An oily slope for "bad" fat

Polyunsaturated fats, which include almost all vegetable oils and no animal fats, are unhealthy and lead to atherosclerosis purgatory. Now there's evidence pointing toward a relationship between these vegetarian-hyped oils (corn, peanut, canola - except unheated varieties such as safflower, sunflower and soybean) and the onset of diabetes. This finding is of momentous importance to your health.

Most people don't realize that when they eat cake and candy they are not only eating sugar but usually the bad oils as well. So what they have is a double whammy for diabetes-the sugar and the wrong vegetable fats.

If you are confused about saturated fats, monosaturated fats, and polyunsaturated fats, and most people are, there is a simple way of keeping it straight: All animal fat, including the fat from pork, fish, and grasshoppers, is healthy fat and vital to your diet. Avoid all vegetable oils (fat) except coconut oil, palm oil, olive oil, and flax oil. These oils are singled out, not because they are saturated or not saturated, but because they do not form free radicals when cooked at high temperatures. As with high cholesterol in your diet, saturation of fats is a non-problem.

Holy Guacamole

One of the most difficult things to get across to most people is that FAT DOES NOT MAKE YOU FAT. The tragic misconception that it does was actually started by a psychiatrist turned "nutritionist." David Reuben garnered a little fame back in the '60s from his book, "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex but Were Afraid to Ask". The book sold for $25 back then, which was a heavy price in those days. Forty-year-old books, if they are of significance, will often sell for many times the original price. You can now pick up a copy of Reuben's book for 75 cents, which doesn't say much for its holding power. But, hey, 75 cents is 75 cents, and, besides, he probably made 75 zillion on the original.

It takes approximately zero knowledge in biochemistry, or any other hard science for that matter, to become a psychiatrist. So how did he become an expert in nutrition-a highly complex field of science-and manage to shape the thinking of millions of Americans on the subject of fat metabolism? Only in gullible America could Reuben have metamorphosed into a nutritional expert.

All it took was one simple question: "Fat makes you fat, right?" he asked his readers in his next book, "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Nutrition". Well, that did it. Since the public sees the title "Dr." and equates it with science (regardless of actual training), anything containing fat, including butter, bacon, and hundreds of other noble foods, went down the pig chute. Even the avocado was vilified.

Slowly, we are working our way out of this morass of misinformation.  Avocados, for example, have been discovered not to make you fat, because they contain monounsaturated fatty acids, which are actually good for you.

The avocado's image first took on some polish with a 1996 study in Mexico that looked at the health benefits of daily avocado consumption. Researchers found that volunteers who ate avocados every day for a week experienced an average 17 percent drop in total blood cholesterol.  This included an improvement in all the ratios of HDL and LDL associated with heart disease. Betasitosterol, a natural substance shown to significantly lower blood-cholesterol levels, is found in high concentration in avocados. At the conclusion of the study, the 45 participants experienced a decrease in LDL (bad) cholesterol levels and an increase in HDL (good) cholesterol levels.

The U.S. government recently revised its official nutrition guidelines to urge Americans to eat more avocados. There were no apologies for the years of misinformation, however. Who needs this kind of expert advice?  You might as well get your nutritional advice from a… psychiatrist.