Saturated Fats Come From Animals
I have to admit, I never gave much thought to saturated fats. I guess I knew in the back of my mind that they were no good but I didn’t really know why. Now I know … most saturated fats come from animals.
Saturated fats also raise total blood cholesterol as well as LDL cholesterol (the bad cholesterol). Here’s the kicker, saturated fats are correlated with an increased incidence of heart disease, blocked arteries and stroke. As you probably know, heart disease is the number one killer of men and women in the United States. The American Heart Association even goes as far to claim that “saturated fat is the main dietary cause of high blood cholesterol.”1
What does this tell us? Relying on a diet that comes from animal products eventually leads to our own demise.
Mostly found in animal products, saturated fats stem from beef, poultry, pork, lamb, milk, butter, eggs, seafood, suet, tallow, lard and prepared foods. These are not the only animal products containing saturated fats. Most foods from animals contain saturated fats.
Often saturated fats will also be used in packaged goods to prolong shelf life. Some packaged products with saturated fats that you might mistake for vegan include: popcorn, granola bars, cookies, french fries, potato chips, and I could go on and on.
Saturated fat can also be found in some truly vegan foods like coconut oil, soybean oil, palm oil and cashews. When you look at a food label, you can tell if a product has saturated fat by looking at the nutritional label. If a product has saturated fat, it will be listed directly below “total fat” towards the top.
The lesson here is that if you’re vegan, make sure to dig a little deeper into a product’s ingredient list if the nutritional label discloses saturated fat. As a vegan, relying on coconut oil, soybean oil and cashews as the main staples of your diet, is not the best idea for your health. I don’t think this is a problem for most vegans since we rely mostly on leafy greens, grains and beans as diet staples. Yet people that rely on an animal-based diet likely eat large amounts of saturated fats on a daily basis and they may not even know it.
Sometimes it can seem disheartening to discover that funny little words on packaging at the grocery store can be incognito labels for animal by-products. But the more we know, the better advocates we become for ourselves and the animals.
1. American Heart Association, http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=532
You can add Alzheimer’s Disease to your list of health issues correlated with saturated fats (and of course the man made trans-fats). Diet and exercise have been the two most consistent interventions for Alzheimer’s and, yup, you guessed it – diets high in vegetables, whole grains, and fruit win out over animal based diets high in saturated fats.
Thanks for that insight! There will be a whole other (probably many) blog post on trans-fats. Yuck!