As a Matter of Fat

As a Matter of Fat - What's Up, USANA?

By Matt Jaggi in Infographic

All it takes is opening a cupboard or searching through the fridge to discover the truth: we are obsessed with low-fat foods. From fat-free salad dressings and light potato chips to low-fat frozen waffles and 100-calorie snack packs—somewhere along the line, we were taught to shun fat from our diets.
Ironically, a closer look at the nutrition labels on these fat-free foods often uncovers something worse: large amounts of refined carbohydrates and sugars, which can be detrimental to good health.
What’s more startling is the fact that even though Americans have been advised consistently over the last 30 years to decrease their fat consumption, obesity continues to rise steadily. In fact, USDA data suggests the average daily calorie intake for adults in the United States has increased by 24.5 percent between 1970 and 2000. That’s a whopping 530 extra calories a day on average.
And where are most of these extra calories coming from? Surprisingly, most of them come from the refined carbohydrates found in unhealthy snack foods—not fats.
So how did the idea that all fats are bad get started? Check out fat’s large history in the infographic below to learn more.
It’s almost like a Nancy Drew and the Case of the Bad Fats story.

What Causes Heart Disease-- a Cardiologist Speaks Out

If you have ever had a test result of elevated cholesterol in your blood, you may have been warned about cholesterol. I have been on several occasions.
While I was never advised to go on medication for it, I was usually given standard advice to watch out for and avoid cholesterol in my diet. In fact in my last exam everything was good as far as my overall results, except that the "bad" type of LDL cholesterol was a bit high, which caused concern for my doctor.
I was already eating whole grains and fish, and avoiding trans fats and foods high in cholesterol. Researching cholesterol, I discovered the conventional wisdom regarding cholesterol is not unanimous. Cholesterol as such is less of the culprit than it was previously thought to be.
Dr. Dwight Lundell, a cardiologist who has performed thousands of surgeries, is one of many physicians who now question this prevailing belief about cholesterol and heart disease.
Instead, Dr. Lundell questions the role that saturated fat and cholesterol play in heart disease. He states that rather than cholesterol, it is inflammation, that is the source of most types of degenerative disease, especially heart disease and type 2 diabetes. And he finds a diet of processed foods high in sugar and Omega 6 fatty acids as a leading cause of many health problems,including heart disease:

Heart Surgeon Speaks Out While we do need some omega 6 fatty acids in our diet, many people are consuming too much of them. Omega 6 is found in margarine and most cooking oils including corn, soy, safflower, palm kernel oil and canola oil except expeller processed canola oil. Olive oil and fish oil are a good source of omega 3 fats.