Fat is Good?
posted on
December 7, 2018
I often ask myself the question, “Why do people not want to eat fat?” I hear many replies to this coming from sources such as friends, family, articles, movies, and books. Some people talk of the need to eat less fat in order to lose weight. Some people just won’t eat it because “fat is gross.” I was raised on the thinking of Weston A. Price and his ideas on healthy living. I first read his book Nutrition and Physical Degeneration when I was just a freshman in high school. I always thought that his views made sense because it matched up nicely with my world view. I hope to share here some of my personal experiences with the benefits of Dr. Price’s philosophy.
For you to know where I come from on this, I will try to quickly summarize how Dr. Price is pertinent to what I am saying. Dr. Price studied the diets and health of people all over the world and found that the healthy people were those that had a good balance of sugars, fats, and salts. We can see how our natural cravings meet these needs when we think of how we like a good strip of salty, fatty, bacon or the sweetness the comes with a doughnut, or anything else that comes with an overload of sugar. Dr. Price learned that staying away from these cravings was not healthy, but he also found that they had to be healthy sugars, fats, and salts if they were going to truly satisfy our physical bodies.
Dr. Price saw that the healthiest peoples of the world were eating natural sugars like those in fruits and honey, healthy fats from animals that grew up on their own natural diets, and salts that were not cheap and refined. I want to focus on the fatty part of the diet, but that doesn’t mean that the other parts are not important or that I won’t write on them in the future. I will start my testimony by saying that our family has always consumed whole milk and eaten the fattiest meats, all the while covering our other dishes with butter or good old pork lard. Even with the extreme level of fat intake, I have never gained extra body fat if I was living at home and eating mom’s good country cooking.
I know that animals are not human, but they need the good healthy animal fats as well. Our calves grow much better when we give them whole milk vs. skim milk. Our small group of barnyard cats will testify to the difference as well. They won’t drink skim milk, but when we give them whole milk, they won’t stop till the bowl is empty. Dr. Price learned that most aborigines people around the world either harvested milk or blood from animals. The necessity of milk or blood is not easily apparent, but why would people go through the trouble of milking cows for thousands of years if it wasn’t good for them?
To get wholesome animal fats, the animal must be raised on grass. Fat from a grain fed animal is white, soft, and has a different molecular structure. Grass fed fat is more yellow and hard. It is full of flavor instead of being white and fluffy. When I eat a pastured piece of meat, the fat is more filling. It is more satisfying than a grain fed piece of fat. Grain fed fat is watery and has no natural flavor. It has the taste of the animal, but it isn’t as savory.
Fat is an interesting thing. It is how our body stores energy. It is easy to digest as well, so when we eat it, we are gaining energy that our body doesn’t have to spend energy to digest and so we don’t eat as much. Fat also acts as the body’s lubrication. If we have enough fats in our diet, we will have healthier joints and we can avoid many aches and pains. Since fat is so important, we don’t sell skim milk, and we don’t try to grow lean animals. If the animal will grow healthy, yellow, grass-fed fat, we want that for the health of our family and yours.
If you want to check into the philosophy of Dr. Weston A. Price you can look into these links;
Book: Nutrition and Physical Degeneration
Price, Weston Andrew. Nutrition and Physical Degeneration. Price-Pottenger, 2016.
Website: https://www.westonaprice.org/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/westo...
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