Essential Fatty Acids : Essential To What?!

The other day, we talked about protein and the essential amino acids. If you remember, or if you don't, they are essential because the body needs them but can't make them.

Today let's talk about essential fatty acids, or 'essential fats'.

If you follow any media of any kind, you have probably heard that there are essential fatty acids that you need to be sure and get plenty of in order to be healthy. We are told that we need polyunsaturated oils. Omega-6 and Omega-3 oils are talked about right and left. Vegetable oils and fish oils are supposed to be wonderful for maximizing your health. Let's analyze these assumptions.

Essential fatty acids are said to be linoleic and linolenic acids. Interestingly enough our bodies can synthesize these unsaturated acids, so they do not meet the definition of 'essential'.

Essential fatty acids (EFA) are, according to the textbooks, linoleic acid and linolenic acid, and they are supposed to have the status of "vitamins," which must be taken in the diet to make life possible. However, we are able to synthesize our own unsaturated fats when we don't eat the "EFA," so they are not "essential." The term thus appears to be a misnomer. [M. E. Hanke, "Biochemistry," Encycl. Brit. Book of the Year, 1948.]

Secondly these fatty acids, are not health promoting. They are health destroying. Study after study for over fifty years have shown that these oils shut down the immune system, and contribute to cancer. In fact, it appears that a body that doesn't have unsaturated oils in it's diet can not get cancer.

These oils are simply toxins to the body. Here is what the biologist Ray Peat had to say about them.

The suppression of an enzyme system is characteristic of toxins. The "EFA" powerfully, almost absolutely, inhibit the enzyme systems--desaturases and elongases--which make our native unsaturated fatty acids.

After weaning, these native fats gradually disappear from the tissues and are replaced by the EFA and their derivatives. The age-related decline in our ability to use oxygen and to produce energy corresponds closely to the substitution of linoleic acid for the endogenous fats, in cardiolipin, which regulates the crucial respiratory enzyme, cytochrome oxidase.

Although the fish oils are less effective inhibitors of the enzymes, they are generally similar to the seed oils in their ability to promote cancer, age-pigment formation, free radical damage, etc.

One of the problems with these oils is that they are made by nature to disrupt digestion. Digestion is the key to getting any and all nutrients from food into the body.

Unsaturated fats are what they use to suppress the immune systems of people who have organ transplants.

These fats also suppress thyroid function. That is why the farmers use them to help make fat pigs. Isn't it interesting that as we have been told more and more how much we need the "essential fatty acids" our population has become more and more obese.

Cancer, heart disease, diabetes, Alzheimer and many other diseases continue to climb. It appears that unsaturated fats play an important role in all these diseases. These diseases can't hardly occur unless there are unsaturated fats in the diet.

To learn more read this article by Ray Peat.

My recommendations are to eliminate all polyunsaturated fats from your diet immediately. This includes corn oil, soy oil, canola oil, cotton seed oil, safflower oil, sunflower oil, nearly all vegetable oils. Also eliminate fish oils, they are highly oxidated by body temperatures.

The good fats to consume are raw butter and milk, coconut oil, olive oil, and avocados.

No need to worry about the small amounts of natural oils that you will consume eating legumes and vegetables. These are natural, and the body handles them well when they are consumed along with the whole foods that they come from. However I do advise that you eliminate all corn and soy products from your diet.

You will continue to hear in the news, and also from many doctors, the importance of consuming polyunsaturated fats to be healthy. Please do your own research, and recognize that even though these people mean well, they have been led astray by bad research and big money.

Get back to health and vitality by choosing whole natural foods.