good and bad fats

Since early childhood, I have loved buttery, creamy foods. I adore chocolate, cream cheese, sour cream, ribs, cheesecake, and cheesy pizza. After I married, at age twenty-one, I began to put on weight. My skinny husband loved hot fudge sundaes and banana splits, so I –who had always been thin—went right along.

When I discovered Adelle Davis, I found she encouraged her readers to add cold-pressed vegetable oil to their diets. She knew that vegetable oils—what we now call omega-6 oil-- easily broke down under the heat and stress of the extraction process. She was right in wanting us to get more oil in our diet, but wrong because she did not know that later research would show that the open bonds in the molecules in polyunsaturated fat caused oxidation in the body and could lead to many health problems. She died in the 1970s and never learned about antioxidants—even though she urged us all to take vitamins, some of which are antioxidants.

Davis encouraged her readers to take cod liver oil, an Omega 3 oil, which is a good thing. She taught me to shun shortening and margarine, even writing that lard was preferable to the white canned shortening American cooks relied on. It was from her I learned not to save and reuse cooking fat. Old grease or oil is oxidized—otherwise known as rancid.

Only within the last few years have Americans learned about the dangers of trans fatty acids, those found in man-made spreads. Another author from whom I learned the science of trans fatty acid is Udo Erasmus, a man who wrote his dissertation on oil and later published it as Good Oils, Bad Oils.

Erasmus explained that fat molecules are chains of atoms. The shorter the chain, the lower the number in the fat’s name, and the less likely this fat is to clog the arteries. Saturated fats come from animal sources mostly—the exceptions are coconut and palm oil. Saturated fat molecules are wavy, which causes them to stick together. The longer the chain, the more they like to coagulate when cool.

Butter, butyric acid, has only two atoms, so melts or softens at room temperature. It is a good saturated fat. From Davis I learned to make super butter: soften butter, then mix it with oil until spreadable. Refrigerate before using. Davis used sunflower oil. I use extra light olive oil. Extra virgin is better but tastes stronger.

Unsaturated fat molecules are straight; therefore, they do not stick together unless very cold. Scientists had to find a way to make these molecules coagulate through chemical manipulation. They call these trans fatty acids. Trans fatty acids are substitutes for saturated fats. When butter was in short supply during World War II, someone invented a way to make oil into pseudo butter. As their first product was white, consumers refused to spread it on their bread, so margarine companies included a packet of yellow food coloring to add to it. Later, they added flavor and color before selling.

Why is margarine bad for us? It is made from chemically altered polyunsaturated fat. Bends have been forced into the long chains, making a product that clogs the arteries, has open bonds that oxidize, and who knows what other chemical bad stuff.

As time went on in my life, I got away from much of the good I learned from my study of nutrition via Davis. I moved to small towns where health food stores were hard to find, and I was financially unable to go find them. However, I still made soup from scratch, did not feed my children processed cereal, and tried to cook from primary ingredients rather than packages.

After my MS diagnosis, I immediately went back to my healthy roots. I haunted the health food store, found homeopathic medicine for my hay fever, bought flax seeds, and found cod liver oil. I searched the health area of Books-a-Million, our local chain bookstore. Here I found a wonderful book, MS—A Self-help Guide, by an English woman, Judy Graham.

This book got me interested in diet as a way to control MS. She has a new, updated version available now named Managing Multiple Sclerosis Naturally: A Self-Help Guide to Living with MS. Her advice led me to Dr. Roy Laver Swank’s book, The Multiple Sclerosis Diet Book, which he wrote with Barbara Brewer Dugan.

For nearly sixty years Dr. Swank, a neurologist, worked with MS patients, using a diet protocol he developed. He was not willing to do a double-blind test because he wanted all his patients to follow the diet. However, when he compared those who stayed on the diet with those who quit, the faithful followers stayed healthy while the others went downhill.

I immediately took on this diet—no easy chore. The Swank diet limits you to 15 grams of saturated fat a day. No red meat for a year and little after that. Cheese should not be eaten as it is so high in saturated fat. No chocolate, whole milk, and few eggs. I followed this diet perfectly for two years after diagnosis until a Christmas gift of chocolate truffles started me on a chocolate binge.

I was stupid not to go back on this diet, but back in the mid-1990s, I had absolutely no support. My doctors and others with MS scoffed at the diet, so I began to doubt its validity. But Dr. Swank was right when he said those who leave it go downhill. Today I am following it once more.

Dr. Swank’s theory, backed by some experiments, was that MS patient’s bodies have trouble breaking down saturated fats, and that small molecules of this fat collect in small veins feeding the central nervous system. When the fat globules stretch the veins, it causes a breakdown in the blood-brain barrier, allowing foreign invaders (viruses, chemicals, metals) to attack the myelin sheath of the nerves.

I was reminded of this theory recently (2008-2010). Dr. Paolo Zamboni theorized a blood flow problem in MS compromising the blood-brain barrier but saw the blockage (CCSVI) in the jugular and azygos veins in the neck. Some people have had angioplastys to help these veins. More trials are underway now; however, these results are so far inconclusive. It does, however, underscore the necessity of limiting saturated fats if you have MS.