Dr. Salerno, founder of The Salerno Center in NYC, speaks about the health benefits of eating saturated fats and the downfall of sugar consumption.
Take a minute and think. For most of human history, we’ve evolved on a diet of fresh meats and sustained by a hunter gatherer mentality. The only plentiful food we were had at our nimble fingertips on a regular basis was what was captured in the wild, especially during torrential winters. We now spend all our time selecting the foods we want to eat and negating the foods we should be eating in a false attempt to add quantity over quality to our natural eating patterns.
Why does food evolution matter? Before the business of agriculture and the beginning of modern animal domestication humans favored raw vegetables and nutrient dense sources of protein, and for good reason. Earlier humans developed a taste for food not for the sake of gorging oneself, but for reasons concerned with sustaining life. If people down copious amounts of sugar, processed dairy, cereals, and grains, it’s because society has saturated the food market with artificial sweeteners, media campaigns, and based it on false food accusations.
Ask yourself when was the last time you saw fats being betrayed in a healthy light in the news? I rest my case. Hopefully that gives you some perspective about the various food traps we need to be aware of including unnatural alterations in fatty acid composition, glycemic load, and total acid-base balance. We have to be willing to ask questions about our health before we can begin discovering a solution. Saturated fats are necessary for all human health. Simply put, half of all breast milk derives its nutritional benefits by containing heavy amounts of healthy fats. Saturated fats are for a reason!
Stay Saturated for Optimal Health
Saturated fats can have amazing affects when appropriately included into your diet — they are needed by components of your body. Saturated fats are needed for cell membrane, liver, heart, lung, bone, and hormone health. Above all, their needed for proper genetic transcription. The very essence of who you are depends on the fats you consume. The hard truth is, if you’re eating access sugars, it’s because you’re genetically programmed to. When we were cavemen, our taste buds instinctually gave us clues to survive on small amounts of sugars found naturally in our environment. Your body still harbors those clues for survival. Unfortunately, your tongues taste sensors have no off switch to sugars. Fats in your diet should include, fresh coconut oils for cooking, organic eggs for brain function, and grass fed meats for muscle. Yes, you will be consuming lots of fats, but a greater majority of your calories will be converted to energy rather than stored as by products of toxic insulin spikes.
Friends Don’t Let Friends Carb
Let’s get one thing straight: Carbohydrates are not great sources of for sustained energy, the average Americans perception of what a carbohydrate is skewed at best. Quite frankly, grain deserts, yeast breads, soda, pizza, and alcohol make up the majority of popular food choices made in this country. This is not only unhealthy but rather serves as a wake up call too our generation and the one being brought into existence today. Carbohydrates have a direct correlation with increased LDL levels, diabetes, and obesity. Mind you, this is the health crisis we’re in now; just imagine where we will be if we don’t take immediate responsibility for our food actions now.
Add to this the fact that heart disease costs Americans $237 billion each year, and you quickly realize this is a problem of epidemic proportions. This statistic shows that something is terribly wrong in the food paradigm. When you ingest carbohydrates, otherwise known as sugar (or fructose), your body reacts by elevating levels of uric acid (the waste product of cell die off), thereby raising your risk for long term low-level inflammation. Simply stated, that tasty soft drink that leads to belly fat, heart disease, and high blood pressure, can ultimately be described as the main culprit in the fight against obesity. If you are struggling to lose weight, suffer from an auto-immune disease, or your child has autism, the first thing you need to do is eliminate all forms of toxic sugar. Unless you want to end up with complicated medical issues, these health steps are completely necessary.
The Final Verdict On Fat
There is no easy solution, supplement, or treatment to fix your health problems without first focusing on your diet. Organic, pure, unadulterated forms of saturated fats are your preferred choice of fuel for sound nutrition. When you eat foods high in saturated fats, they help energy needs and provide you with important fat-soluble vitamins such as A, D, E, and K. Unless you want to continue feeling tired, you need to include a sound nutrition plan. And once you experience the benefits of that plan, you will realize how much better you will feel not based on how few calories you consumed that day, miles you ran, or fad diet foods you ingested, but because you were eating the way humans really “should” be eating, the saturated way.
