the kangaroo
seems a little iffy to those of us in the U.S. of A., but kangaroo meat is
enjoyed regularly in other parts of the world, and it’s the richest known source of CLA!)
To be quite honest with you,
I don’t have a solid grip on the biochemistry of why CLA doesn’t affect our health the way trans fats that come out
of factories do. (And you know I ain’t lyin’, ‘cuz if I did understand it, I’d probably bore you with a huge blog post
about it, hehheh. It seems to have something to do with the particular
arrangement of these bonds, as compared to the bonds that form in man-made partially hydrogenated oils.)
Anyway, there are people way smarter than me who wear white lab coats at work
and do cool experiments for a living, and they’ve found that CLA has some very
interesting properties that suggest it’s good
for our health. Yes, a trans fat that
is beneficial for health.
CLA has been shown to help
reduce abdominal fat, lower the risk for certain types of cancer, and aid in
blood glucose regulation and insulin sensitivity (i.e., help manage type 2
diabetes). And unlike the industrial trans fats, CLA has not been shown to increase heart disease risk. In fact, some
studies have shown that it actually reduces
heart disease risk. Holy cow…is this stuff the biochemical equivalent of
Superman?
 |
| I do it all, baby. |
CLA sounds like a dream come
true. We get to eat things like butter, beef, lamb, Roquefort cheese, and
they’re health foods?! Where do we sign? CLA even comes in
supplement form. Maybe we should all pop a few of those pills every day and
call it good, ‘cuz grass-fed meats and dairy are not so easy on the ol’ wallet.
Not so fast. Word on the
street is that CLA
supplements do not have the same
positive effects on health as the natural stuff we find in…well…its natural form, in the fat and fattier
cuts of meat from ruminant animals. The supplements typically come from
safflower or sunflower oil, which we already know are not really the
best things to eat in the first place. And just like making fake saturated
fats in a factory requires a crazy amount of
processing, what kind of chemical tinkering do you think is required to make
fake CLA? My guess is a lot. Probably more than I want involved in anything I’m
putting in my mouth. Your best bet is to get your CLA the old-fashioned way—and
the more fun way, if you ask me—from food! Yes, I am telling you to eat
butter, and red meat, and sheep milk cheeses, and anything else delicious and
naughty from a ruminant animal.
BUT: in the case of CLA, where you get your food
matters. Remember, there is much less CLA in the fat of grain-fed animals.
There’s some, but not as much as there should
be if they were eating the diets they are physiologically and biologically suited
to. If you can take the time to get some grass-fed beef or butter, milk, or
cream from grass-fed dairy cows, please do it. The easiest place to find these
things is at a farmer’s market (or by going to an actual on-farm store, if you
live near any grass-based farms). Not only will you be doing excellent things
for your health, you’ll also be doing great things for your local economy and
for your neighbors who are producing nutrient-dense foods just a couple of zipcodes away. (But I’ll stay off the “eat local” soapbox for now. My blog posts
are already too long!)
*If
you can’t afford the top-level stuff (and believe me, I understand!!), or you don’t have the time to seek out a good
local farmer, remember that CLA is
still found in the regular supermarket stuff; there’s just less of it. And make no, NO mistake: I will always
advocate eating real food from a supermarket—regular ol’ feedlot meat,
industrial dairy, and conventional, non-organic produce—over eating organic,
artisanal junk food. Remember,
organic, gluten-free junk is STILL JUNK. If all you can afford is whatever
beef, chicken, and cheese is on sale at your local mega-mart, I’d much
rather you eat that than cereal or granola bars!
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| You will be just fine even if your food hasn't been blessed by angels, delivered on the back of a unicorn, or sung to by mermaids. Do the best you can and just eat real, whole foods. |
P.S. Chris Kresser, a holistic health specialist
who is eyeball deep into all the research, put together a fantastic article explaining all this, and unlike me, he’s taken the
time to include links to some heavy-hitting, peer-reviewed medical journals to
back up all the claims. I highly recommend checking it out, and while you’re
there, the rest of his site is pretty frikkin’ awesome, too.
Tuit Nutrition, LLC is not a
medical practice and Amy Berger, M.S., is not a physician. The information
contained herein is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any
medical condition and is not to be considered medical advice.
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