By Joan McDaniel                                  July 18, 2012

Continuing the story of my research into nutrition while trying to get well again, I turn to the subject of Fats.

If the answer to the Salad question is yes, the next question is; What type of salad dressing did you use?

I bet the answer will be a Fat-Free Salad Dressing because that is all I can find to buy in any store be it my local grocery store, fast-food deli, my favorite restaurant, or my friendly Health Food Store.  Where ever I go to shop, I see rows and rows of proudly labeled FAT-FREE Dressing.

Label reading.

These dressing may be fat-free but normally are loaded with insulin resistant generating sugars, especially High-fructose corn syrup (HFCS). It seems things that have had the fat removed don’t taste very good so the manufactures have added sugar and lots of it.

I could eat the salad natural or raw without any dressing, but as I was finding, food can have zest without being harmful. In other words –FOOD CAN TASTE GOOD AND ITS IS NOT A SIN.  Fat tastes great especially in the form of walnuts, olives, cheese, flakes of coconut and a whole lot more.  Adding Sea Salt and Stevia Sugar is an interesting variety also.

Generally, anyone who is concentrating on the health benefits of foods start with eating something that consists of more than the normal Standard American Diet “side dish” salad.  The salads ingredients generally contain more than a hunk of iceberg lettuce under a layer of artificially colored plastic flavored French dressing.  (In fact, I don’t think you could get a Frenchman to eat it).

I was struck with the thought, the worst place for a fat-free product is, on a salad.  Without being too difficult, or technical, it is hard to define what exactly constitutes a salad.  But a good salad generally contains lettuce and other vegetables.  Now most of us have been told, by our

mothers and even by the Food pyramid food police 

VEGGIES ARE GOOD FOR YOU. They contain vitamins.

Exactly, Fat-Soluble vitamins or minerals which cannot be absorbed by the body unless they are eaten with fat.  Fat-Soluble Vitamins- A, D, E, and K need fat to be absorbed by the body. Many of these vitamins function as an antioxidant and protect against free-radical damage. To be dissolved and used by the body you must eat fat.  In other words, to stop disease cause by free-radicals damage YOU MUST EAT FAT.  So why are you putting Fat-Free Salad dressing on that great salad.  You might as well feed the salad to the family pet.  The vitamins in that salad won’t do you any good.  A vitamin tablet will not help for they too need fat to be absorbed by the body.

All the minerals and vitamins that are in the salad to fight free-radical damage are blocked by the added fat-free hydrogenated free radical generating salad dressing.  Sort of like a Catch 22 problem. What you really eating is just causing an internal war and a lot of need for an antacid. (See my next post on the dangers of antacids.)

Now let us do a quick review of fats.

Fats and Oils consist of molecules of fat molecules known as fatty acids.  There are three different broad categories; saturated, monounsaturated and polyunsaturated.  Monounsaturated, and saturated fats are essential to unlock the nutrients found in salads and vegetables.

Saturated Fat is Animal fats (Lard), beef tallow,  butter, cheese, chicken fat, coconut and palm oil, eggs, ghee (clarified butter), milk, mutton tallow, Nutmeg oil, Peanut Oil, Sour cream, and Vinegar were the common crucial fats used throughout the history of mankind and maintaining healthy cells, healthy organs, and a healthy body.

Monounsaturated fat- is two hydrogen atoms short of being a saturated fat. Olive oil is mostly Monounsaturated then ¼ saturated and polyunsaturated.

Monounsaturated Fatty Acids are: Almond, Avocados, Butterfat, Grape Seed, Olive, Peanut, Pumpkin, Rapseed (canola) and, Sesame. Good source for fat but become toxic if heated.  Heating causes the oil to become oxidized.

So add Walnuts, Olives, Eggs, Cheese, and anything else that is a fat to that vegetable or salad, It will taste better, take longer to digest and make you healthy, your mother said so.

Remember most of the oils in those Fat-Free salad dressing are polyunsaturated vegetable oils, which are hydrogenated oils.

The process of Hydrogenation  was created in 1907 by E.C. Kayser for Procter and Gamble to manufacture a man made cooking Fat called Crisco to replace the natural occurring fat from meat called Lard.  This process was created earlier to replace butter with the less expensive margarine, during the

French Revelation and                                               Napoleon.

The process added a hydrogen atom to the fatty acid chain which created a Polyunsaturated fat or Trans fat.  We now know that partially hydrogenated oils are bad for us.  Polyunsaturated fats readily oxidize when exposed to heat, light, or oxygen. They spontaneously oxidize and become destructive free-radicals.  Once free radicals are formed, they attack other cells of the body by taking an electron and creating more free radicals. The damage done by free-radicals have been proved to cause cancer, aging, mental dementia, Alzheimer’s and other destructive disease let alone Heart Failure.  Saturated Fats, like Lard, butter and coconut oil are very resistive to oxidation.

In other words, if nothing else is clear DO NOT EAT FAT FREE FOOD!!

It is not good for you.

Sources:

http://www.naturalnews.com/036391_monounsaturated_fats_nutrients_vegetables.html