Before II World War, the food available was mostly fresh and grown locally. People used to move more to get food, and tradition was to sit all together and have a meal, which united families around the Globe. After post war period famine times were over and there was a food revolution: easy and fast to prepare foods emerged and people just wanted to indulge and enjoy the ease of having food supply availability. Today, the majority of foods served, whether at home, in school or in restaurants, are highly processed foods, filled with sugars, harmful processed fats, and chemical additives. This includes restaurant foods (foods away from home) and processed grocery foods that require little or no preparation time before consuming at home.
The result of this revolution? Well, diabetes type II, CVD, and many chronic diseases might be on answer.
The shifts that led western civilizations to metabolic chronic diseases:
Exchanging traditional fats for processed vegetable oils
Fats help our body absorb important vitamins, including vitamins A, D, and E, and fats are especially important for babies and children for proper growth and development. Furthermore, saturated fats, although supplying more calories, will NOT actually cause gain weight, nor will it promote heart disease as the industry wants us to believe.
Unfortunately, the healthiest fats, including animal fats and coconut oil, both of which are saturated, have been long believed to be heart attack promoters, for example, whereas meanwhile, harmful hydrogenated vegetable oils such as margarine, corn and canola oil have been promoted as “healthful” alternatives.
Conventional recommendations have also called for dramatically decreasing the overall amount of fat in daily diet, and this modern fat aversion is another driving factor of metabolic diseases and chronic ill health.
The increased consumption of processed vegetable oils has led to a severely unbalanced fatty acid composition, as these oils provide high amounts of omega 6 fatty acids. The ideal ratio of omega-3 to omega-6 fats is 1:1, but the typical Western diet is around 1:20. Eating too much damaged omega-6 fat and too little omega-3 triggers health problems, including cardiovascular disease, cancer, depression, Alzheimer's, rheumatoid arthritis, and diabetes, just to name a few.
But how to deal with this contradictory information, and how to correct this imbalance?
- Learn how to get away from pro inflammatory foods and oils;
- Add correct amounts of fatty acids on your diet.
Get away from pro inflammatory foods:
- Hydrogenated oils (palm oil, corn oil, peanut oil)
- Grilled meats
- Processed foods (sausages)
- Non-organic commercial eggs
And commenting about Eggs, which are actually among the most nutritious foods you can eat (provided they come from organically raised, pastured chicken) have long been accused of causing heart disease simply because they're high in cholesterol.
But dietary cholesterol has little to do with the cholesterol level in your body, and numerous studies have confirmed that eating eggs does NOT raise potentially adverse LDL cholesterol in your blood.
You can tell the eggs are free range or pastured by the colour of the egg yolk. Pasture fed chicken produce eggs with bright orange yolks and firm white part. Dull, pale yellow yolks are a sure sign you're getting eggs from caged chicken that are not allowed to pasture for their natural diet.
Add healthy Omega 3 fatty acids to your diet!
- Avocado
- Flaxseed oil
- Organic pasture meat and chicken
- Bone broth
- Wild caught salmon and white fish
Omega-3 Fatty acids help your Mitochondrial function:
Your omega-3 levels may also affect your mitochondrial function, or dysfunction, as well as important organs such as liver, eyes and kidneys. Omega-3 fats are among the more promising nutritional components researchers have found that play a crucial role in the management of mitochondrial dysfunction. Your mitochondria are important in energy production and calcium signalling, as well as apoptosis and autophagy.
Technically, omega-3 fats are found in plant and animal sources, but animal sources are the most bioavailable to your body, meaning that your body is more effective in using animal sources.
Plant-based omega-3 provides alpha linoleic acid (ALA), which your body inefficiently converts to EPA and poorly converts to DHA. Plant-based sources of omega-3 include flaxseed, walnuts, pumpkin seeds and chia seeds. These help to boost your overall ALA intake.
Fish and marine oil supplements are a direct source of EPA and DHA. EPA and DHA are essential in digestion, blood clotting, memory, learning and functions of cell receptors. You must get these from your diet.
Having a balance diet with natural sources of Omega 6 and Omega 3 will enable you to stay healthy and protected from aging effects of pro oxidative damage.
Don’t avoid fat! Balance the ratios to have your body use the most of it for your health!
By Adriana Taralli
N.D. MAS ETH Zürich Nutrition and Health DHEST
