THE SOURCE OF HEALING

Hooray, Lard is Back!   

 Lard & schmaltz. The prime example of fats we all thought were bad for us, lard and schmaltz (rendered chicken, pork, or goose fat) may have been wrongly demonized for years. The main fat in lard—oleic acid—is a monounsaturated fat linked to decreased risk of depression, says Drew Ramsey, MD, coauthor of The Happiness Diet (Rodale, 2010). Those same monounsaturated fats, which make up 45 percent of the fat in lard, are responsible for lowering LDL levels while leaving HDL ("good") cholesterol levels alone. Lard and schmaltz also tolerate high cooking temperatures—they're often recommended for frying—and have long shelf lives.  AND IT'S CHEAP!

What oils are healthy?  Not all fats and oils are created equal. In their headlong rush to incorporate essential fatty acids into their diets, many health-conscious consumers lose sight of these distinctions. Safflower oil, like many other fats and oils, has both advantages and drawbacks. You should weigh all the facts before deciding whether this particular oil is suitable for you and your specific health needs. And, you should talk to a health professional for further advice. Unfortunately, most health professionals know very little about nutrition, so we are left with doing our own research.  This article hopefully will give you some data to consume in your own search.

Free Radicals

Safflower oil is one of several widely used polyunsaturated fatty acids, each of which has two or more double bonds, according to Mary G. Enig and Sally Fallon, authors of "Eat Fat, Lose Fat." In chemistry, a double bond is a covalent bond in which two electron pairs are shared between two atoms. Safflower oil itself has two double bonds and is a linoleic acid, or omega-6 fatty acid. Because polyunsaturated fatty acids have bends or turns at the sites of double bonds, they do not pack together readily, staying in liquid form even when refrigerated. Enig and Fallon point out that such oils are highly reactive, forming free radicals when they are subjected to heat or oxygen, such as occurs during processing, extraction and cooking. Free radicals, in turn, have been implicated as causative factors in a variety of illnesses and disorders, including heart disease and cancer. To avoid the threat posed by free radicals, Enig and Fallon recommend that consumers strictly limit their use of industrially processed polyunsaturated oils, including safflower, corn, soy and sunflower oils.

The effect of oils on Adult-Onset Diabetes

Although there is an important nutritional role for both omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids, excessive consumption of the latter has been associated with an increase in adult-onset diabetes, according to Fred Ottoboni and M. Alice Ottoboni, authors of "The Modern Nutritional Diseases." Since safflower oil is high in omega-6 content, use caution in the amounts of this oil that you include in your diet. The Ottobonis report that a sharp increase in cases of adult-onset diabetes has been linked to fundamental changes in the Indian diet. Polyunsaturated vegetable oils, including safflower oil, have largely replaced traditional dietary fats, such as ghee and coconut oil, in the diets of most Indians.

Increased Cancer Risk

In an online overview of health risks associated with polyunsaturated vegetable oils, including safflower oil, Barry Groves, Ph.D., cites a Swedish study that showed a "positive association" between breast cancer and polyunsaturated fats. That study tracked the health histories of roughly 61,500 Swedish women between the ages of 40 and 76 over the course of more than four years. In results published in a 1998 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine, the researchers found that women consuming high levels of polyunsaturated fat had a higher risk of breast cancer than those whose diets were high in monounsaturated and saturated fats.