A truth’s initial commotion is directly proportional to how deeply the lie was believed. It wasn’t the world being round that agitated people, but that the world wasn’t flat. When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker a raving lunatic.
—DRESDEN JAMES
In order to lose weight, you’re going to need to increase the amount of quality fat in your diet. That’s right: Eat more fat. I’m going to give you a moment to let that sink in. It may take a little while to undo the many years of preaching about “low-fat” diets we’ve all lived through over the past two decades or so. You’ve heard for years that the way to drop fat off your body is to cut fat out of your diet. I’m here to stand up for a radically different view.
The truth is, fat isn’t, by definition, bad for you. Fat is, in fact, your friend. This chapter moves beyond the fact that fat storage deposits on your body are actually saving your life to examine the importance of including fat—the right fat—in your diet to ensure healthy, permanent weight loss. You’ll receive a variety of benefits to your health—permanent weight loss prime among them. In fact, fats are the single most important food you can eat to regulate your weight!
Reading this chapter will let you see fats in a whole new light. To wit: Fats are the most important food you will eat to regulate your weight. And low- or no-fat diets will make you fat. Eating fat does not make you fat. Rather, it’s eating acid that piles on the pounds. The solution to being overweight, then, is not to stop eating fats, but to stop eating acids—and start eating good fats! An array of beneficial fats should be an integral part of every one of your daily meals. This chapter shows you why and points you in the direction of how (more specifics of which you’ll find in later chapters).
THE BENEFITS OF FAT
A healthy adult human body is 20 percent fat. It’s a crucial—and very busy—20 percent. After oxygen and water, fat is the next most important component of a healthy, fit body. Fat, a critical component of cellular membranes, is necessary for building healthy cells. Fat is crucial in hormone production and joint lubrication. Fat provides protection from physical impact, including insulating and padding your organs. Fat helps keep blood moving smoothly through the circulatory system. Several crucial vitamins are fat soluble, meaning they are only available to the body if bound to fat. Your body simply cannot function properly without a good supply of fat.
Fat has two functions in the body that are particularly important for achieving and maintaining your ideal weight. First, as I mentioned previously: The body uses fat to buffer, or neutralize, acids. Your body needs fat to maintain the blood and extracellular fluids at an ideal pH of 7.365. Providing your body with the right amounts of the right fats will allow the fat to bind with any excess acids and eliminate them from the body. (Too much acid, though, and the fat gets stored instead.)
One way fat helps neutralize acid is actually by creating cholesterol. When acids build up in the body, it signals the liver to use fat to make cholesterol. The more acidic the body, the more cholesterol is made. Specifically, the liver (which is responsible for 80 percent of our cholesterol—what we get from our diets accounts for only 20 percent) makes LDL cholesterol, famous as “bad” cholesterol because it makes up the plaque inside your arteries that can eventually impede blood flow. The plaque is actually protective, however, saving your arteries from the ravages of acids. Without it, without the cholesterol, the acids could burn holes right through the arteries throughout your circulatory system, and you could bleed to death. Turns out cholesterol is your friend, too. Ultimately, the buildup of too much plaque does become dangerous in and of itself, fulfilling the promise of cholesterol’s bad reputation: high risk of heart attack and stroke. The real problem, however, is not the cholesterol, but the acid! Eliminate the acid, and you don’t have to worry about cholesterol or plaque. And there goes one of the biggest arguments (cholesterol control) in favor of low-fat diets!
The second key point regarding eating fat and losing weight is using fat as fuel. Most human bodies burn sugar (carbohydrates) for fuel. Basically, that’s what is readily at hand. Given the chance, though, the body will run on fat, which is a much cleaner, more efficient fuel. One of the aims of the pH Miracle Living plan is to teach your body to use fat as fuel. Fat creates six times more energy than burning sugar, or protein, while using much less energy in the process. Furthermore, burning fat results in much lower levels of acid waste products. Metabolism is one of the major sources of acid in the body, so slashing the amount of acids produced in this way goes a long way toward balancing your body’s pH—and its weight.
WHY LOW-FAT HASN’T WORKED—AND HOW IT HAS HURT
For decades we’ve been advised to slash the fat from our diets. It seemed to make sense. Eating fat makes you fat, the argument went. If you don’t want to be fat, don’t eat fat. There’s just one problem: It hasn’t worked. Well, two, really: It isn’t true.
Since we as a nation embarked on a quest to get rid of fat in our diets and so off our bodies, we’ve gotten even fatter, and at an alarmingly steep rate of increase to boot. For one thing, we didn’t successfully reduce our fat intake at all—from 1980 to 1991 it remained pretty much the same as it began, at about 81 grams a day per person. But we compensated for the fat we cut out (thought we cut out) by increasing the amount of carbohydrates and animal proteins we ate. What we did manage to do was cut the percentage of calories from fat slightly—but only because we increased the number of calories we ate each day! And the sugary foods we loaded up on are all acidic.
Even people who really do decrease their fat intake can’t expect to lose weight. In a six-week study at the Mayo Clinic, overweight women followed a diet with 45 percent of its calories from fat for two weeks, then switched to a low-fat diet with the same number of calories (mainly from additional carbohydrates) for a month. Not a single participant lost weight or body fat. Researchers could also detect no change in metabolic rate. According to the Mayo team: “NO effect of the four-week, low-fat diet could be detected.”
Furthermore, insufficient fat in your diet can cause a variety of health problems. Your skin may suffer, for one thing, as acids are eliminated through “the third kidney” rather than being bound to fats and eliminated through the bowels or urinary system. As acids escape through the skin, you may have blotchy, dry skin, rashes, and cracks at the corners of the mouth. Without enough fat, you’ll have brittle hair and weak nails. More important, your neurotransmitters can’t function correctly without sufficient essential fatty acids, potentially interfering with your nerve function. Diets too low in fat have been linked to depression and mood disorders, and heart disease. Without the fats essential to cell membranes, you’ll have weak body and blood cells, and associated problems including anemia, poor circulation, inappropriate clotting, and high blood pressure. Without healthy cell membranes, your body is at extreme risk of cellular breakdown leading to serious illness or disease. In short, fat is essential, and to limit or eliminate it sets the stage for serious degenerative consequences.
THE FAILURES OF FAT
By now you may be wondering why I’m bothering to tout the benefits of fat when everyone knows Americans are already experts on getting plenty of fat in their diets. And on the surface, that’s true: Americans currently get about 30 percent of their calories from fat—a drop from 40 percent in 1955, and in line with official nutritional recommendations. But these are largely the wrong kinds of fats—hydrogenated and trans fats. Still, this plan’s recommendation of 40 percent of calories from fat will look shocking to many people who have been exposed to low- or no-fat fad diets for so long.
A vast body of mainstream studies have correlated high-fat diets with increased risk of heart disease, stroke, diabetes, cancer, and, of course, overweight and obesity. When we look at the fatty typical American diet, it is easy to see how it was concluded that fat is bad for you.
But that’s missing the real problem. What’s bad for you is not the fat per se—it’s the typical American diet! (Nutrition professionals refer to it as the standard American diet, or SAD, for short. Sad indeed!) The vast majority of the fat most people get in this country comes from acidic, artery-clogging hydrogenated saturated and trans fats. The picture changes dramatically when the fats in question come from the healthful options available. And trying to lose weight by eating more fat, like trying to lose weight by eating less fat, will be doomed to failure unless you also reduce or eliminate the acidic foods and drinks that are the true culprits.
THE FOUR FATS
The key to eating fat to lose weight is understanding the different types of fats: saturated, trans, monounsaturated, and polyunsaturated. Any given fat or oil has a mixture of these types of fat, and are classified according to which type is predominant. As you’ll see, there are big differences in the effects these fats have on your body. But at baseline, all these fats are much the same. A fat molecule contains carbon atoms bonded to other carbon atoms; the number of carbons in the chain varies by the specific fat. Fats are grouped into types depending on how many of those carbon atoms bond with a pair of hydrogen atoms. If every carbon attaches to two hydrogens, the result is a saturated fat (i.e., it is saturated with hydrogen). If all but one carbon bonds to a hydrogen pair, it forms a monounsaturated fat; more than one pair of hydrogens missing results in a polyunsaturated fat. Trans fats are basically artificially super-saturated fats unusable by the body. As you’ll recall, the more saturated with hydrogen a substance is, the higher its positive charge, and the more acidic it is. In your quest for an alkaline—and ideal weight—body, you need to take in negatively charged foods, including fats. Furthermore, the more saturated a fat is to begin with, the less able it is to bind with acids, and to get them out of circulation in your body—there’s just less room on the bus. Saturated fats are not much use as acid buffers, though the body can use naturally occurring forms for energy.
Saturated Fat
Most fats from animal sources—dairy, meat, poultry, eggs—are saturated. A few vegetable fats, notably coconut, palm, and safflower oils, are also rich in saturated fats. One hallmark of saturated fats is that they are solid at room temperature. Saturated fats can fuel your body, but they can’t buffer acids.
Most Americans get plenty of saturated fats from the animal products they eat. Besides that, the body can make its own saturated fats. Your body needs some saturated fats to make necessary cholesterol. The fat layer under your skin, providing insulation, is almost entirely made of saturated fats. But so are the plaques that form inside blood vessels that can eventually block the flow of blood.
In the 1950s, researchers established saturated fat’s bad reputation, and to this day it is generally equated with weight gain, clogged arteries, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, heart disease, and stroke. But it isn’t really saturated fats that are bad for you—it’s what happens to those fats during processing, cooking, and metabolism. In fact, some saturated fats actually help prevent those conditions and are essential to good health.
There are twelve kinds of saturated fats, most of them known as long-chain fatty acids because of their long (about 20 atoms) carbon chains. Saturated fats in meat are long-chain, and they don’t break down easily unless heated, so the body can’t make good use of them as fuel. And when long-chain saturated fats are heated enough to break down, either during processing or cooking, trans fats are formed (the dangers of which are explained next).
Far better are saturated fats from plant sources. Saturated fat from coconut and palm oils are medium-chain or sometimes short-chain fats, and they break down at body temperature so they can be used for energy. (The saturated fats in coconut—lauric oils—are very similar to what appears in human breast milk, the most perfect food on the planet!) You must be sure to get cold-pressed coconut oil, however, as processing it with heat creates trans fats (see below). Theoretically the same would be true for palm oil, though I don’t know of any source for cold-pressed palm oil. You’ll hear more about the benefits of coconut oil, in particular, later in this chapter.
Saturated fats can be a third to a half of your total fat intake, as long as they aren’t hydrogenated or trans fats.
Trans Fat
Trans fats are formed when hydrogen is added to vegetable oil to convert it from a liquid to a solid (as in corn oil margarine, for example) in a process known as hydrogenation. This takes a potentially good polyunsaturated fat and fills it with protons, not only giving it an unhealthy positive charge but also rendering it useless in buffering acids. What’s more, a structural change called cross linking occurs across the carbon chain of the fat that makes trans fats useless as metabolic fuel as well. And trans fats can interfere with optimal use of beneficial essential fatty acids (which we’ll be getting to in a moment). You also get trans fats when heating polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats above 118 degrees Fahrenheit. Any oil that isn’t cold-pressed is going to have trans fats.
Trans fats raise cholesterol levels, impair circulation, and increase the risk of many degenerative diseases and age-related maladies. Trans fats are officially known as trans-fatty acids, which should give you a clue right there that they should have no place in your diet.
With no redeeming qualities, trans fat is the one type of fat you must avoid altogether. Following the pH Miracle Living plan, you won’t find any trans fats in whole, natural foods—like the ones recommended in this book. Trans fats are the exclusive domain of processed foods, where they are used to extend the shelf life of foods, keeping them artificially “fresh” for extended periods. After the National Academy of Sciences published conclusions about the harmful health effects of trans fats in 2003, demonizing them more even than saturated fats, food labels began to note the amount of trans fats in some products. The FDA ruled in 2003 that food manufacturers must list trans fat amounts on nutrition labels, but the requirement doesn’t go into effect until 2006. While you wait for access to more specific info, you can steer clear of trans fats by avoiding anything with “partially hydrogenated” or “vegetable shortening” in the list of ingredients. It pays to be scrupulous: Leading scientists at the Harvard School of Public Health estimate that 30,000 premature deaths every year are attributable to the consumption of trans-fatty acids.
Monounsaturated Fat
One of the wonderful properties of monounsaturated fats (besides their ability to cleanse the body of acids and fuel your metabolism) is that they are very stable. Unlike polyunsaturated fats (see below), they can withstand heat above 118 degrees F without breaking down into trans fats. That makes them the best choice when you cook your food.
Monounsaturated fats are usually liquid, though they will solidify in the refrigerator. The oils in olives and avocados are monounsaturated. Canola and peanut oils are also touted for being monounsaturated, but they are always processed with heat, which creates trans fats and so aren’t good choices. “Cold-processed” oils are what you need; check the labels.
Polyunsaturated Fat
Electron-rich polyunsaturated fats can bind to more excess acids in the body than any other type of fat, and they are the best fuel for the body to use to generate energy. These fats will help lower your cholesterol levels because they buffer acids in your body, so less cholesterol is produced—and your risk of obesity is reduced, along with the risk of heart attack, stroke, and diabetes. In addition, the fats that are crucial in forming cell wall membranes are mainly polyunsaturated fats. If necessary, the body will use saturated fats for this purpose, but those membranes won’t function as well as normal, which can lead to serious health problems over the long run.
Missing two or more pairs of hydrogen, polyunsaturated fats are found mainly in vegetable oils and are liquid at room temperature.
Polyunsaturated fats should make up 20 to 40 percent of your caloric intake—at least 60 to 90 grams of the stuff each day, for most people.
ESSENTIAL FATTY ACIDS: OMEGA-3 AND OMEGA-6
One subcategory of polyunsaturated fats are particularly… well, essential. The essential fatty acids (EFAs) are so called because the body needs but cannot make them; they must be provided via your food. There are two key groupings of EFAs I want to cover here: omega-3s and omega-6s, which are found in fish oils and a variety of seed oils. (Monounsaturated fats could be called omega-9s, though they rarely are.) These long-chain fats (18 to 22 carbon atoms in a row) are the very best acid neutralizers—big bus, plenty of open seats.
Omega-3s and omega-6s help build cell membranes, support the work of white blood cells, lubricate joints, insulate the body against heat loss, prevent skin from drying out, promote chromosome stability, improve brain function, enhance growth, improve lymphatic and blood circulation, support cellular growth and regeneration, and provide energy. They are used to make hormone-like prostaglandins that protect against heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, atherosclerosis, blood clots, and diabetes. They can also help relieve secondary symptoms of arthritis, asthma, PMS, allergies, skin conditions, diabetes, and some behavior disorders. Deficiencies of omega-3s and omega-6s have been strongly implicated as a cause of serious disease—and obesity.
Omega-3s: EPA, DHA, and ALA
The far end of the fat molecule is called the omega end, “omega” meaning final or last in Greek. Omega-3 fats are so called because the first missing pair of hydrogen atoms occurs at the third position from that end.
Omega-3s soak up the most acid of any kind of fat. That helps them decrease your risk of heart attack by lowering triglyceride levels (by as much as 65 percent) and cholesterol (especially LDL or “bad” cholesterol), reducing arteriosclerosis, lowering blood pressure, and improving blood circulation. A study at the Oregon Health Sciences University provided patients with high cholesterol and triglycerides omega-3s in the form of fish oil for four weeks—and their cholesterol dropped an average of 46 percent, and their triglycerides more than 75 percent! Omega-3s also reduce your risk of stroke.
In some animal studies, certain omega-3s even inhibited the growth and metastasis of tumors. That’s probably because omega-3s help suppress formation of new blood supplies to tumors. In humans, this anticancer effect showed up in a French study documenting that women with high levels of a particular omega-3 (ALA) in the fat tissue in their breasts had a 60 percent lower risk of breast cancer than women with low levels, and Swedish studies showing men with high levels of omega-3s from fish oil in their blood had a lower risk of prostate cancer than men with low levels. Omega-3s fight inflammation, and so arthritis, colitis, fibromyalgia, diverticulitis, and other inflammatory diseases. They help prevent osteoporosis and diabetes. Last but certainly not least, omega-3 fats help keep you slim.
Two of the best sources of omega-3 fats are eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), found in fatty cold water fish and other northern marine animals. Flaxseed, hemp, walnut, and soybean oils contain an omega-3 called alpha-linolenic acid (ALA), which the body converts, through several stages, into EPA then DHA. Flaxseed is the plant source richest in omega-3s, which comprise 57 percent of the oil. In addition, flaxseed oil contains about 16 percent omega-6s (see below).
EPA and DHA are abundant in brain cells, nerve relay stations, visual receptors, and adrenal and sex glands, to give you a feel for how integral they are in so many ways to the smooth functioning of the body.
In 2000 the American Heart Association recommended that everyone should eat at least two 3-ounce servings of fatty fish each week. That same year even the FDA gave omega-3s its approval after reviewing evidence about reduction in risk of heart disease. In 2004, the FDA announced that it would allow products containing omega-3s to tout their heart-healthy benefits on the label and require specific information on how many grams of EPA or DHA are in the food.
Omega-6s: LA, CLA, and GLA
Omega-6 fats have their hydrogens missing in the sixth position away from the end of the chain. Though not quite up to the performance level of omega-3s, omega-6s are also good acid neutralizers and good to burn for energy. They help you burn off unwanted body fat by increasing your metabolic rate while you are burning fat for energy. Like omega-3s, omega-6s, too, help lower blood pressure, cholesterol levels, and risk of stroke and heart attack—and obesity. Not to mention helping prevent arthritis, stop cancer cells, improve diabetic side effects, relieve PMS, and improve the condition of hair, nails, and skin.
The two key omega-6 fats are linoleic acid (LA) and gamma-linolenic acid (GLA). Omega-6s are readily available in your diet, since they occur in a range of common vegetable oils, nuts, and seeds. In addition, omega-6s are made from omega-3s within the body as they soak up protons. LA is found in safflower, soybean, sesame, walnut, pumpkin, flax, and hemp—seeds, nuts, and oils. LA and GLA are both found in sunflower, evening primrose, black currant, and borage oils. The amount contained varies by the oil, and most oils have a combination of omega-6s. Borage seed oil, for example, contains up to 24 percent GLA—more than twice the level in evening primrose oil—and about 34 percent LA.
Studies at the Welsh National School of Medicine have shown that GLA from evening primrose and borage oils stimulates the metabolism and so increases fat burning. In one study, participants lost an average of about 10 pounds over a six-week period when they took GLA. Animal studies conducted at the National Food Research Institute in Japan demonstrated that when taking GLA from borage oil, less body fat accumulates.
A form of LA called conjugated linoleic acid, or CLA, reduces the body’s ability to store fat and promotes the use of stored fat for energy. A study published in the Journal of Nutrition in 2000 found a 20 percent decrease in body fat percentage and an average loss of 7 pounds of fat over a ninety-day period in patients taking CLA and not making any changes to their diets. The study compared different doses of CLA against placebo and found that 3.54 grams (g) of CLA per day was sufficient to obtain all the beneficial effects.
A Norwegian study published in 2001 in the Journal of International Medical Research demonstrated that CLA helped people exercising strenuously three times a week significantly reduce their body fat and increase lean muscle mass compared to those following the exercise program but not taking CLA. Neither group made any other changes to their lifestyle during the trial.
EAT FAT
Inuits in Greenland eat more fat than any other people in the world. Yet heart disease, strokes, and cancer are virtually unknown among them. Their secret: omega-3 fats. Because their diet is so heavily based on fish and northern marine animals, omega-3s make up 10 percent of their total blood fats. (For comparison’s sake, a study of Danes living in Copenhagen following essentially the same diet as the typical American one showed almost no omega-3s in their blood. My own studies show the typical American’s levels are less than 3 percent.) Just imagine what a similar level of omega-3s could do for you, especially combined with the rich plant nutrition of the pH Miracle Living plan.
Eating fat—the right fat—will lower your cholesterol and blood pressure, and reduce the plaque in your arteries, despite whatever the many fat-phobes out there may say. Thus, one of the many points of this plan is to increase the amount of healthy, electron-rich mono- and polyunsaturated fats, and even saturated fats, in your diet. That means virgin, cold-pressed, or low heat-extracted oils like olive, flaxseed, borage, and primrose. It also means fish, especially trout, salmon, mackerel, sardines, tuna, striped bass, and eel, the richest sources of EPA and DHA omega-3s. And it means foods that contain naturally occurring oils. Fish is one example, and nuts and seeds are also generally rich in healthy fats. Here I want to call attention to two other key foods in particular: avocado and coconut.
Avocado is a key source of monounsaturated fats in the pH Miracle Living plan, right up there with olive oil, and you should have at least one a day—up to three to five for those with serious health conditions. Avocados are important in reaching and maintaining your ideal weight because they neutralize acids, protecting your body against the inevitable by-products of digestion, metabolism, and respiration. That’s job one in the fight against obesity. And like other monounsaturated fats, avocado helps protect the heart and blood vessels. Avocados contain compounds that lower cholesterol and help prevent certain types of cancers, eye disease, heart disease, diabetes, and obesity—in greater concentrations than many other commonly eaten plant foods. Avocados have antioxidant as well as antacid properties. They contain fourteen minerals, notably iron and copper, which aid in red blood cell regeneration, and potassium. They are one of the best sources of vitamin E. They contain no starch and very little sugar. Avocados are 80 percent fat, all of it good. And they are a good source of protein (10 to 15 percent). (To buy organic avocados via mail order, see Resources.)
Coconut is the second incredible fat-rich food you should never do without when you are working toward a healthy weight. Technically a saturated fat, coconut oil—as long as it is cold pressed and not converted into trans fat by heat processing—has been shown to reduce the symptoms of digestive disorders, support the work of the white blood cells, and help prevent bacterial, yeast, and fungal infections. Coconut oil is high in lauric fats (which comprise 50 to 55 percent of its makeup), a medium-chain fat that the body converts into monolaurin. Monolaurin helps reduce acidity and, thus, weight. By controlling yeast, coconut oil reduces yeast’s appetite—and your cravings for sugar. It also curbs hypoglycemia and helps eliminate hunger pangs. The final bit of good news about coconut: It speeds up your metabolism. A study conducted in Yucatan, where coconut is a staple of the diet, showed that people living there had metabolic rates 25 percent higher than people with a similar profile living in the United States. (Bonus: The women in Yucatan had none of the symptoms commonly associated with menopause.)
You’ll get more details on how to work good fats into your foods on the pH Miracle Living plan in chapter 12. Basically, I recommend increasing your omega-3s, 6s, and 9s by eating wild (not farm-raised) salmon, mackerel, trout, tuna, striped bass, and other cold-water fish several times a week. You should also include flax oil and Essential Oil by Braleans on steamed veggies or in soups, shakes, and salad dressings every day. To increase your omega-6s, also use oils from hemp, primrose, and borage. And eat almonds, hazelnuts, flax, and sunflower seeds—raw, not roasted. Get a variety of oils in your diet. In every case, select unrefined, cold-pressed organic oils (check your local natural food store). Exposure to heat, light, and even oxygen makes fats and oils rancid, which, besides affecting their taste, reduces their beneficial properties. So choose oils in dark containers to protect them from light exposure, and buy smaller bottles to reduce exposure to air. Check the selections in the refrigerator section of your natural food store. Leave out enough oil for a few days’ use, and freeze the rest to extend the life of the oil you’ve invested in. Yes, high-quality oils will be more expensive, but the good health they provide is priceless.
The following chart summarizes the best sources of fats. In addition, I recommend supplementing your good fats intake. You’ll find the details of the pH Miracle Living plan in chapter 12.
Good Fats and Where to Find Them
Most oils contain both monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats, and are generally classified by which one makes up the greater proportion. Again make sure to buy cold-pressed oils; heating the oil during extraction and/or packaging breaks it down, robbing it of its benefits.
GOOD Saturated fats for energy |
BETTER Monounsaturated fats for acid buffering |
BEST Polyunsaturated fats for acid buffering and cellular membranes |
|
|
Omega-3s |
Omega-6s |
coconut oil |
olive oil |
marine oils |
borage oil |
|
cold-pressed canola oil |
fish oils |
evening primrose oil |
|
almond oil |
flaxseeds and oil |
soybean oil |
|
avocado and avocado oil |
hemp oil |
sesame oil |
|
raw nuts |
|
sesame seeds and oil |
|
|
|
safflower oil |
|
|
|
pumpkin seeds |
|
|
|
black currant oil |
|
|
|
sunflower oil |
|
|
|
grapeseed oil |
Used on a regular basis, electron-rich fats provide many health benefits and are especially important to reaching your ideal weight. A 2000 report from the Surgeon General on nutrition and health declares that deficiencies, excesses, or imbalances of fat in the body are involved in 70 percent or more of all deaths in this country. Choose the right fats, get plenty of them, and you’ll never be one of those statistics. You’ll stick at your ideal weight, in vibrant good health besides.
