Did you grow up in the 1980s thinking that fat was bad for you?
Me too.
Let's play a shell game about which three fats are worst for you and which three are best for you.
I'm Robin Openshaw, I'm the green smoothie girl online,
and today I want to clear up the confusion about fats.
Let me share which three of these fats are slowly killing you and need to go in
the garbage and which three will actually help you live longer and slow your aging.
Number one,
vegetable oil.
Don't let the name fool you,
this ain't no vegetable.
This is pure marketing to call
it vegetable oil.
It's mostly made of canola oil,
which is almost always a genetically modified crop.
It's heated above 400 degrees and it's rancid by the time that you get it.
It's totally toxic.
Unless you're using it to make play dough for your preschooler,
throw it out.
That would be the only good use of it I can think of.
All right, number two,
margarine.
Okay, this is a plastic food.
We were duped by the food
industry in the 1980s and they told us that butter was the devil and to eat margarine instead.
Science now has demonstrated otherwise.
Natural grass-fed butter has some benefits.
It has good medium chain fatty acids,
whereas margarine is pure junk and should be thrown away.
Number three,
shortening.
This is the worst of the bad.
This is the kind of fat
that clogs your arteries.
There are some wonderful fats that protect the lipid membrane around
every cell and keeps you young and limber and keeps your whole nervous system and brain healthy too.
Let's get to those next.
But first of all,
throw away the shortening.
So now let's talk about three kinds of good fats and what to do with them.
That many scientific studies now show us have different properties,
all of them super important for your health.
Of course, avocados, coconuts, nuts and seeds of all kinds have some wonderful fats in them and they are whole foods.
But let's just say that you want to fry something.
You want to bake something.
You want to make a salad dressing.
So number one,
coconut oil.
It is actually a saturated fat and we were taught that that was bad,
but it's not always the case.
Coconut oil is full of medium chain fatty acids,
which are critical for brain health,
our whole neurological system,
but make sure you buy it cold pressed and organic.
Coconut oil is perfect for baking.
Just replace it with any vegetable oil or other oil in a recipe one to one.
Coconut oil is one of the very few fats that's good for frying because unlike most oils,
it doesn't create trans fats at high temperatures.
The second one is extra virgin olive oil.
This is a wonderful oil and the Mediterranean diet is a very low disease risk diet.
Buy it green.
The greener, the better.
One of the main features of the Mediterranean diet is a fair amount of extra virgin olive oil.
Number three,
flax oil.
Super rich in essential fatty acids.
Most Americans are very deficient in omega threes and really way too high in omega sixes because of all the fried foods that we eat.
So this is a great way to correct that flax oil is something you shouldn't cook with.
Keep it refrigerated at all times because these very fragile essential fatty acids do go rancid in a fairly short time.
I'll drizzle this on a baked sweet potato or flax oil is wonderful in a fresh dressing.
If you learn something here,
I'd love to serve you further in my free video masterclass I've got going on right now with a video just for you all about seven foods that fight inflammation and what foods caused your inflammation.
Number two, how to heal your gut with food.
Number three,
how to eat super healthy,
super cheap.
Number four, how to beat your food addictions in four days flat.
And finally,
how to bring your partner and kids along as you make healthy changes.
If any of those subjects interest you,
sign up right here while it's all free.
And as always, at Green Smoothie Girl,
I hope this has served you well.
I'll see you next time.