1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Book I Keep Reading, February 21, 2012
This review is from: Why Women Need Fat: How "Healthy" Food Makes Us Gain Excess Weight and the Surprising Solution to Losing It Forever (Hardcover)
This book changed my outlook on eating and diets. I know that slow weight loss works best for me. He gives the evolutionary reasons why. I finally understand why my parents who eat lots of saturated fats (butter, lard) and organic foods are healthy and happy in their 80's. His research dovetails with other trusted food books on my shelves (e.g., Michael Pollan). It's a great book.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Makes sense, February 21, 2012
This review is from: Why Women Need Fat: How "Healthy" Food Makes Us Gain Excess Weight and the Surprising Solution to Losing It Forever (Hardcover)
I have read many, many nutrition books in the last couple of years. I highly recommend this book, especially to women. The authors make an excellent case of the fact that women need fats in order to bring healthy children into the world. So, gradually gaining weight through a woman's life is normal and should be accepted (models are not normal). On the other hand, Americans in general are much heavier than we used to be in past decades and some are unnaturally obese. The excess weight leads to systemic conditions such as heart disease, diabetes, certain cancers, inflammation, etc. For decades, we have been led to believe that saturated fats are to blame and we should turn to vegetable oils such as corn, soybean, sunflower, and others that are hydrogenated or partly hydrogenated in order to increase shelf life and enhance flavor. In this book, the authors explain that we humans evolved to be able to process saturated fats and those fats are not the cause of our predicament. The problem lies on the barrage of omega 6 rich vegetable fats we have incorporated into our diets in the past few decades due to the incorrect belief that saturated fats are bad for us.
Humans need a balance of omega 6 and omega 3 fatty acids in order to maintain a healthy weight. The brain constantly monitors this balance in the blood and when it finds we are deficient in one of these fatty acids, it instructs the body to retain more fat in order to fix the imbalance and regain equilibrium. Partly hydrogenated oils such as corn and soybean oil are super rich in omega 6 and very deficient in omega 3. Since our diets contain such an abnormal amount of omega 6 (try to find something in the supermarket that does not contain these oils), our brain must regain the balance by telling the body to retain fat. The problem is there are now very few sources of omega 3 available in our diets (wild caught salmon, walnuts, flaxseed are some). Meats and poultry used to be good sources until we replaced the animal's normal diet with corn which is very low on omega 3. The solution? Balance the amount of omega 6 and omega 3 by drastically lowering the omega 6 and increasing your intake of omega 3. This is easier said than done since almost every prepackaged, processes item in the grocery store lists vegetable oil as an ingredient. Salad dressings (even the low fat kinds) are loaded! So are crackers, cookies, breads, coffee creamers, etc. Personally, I have decided to go back to real foods, including butter, cream, milk, etc. and follow Michael Pollan's advice: if your grandmother would recognize it as food, eat it, otherwise, don't.
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