If you really knew me you would know that I have been talking about the great benefits of saturated fats like grass fed butter, ghee, coconut oil and even icecream in moderation 🙂 for several years… and not only becuae I was addicted to cheese in my teens 🙂 You would know that my belief is that its the fat in (grass fed) dairy products that is the most important nutrient and that if you aren’t going to eat the full fat (organic) good stuff, I wouldn’t bother with dairy products at all.
I have been convinced by Gary Taube’s thorough review of the research, by Mary Enig Ph.D who has devoted her career to the study of lipids and been questioning the lipid hypothesis (ie all fats are bad and along with cholesterol cause heart disease blah blah blah), by Michael Pollan’s two cents in Omnivore’s Dilemma which I heard through the wall from my house mate’s art studio several years ago and ran into say “whats this?”. I have more recently learned about ghee from my Ayurvedic advisors…
You would also know that I stopped being so attracted to Dr Andrew Weil’s website about 10 years ago. I do still use him as an occasional resource and was delighted to find that he’s finally catching up with us (Ann Louise Gittleman was talking about the benefits of CLA (conjugated linoleic acid) more than a decade ago). Here is his statement about his new attitude towards saturated fat based on some very good research (he is evidence based, just a little slower than others to catch on to this one) CLICK HERE:
Rethinking Saturated Fat? – Dr. Weil.
And for anyone who wants some serious science on the anti-carcinogenic effects of milk fat check this out from the Journal of Nutrition in 1997:
The optimum approach to conquering cancer is prevention. Although the human diet contains components which promote cancer, it also contains components with the potential to prevent it. Recent research shows that milk fat contains a number of potential anticarcinogenic components including conjugated linoleic acid, sphingomyelin, butyric acid and ether lipids. Conjugated linoleic acid inhibited proliferation of human malignant melanoma, colorectal, breast and lung cancer cell lines. In animals, it reduced the incidence of chemically induced mouse epidermal tumors, mouse forestomach neoplasia and aberrant crypt foci in the rat colon. In a number of studies, conjugated linoleic acid, at near-physiological concentrations, inhibited mammary tumorigenesis independently of the amount and type of fat in the diet.
