Should you Avoid Saturated Fat and Cholesterol?

My mother's doctor told her that her cholesterol levels were high. Her total was 270, but her LDL was too high, but her HDL was healthy. Her cholesterol has always been high, but never like this. After taking a second blood test to make sure the first wasn't inaccurate, her doctor prescribed a statin to lower it.

Cholesterol levels are not largely determined by the food you eat. Read that again. Eating red meat, shrimp, and eggs everyday will not determine your cholesterol level. Your cholesterol level is largely genetic and a response to internal damage and inflammation. So is cholesterol the cause or a response to coronary damage? If dietary cholesterol were the cause of high cholesterol, then it doesn't explain why my mother has such high levels. Her diet is immaculate: plenty of vegetables, a couple of protein bars, walnuts, salads, some soy chips (with no saturated fat), and the occasional splurge of light whip cream at night. She runs three times per week and goes to her fitness boot camp religiously three times per week. In short, her dietary cholesteral is very low and the amount of exercise she does suggests that it's not her lifestyle causing high levels.

Nonetheless, she started counting all the saturated fat in her diet. I told her she was wasting her time, and was mistakingly blaming saturated fat for her high cholesterol levels.

For the last 30-40 yeers it's been dogma that saturated fat is bad and that its consumption should be limited. Almost every nutritionist agrees that saturated fat should comprise no more than 10% of your total fat consumption (not total daily caloric consumption). The common belief is that saturated fat causes obesity, coronary heart disease, and high levels of LDL cholesterol. The problem is, no study has ever shown causation, only correlation. But these two terms are not the same. Even so, many studies haven't even shown a correlation between saturated fat and the health problems it's typically associated with. For more on that, I recommend Gary Tabuson's Good Calories, Bad Calories. Or read this article in Men's Health last year. Experience Life has two good articles about cholesterol: Skimming the Truth and Cholesterol Reconsidered.

If saturated fat is so bad, then why do the French, who consume so much full-fat cream and butter, have much lower rates of heart disease?

Why did a recent Harvard study find a relationship between healthy cholesterol levels and the highest saturated fat intakes?

Why is there no definitive study showing that saturated causes heart disease?

Why do some people in the world, like those in Greenland and some tribes in Africa, consume large amounts of saturated fat but have never heard of heart disease?

If saturated fat were the cause of coronary heart disease, why do most people who have heart attacks have normal levels?

In fact, saturated fat has plenty of proven health benefits:

-Absorption of vitamins. Vitamins A, D, E, K are all fat-soluable vitamins, which means you need to eat fats (including saturated) to absorb them properly
-Healthy metabolism. Adding fat to a food makes it more satiating. That is, you'll feel more satisfied after eating a high-fat meal than after a low-fat meal. So is it really better to eat low-fat foods that leave you hungry for more, or to eat a meal with more fat and feel full?
-Proper hormonal production. Fat is needed to proporal produce testosterone and to make a woman fertile. Low fat diets are associated with low fertility and low hormonal production. Adequate fat intake is associated with increased sex drive. Peanut butter as an aphrodisiac? Believe it.
-It tastes good. There's a reason why humans prefer the texture of guacamole, peanut butter, cheese, and ice cream. It has a lot of fat. This isn't a bad thing. For reasons I mentioned above, you need to eat a certain amount of fat. Aim for one gram per kilogram of body weight, or at least 20% of your calories.
-Low fat diets are almost impossible to adhere to. Why? Because we like the texture of fat. And fat makes us feel full. And it tastes good.

So what's my message? If you like milk, enjoy your full-fat milk. If you like ice cream, eat full fat ice cream. If you like butter, don't buy margerine. If you like beef, then enjoy it (as long as it's grass-fed. Don't buy grain-fed). At some point, you have to eat fat in you diet. Eating 'fat-free' or 'low-fat' or 'lean meats' all day will not give you the fat you need. If you're going to eat fat, eat real food (like beef, milk, eggs, coconut oil, etc.)

Enjoy those bad, fatty foods. As long as your insulin levels are normal and balanced, avoid sugars and excess starches, and you eat unprocessed food, you shouldn't worry about saturated fat. I don't.

Kevin