The Hateful 8: These “Healthy” Foods Were Making Me Fat!

I know you. You want to be healthy, fit and feel good in your skin and have the energy and motivation to do all the things you want to do in your life. Me too.

This means you “try to eat healthy”, exercise, get to bed on time and do your best to avoid “bad foods”. But did you know that there is a very common type of “food” that many people believe is healthy but it is actually NOT healthy at all but rather a major source of health problems, including heart disease, stokes, asthma, ADD, brain fog and stubborn body fat?

And to make matters worse, these foods are found in a majority of our everyday food supply!

I’m talking about refined polyunsaturated seed or vegetable oils.

In fact, these manufactured oils/fats have been found to be so harmful that doctor and researcher Dr. Cate Shanahan has coined them “The Hateful 8”!

BAD FATS (a.k.a. *”The Hateful 8″)

1. Canola (rapeseed oil)
2. Soy (soybean, soy lecithin, etc)
3. Corn
4. Cottonseed
5. Sunflower
6. Safflower
7. Grapeseed
8. Rice bran

Why are these oils not good for you? In a nutshell, because they are human-made/manufactured and highly processed which destroys the delicate structures of them which spells disaster for your physiology, metabolism and beauty.

Always remember: Nature doesn’t make junk and it sure doesn’t make bad fats, but factories do!

I recently finished a fantastic book called Deep Nutrition: Why Your Genes Need Traditional Food by *Cate Shanahan, M.D. and wow, did I learn a LOT!

“These are the fats that make people sugar addicts.” -Dr. Cate Shanahan

As referenced in her book, the average American gets 80% of their fat calories from seed oils, which are highly unstable fatty acids that break down into toxins when you cook with them. And the thing is, these oils are EVERYWHERE now and when we eat them regularly over long periods of time, like years and years, because they are unnatural to the body they don’t break down but instead accumulate and cause damage and dysfunction in the cells and cell walls .

Worst of all, this problem is pushed under the rug and nobody is talking about it and The American Heart Association wants to keep it that way.

Why You Want to Avoid PUFAs Like Your Life and Your Figure, Depended On It – because they do!

1. These oils are NOT natural. They are cheap, refined, man-made products. In order to be extracted from the seed, these oils need to undergo extensive manufacturing and thus are highly processed (i.e. exposed to harsh and nasty chemicals and practices like heat, metals, bleaching agents). This renders the delicate membranes in the fats RANCID and thus highly toxic.
2. They are pro-inflammatory These fats are called, “polyunsaturated”, and therefore they are extremely delicate and sensitive to things like temperature, light, oxygen, etc. and these things actually change the molecular makeup and biochemistry of the oils. This strips away the important and protective antioxidants and makes them prone to oxidizing, which produces free-radicals in the body and makes them toxic and produce inflammation in the body (think asthma, heart disease, strokes, arthritis, joint swelling and pain, bloating, etc).
3. All seeds contain phytoestrogens. Phytoestrogens are actually plant hormones which can negatively influence your hormones. Plus research has shown phytoestrogens can not be broken down by the liver.
4. They are a source of dangerous GMO’s. Unless otherwise indicated as “organic”, all of these oils are from genetically modified crops which are not only highly sprayed with pesticides, herbicides and other (literally) poisonous chemicals, but are a “food” that was “created” by technology, had it’s DNA altered and is certainly not found in nature, and therefore is foreign to your body, thus will need to be detoxified and will cause stress and unwanted problems and symptoms.

Ideally, a healthy diet would include approximately 2-4% PUFAs, yet people today are eating 10-20X this amount – and that can result in a 10-20X increase in unwanted, painful and problematic inflammation (think asthma, heart disease, strokes, arthritis, joint swelling and pain, bloating, etc)

A little bit of PUFA is not a problem for us, we actually need some. And when we get PUFA from whole foods like sunflower, chia or flax seeds, it’s well protected by antioxidants nature builds into the seed. These protectants get stripped away during the industrial scale refining of sunflower and the other vegetable oils, and that’s just the beginning of the problems with vegetable oils. –

Dr. Cate Shanahan

What to Do

1. Read all labels, look for these oils (the Hateful 8) and don’t eat them!
2. Be mindful when eating out or in restaurants that you can pretty much assume that they will be used in the food prep because they are cheap. If you do eat out, ASK your server to not cook with them and/or substitute with a natural and more stable fat like grassfed butter, ghee, olive, palm or coconut oil or duck fat or tallow.
3. It’s always safest to prepare your own meals so you know exactly what you’re making your body out of!

Common Culprits to Watch Out For

• Mayonnaise
• Salad dressing
• Processed, packaged, boxed, frozen, “instant” “foods”
• “Fake” foods and food substitutes like vegetarian “imitation” foods and meats like Beyond Burger,
• Cookies
• Chips (yup, sorry, but now there are really good brands that are made of avocado or coconut oil and they are really good!)

What to Eat: GOOD FATS

As long as the below seed/plant oils are NOT HEATED, and are “UNREFINED” (read labels to make sure) these fats are are either low in polyunsaturated fats or high in Omega 3 fats. The animal sources and coconut are fine to heat :

• Avocado oil
• Grass-fed, organic butter
• Organic, unrefined, raw coconut oil
• Grass-fed, organic ghee
• Lard
• Unrefined, organic olive oil
• Tallow
• Duck fat
• Unrefined, organic sesame oil
• Unrefined, organic macadamia nut oil

So there you go. I hope this helps you as much as it did me. I know within days of switching and removing these fake oils/fats I not only felt better but saw a huge improvement in my skin and joints! 🙂

xx,

Amy

REFERENCES and FURTHER RESOURCES

1. https://drcate.com/the-hateful-eight-enemy-fats-that-destroy-your-health/
2. https://www.westonaprice.org/health-topics/know-your-fats/good-fats-bad-fats-separating-fact-from-fiction/
3. https://drcate.com/what-every-doctor-should-know-about-ancel-keys-experiments/
4. The Price Pottenger Foundation