MUST READ: Saturated Fat - No Grounds for Current Warnings Against

22 December 2014

Americans have long been told to stay away from foods high in saturated fats.  But new research suggest they might not be as bad for you as once thought.

Systematic Review Finds No Grounds for Current Warnings Against Saturated Fat

This post is on Healthwise

Story at-a-glance

• Despite low-fat diets having become the norm over the past six decades, American levels of heart disease, obesity, and high cholesterol have skyrocketed
• Four years ago, a meta-analysis came to the conclusion that there’s “no significant evidence... that saturated fat is associated with an increased risk for coronary heart disease”
• Another recent meta analysis also found that saturated fats, which have the longest history of being (wrongfully) demonized were found to have no effect on heart disease risk
• The only fat found to really promote heart disease was trans fat (found in margarine, vegetable shortening, and partially hydrogenated vegetable oils)
• To protect your heart health, you need to address your insulin and leptin resistance, which is the result of eating a diet too high in sugars and grains

By Dr. Mercola

For well over half a century, the media and a majority of health care officials have warned that saturated fats are bad for your health and lead to a host of negative consequences, including high cholesterol, obesity, and heart disease.

The American Heart Association began encouraging Americans to limit dietary fat, particularly animal fats, in order to reduce their risk of heart disease as far back as 1961. And as of 2010, the current recommendations from the US Department of Agriculture1 (USDA) call for reducing your saturated fat intake to a mere 10 percent of your total calories or less.

Worse yet, fat was virtually removed entirely from the latest USDA "food pyramid," now called "MyPlate." Except for a small portion of dairy, which is advised to be fat-free or low-fat, fats are missing entirely!

But despite low-fat diets having become the norm over the past six decades, American levels of heart disease, obesity, and high cholesterol have skyrocketed, far surpassing such disease rates in modern-day primitive societies that still use saturated fat as a dietary staple.

Clearly there's a lot of confusion on the subject of saturated fats, even among health care professionals. Fortunately, the tide is starting to turn, as the truth about these correlations is becoming more glaringly obvious.

Systematic Review Finds No Grounds for Current Guidelines on Fat

Four years ago, a meta-analysis published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition2 came to the conclusion that there's "no significant evidence... that saturated fat is associated with an increased risk for coronary heart disease."

Now, yet another meta-analysis of 49 observational studies and 27 randomized controlled trials published in a major publication, the Annals of Internal Medicine3,4,5 has reached the same conclusion. In all, the analysis included data from more than 600,000 people from 18 countries, and according to the authors:

"[C]urrent evidence does not clearly support cardiovascular guidelines that encourage high consumption of polyunsaturated fatty acids and low consumption of total saturated fats."

The study looked at four categories of dietary fats: saturated fats; polyunsaturated fats, such as omega-3 and omega-6; monounsaturated fats such as olive oil; and trans fats. Saturated fats, which have the longest history of being (wrongfully) demonized, were found to have no effect on heart disease risk.

Ditto for monounsaturated fats such as olive oil, which are generally recognized as being heart healthy. Both omega-3s and omega-6s were also deemed to be beneficial6, 7 for heart health. The only fat found to really promote heart disease was trans fat (found in margarine, vegetable shortening, and partially hydrogenated vegetable oils). Fortunately, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has already taken steps to remove these harmful fats from the food supply.

They plan to do this by removing partially hydrogenated oils—the primary source of trans fats—from the list of "generally recognized as safe" (GRAS) ingredients. If the proposal goes through, it would be a big step in the right direction. The World Health Organization (WHO) has also previously called for the elimination of trans fats from the global food supply.8

According to the authors of the featured analysis, the lack of correlation between saturated fat and heart disease really should trigger a review of our current dietary guidelines for heart health. Others still vehemently disagree, to the detriment of anyone listening to their recommendations. As reported by MedicineNet.com:9

"In response to the study, the American Heart Association says its guidelines remain the same. For heart health, it recommends a diet rich in fruits and vegetables, whole grains, fish, nuts, and unsaturated fats. Less than six percent of the diet should include saturated and trans fats, the association says."

Sugar, Not Fat, Drives Heart Disease

Many health experts now believe that if you are insulin or leptin resistant, as 85 percent of the US population is, you likely need anywhere from 50 to 85 percent of your daily calories in the form of healthful fats for optimal health. Research also increasingly points to refined carbohydrates (particularly processed fructose) as being the real culprit behind rising heart disease rates. 

In the 1960s, British physician John Yudkin was among the first to challenge Ancel Keys' hypothesis that saturated fat caused heart disease by raising cholesterol, stating that SUGAR is the culprit in heart disease—not saturated fat.

Unfortunately, Keys was a politically powerful figure, and it was his flawed cholesterol theory that ultimately gained firm traction within the medical establishment. By the 1970s, you were considered a total quack if you supported Yudkin's sugar theory.

In more recent years, Yudkin's work has been proven prophetic—and far more accurate than Keys' ever was. For example, a 2010 study published in theAmerican Journal of Clinical Nutrition10 found that when you replace saturated fat with a higher carbohydrate intake, particularly refined carbohydrate, you exacerbate insulin resistance and obesity, increase triglycerides and small LDL particles, and reduce beneficial HDL cholesterol.

The authors state that dietary efforts to improve your cardiovascular disease risk should primarily emphasize the limitation of refined carbohydrate intake and weight reduction.

Courtesy of the low-fat myth taking firm hold, this is the polar opposite of what actually occurred over the past half century. While saturated fat consumption was dramatically reduced in most people's diet, refined carbohydrate intake dramatically increased. Today, refined fructose is added to virtually every kind of processed food and beverage on the US market.

One of the reasons for all this added sugar is because when you remove fat, you lose flavor. So sugar is used to add flavor back in. Consumption of harmful trans fat (which for decades was touted as a healthier alternative to saturated animal fat) also radically increased, starting in the mid-1950s.

Replacing Saturated Fats with Carbohydrates Has Led to Elevated Disease Risks Across the Board

In the final analysis, it seems clear that one seriously flawed hypothesis gaining foothold in the minds of the medical establishment has led to a decades-long snowball effect of dietary recommendations that have both altered the food supply for the worse, and led to an avalanche of otherwise avoidable chronic diseases.

Evidence of this was recently highlighted in an excellent editorial in the journalOpen Heart.11 In it, research scientist and doctor of pharmacy James J. DiNicolantonio reviews the cardiometabolic consequences of replacing saturated fats with carbohydrates, which includes the following:

Shift to overall atherogenic lipid profile (lower HDL, increased triglycerides and increased ApoB/ApoA-1 ratio)	Increased risk of coronary heart disease, cardiovascular events, and death from heart disease and increased overall mortality (all causes)	Increased thrombogenic markers
Increased oxidized LDL	Increased inflammation	Reduced HDL
Impaired glucose tolerance, higher body fat, weight gain, obesity, and diabetes	Increased small, high-density LDL particles	Increased risk for cancer

Heart Disease Prevention 101

Groundbreaking research by the likes of Dr. Robert Lustig and Dr. Richard Johnson (author of the books, The Sugar Fix andThe Fat Switch) clearly identifies the root cause of heart disease—and it's not fat. It's refined fructose, consumed in excessive amounts. Their research, and that of others, provides us with a clear solution to our current predicament. 

In short, if you want to protect your heart health and avoid a number of other chronic disease states, you need to address your insulin and leptin resistance, which is the result of eating a diet too high in sugars and grains. 

For those of you still concerned about your cholesterol levels, know that 75 percent of your cholesterol is produced by your liver, which is influenced by your insulin levels. 

Therefore, if you optimize your insulin level, you will automatically optimize your cholesterol, thereby reducing your risk of both diabetes and heart disease. 

To safely and effectively reverse insulin and leptin resistance, thereby lowering your heart disease risk, you need to:

• Avoid sugar, processed fructose, grains if you are insulin and leptin resistant, and processed foods
• Eat a healthful diet of whole foods, ideally organic, and replace the grain carbs with:
• Large amounts of vegetables
• Low-to-moderate amount of high-quality protein (think organically raised, pastured animals)
• As much high-quality healthful fat as you want (saturated and monounsaturated from animal and tropical oil sources). Most people actually need upwards of 50-85 percent fats in their diet for optimal health—a far cry from the 10 percent or less that is currently recommended. Sources of healthful fats to add to your diet include:avocados; butter made from raw grass-fed organic milk; raw dairy; organic pastured egg yolks; coconuts and coconut oil; unheated organic nut oils; raw nuts and seeds; and grass-fed and finished meats

A third "add-on" suggestion is to start intermittent fasting, which will radically improve your ability to burn fat as your primary fuel. This too will help restore optimal insulin and leptin signaling.

Saturated Fat and Cholesterol Are Both Necessary for Optimal Health

Saturated fats from animal and vegetable sources provide a number of important health benefits, and your body requiresthem for the proper function of your:

Cell membranes	Heart	Bones (to assimilate calcium)
Liver	Lungs	Hormones
Immune system	Satiety (reducing hunger)	Genetic regulation

Cholesterol also carries out essential functions within your cell membranes, and is critical for proper brain function and production of steroid hormones, including your sex hormones. Vitamin D is also synthesized from a close relative of cholesterol: 7-dehydrocholesterol. Your body is composed of trillions of cells that need to interact with each other. Cholesterol is one of the molecules that allow for these interactions to take place.

For example, cholesterol is the precursor to bile acids, so without sufficient amounts of cholesterol, your digestive system can be adversely affected. It's also critical for synapse formation in your brain, i.e. the connections between your neurons, which allow you to think, learn new things, and form memories. In fact, there's reason to believe that low-fat diets and/or cholesterol-lowering drugs may cause or contribute to Alzheimer's disease.12 Low cholesterol levels have also been linked to violent behavior, due to adverse changes in brain chemistry.

To further reinforce the importance of cholesterol, I want to remind you of the work of  Dr. Stephanie Seneff, a research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) who most recently made a giant splash in the world of science with her discovery of how glyphosate acts to destroy human health. According to her theory on cholesterol, it combines with sulfur to form cholesterol sulfate, which helps thin your blood by serving as a reservoir for the electron donations you receive when walking barefoot on the earth (also called grounding). She believes that, via this blood-thinning mechanism, cholesterol sulfate may provide natural protection against heart disease. In fact, she goes so far as to hypothesize that heart disease is likely the result of cholesterol deficiency—which of course is the complete opposite of the conventional view.

For Optimal Heart Health, Balance Your Omega-3 to Omega-6 Ratio

Another critical fat your body needs for optimal health is animal-based omega-3. Omega-3 deficiency can cause or contribute to very serious health problems, both mental and physical, and may be a significant underlying factor of up to 96,000 premature deaths each year. Again demonstrating the abject failure of government guidelines to promote health, the 2011 "food pyramid" (MyPlate) doesn't even mention omega-3. To remedy this gross "oversight," I've created my own Food Pyramid for Optimal Health, which you can print out and share with your friends and family.  

 

As for omega-6 fats, it's important to understand that while you do need them, the most important factor is the ratio between omega-3 and omega-6. The ideal ratio is thought to be anywhere between 1:1 and 1:5, but the typical Western diet is between 1:20 and 1:50 in favor of omega-6, courtesy of an overabundance of industrially processed vegetable oils. As an oversimplification, omega-3s are anti-inflammatory, whereas omega-6s are pro-inflammatory. Hence, when omega-6 is consumed in excess, it can become problematic — and even more so if it's damaged through processing. I firmly believe that increasing your omega-3 and reducing industrialized omega-6 oils is a profoundly important and simple shift in diet that you need to address. For a more complete discussion of the differences between types of dietary fat, omega-3 versus omega-6, DHA, EPA, etc., please refer to our comprehensive fatty acids overview.

Preventing Heart Disease Is Within Your Control

The take home message here is that eating saturated fats like butter, coconut oil, and avocados will not increase your risk of heart disease. On the contrary, it is extremely important for optimal health, including your heart and cardiovascular health. 

What WILL dramatically raise your risk of heart disease and any number of other chronic health problems is refined carbohydrates, including sugar, fructose, and all unsprouted grains. Replacing saturated fats with trans fats and carbohydrates is precisely what has led to a literal "world of hurt" over the past several decades. 

Fortunately, reversing this trend is rather simple, but it will require you to buck a very stubborn status quo—albeit a status quo that is starting to crumble at the foundation, as more and more researchers are coming to the conclusion that we've had it all backwards. 

So, in summary, if you want to prevent heart disease:

• DO eat unprocessed saturated animal fats. Many may benefit from increasing the healthful fat in their diet to 50-85 percent of daily calories
• AVOID all sugars, including processed fructose and grains if you are insulin and leptin resistant. It doesn't matter if they are conventional or organic, as a high-sugar diet promotes insulin and leptin resistance, which is a primary driver of heart disease
• DO exercise regularly, as physical activity along with a healthy diet of whole, preferably organic, foods may be just as potent—if not more potent—than cholesterol-lowering drugs
• AVOID cholesterol-lowering drugs such as statins, as the side effects of these drugs are numerous while the benefits are debatable. In my view, the only group of people who may benefit from a statin drug are those with genetic familial hypercholesterolemia. This is a condition characterized by abnormally high cholesterol, which tend to be resistant to lifestyle strategies like diet and exercise

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2014/12/22/saturated-fat-heart-disease.aspx

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How Turning the Food Pyramid on Its Head Can Help You “Slim Down Without Trying”

June 22, 2013

Story at-a-glance

• While the American agricultural system is the envy of many less affluent nations, it is a food system that promotes subsidized cheap food largely devoid of nutrients and chockfull of unhealthy ingredients that has caused obesity rates to skyrocket
• There is no relationship between agricultural subsidies and nutrition. The government’s nutritional guidelines are in large part mirrored by these same agricultural subsidies, rather than being built upon sound nutritional science
• 92 cents of each food dollar now goes to someone other than the farmer—it’s actually spent on the various manufacturing and packaging processes associated with processed foods
• My food pyramid for optimal health is almost the inverse of the original USDA food pyramid, featuring healthful fats and vegetables on the bottom, followed by high quality proteins, fruits, and lastly, grains and sugars, which are ideally eliminated

            
Visit the Mercola Video Library

 

By Dr. Mercola

In the video above, the late Peter Jennings reports on “how to get fat without really trying.” Indeed, if you eat a standard American diet (SAD), you’re virtually guaranteed to inadvertently pack on extra pounds, even if you think you’re eating healthy.

Presently, a full two-thirds of Americans are overweight or obese, and childhood obesity has tripled over the past 30 years.  

While the American agricultural system may be the envy of many less affluent nations, it also has many unintended consequences, as Jennings points out. One of them is a food system that promotes cheap food largely devoid of nutrients and chockfull of unhealthy ingredients that has caused obesity rates to skyrocket.

If you’re like most people, you probably do not know that there is NO link between agricultural subsidies and nutrition. This important fact is revealed in Jennings report, and this is a major part of the problem. 

Directly related to this issue is the fact that the government’s nutritional guidelines are in large part mirrored by these same agricultural subsidies, rather than being built upon sound nutritional science. 

The original food pyramid created and promoted by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), told you that the “base” of your diet should consist of grains, pasta and breads, despite the evidence showing that grains, which break down into sugar in your body, promotes fat accumulation and drives insulin resistance and related diseases, including diabetes, heart disease and cancer.  

In short, the reason you’re told to make grains the cornerstone of your diet is because that’s what farmers are paid to grow in the US. There’s a lot of it, and it’s inexpensive compared to healthier foods like vegetables, for which few subsidies are offered.

Conventional Farming Promotes Consumption of Unhealthy Foods

There’s no denying the fact that modern agricultural practices promote the consumption of an unhealthy diet. Today’s sky-high rates of obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease can be tied directly to changes in how our food has been grown and produced over the past 40 years. 

According to the Environmental Working Group¹ (EWG), between 1995 and 2010, a mere 10 percent of American farmers collected 74 percent of all subsidies, amounting to nearly $166 billion over 16 years. 

These farm subsidies bring you high-fructose corn syrup, fast food, animal factories, monoculture, and a host of other contributors to our unhealthful contemporary diet.
A report comparing federal subsidies of fresh produce and junk food, prepared by US PIRG, a non-profit organization that takes on special interests on behalf of the public, revealed where your tax dollars are really going and it's quite shocking: If you were to receive an annual federal subsidy directly, you would receive $7.36 to spend on junk food and just 11 cents to buy apples.  

Equally astounding is the following statistic gleaned from a recent interview with Michael Pollan,² in which he points out that according to USDA data, 92 cents of each food dollar now goes to someone other than the farmer—it’s actually spent on the various manufacturing and packaging processes associated with processed foods.

“We’re not going to undo that unless we buy more directly from farmers and buy unprocessed food,” he says.

And I think that’s a crucial point, really. Imagine if food growers could get most or all of each food dollar instead of it being spent on plastic wrappers and food processing! Then they might actually be able to afford growing something other than corn, soy and wheat, which are three of the unhealthiest staples of the processed food industry...

Following USDA Diet Recommendations Is a Recipe for Obesity

Some of you may be old enough to recall the 1992 Food Pyramid, which had grains as the largest bottom block of the pyramid, encouraging you to eat 6-11 servings of bread, cereal, rice and pasta each day. This excess of carbohydrates, most of them refined, is precisely the opposite of what most people need to stay healthy. At the very top of the pyramid was fats and sugar, and while sugar clearly belongs there, healthy fats do not. In fact, most people would benefit from getting anywhere from 50 to 70 percent of their total calories from healthy fats!  

The food pyramid was replaced with “MyPlate”³ in 2011, which slightly downplayed grains as the most important dietary ingredient, making vegetables the largest “slice,” but it still has a long way to go before it will offer a meal plan that will truly support your optimal health.  

One of its most glaring faults is that MyPlate virtually removed all fats from the equation! In fact, except for a small portion of dairy, which is advised to be fat-free or low-fat, fats are missing entirely... There is no mention of the importance of dietary fats, even the "politically correct" ones like the monounsaturated fats in olive oil and nuts, such as pecans (canola oil is also in this category, but I advise avoiding it and using coconut oil instead).  

Of course, one of the most important of the healthy fats is animal-based omega-3, which is also absent from the plate. Deficiency in this essential fat can cause or contribute to very serious health problems, both mental and physical, and may be a significant underlying factor of up to 96,000 premature deaths each year. For more information about omega-3's and the best sources of this fat, please review this previous article.  

Not surprisingly, the US government still has not acknowledged the ever mounting data showing that saturated fat is actually an incredibly healthy, nourishing, and all-natural fat that humans have been thriving on for generations. It provides the necessary building blocks for your cell membranes and a variety of hormones and hormone like substances that are critical to your health. Saturated fats from animal and vegetable sources (such as coconut oil, avocado, non-CAFO meat and dairy, also provide a concentrated source of energy in your diet. 

When you eat fats as part of your meal, they also slow down absorption so that you can feel satiated longer, which helps curb overeating. In addition, they act as carriers for important fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E and K, and are needed for mineral absorption and a host of other biological processes. To get these healthy saturated fats in your diet, you need to eat animal foods like butter and other full-fat raw dairy products and eggs, yet these foods are still demonized by the establishment.

What a Food Pyramid Based on Nutritional Science Really Looks Like

In an effort to remedy the situation, I’ve created my own food pyramid for optimal health (below), which you can print out and share with your friends and family. My pyramid, which is based on nutritional science opposed to agricultural subsidies and industry lobbying efforts, is almost the inverse of the original USDA food pyramid, featuring healthful fats and vegetables on the bottom. Again, most people would benefit from getting at least 50 percent of your daily calories from healthful fats such as avocados, coconut oil, nuts, and raw butter. In terms of bulk or quantity, vegetables should be the most prominent feature on your plate. Veggies provide countless critical nutrients, while being sparse on calories. 

Next comes high quality proteins, followed by a moderate amount of fruits, and lastly, at the very top, you’ll find grains and sugars. This last top tier of sugars and grains can be eliminated entirely, and your health just might become the envy of everyone around you... While this may sound impossible to some, I can attest to the fact that quitting carbs is doable. In fact, once you’ve successfully switched over from burning carbs to burning fat as your body’s primary fuel, carb cravings actually disappear, as if by magic. There are two primary ways to achieve this metabolic switch, and these strategies support each other when combined:

• Intermittent fasting: I prefer daily intermittent fasting, but you could also fast a couple of days a week if you prefer, or every other day. There are many different variations. To be effective, in the case of daily intermittent fasting, the length of your fast must be at least eight hours long. This means eating only between the hours of 11am until 7pm, as an example. Essentially, this equates to simply skipping breakfast, and making lunch your first meal of the day instead
• A ketogenic diet: This type of diet, in which you replace carbs with low to moderate amounts of high quality protein and high amounts of beneficial fat, is what I recommend for everyone, and is exactly what you get if you focus on the bottom three tiers of my food pyramid

Other Atrocious Health Recommendations That Drive Obesity and Disease Rates

Make no mistake about it, obesity is the result of inappropriate lifestyle choices, and unfortunately, our government has spent decades disseminating astoundingly inaccurate information about diet and health. In many ways, the US government has become little more than a propagator of corporate-sponsored propaganda. The following is just a tiny sampling of the pervasive misleading information on weight and obesity disseminated by our government agencies:

• “All sugars are equal, and are okay in moderation:” The science is overwhelmingly clear on this point: fructose and glucose are NOT metabolized by your body in the same way. For example, while every cell in your body utilizes glucose, thereby burning up much of it, fructose is turned into free fatty acids (FFAs), VLDL (the damaging form of cholesterol), and triglycerides, which get stored as fat. Furthermore, the entire burden of metabolizing fructose falls on your liver, which creates a long list of waste products and toxins, including a large amount of uric acid, which drives up blood pressure and causes gout. It also promotes visceral fat.⁴
When you eat 120 calories of glucose, less than one calorie is stored as fat. 120 calories of fructose results in 40 calories being stored as fat. As a standard recommendation, I advise keeping your total fructose consumption below 25 grams per day, or as little as 15 grams a day if you have insulin resistance, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease or are overweight

• “To lose weight, just expend more calories than you eat:” This outdated advice has been shown to be patently false, as not all calories are created equal. In a nutshell, counting calories will not help you lose weight if you're consuming the wrong kind of calories
• “Choosing diet foods will help you lose weight:” Substances like Splenda (sucralose) and Equal or Nutrasweet (aspartame) may have zero calories, but your body isn't fooled. When it gets a "sweet" taste, it expects calories to follow, and when this doesn't occur it leads to distortions in your biochemistry that actually lead to weight gain
• “Avoid saturated fat to protect your heart:” The myth that saturated fat causes heart disease began as little more than a scientifically unsupported marketing strategy for Crisco cooking oil. Most people actually need about 50 to 70 percent of their diet as healthful fats from organic, pastured eggs, avocados, coconut oil, real butter and grass-fed beef in order to optimize their health
• “When it comes to cholesterol levels, the lower the better, to avoid heart disease:” Cholesterol is actually NOT the major culprit in heart disease or any disease, and the guidelines that dictate what number your cholesterol levels should be to keep you "healthy" are fraught with conflict of interest -- and have never been proven to be good for your health. Meanwhile, bringing your cholesterol levels down too low can have significant health ramifications, from mood disorders and violence to, ironically, heart disease

Yes, You Can 'Slim Down Without Even Trying...'

Once you realize the root of the problem, which begins with agricultural subsidies that are based on economics and have nothing to do with growing nutrient dense foods for the masses; which in turn has spawned dietary recommendations that are also based on industry profitability opposed to nutritional science, then it becomes easier to understand why a full two-thirds of Americans are overweight or obese. Even the education of registered dietitians is sponsored and taught by the junk food industry! 

Sadly, these deeply flawed dietary recommendations fuel the nation’s poor health scores, and drive the now colossal health industry, which in turn is run by the pharmaceutical industry... It’s really one big vicious circle.  

You CAN break free, however. 

Perhaps one of the most powerful scientific discoveries to emerge in the past several years is that the old adage “a calorie is a calorie” is patently false. The research clearly demonstrates that even if you control the number of calories you eat, if those calories come primarily from fructose and grains, you are at increased risk of obesity and pre-diabetes, which includes both insulin - and leptin resistance, fatty liver, high blood pressure and high triglycerides. Insulin - and leptin resistance in turn form the foundation for virtually every chronic disease you can think of, including heart disease and cancer. 

The answer, therefore, is to turn the conventional food pyramid on its proverbial head, and dramatically reduce or eliminate virtually all grains and sugars, especially fructose. This in and of itself will go a long way toward preventing accumulation of excess fat. However, to be truly effective, you want to make sure you’re replacing those refined carbs with vegetables and healthful fats.  

Now you’re entering into a diet that will allow your body to shift from burning carbs to burning fat (or ketones) as its primary fuel. At this point, weight loss is not the only benefit you’ll reap. Compelling research shows that this type of diet, also referred to as a ketogenic diet, is an effective prevention and even treatment strategy for cancer. 

Intermittent fasting is another powerful key that will help you transition your body from obtaining the majority of its fuel from glucose stored as glycogen in your muscles and liver, to the fat stored in your tissues. This is one of the most effective ways I know of to burn off excess body fat and eliminate sugar cravings. These are all things that are well within your power to do. Next, I urge you to become involved with changing the system that has brought us to this unfortunate point in our evolution. Growing sprouts in your home is a powerful way to eat very healthy and inexpensively.  

Changing your shopping patterns by supporting local agriculture will not only help improve your health, it will also help improve the environment and bring back our rural communities. One way to get involved is to simply buy more food from your local farmers. It is important to understand the impact you have when you spend your money on processed factory food. For more information on how to find locally-grown foods and farmer’s markets, please see my Sustainable Agriculture page. I would also encourage you to support the Environmental Working Group in its current efforts to renew America’s food and farm policies through the farm bill.⁵

[-] Sources and References

• ¹ Environmental Working Group 2011 Farm Subsidy Database
• ² Alternet April 29, 2013
• ³ USDA MyPlate
• ⁴ Pharmacology, Biochemistry and Behavior November 2010;97(1):101-6
• ⁵ Environmental Working Group, 2013 Farm Bill Platform

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