Is it the carbs?

Or maybe something else too??

Or maybe it’s multiple something elses (that’s plural for else).

For those of you who know me, I have this thing that I do where I seem to blame carbs for many maladies. While I do think we all consume too many what I call EXCESS CARBS, there is more to improving your health than just avoiding excess carbs.

There, I said it! Are you happy now?

If you don’t want to take my word for it, read thru the comments from my recent substack where I asked my readers to tell me what has improved their health the most. While many wrote that lowering carbs was key, they mentioned many other optimal health improvement hacks. So if you haven’t yet read it, go check it out.

I need your help

So what else is important, you know, other than avoiding EXCESS CARBS.

If we stick to food we consume then there is another food group that comes to mind that can be just as harmful to your health as EXCESS CARBS.

You want to know what that is?

Can you handle it?

Well I am going to tell you anywho…

Fake dietary fat.

Fake dietary fat is that which is man made in factories by mechanical industrial processing. Fake fats are something created by the food industry, aka Big Food, that our ancestors never ever consumed. Yet it is in so so many of the foods we now eat, unless you prepare all your foods yourself from natural ingredients, like our ancestors did.

Here are some fake fats.

• Vegetable oils

• Seed oils

• Soybean oil

• Crisco

• Corn oil

• Sunflower oil

• Canola/Rapeseed oil

• Safflower oil

• Cottonseed oil

• Any oil that says hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated

Can you name any others I missed?

BTW, besides fried foods these oils are major ingredients in Mayonnaise and Salad dressings. We all need to start reading food ingredient labels and putting back in the shelves those “food products” that have these ingredients. To put it bluntly I have heard these food products to be called Frankenfoods as well as Weapons of Mass Destruction for your health.

There are probably others Fake Fats but I hope you get the drift. It might be easier to know the healthy fats you should consume.

What fats are safe or healthy?

Pretty much any fats our ancestors consumed before the food industry switched to using the vegetable and seed oils.

Safe added fats include:

• Butter

• Olive oil

• Ghee

• Coconut oil

• Avocado oil

Safe natural fats include:

• Any fat found naturally in animals and fish that ate their natural foods. So the fat in properly raised cows and chickens are healthy. Fat in wild caught fish is healthy. Fat in eggs is healthy. Fat in dairy is healthy. Get the hint?

• Natural Fat found in some plant foods like avocados and nuts.

Time for a story.

A story usually helps with perspective.

If you want to take a deep dive on bad food ingredients follow thefoodbabe on Instagram.

Can you believe all the ingredients in Wendy’s french fries? Incredible but McDonalds is no better, but they used to be about 30ish years ago.

Did you know that McDonalds used to fry their french fries in beef fat? Beef fat is actually healthy. McDonalds changed sometime in the 1990s to a pretty ingredient-heavy oil blend that includes canola oil, corn oil, soybean oil, hydrogenated soybean oil, and natural beef flavor with wheat and milk derivatives), dextrose, sodium acid pyrophosphate, and salt.

I don’t think I will ever have a McDonalds or a Wendy’s fry again. Look at that oil list and compare it to the fats to avoid. It’s almost like they lost a bet and had to choose the unhealthiest ingredients to use in their fries. While todays stack is about unhealthy industrial processed fats, do you really also want wheat (especially if you are avoiding gluten), milk derivatives (careful if you are dairy or lactose sensitive), dextrose (sugar), and what really is sodium acid pyrophosphate in your french fries? I think it’s what keeps the fry from discoloring and spoiling. Try an experiment to see. Buy some McDonalds fries. Don’t you dare eat them. Leave them out on a table somewhere in your home. Check a month later. I bet you they look about the same. If so that is the sodium acid pyrophosphate. I wonder what that stuff does to your body if you consume it?

So now that I went off on another tangent let’s get back to Fake Fats.

Fake fats if consumed can cause very similar issues to excess dietary carbs. They can cause fatty liver, insulin resistance, excess inflammation, and weight gain. Sounds familiar. Imagine what the Standard American Diet (SAD) which is full of excess carbs and vegetable/seed oils (fake fats) is doing to your health? The answer is not anything good.

So my thoughts.

Avoid EXCESS DIETARY CARBS.

But also avoid FAKE FATS.

Your body and your overall health will thank you for this.

If you want to know what your levels of inflammatory fats are in your body, we do have a finger stick blood test at the Institute for Medical Wellness that will measure all your healthy, not so good and bad fats. This can help us to guide you on how best to improve your diet and overall health.

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Other interesting stacks worth a read.

Maryann DeMasi is an investigative reporter and just wrote a stack on Mammograms. It’s not what you think so worth a read.

Mammograms for women 40 & over?

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What’s a stack without some fun?

It’s a wasted stack of course.

So let’s not waste it.

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Looks like the poster children for how to live long and healthy.

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Try and remember this quote next time you get in a discussion/debate?

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Don’t you hate when this happens?

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And last but not least, from another good substack writer,

As always, comments and questions encouraged. We set a record with comments in the last stack, maybe we can keep it going.