Not too long ago, I cooked almost everything – from roast chicken to salmon, mashed potatoes to polenta – with olive oil. Eventually my cooking became boring. I still use olive oil, but now I also use old-fashioned fats such as butter, lard, duck fat and beef tallow – which I almost always purchase from local farms – and exotic fats such as coconut oil.

   Fats have many roles in cooking. They keep things from sticking, add and retain moisture and carry flavor. Dark thigh meat from a chicken contains more fat than a chicken breast – and more flavor. Fats also contribute that inimitable texture known as “mouth feel” – the creaminess of butter, the silkiness of the fat that lines Serrano ham or the crispiness of roasted chicken skin. Traditional, or old-fashioned, breeds of pork, as opposed to modern hybrids, often contain more fat than commercial types, which are bred to be lean.

   Contrary to much of what we often hear, fats are necessary for proper nutrition. They are used in the body to make cell membranes, to build brain tissue, and to insulate. Fats contain the important fat-soluble vitamins A and D. Certain fats, such as the omega-3 fats in fish, are essential in the diet because the body cannot make them. Additionally, they are required for digestion, particularly of protein. One would literally starve to death on a diet containing no fats.

   Fats go with everything. The modern habit of eating fat-free chicken breasts is new; humans never ate protein without fat for the simple reason that in nature they go together. The cuts of meat regarded as choice, such as filet mignon and chicken breast, are mostly muscle, but traditionally humans ate the whole animal, including the skin, bone marrow and organs, which are all rich in vitamins and iron. Traditionally, human hunters (like other carnivores) went straight for the fatty meats, especially organs. When times were good, they would even leave the muscle behind. The fats were simply more valuable.

   Saturated fats and brightly colored vegetables, rich in beta-carotene, also make a natural pairing. The fats help convert beta-carotene into usable vitamin A. To make the most of their nutritional value, butter your sweet potatoes, make cream of carrot soup, add bacon to spinach salad and cook your mustard greens with fat-back.
Many of the healthy farm fats are saturated or mostly saturated. Butter is two-thirds saturated, and lard and beef fat are roughly half-saturated. Saturated fats are often dismissed as “artery-clogging.” Yet they are vitally important in the body.

   One function of saturated fats is structural: they make up half of cell membranes throughout the body. Along with the more flexible unsaturated fats, they are essential for producing the perfect balance of flexibility and permeability needed for all cell activity. Saturated fats are also required for calcium absorption. They help build immunity by fighting harmful microbes, viruses and other pathogens, especially in the digestive tract. Some, such as lauric acid, found in coconut oil and breast milk, are antimicrobial. Saturated butyric acid, found in butter, fights cancer. Saturated fats lower blood levels of lipoprotein (a), which leads to clotting and atherosclerosis. You also need saturated fats to use the omega-3 fats in fish.1

   But don't saturated fats raise cholesterol and clog the arteries? There is intriguing evidence that unrefined, natural saturated fats do not affect cholesterol in unhealthy ways or cause heart disease.2 Many traditional diets, such as those of Masai shepherds in Kenya, Evenki reindeer herders in Russia and Tokelau Islanders in the South Pacific include a lot of saturated fats in their diets, yet people eating that way have healthy cholesterol and little heart disease. On Tokelau, fats – mostly saturated coconut oil – provide 60% of calories.

   Natural saturated fats are healthy for several reasons. Some saturated fats, such as coconut oil, raise the beneficial cholesterol carrier HDL, which is linked to a reduced risk of heart disease. When you eat more saturated fat than you need, the body converts it into mono-unsaturated fat – the fat in olive oil that lowers cholesterol.3 Ironically, the fat around the heart muscle itself is saturated.4 The heart contains saturated stearic acid, found in beef and chocolate, and palmitic acid, found in palm oil and butter.5

   Stearic acid itself makes an interesting case study. Dr. Ancel Keys was an early proponent of the theory that cholesterol and saturated fats cause heart disease. Keys developed equations on diet and cholesterol and most of his calculations, as he expected, showed that saturated fat raises cholesterol. He also found that stearic acid does not raise cholesterol. Over the next 25 years, other research confirmed the neutral or positive effect of stearic acid on cholesterol.6 The National Research Council's report Diet and Health and the Surgeon General's Report on Nutrition and Health confirmed Key's findings.

   Once the facts were in, did the experts tell us that saturated stearic acid could lower cholesterol? No. Instead they proposed to reclassify stearic acid! According to the International Food Information Council, “In light of the findings about stearic acid, some researchers recommend no longer grouping it with other saturated fatty acids.”7

Saturated fats may be good for diabetics – or better than carbohydrates, at least. Until recently, the prescription for diabetics was a low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet of fruit, bread, pasta and skim milk. Because diabetes is a risk factor for heart disease, patients were advised to limit saturated fat. But Dr. Diana Schwarzbein, whose specialty is metabolic diseases, found that Type II diabetics got worse on that diet. They gained weight, their cholesterol rose, and they required more insulin. Schwarzbein added fat and protein, and the results were excellent. Patients lost weight. Blood sugar and cholesterol fell. The biggest improvements were in the patients who “cheated” by eating mayonnaise, cheese, eggs and steak.

   In The Schwarzbein Principle, she describes 'The Myth of Saturated Fat,' saying, “My clinical experience has shown that eating saturated fats is not the culprit [of high cholesterol]! [P]atients who have increased consumption of saturated fats (as well as all other good fats) have improved their cholesterol profiles, decreased blood pressure and lost body fat, thereby reducing their risk of heart disease.”

   What about the arterial plaques that can burst and cause heart attacks? The truth is that fat is only a small part of such plaques.8 Moreover, only 26% of the fat in arterial plaques is saturated.9 The rest is unsaturated, of which more than half is polyunsaturated – the kind the experts have been urging us to eat.

   Most polyunsaturated fats in the American diet come from refined industrial vegetable oils that were all but unknown until the twentieth century, such as corn, soybean and sunflower oils. Unfortunately – and despite what we're often told – this kind of fat leads to heart disease. Three major causes of heart disease are hydrogenated vegetable oils or trans fats, too many refined polyunsaturated vegetable oils and too few omega-3 fats.

   Traditional fats are not to blame. Meat, milk, cream, butter, and eggs were common a century ago, when heart disease was rare. In the Baptist Ladies Cookbook (1895) and The Boston Cooking School Cookbook (1896), there are recipes for creamed liver and sweetbreads, lamb fried in lard, creamed fish and oyster pie (a quart of cream and a dozen egg yolks). About 40% of the calories in these dishes come from fat, with slightly more saturated than unsaturated fats.

   By 1931, the Searchlight Recipe Book contained similar recipes for liver and called for plenty of butter and eggs. But it also called for vegetable oil and “butter substitute” – margarine. By the 1950s, heart disease was the leading cause of death in the U.S. Since 1900, consumption of animal fats has fallen, while the incidence of heart disease has risen. What has soared is consumption of polyunsaturated vegetable oils.

   The simplistic advice to avoid all saturated fats may be evolving into a more nuanced view. According to Amy Muzyka-McGuire, Chairman of the Nutrition and Food Science Committee of the International Association of Culinary Professionals, “There is no dispute, in science, that saturated and unsaturated fats are essential to human health and development.”10 But no one knows how much. Perhaps it's time for a thorough evaluation of traditional fats.
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1 Garg, M.L. et al, FASEB Journal, 1988, 2:4:A852 and Oliart Ros, R.M. et al, “Meeting Abstracts,” AOCS Proceedings, May 1998, 7, Chicago, Illinois.
2 See Weston A. Price Foundation (www.westonaprice.org), The Cholesterol Myths (Ravnskov), The Schwarzbein Principle (Schwarzbein).
3 Testimony of Mary Enig, PhD. F.D.A. Hearing on Exploring the Connections Between Weight Management and Food Labels and Packaging, Docket No. 2003N-0338, “Trans Fatty Acids in Nutrition Labeling,” November 20, 2003.
4 German, Bruce J. and Dillard, Cora J. “Saturated fats: what dietary intake?” American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. September 2004;80(3): 550-559.
5 Lawson, L.D. and F. Kummerow, Lipids, 1979, 14:501-503 and Garg, M.L. Lipids, April 1989, 24(4): 334-9.
6 Hayes K.C. Canadian Journal of Cardiology. 1995 October;11 Suppl G:39G-46G.
7 International Food Information Council Review: “Sorting Out the Facts About Fat” July 1998, International Food Information Council http://ific.org/publications/reviews/fatir.cfm
8 McCully, Kilmer. The Homocysteine Revolution: A Bold New Approach to the Prevention of Heart Disease (Los Angeles: Keats Publishing, 1999), 115.
9 Mary Enig, PhD. Know Your Fats: The Complete Primer for Understanding the Nutrition of Fats, Oils, and Cholesterol (Silver Spring: Bethesda Press, 2002), 187.
10 Amy Muzyka-McGuire and Robin Kline. Letters to the Editor, IACP Food Forum, Third Quarter 2004, pp 20-21.

Nina Planck is the author of The Farmers' Market Cookbook. Her next book, Real Food, explains why traditional foods such as grass-fed milk and butter are good for you and industrial foods like refined corn oil are not. She is also the founder of London Farmers' Markets and Local Foods. She was director of the Greenmarket in New York City. For more information go to www.ninaplanck.com or call (212) 982-6462.