People give me a very hard time about my unwillingness to act on resent reports that saturated fat can be good for you. People have also have given me a hard time about my stance on eggs and how I recommend limiting their use. In a recent post on saturated fat and common sense, I gave my suggestion for a good allocation of fat in your daily diet which relied upon moderation. I still suggested limiting saturated fats despite all their recent ‘redemption’? Why? We don’t live in a theoretical world. Perhaps in *theory* these fats are good for you but the reality is in stark contrast.
I know in Europe its much better, but the USA has a horribly contaminated food supply – thats the ugly reality. When you tell someone to eat saturated fat, you are telling them to eat pesticide contaminated food.
Prevention Magazines “Dirty Dozen”
1. Beef, Pork and Poultry
2. Milk, Cheese and Butter
3. Strawberries, Raspberries and Cherries
4. Apples and Pears
5. Tomatoes
Notice anything interesting about this 12 most contaminated foods list? Most of those “good saturated fats that those in bodybuilding tell you to eat are either in the #1 worst or #2 worst when it comes to food contamination! I can hear people’s reply now, “Oh, but you can buy organic!”. Time to bring you back to the real world. The bodybuilding advocates pushing eggs, milk and cheese for “good saturated fat” never mention the word ‘organic’, go ahead and look for yourself. The reality is that many bodybuilders are either students or just starting in their careers so they cant afford organic.
Some very interesting “food for thought” from the above linked prevention magazine article:
The EPA reports that meat is contaminated with higher levels of pesticides than any plant food. Many chemical pesticides are fat-soluble and accumulate in the fatty tissue of animals. Animal feed that contains animal products compounds the accumulation, which is directly passed to the human consumer.
Animals concentrate pesticides and chemicals in their milk and meat. Growth hormones and antibiotics are also serious concerns and are invariably found in commercial milk, cheese, and butter.
Fat from animals is bad, why? Because pesticides accumulate in the fatty tissues of animals. If you want to eat beef, dairy, and chicken you might consider minimizing your exposure to pesticides by getting the leanest cuts of meat you can afford.
Moderation is the key! Set your macronutrient ratios then calculate how many grams fat you get per day using a calorie calculator like mine. Then when it comes to deciding how to allocate your fat calories between plant and animal sources, keep the pesticide issue in mind!
I’m not a vegetarian for political reasons. I’m not a vegetarian because of cruelty. I’m a vegetarian for health reasons as the above two quotes sum up. If I was a farmer and grew my own cattle and chickens from grain raised on my own farm then I would certainly eat beef and chicken freely because then I could be sure of its safety. If I lived in Europe, I would probably eat beef and chicken. IMO, the ‘organic’ label is a great start in the USA but its insufficient. Grain raised at Three Mile Island without pesticides or fertilizer would be ‘organic’ and you could then feed it to your cows for ‘organic’ beef – problem is it would be dangerously radioactive. Because of the globalization of the agribusiness, organic foods often don’t come from the USA. Who knows what leaking toxic wasted dump is next to the farm where the ‘organic’ food is being grown.