Why I Believe Over Half of Your Diet Should Be Made Up of Saturated Fat

Full Article from Dr. Mercola          Reposted by YevoFoodClub.com
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/05/31/coconut-oil-for-healthy-heart.aspx

May 31, 2012 | 321,102 views

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By Dr. Mercola

A little over 100 years ago a German scientist wrote a letter to a company that made soap, and in so doing changed the way the world cooks its food. The soap company, Procter & Gamble, bought the scientist's idea—and Crisco was born.
At this time in history, people used animal fats for cooking in the form of lard and butter. And while Crisco was purposely formulated to resemble lard and cook like lard, it was nothing like lard. The rest of the story, as related in The Atlantic, is a tale of marketing successⁱ.

 

When Marketing Alters Dietary Recommendations...

Recipe in hand, Procter & Gamble launched a massive sales strategy for Crisco that rivals even some of the biggest sales pitches today, and won over the cooks of the world. According to The Atlantic:

"Never before had Procter & Gamble -- or any company for that matter -- put so much marketing support or advertising dollars behind a product. They hired the J. Walter Thompson Agency, America's first full service advertising agency staffed by real artists and professional writers.

Samples of Crisco were mailed to grocers, restaurants, nutritionists, and home economists. Eight alternative marketing strategies were tested in different cities and their impacts calculated and compared. Doughnuts were fried in Crisco and handed out in the streets. Women who purchased the new industrial fat got a free cookbook of Crisco recipes. It opened with the line, "The culinary world is revising its entire cookbook on account of the advent of Crisco, a new and altogether different cooking fat." Recipes for asparagus soup, baked salmon with Colbert sauce, stuffed beets, curried cauliflower, and tomato sandwiches all called for three to four tablespoons of Crisco."

Since advertising claims back then were unregulated, Procter and Gamble sold this plant-based product (known today as hydrogenated vegetable oil) as being healthier than animal fats, and consumers believed it. It took 90 years before researchers finally discovered that this new, "better-for-you" compound, which we call trans fat today, actually increases your risk of getting heart disease. As stated in the featured Atlantic article:

"It is estimated that for every two percent increase in consumption of trans fat (still found in many processed and fast foods) the risk of heart disease increases by 23 percent. As surprising as it might be to hear, the fact that animal fats pose this same risk is not supported by science."

Not only that; research has also found that trans fats contribute to cancer, bone problems, hormonal imbalance and skin disease; infertility, difficulties in pregnancy and problems with lactation; low birth weight, growth problems, and learning disabilities in children. It's so bad for your health that one U.S. government panel of scientists determined that man-made trans fats are unsafe at any level...