|
Not
so long ago, we loved butter. Whether
it’s used as the base of fine sauces, melted over
vegetables, or spread lavishly on toast and encrusted
with cinnamon sugar, butter is the stuff of childhood
dreams, the wistful fantasy of fat-deprived grownups.
Now we’re terrified of the stuff and, for that matter,
fat in any form. Somehow, we’ve taken a food that’s
been universally consumed—even revered—and
made it a culinary thug.
How, exactly, did this happen? What prompted,
then tirelessly fueled, our extraordinary fear of fat?
After all, this is the stuff that’s been used for
most of our civilized history, since the first enterprising
foodie discovered that vigorously shaking ewe cream rendered
it a creamy, solid mass that was just this side of heaven.
For hundreds of years, butter was used in everyday kitchens
and well-heeled restaurants alike, without anxiety or
shame. It just made sense: it came from cows, it tasted
good, it made skillets slippery enough to flip eggs and
flapjacks, and turned plain potatoes into a side dish
of note.
Then came the relatively recent phenomenon
of fat phobia. Around the middle of the 20th century,
once modern sanitation practices triumphed over the assorted
scourges and plagues of earlier years and people began
living past the age of 50, doctors noticed a continued
and disturbing increase in the incidence of cardiovascular
disease. A theory evolved that eating cholesterol and
fat caused heart disease, and researchers set out to prove
this hypothesis. Studies emerged, and the sheer volume
of research seduced news-hungry reporters. Starry eyed,
they leapt on every new finding that supported the fat-causes-heart-disease
theory like paparazzi racing after celebrities at the
Academy Awards. With physicians admonishing them to cut
back on fat, and media headlines fueling the fire, the
public bounded on the fat-is-bad bandwagon. And the rest
is history.
Big fat lies.
Over the next 50 years, in spite of countless conflicting
studies, the following evolved: high cholesterol causes
heart disease. In the medical community, this theory is
called “the lipid hypothesis.” It has become
more than a theory, however, and most people accept it
as a hard, proven fact—even though researchers now
believe oxidative stress (essentially, free radical damage)
and inflammation are the causes of heart disease, and
even though plenty of large studies refute the high cholesterol-heart
disease link.
But studies are just studies, creations
of artificial settings and manipulations of data. What
if we asked a common-sense question: why would a substance
we’ve eaten without incident for a large portion
of recorded history suddenly be causing widespread disease?
Is it because we’ve stopped exercising, so we’re
more prone to obesity? Is it because we’ve dramatically
increased our intake of processed grains and simple carbs,
which prompts inflammation and raises blood triglyceride
levels? Is it that we eat our saturated fat in conjunction
with sugar and flour, rather than with vegetables? Is
it simply that, thanks to modern sanitation practices
and medical know-how, we now live long enough to develop
heart disease?
Perhaps it’s because we eat fewer
fruits, vegetables, nuts and fish, antioxidant-rich foods
that can prevent the harmful effects of oxidized cholesterol,
or because we no longer eat butter and other forms of
saturated fat in their natural forms—as whole foods,
unadulterated by hormones, antibiotics and pesticide residues.
Or maybe it’s that, in many cases, we’re big
fat pigs. We’ve lost a sense of moderation, forgetting
to eat butter and meat and cheese—like everything
else—in their appropriate quantities.
At any rate, after enough medical professionals bought
into the “fat causes heart disease” theory,
we were sold. Then, in a heroic feat of food engineering
and utter disregard for common sense and aesthetics, fat-free
foods were invented.
The unlikely forerunner of these was margarine.
We think of it as a modern American creation, but the
foul stuff was developed in 1869 by, of all people, the
French. (Its creation came about when Emperor Louis Napoleon
III offered a substantial reward for anyone who could
make a butter substitute suitable for the lower classes).
For many years, margarine was used as a cheap and admittedly
inferior substitute for butter, not because of any purported
health benefits.
As the fat-free craze spread, margarine
gained enormous popularity in the United States. Butter
bashers everywhere trumpeted its virtues, and we slathered
the stuff on our bran muffins and high-fiber bread, swaggering
with the misguided arrogance and self-importance of happily
unaware toddlers.
Years later, of course, we learned that
margarine was a primary source of trans fats, scary substances
that caused LDL (bad) cholesterol levels to skyrocket
and HDL (good) levels to plummet. In 2007, one large study
reported that women with the highest levels of trans fats
had triple the risk of developing heart disease. In a
recent review in the New England Journal of Medicine,
even small amounts of trans fats—1 to 2 percent
of calories per day—were linked to a 23 percent
increase in heart disease.
Fat facts.
Now, back to the whole fat question: what’s good,
what’s bad, and what’s plenty? In general,
fat-free diets are dangerous. Fats are crucial for a variety
of body functions. They make it possible for us to digest,
absorb and utilize fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E and K.
They’re sources of essential fatty acids, and they’re
critical in nerve transmission, hormone production and
maintaining the integrity of cell membranes.
Most food contains a combination of four
major fats: saturated fats, trans fats, monounsaturated
fats and polyunsaturated fats. The real question is, what
kind of fat should we eat, and how much? Some answers
are easy: trans fats are the work of the devil, while
the monounsaturated fats in olive oil, avocados and most
nuts can be eaten with impunity. Other answers are more
complex. The data on polyunsaturated fats is mixed, and
the saturated fat debate is unarguably the most complex
of all.
Lots of folks will tell you how much fat
to eat, and what kind. The American Heart Association
will tell you to limit saturated fats to seven percent
of your daily diet, and to keep trans fats to 1 percent,
but they won’t tell you how much polyunsaturated
or monounsaturated fat to eat. A bunch of other experts
will tell you to eliminate saturated fat altogether, or
to limit polyunsaturated fat, or to eat more polyunsaturated
fat, or to shun all fats except for coconut oil.
I won’t tell you anything about how
much fat to eat. I think my job is to offer you some food
for thought that may, perhaps, inspire you to your own
research. In so doing, you might draw your own conclusions
and make your own decisions, rather than relying on the
opinions of experts who are, in the end, simply imperfect
and fallible humans. In the words of Michael Pollan—author
of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, an intelligent, insightful
and deeply provocative treatise on what we eat—“I’m
trying to take down the cult of expert eating.”
And yes, I eat butter.
Lisa Turner is a food and nutrition writer in Boulder,
Colorado. She writes food columns for local and national
magazines, teaches at Bauman College of Holistic Nutrition
and Culinary Arts, and eats chocolate every chance she
gets.
|
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2008 FEATURE ARTICLES
