Chances are when you read "fat free" on a label, you assume it's the healthier choice.

This is wrong.

This is the story of how we got duped into believing we should avoid fat:

The story begins in the 1950s with a growing public health problem that needed an answer: heart disease.

Journalist Nina Teicholz recounts: "The disease had appeared seemingly out of nowhere and had grown quickly to become the nation's leading cause of death."

That all changed when a scientist named Nacel Keys, a pathologist at the University of Minnesota, emerged with a hypothesis that dietary fat was at the center of the epidemic. He got there by showing a correlation between dietary fats consumed and death rate from heart disease in 6 countries.

The problem is he cherry picked these 2 variables out of a sea of factors to draw his conclusion. But correlation does not equal causation. Not to mention, he omitted countries with high fat consumption but with low death rate from heart disease (such as France).

Researchers quickly began to combat his assertion. Growing evidence pointed to refined sugars as the real problem, considering these sugars were rarely consumed up until the 1850s... compared to fat, such as butter and cheese, that had been a normal part of our diet without issue for millennia.

But no one could rise above the charismatic and combative Keys, who was shrined as a national hero, and featured on the cover of Time Magazine in 1961.

He also had a secret ally. In 1967 the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine published a review singling out dietary fat as the chief cause of heart disease while minimizing the role of sugars. In order to protect from bias, research funding for these studies are supposed to come from outside sources that don't have a stake in the game.

Unfortunately, this was not the case. The scientists behind the study were each paid the equivalent of $50,000 of today's money by a trade organization called the Sugar Research Foundation - a fact that was not disclosed in the original paper. To make matters worse, they even influenced which studies were selected to draw their conclusions.

The Aftermath

This paved the way for food corporations to create an enemy out of fat which ushered in dozens of new food products: highly processed, frankenfood alternatives.

• Breakfast cereals (dozens of them) instead of eggs
• Margarine instead of butter
• "fat-free", "low-fat" (fill-in-the-blank)

They noticed that bacon grease looked like sludge that could clog kitchen pipes so they told you that fat clogs your arteries. Wrong.

They took raw milk and stripped it's key nutrients to make it fat-free, causing many of the issues our gut's have today with processing dairy.

They replaced natural fats (butter & tallow) with highly processed, unstable seed oils (canola, cottonseed, etc.).
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It turns out, substituting natural foods like butter, cheese, eggs and raw milk that we have eaten forever, for chemically processed alternatives (margarine, raisin bran, cheez its) makes food companies rich and our health poor.

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So what do we do?

We don't run from entire food groups that come from nature. We run from processed "food" that comes from corporations.

We embrace foods that humans have a long track record of eating and thriving on. Fats included.

What's good about fat?

60% of your brain is made up entirely of fat. Eating healthy fats are critical for brain health, mood, energy, cellular protection, hormone regulation, to name a few. They protect the cell membrane, reduce inflammation, supply proteins to the brain for new neural-connections, and facilitate the absorption of nutrients like vitamin A, E, D and K. Healthy fats are also critical for thyroid function. When your thyroid gland isn't working properly, your metabolism slows and you gain weight easily.

These are just a few of the important roles fats play.

Does eating fat make you fat?

No. During the last 30 years, we have eaten less animal fats and more carbohydrate based foods, and obesity rates have soared. Recent studies show children on low fat diets end up heavier than children on normal diets. Ultimately, weight gain is a result of energy imbalance. No one food group is responsible.

9 healthy fat foods:

1. Wild Caught Fish (salmon, cod)
2. Pastured Eggs
3. Avocado
4. Extra Virgin Olive Oil
5. Coconut Oil
6. Grass Fed Butter
7. Macadamia Nuts
8. Almonds
9. Walnuts

APPLICATION:

• when high heat cooking use ghee, coconut oil, avocado oil
• cook vegetables in grass fed butter
• add avocado into salads or on the side with olive oil and salt+pepper
• eat fish
• olive oil for salad dressing
• eggs and avocado for breakfast

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I hope this email has helped your relationship with fats. Remember, fats are your friend.

Have a great week,
​TOMMY

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Email Archive:

​001 // Step 1 to a Healthy Life​
​002 // Your Body Runs on Clocks [Circadian Health]​
​003 // Sleep's Connection to Eating Healthy​
​004 // Make Movement A Movement​
​005 // What Mice Taught Us About Eating Healthy​
​006 // The story of a 61-yr-old Farmer Ultra Marathoner​
​007 // Redefining Health for a Meaningful Life​
​008 // A Guide To Cardio Training​​
​009 // What's the Best Form of Exercise?​
​010 // Take Care of Yourself to Take Care of Others​
​011 // Why Your Thoughts Matter for Health ​
​012 // Sustainable Health Framework​
​013 // The Path to Joyful Health​
​014 // Getting to the Land of Vitality​
​015 // #1 Thing to Avoid with Food​
​016 // 5 Easy Food Upgrades​
​017 // Get Better Sleep [Complete Guide]​