Nourishing Fats: Why We Need Animal Fats for Health and Happiness

Butter is Nature’s Perfect FatThis is an important book. In a clear and readable fashion, Sally Fallon Morell shows why saturated fat and cholesterol are not the villains medical authorities make them out to be.Parents of infants and young children will want to read Chapter 8 first., “Remember the Little Ones: Why Children Need Animal Fats.” Beneath its title in the table of contents she writes: “Children need animal fats for normal growth and the development of their brains. But at the two-year checkup, doctors warn moms not to give saturated fats to their toddlers, and whole milk is forbidden in school lunches—despite consistent science showing that children on low fat diets are more likely to suffer from allergies, asthma, learning disorders and obesity. We are literally starving our children in the name of phony science.”The human brain continues to make billions of new brain cells after birth for some number of years, and they need saturated fats and cholesterol to form healthy, waterproof cell membranes. She points out that “Nearly half of the fatty acids in human breast milk are saturated, suggesting that dietary saturated fats are critical to the development of infants and young children. Saturated fats are so important during these critical stages of development that their abundant presence in breast milk is universal among mammals.”In the first chapter, “The Greatest Villains,” she tracks the unfolding demonization of saturated fat and cholesterol. It began in 1912 with the pernicious marketing of Crisco—its name comes from CRYStalized Cottonseed Oil—by Proctor and Gamble. The company promoted this hydrogenated trans-fat, first used to make candles and soap, as a “healthier alternative to cooking with animal fats.” She next addresses the fake science of cholesterol studies in rabbits, who as herbivores are not designed to digest animal fats and cholesterol. Then there is the Framingham Heart Study, where largely ignored follow-up reports contradict its initial findings that high cholesterol blood levels cause heart disease. She shows how the 1977 McGovern Report advocating a low-fat “Dietary Goals for the United States” and the 1984 Cholesterol Consensus Conference have played fast and loose with the science.For the chapter titled “Not Guilty as Charged” she writes: “Animal fats get the blame for everything from cancer to ingrown toenails—and none of these accusations is true! The science shows that saturated animal fats actually protect us from chronic disease.”The last chapter’s title is “The Queen of Fats: Why Butter is Better.” Below it she writes, “The queen of fats, butter is loaded with nutrients the body needs to be healthy and happy. Starve yourself of butter during the day and you’ll crave ice cream when nighttime rolls around. Modern processing technologies cannot come close to providing in spreads and margarines the range of vitamins and lipid components present in butter. Nature’s fat for optimal growth and development.”Fallon Morell confirms that butter contains a variety of healthful saturated fats, and it also contains the fat-soluble vitamins A, D, and K2. Fallon Morell devotes a separate chapter to them, with this caveat: “Critical vitamins A, D, and K2 occur uniquely in animal fats—and Westerners are woefully deficient in these nutrients. The body uses vitamins A, D and K2 for everything from proper vision to growth to fertility.” These vitamins help produce and activate matrix GLA protein that removes calcium from coronary arteries supplying blood to the heart.The healthiest butter comes from cream that free ranging, contented cows eating grass in sunlit pastures produce. This butter has a natural deep yellow color indicative of high levels of Omega-3 fats and fat-soluble vitamins. Butter from industrially confined cows denied access to green pastures has 10 to 13-times less vitamin A and 3-times less vitamin D than grass-fed cows. My wife and I consume Amish butter. Amazon has it.As President of the Weston A. Price Foundation and Editor of Wise Traditions: in Food, Farming and the Healing Arts (the Foundation’s quarterly journal), Sally Fallon Morell commands an encyclopedic knowledge of butter and saturated fats. She states, “No one studied butter more thoroughly than Dr. Weston A. Price. Throughout the 1930s, he analyzed thousands of butter samples shipped to him from all over the world.”She dedicates Nourishing Fats “To the memory of Mary G. Enig, PhD” (1931-2014), her long-time colleague, friend, and coauthor of key articles and books on fat, one which is titled Eat Fat, Lose Fat: The healthy Alternative to Trans Fats (2005). More than 30 years ago, Dr. Enig exposed the connection between trans-fat margarine and heart disease and cancer. The medical establishment first ignored her, then vilified her, and finally years later treated her findings concerning trans-fat as an unsurprising, obvious fact.Sally Fallon Morell is a skilled writer with a sharp scientific mind. She cites 707 up-to-date references in this book, which I was pleased to see includes this one: “Statins stimulate atherosclerosis and heart failure: pharmacological mechanisms,” by Okuyama H, et al., in the March 2015 issue of Expert Review of Clinical Pharmacology (volume 8[2], pages 389-99).Orthodox claims that animal fats are bad for us wilt and become thoroughly discredited when held up to scientific scrutiny.The bottom line: “Start eating butter, lots of butter!”Note:I address this subject in my 2011 Lew Rockwell article “Enjoy Saturated Fats, They’re Good for You!” at: http://archive.lewrockwell.com/miller/miller38.1.html. It is drawn from a talk I gave on saturated fats earlier that year at the 29th Annual Meeting of the Doctors for Disaster Preparedness in Albuquerque. This 53-minute talk is available on YouTube available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRe9z32NZHY&t=2s (there have been 325,000 views of it so far). Some of the slides I used in that talk are reproduced in this LRC article.Graduating from medical school in 1965 and pursuing a 40-year career as an academic member of the medical establishment performing and teaching heart surgery, I unquestioningly adhered to the low-fat creed. For far too long. Then, in 2005, I came upon an article that Mary Enig, PhD and Sally Fallon (now Sally Fallon Morell) wrote titled “The Oiling of America,” first published in the magazine Nexus in 1999. This article stimulated me to look more carefully into the matter and discover that the conventional wisdom regarding saturated fats and cholesterol is false.

Incredible research. Mountains of it. If you think politics is full of lies, wait till you see the errors connected to medical health reporting on TV and in leading magazines. For example, on page 77, you'll read how one headline proclaimed, "High Fat Diet May Make You Stupid and Lazy." It was all blamed on high-fat. WRONG. Here's why...As Researcher Sally Fallon points out, "There's just one problem with the press release: the rats in the experiment were not fed fat, they were fed oil. The rats in the study encountered problems typical of those on diets high in industrially-processed vegetable oils." Further, on page 84, she refers to several studies showing how saturated fat can protect the liver from the effects of alcohol and other toxins, such as Tylenol. Learn why saturated fat is a healer for your liver and kidneys.In addition, on page 102, Ms. Fallon covers the lie that we can get all the vitamin A we need from vegetables alone. Yes, your body can convert beta-carotene from vegetables into active vitamin A. Yet Sally Fallon points out that almost 50 percent of females have a genetic variation that greatly reduces the levels of the enzyme (BCOM) that converts beta-carotene to its active form. In addition, compounds in beta-carotene supplements could lower the activity of active vitamin A. Popular advice is often scary wrong. For example...0n page 76, Ms Fallon explains why "Impotence is a commonly reported side effect of cholesterol-lowering regimens, because the body makes testosterone out of cholesterol." Oh great, follow popular advice and end up biologically castrated. Also learn how popular health food advice can damage children in the womb. Ancient people had sacred foods that created super-healthy babies. We never eat them because they contain animal fats, and one result is kids born with heart defects. (pg 132 onward)If you're a low-fat follower, this book is a 1,000 pound bunker bomb of unknown science that could save your heart -- and help you avoid immune collapse or kidney failure. So-called healthy vegetable oils are definitely immuno-SUPPRESSIVE. The book is so packed with science you will need a yellow highliter to mark it up. Could the index be better? Absolutely. Sally, please, please upgrade it. But that's minor to getting your life saved.As a professional journalist, I have read hundreds of health books. This one is a shining diamond -- a trend-changing work. Nothing like it anywhere.

I love history and really enjoyed reading about the traditional foods and their preparation of cultures from around the world. This book is full of interesting information, but is very easy to read and understand (not technical). Sally also includes a lot of interesting footnotes throughout the book to further explain various parts. It's also clear the author has a sense of humor. There were a number of times I laughed out loud reading this. The book is mostly information about the cultures, divided into a separate chapter for each. At the end of the book, it summarizes how to apply this knowledge in our own lives and includes recipes. She also references a number of books throughout and has a very long bibliography of books I will probably be looking up in the future. One author I was happy to see a mention of in the chapter on the American Indians is Charles C. Mann. I have read his 1491 book (here on Amazon; a fantastic book) on what the Americas were really like before Columbus. It's very eye-opening, and I wish the information was known by the masses. I was very happy to see that Sally included his information rather than just going with the "mainstream" fake knowledge that the Indians were all tree-hugging hippies living in the midst of thousands of miles of virgin wilderness.This book is mostly information, not solely a cookbook. If you want more information about traditional diets, read Weston A. Price's book, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration. And if you want more recipes, check out Sally's books about broth or Nourishing Traditions.