Tuesday, October 2, 2007

Saturated fat prevents diabetes

Here is an interesting article about a group of scientists who found that shorter chain fatty acids can prevent the development of diabetes in mice, even if they are obese (http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071002/sc_nm/diabetes_japan_fat_dc).

This is interesting because shorter fatty acid chains only exist as saturated fat, the kind we are told to avoid. The unsaturated fatty acids are all long chain.

Is it possible that the reason we haven't solved the diabetes issue is because we are telling people to eat long chain fatty acids in the form of soybean, corn, cottonseed, canola and olive oils? And because we are telling people to avoid the shorter chain fatty acids in butter and coconut oil?

I think we need to rethink our fat intake. We should eat the fats our ancestors ate before we started developing diabetes and other chronic disease. They just happen to be things like butter and cream. They didn't eat vegetable oils. And they definitely did not eat hydrogenated oils.

So, eat your butter and live happily ever after.

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