Real Food Part 7

Growing different varieties is also more interesting for the farmer. No one wants to plant, pick, sell, and eat the same zucchini, year after year. My parents grow about a dozen different cuc.u.mbers and two dozen varieties of tomatoes, both heirlooms and hybrids. Why grow modern hybrids at all? Aren't heirlooms better? They can be. Let me explain.

The revival of traditional varieties- often from seeds saved over many generations- has been a boon for what the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins called pied beauty. "Glory be to G.o.d for dappled things," he wrote. Now we have green escarole speckled with red dots, cuc.u.mbers that look like lemons, candy-striped beets, and a tomato that reveals tropical sunsets when sliced. One of my favorites, it's called Pineapple.

Beyond beauty, genetic diversity itself is valuable: a large library of traits gives breeders more material to work with. The Sturmer, an English apple now difficult to find, has five times more vitamin C than Golden Delicious. Americans can thank the Irish potato famine for the Green Mountain potato, an almost-forgotten Vermont native. Around the time of the Irish catastrophe, blight nearly wiped out New England potato farms. Wary of another crop disaster, farmers and breeders developed a blight-resistant variety in the 1880s. For fifty years, the tasty but oddly shaped Green Mountain was America's most popular baking potato, until the more consistently oval Russet took over.

Modern hybrids- which are bred from two parents, thus blending their traits- also have good points, such as high yields, hardiness, and pest resistance. Other qualities I'm less keen on, such as thick skin or excessively firm flesh, are hallmarks of industrial produce. Hybrids per se are not objectionable; after all, breeding is an old and honorable agricultural practice. One laments the loss of useful qualities. When seed companies began to focus on industrial production, flavor and other fine traits were neglected, some lost forever.

Three cheers, then, for seed savers who brought back charmers like Cherokee Purple, a tomato with dark creamy flesh and superlative flavor. We've also grown some lackl.u.s.ter heirloom tomatoes, like Great White and Purple Calabash. Some heirlooms have abysmal yields and poor consistency; even superior flavor may not be enough to make growing them worthwhile. Happily, the renewed demand for flavor and texture has opened the gene libraries of many good seed companies, and that means more and better traditional varieties for farmers to try.

Meanwhile, we're big fans of hybrids like Early Girl, Lady Luck, and Lemon Boy. Dad calls them "garden" hybrids. They taste great and yield well, but for various reasons- small size, delicacy- they don't suit industrial growers, so you won't find them in supermarkets. For me, flavor is tops. I won't spend four dollars a pound on tomatoes merely because they're a wacky color or the sign says HELIRLOOM. They must taste good- and many hybrids do. Yield matters to the cook, too; if I have to cut away large parts of a funny-shaped tomato because of scarring, my salad gets more expensive. With a shapely and reliable hybrid like Lady Luck, that's unlikely.

How to Eat More Vegetables.

YOU ALREADY KNOW THAT eating plenty of fruits and vegetables is a good thing. The trick is actually doing it. If you also cook for selective eaters- children or adults- perhaps you worry that they don't eat spinach every day. Relax; no one eats spinach every day. It may help to think not in terms of meals or even days, but rather in weeks. What's important is your overall diet; you won't be malnourished in one day.

Buying local food makes eating vegetables easier and more fun, but if you want to eat more vegetables, it doesn't matter where you shop. Farmers' markets, farm stands, farm shares, green grocers, and supermarkets are all good. These are my tips.

Stock up. If you don't buy produce, you'll never eat it. I tend to be frugal, but in this case, I much prefer to have produce on hand and risk throwing it away than not have any. Buy large amounts of produce when it's cheap, especially during a glut. On most trips to the market, I stock up on basics like lettuce and zucchini, and rarely buy expensive treats such as wild blueberries or fancy mesclun. I find "baby" vegetables overpriced and insipid. At my local market, lettuce is a bargain at one dollar a head all summer; for most of the year, I use two heads a day. There is always fruit in the house for dessert.

Have a salad at every meal. Once you adopt this habit, lunch or dinner without a raw vegetable seems incomplete. If you tire of lettuce, there are lots of leaves: watercress, radicchio, endive, escarole, dandelion, purslane. Try salads of shaved fennel and orange slices or lightly cooked vegetables, as in celeriac remoulade. At the farm, we have a plate of sliced tomatoes at every Summer meal. Be aware that some vegetables are more nutritious when cooked. The broccoli and cabbage family contains goitrogens, which depress thyroid function. Spinach, beets, and chard contain oxalic acid, which blocks calcium and iron absorption. Goitrogens and oxalic acid are reduced by cooking. Beta-carotene in vegetables is more available to the body once it has been liberated from tough cell walls; thus shredding, juicing, and cooking beets and carrots are all ways to make them more nutritious.

Dress it up nicely. Say good-bye to plain steamed broccoli. Every vegetable should be properly dressed, and to me that means the right fat, a little salt, and perhaps one flavor, such as fresh herbs or good cheese. When the only fat I used was olive oil, all my vegetables tasted the same. Now I'll make b.u.t.tered carrots with thyme, roasted zucchini with garlicky olive oil, and a green salad with macadamia oil and macadamia nuts. The vegetables taste better, they taste different, and it's easy to eat all three.

Eat salad first. I happen to prefer the American habit of eating salad before the main course. Raw vegetables stimulate digestion and leave you hungry for the next course. Protein, hot foods, and creamy dishes, by contrast, are satiating. After that sensory experience, you're not hungry for salad anymore. But suit yourself on this one.

Eat salad as a main course. Cobb salad is one of my favorite one-dish meals, but there are many others. Learn to make Caesar salad dressing, buy Romaine lettuce, and do what restaurants do: top it with chicken or shrimp.

Put it out there. We know very little about how eating habits form. Why, for example, do some children develop a diverse palate and not others? You might suspect cultural factors- maybe some parents offer kids cayenne and garlic, others bland foods- but the studies are equivocal. However, it's safe to a.s.sume that if you don't put food out, no one will eat it. One small study, hoping to shed light on the eating habits of overweight kids, found that the sole factor predicting how much they ate was the amount of food on the plate. This applies equally to adults. If you want to eat more of something, serve it. My mother set out raw fruits and vegetables before dinner, when we were hungry. In the summer, we had sliced tomatoes and in the winter, a jumble of apple, carrot, and turnip slices.

Eat local food. Here's a paradox. Eating local food leads to more variety in your diet, not less. When offered the same global fruits and vegetables all year long, many people get stuck in food ruts. They buy the same fruits and vegetables- bananas and broccoli, or whatever their favorites happen to be- year round. If you buy local food in season, meals will vary without planning or effort. You'll eat spinach in April, strawberries in May, fennel in June, corn in August, and pears in November.

Mix it up. Variety whets the appet.i.te. In fact, science has doc.u.mented this phenomenon. They call it sensory-specific satiety. A fancy term, but all it means is that you're more likely to eat four different vegetables- one creamy, one crunchy, one sharp, one sweet- than four servings of one vegetable. As I write, in the height of July, there are four local fruits in the kitchen: sweet cherries, red gooseberries, blueberries, black raspberries. After lunch, I'll have a bowl of mixed fruit and raw Jersey milk: five foods in one dish.

It's entirely up to you whether you eat more fruits and vegetables. But someone has to be responsible for the nutrition of babies and small children. How much should we worry when they don't eat vegetables? Every parent will have to wrestle with this question, but my best guess is that from zero to two years old, the overriding nutritional requirement is for high-quality fat and protein for growth and development, starting, of course, with breast milk. But the older you get, the more important antioxidant fruits and vegetables are. Why?

Free radicals (unstable atoms with unpaired electrons) are a normal product of cell metabolism, created when cells use oxygen to burn fat. Unfortunately, their numbers rapidly increase with age and damaging environmental factors. Whatever the source, free radicals are highly damaging to cells. They cause the body to oxidize and age, like rusting iron, and contribute to heart disease and cancer. Antioxidants in fresh produce battle the c.u.mulative effects of environmental carcinogens and free radicals.

When your baby starts to eat solid foods, try three simple things. First, steer clear of extra calories from corn oil, juice, and sugar, because any inferior food displaces some more important nutrient. (The easiest way to do this? Don't buy them.) Second, puree the food the whole family is eating, rather than create separate meals for the baby. There is every reason for him to eat a soupy version of homemade spaghetti Bolognese or roasted vegetables; that's exactly what store-bought baby food is. It will be faster than making a separate dish, and cheaper and better than commercial baby food. Third, buy wild fish, ecological produce, and pastured meat, poultry, dairy, and eggs if you can. Children are more vulnerable to pesticides and other toxins than adults.

Otherwise, try to feed children as you would anyone else: with a diverse and balanced diet of whole foods, in hopes of creating good eating habits to last a lifetime. Most kids don't grow up on vegetable farms, and they turn out fine. It would be too bad if children became teenagers still hating vegetables, but it's probably not dangerous. After all, most of us survived our junk-food years.

Suppose you try all of these things and still don't eat enough broccoli and blueberries. Is taking vitamin C and anthocyanin pills good enough? In cases of deficiency, vitamin therapy is safe and effective, and some supplements, like fish oil, are highly beneficial, and consistently so. But there are some questions about vitamin supplements. The results of trials with supplements isolated from whole foods range from unhelpful (smokers taking beta-carotene had higher rates of lung cancer) to promising (vitamin E prevents second heart attacks) to merely equivocal (another vitamin E study on heart disease showed no effect).6 However, studies consistently find that diets rich in antioxidants from whole foods lower risk of heart disease and cancer.

Scientists are just beginning to uncover how extracted vitamins are imperfect subst.i.tutes for foods. Whether vitamin E supplements are helpful, for example, has been hotly debated. Why are the studies equivocal? Here's one hypothesis: the vitamin E in supplements is usually alpha-tocopherol, but the vitamin E "complex," as the natural vitamin E in foods like avocados is known, contains at least seven other agents, including beta-, delta-, and gamma-tocopherol. The other agents may be equally or more important. In a similar fas.h.i.+on, the vitamin C in most pills is merely as...o...b..c acid, but the C complex includes the flavonoid rutin and the enzyme tyrosinase. Without tyrosinase, as...o...b..c acid doesn't cure fever. Thus, maybe beta-carotene supplements didn't help smokers in that well-publicized study because isolated beta-carotene does not equal a carrot.

Eating fruits and vegetables is still the best preventive measure. They simply don't know how to put all the benefits of foods like beets and broccoli and berries into a pill.

6.

Real Fats.

Some Surprising Facts About Fats.

THE BAD FOR YOU COOKBOOK, published in 1992, in the midst of the frenzy for "light" cooking, extolled lard, eggs, b.u.t.ter, and cream- for pleasure if not health. Chris Maynard and Bill Sch.e.l.ler presented their favorite recipes for s.h.i.+rred eggs, lard pie crust, and trout with bacon with unguarded enthusiasm- and this disclaimer: "As for heart attacks . . . we are not going to make any hard-and-fast recommendations here because we are not doctors and- far more important- we are not lawyers."

How little has changed since then! Many Americans are still terrified of eating fats and feel guilty when they do. Monounsaturated olive oil makes the official list of "good" fats, yet few will defend saturated fats. Traditional fats are certainly more fas.h.i.+onable recently. The television chef and restaurateur Mario Batali made a splash putting lardo (cured fatback) on his menus, and food writer Corby k.u.mmer praised lard in the op-ed pages of the New York Times. "Here's my prediction," wrote the trend-spotting columnist Simon Doonan in the New York Observer, after he saw k.u.mmer's piece on lard. "This trend is not only going to catch on, it's going to sweep the nation."

Well, I hope so. Lard may be in vogue, but hardly anyone knows that lard is good for you. When I began to read about fats with an open mind, I learned some curious things. Consider this: lard and bone marrow are rich in monounsaturated fat, the kind that lowers LDL and leaves HDL alone. Stearic and palmitic acid, both saturated fats, have either a neutral or beneficial effect on cholesterol. Saturated coconut oil fights viruses and raises HDL. b.u.t.ter is an important source of vitamins A and D and contains saturated butyric acid, which fights cancer. As for the vaunted polyunsaturated vegetable oils, we eat far too many. Refined corn, safflower, and sunflower oil lower HDL and contribute to cancer.

Back when I took the warnings about saturated fats to heart, I cooked everything- from roast chicken to salmon, mashed potatoes to polenta- with olive oil. After I did a little homework on fats, life in the kitchen got more interesting. What fun to rediscover- and in some cases learn for the first time- how to cook with traditional fats like b.u.t.ter and lard. Now my kitchen is stocked with local b.u.t.ter, lard, duck fat, and beef fat, as well as exotic oils of coconut and pumpkin seeds.

Fats have many roles in cooking. Perhaps most important, they carry and disperse flavor throughout foods. Olive oil takes up the flavor of chili, garlic, or lemon and spreads it through the dish. Chicken breast has less flavor than dark thigh meat because it contains less fat, and modern commercial pigs, bred to be lean, make for dry and flavorless pork compared with traditional breeds. The Bad for You Cookbook authors want to know: "How did the fat get bred out of hogs to the point where you'd have to render three counties in Iowa to get a pound of lard?"

Fats add and retain moisture (in roasting, for example), and they keep food from sticking in frying and baking. Bakers use solid fats like b.u.t.ter, lard, and coconut oil to create a flaky, crumbly texture. Finally, and perhaps most mysteriously, fats contribute the inimitable quality known as "mouth feel"- think of creamy b.u.t.ter, silky serrano ham, or crispy skin on roast chicken. The desire for the feel of fat in food is universal. As anyone who has tried fat-free versions of real food knows, it has not been easy for food scientists to mimic the delectable feel of fat without real fat.

Fats, in other words, are delicious. But they are also necessary for health. Fats in the omega family are called essential because the body cannot make them; we must get them from foods. The brain relies on omega-3 fats; deficiency causes depression. Without fats, the body cannot absorb the fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E, and K. Fats are key to many other functions, including building cell walls, immunity, and a.s.similation of minerals like calcium.

Digestion is impossible without fats. The cell membrane (also made of fats) controls the muscles of the gastrointestinal tract. Fats stimulate the secretion of bile acids, which are essential for digestion. The vital role of fat in digestion is ill.u.s.trated by an obscure condition called rabbit starvation, caused by a diet exclusively of lean protein. The term comes from Arctic explorers forced to live on lean winter game for months, and the symptoms are lethargy, nausea, diarrhea, weight loss, and eventually death. Without fat, digestion literally fails and you starve- even if you're eating plenty.

Granted, this form of malnutrition is not likely to threaten many Americans. Fat is cheap and ubiquitous- or at least industrial fats are. Today, overeating low-quality food is more often the cause of poor nutrition than starvation. So how much fat is healthy? I don't count fat grams or the percentage of calories from fat and don't recommend it. My approach is simple: I eat a variety of traditional fats and oils, and I balance rich foods with lighter ones.

However, if you would like to know how much fat people eat and how much fat experts think we should eat, here are a few numbers. Deriving less than 20 percent of calories from fat is regarded as a low-fat diet, 30 to 40 percent moderate, and 60 percent high-fat. The extreme low-fat diet is recent, hard to follow, and nutritionally dubious. In 2006, the prestigious Women's Health Initiative trial found that low-fat diets did not prevent weight gain, heart disease, stroke, or cancer.1 The women on the "low-fat" diet were instructed to limit fat to 20 percent of calories, but that proved impossible (or perhaps merely unpalatable). These unfortunate women, who gamely ate salads without olive oil for eight years with nothing to show for it, consumed about 29 percent of their calories from fat. That's roughly what that U.S. government recommends. The lucky women who were allowed to eat whatever they wanted (researchers call that ad libitum, a term I love) ate 37 percent fat, which happens to be typical of most human diets. Very high-fat diets are probably inappropriate for those of us who work at desks rather than at physical labor. Most diets- actual and recommended- are 35 to 40 percent fat. The accompanying table shows the wide range of calories from fat in diets old and new.

HOW MUCH FAT IS IN TFIE DIET?.

* About 50 percent saturated fat.

Mostly olive oil.

About 33 percent saturated fat.

If You Have Only Two Minutes to Learn About Fats, Read This.

WHEN I STARTED TO LEARN about the intricate chemistry of fats, it was very exciting. I studied where plant and animal fats come from and marveled at how the body makes its own fats. I wondered why the body tends to h.o.a.rd polyunsaturated fats in corn oil for a rainy day, while it burns the saturated fats in b.u.t.ter and coconut oil quickly. Unsatisfied with the charts and tables in books, I drew my own and hung them over my desk. You can imagine my situation. I soon discovered that my friends were less fascinated with fat metabolism than I was. They asked for the essential facts on fats. Here they are.

Members of the lipid family, fats and oils (which I will call fats) consist of individual fatty acids, which may be saturated, monounsaturated, or polyunsaturated - terms describing their chemical structure. All fatty acids are strings of carbon atoms encircled by hydrogen atoms. When every carbon atom bonds with a hydrogen atom, the fatty acid is saturated. If one pair of carbon atoms forms a bond, the fatty acid is monounsaturated. If two or more pairs of carbon atoms form a bond, the fatty acid is pofyunsaturated. A carbon-hydrogen bond is known as a saturated or single bond. A carbon-carbon bond is called an unsaturated or double bond.

THE CHEMISTRY OF FATS.

All fats consist of individual fatty acids made of hydrogen and carbon. Fatty acids may be saturated, monounsaturated, or polyunsaturated.

Saturated.

All carbon atoms form saturated bonds with hydrogen Example: stearic acid (beef and chocolate).

Monounsaturated.

Two carbon atoms create one unsaturated bond Example: oleic acid (olive oil and lard).

Polyunsaturated.

More than one pair of carbon atoms create two or more unsaturated bonds.

Example: linoleic acid (corn oil).

All the fats we eat are a blend of saturated, monounsaturated, and polyunsaturated fatty acids. Fats are identified by the predominant fatty acid. Beef is mostly saturated, so we call it a saturated fat- even though it contains monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fatty acids, too. b.u.t.ter is mostly saturated, olive oil mostly monounsaturated, and corn oil mostly polyunsaturated. Lard is difficult to characterize because it varies with the diet of the pig, but it's about 50 percent monounsaturated, 40 percent saturated, and 10 percent polyunsaturated. Because it is 60 percent monounsaturated and polyunsaturated, lard is correctly grouped with unsaturated fats.

An important quality of every fatty acid is its ability to withstand heat. The more saturated the fat, the more st.u.r.dy it is, because saturated bonds are stronger than unsaturated bonds. Delicate unsaturated bonds are easily damaged or oxidized by heat. When you heat a fat to the smoking point, that's a sign of damage. Unsaturated fats also spoil more quickly than saturated fats. Spoiled fats are called rancid.

Oxidized fats contribute to cancer and heart disease. According to Science, "Unsaturated fatty acids . . . are easily oxidized, particularly during cooking. The lipid peroxidation chain reaction (rancidity) yields a variety of mutagens . . . and carcinogens."2 At the University of Minnesota, researchers found that repeatedly heating vegetable oils including soybean, safflower, and corn oil to frying temperature can create a toxic compound, HNE, linked to atherosclerosis, stroke, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, and liver disease.3 "We are, it seems, biologically primed not to eat oxidated fat," writes Margaret Visser in Much Depends on Dinner, "for doing so can cause diarrhea, poor growth, loss of hair, skin lesions, anorexia, emaciation, and intestinal hemorrhages." That's why it was bad news for health when fast-food restaurants stopped using saturated beef fat and palm oil, and started frying foods in rancid polyunsaturated oils.

In the kitchen, some fats are appropriate for heating, others acceptable, and some unsuitable. Heavily saturated fats (which tend to be solid at room temperature) are best for heating, monounsaturated fats are second best, and polyunsaturated fats (liquid at room temperature) are ideally used cold. Fortunately, there is a traditional fat for every culinary need. For roasting and sauteing, use b.u.t.ter, coconut oil, or lard, which are mostly saturated and monounsaturated. Chiefly monounsaturated oils, such as olive and macadamia nut, are the next best choice for cooking. A good blend for sauteing is half b.u.t.ter, half olive oil. Peanut and sesame oil, which contain more polyunsaturated fats, are less suitable for cooking but acceptable. In vinaigrettes and other cold dressings, use flaxseed, olive, or walnut oil.

THE BEST COOKING FATS.

Traditional cooking fats are saturated and thus heat-stable.

The body can manufacture some fats, while others, called essential, must be found in foods. The essential fats are polyunsaturated omega-3 (best found in fish) and omega-6 (vegetable oils). They have equally important, but opposite effects in the body. Ideally, the diet contains equal amounts of omega-3 and omega6 fats, but the typical American eats too few omega-3 and too much of the main omega-6 fat, which leads to inflammation, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and depression.

Omega-3 fats include alpha-linolenic acid (ALA), docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), and eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA). Flaxseed oil, gra.s.s-fed beef and b.u.t.ter, and pastured eggs all contain some omega-3 fats, but the best source is fish. The main omega-6 fat is linoleic acid (LA), found in grain and seed oils such as corn, safflower, and soybean oil. Once rare in the diet, the omega-6-rich oils are now ubiquitous, especially in junk food, and we eat too many.

Gamma-linolenic acid (GLA) and conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) are two omega-6 fats we should eat more of because they tend to behave like omega-3 fats in the body. In theory, the body can make GLA from the LA in corn oil, but the conversion is inhibited by many factors, so in practice the best sources are the oils of borage, black currant seed, evening primrose, and Siberian pine nuts. GLA treats premenstrual problems, reduces inflammation, dilates blood vessels, reduces clotting, and aids fat metabolism. CLA, which fights cancer and builds lean muscle, is found almost exclusively in gra.s.s-fed beef and gra.s.s-fed b.u.t.ter.

THE ESSENTIAL FATS.

The essential fats must be eaten in the right quant.i.ties. The industrial diet contains too much LA from vegetable oils, which leads to inflammation, obesity, diabetes, and heart disease.

Each fat has different nutritional qualities thanks to its particular fatty acids. For example, b.u.t.ter contains saturated lauric acid, which fights viruses. Lard and olive oil contain monounsaturated oleic acid, which lowers LDL. Any fatty acid (such as oleic acid) is chemically identical whether it's from lard or olive oil, and has the same effect in the body.

With animal fats, the breed and especially the animal's diet affect fatty acid composition and nutritional value. In other words, all beef fat is not identical. Gra.s.s-fed beef contains more polyunsaturated omega-3 fat and more CLA than grain-fed beef. Gra.s.s-fed cream contains more beta-carotene, vitamin A, and CLA than cream from grain-fed cows. Lard from pigs that eat coconut contains more saturated lauric acid than lard from pigs that eat acorns.

The nutritional value of vegetable oils, on the other hand, is affected by how the oil was processed. Refined vegetable oils such as corn and soybean oil are pressed under high heat. Vitamin E is destroyed, and delicate polyunsaturated fats are oxidized. In extra-virgin olive oil, the antioxidants and vitamin E remain intact. Polyunsaturated oils, such as walnut and flaxseed, should be cold-pressed.

This is the most important thing about the nutrition of fats.

All the traditional fats - ideally unrefined - are healthy in moderation. The body needs all three kinds of fats (saturated, monounsaturated, polyunsaturated) for various purposes, from pregnancy to digestion to thinking.

Aren't some fats unhealthy? Yes. It's easy to remember the bad ones: they are the industrial fats recently added to our diet. The unhealthy fats are refined vegetable oils, including corn, safflower, sunflower, and soybean oil, and synthetic trans fats. Trans fats are formed by hydrogenation, in which unsaturated oils are pelted with hydrogen atoms to make an artificially saturated fat. That's how they make firm margarine from liquid corn oil. Like natural saturated fat, hydrogenated oils are solid at room temperature and shelf-stable, which makes them useful for processed foods and baked goods. But trans fats lower HDL and cause heart disease, among other maladies. Industrial vegetable oils are unhealthy because they are too rich in omega-6 fats and because they are typically refined with heat, which makes them rancid and carcinogenic.

I've done my best to heed my friends' plea for brevity and greatly simplified the complex chemistry of fats. But the moral of the story is simple. If you're trying to remember which fats are healthy, follow this rule: eat the foods we've eaten for thousands of years in their natural form. If you can't find the perfect version of a food- say, 100 percent gra.s.s-fed beef- look for the next best thing. Any version of the traditional fats will be better for you than any version of the industrial fats. Those you must avoid like the proverbial Black Death.

TRADITIONAL AND INDUSTRIAL FATS.

The Basics * All the traditional fats are healthy * The industrial diet contains too many omega-6 fats and too few omega-3 fats. This leads to obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and depression * Trans fats lower HDL and cause heart disease, among other ills * With animal fats, the animal's diet matters for our health * With vegetable oils, processing matters for our health Traditional Healthy Fats: Eat Up ANIMAL FATS.

* Fat from gra.s.s-fed cattle, sheep, bison, and other game.

* b.u.t.ter and cream from gra.s.s-fed cows.

* Lard from pastured pigs fed a natural diet (pigs eat anything, so their diet varies).

* Egg yolks from pastured chickens, ducks, and geese.

* Fish oils (preferably wild), especially cod-liver oil.

VEGETABLE OILS.

* Cold-pressed, extra-virgin olive oil.

* Cold-pressed, unrefined flaxseed oil.

* Wet-milled, unrefined coconut oil.

* Cold-pressed, unrefined macadamia nut oil.

* Cold-pressed, unrefined walnut oil.

* Cold-pressed, unrefined sesame oil.

Modern Industrial Fats: Avoid.

* All hydrogenated and partially hydrogenated oils, including lard and all vegetable oils.

* Corn, safflower, sunflower, and soybean oils, especially when refined or heated.