There are many good books and I will mention some of them in this chapter. Realistically, I know that most people are not going to read many books. So, if I had to pick the best one for the average person to look at and study, I would have to pick Good Fat, Bad Fat. I choose it because heart disease is the number one killer in America and Satan has focused on teaching Americans and affluent nations to eat high amounts of saturated fat.

Stephen Covey praises this book saying, "A book to help everyone set limits on bad fat while choosing good-tasting foods."

William Castelli is one of the most distinguished doctors in America.  For 16 years he was the medical of the famed Framingham Heart Study.  He has lectured at Harvard Medical School for 34 years.  He has received many awards, lectures in many countries around the world, and makes frequent appearances on TV as an expert on heart health.

He writes that there are contradictory views on how to have a healthy heart.  There is "information chaos. Sorting out the truth is not even easy for experts."

One Out of Every Two

"That's how many people die of a heart attack or stroke.  Not a comforting thought!"  If you knew that the odds of your house burning down would be one in two, "you would do whatever you could to keep" it from happening.  What should we do to make sure we never get heart disease?  He teaches that the "principle culprit" is saturated fat.

There are 3 kinds of fat.  Saturated fat, monounsaturated fat and polyunsaturated fat.  Saturated fat is what affluent nations love.  It comes mainly from animals.  Because Americans eat so many cheeseburgers and so much ice cream their arteries are clogged.

Many people mistakenly think that they can know if they are at risk of a heart attack by knowing their total blood cholesterol.  American adults have an average of over 200.  Dr. Castelli says that out of all the thousands of people that have been in the Framingham Heart Study for the last 40 years, not one person who had a cholesterol level of less than 150 ever got a heart attack.  Many people, even doctors, assume that a level over 200 puts a person at risk.  They are wrong.  In the book, Good Fat, Bad Fat, we learn that to really know if a person is at risk we need to know what the HDL and LDL levels are also.  The authors write, "The H in HDL can remind us this is Healthy cholesterol."  The opposite of this good cholesterol is the bad, LDL.  "The L could be called the Lousy cholesterol."

Total cholesterol of "150 or less is ideal; if your is above 150, you need to look at your total - HDL cholesterol ratio.  Divide the total cholesterol by the HDL cholesterol.  Suppose your total cholesterol was 200 and your HDL cholesterol was 50, your ration would be 4.

"If you ratio is higher than 4 you are continuing to increase the deposits of fat in your arteries. The authors recommend that a healthy person eat less than 20 grams of fat a day and people at risk eat less than 10 grams.  "Cheaters are buried."

Bad fat, by the way, is not just saturated fat like that found in butter.  "Trans-fatty acids are also bad fats (even though they are unsaturated fats)."  Unfortunately these fats are not listed on food labels.  "Trans-fat is fat that has been heated to make it hydrogenated."  This means that we shouldn't eat any deep-fat fried foods such as donuts and french fries.

Please read the book to get all the details on this important subject.  The vast majority do not even know what their cholesterol level is and those that do probably do not know how to interpret it.  Even most doctors don't know what Dr. Castelli teaches and misdiagnose.

The best thing affluent nations can do is get their cholesterol levels down to those that nations have that do not have heart disease.  In America the "average adult level" is "about 210 to 220.  This average is far from healthy." Most people around the world don't have cholesterol levels this high.  People in parts of the world who don't eat as much bad fat and who don't get coronary-artery disease have total-cholesterol levels at or under 150.  Of the 5.7 billion people on the earth, 4 billion are not at any risk for the heart disease that kills half of North Americans.  The average cholesterol of the people in central China is 125.  The Masai in Africa have an average cholesterol of 135.  In Latin America, outside the big cities, the average cholesterol is 140.  Unfortunately, only 5% of North Americans over age 30 have a cholesterol level under 150."  In chapter 7 we learned that only 5% are successful.  The vast majority do not live by success principles.

"And while most adults around the world have cholesterol levels under 150, half the children in the United States and Canada already have a cholesterol level higher than that."  What is the first business that Americans bring to countries?  McDonalds.  We need to eat more like the healthy people of the world and they need to adopt a better governmental system like ours that honors free enterprise.

#1 Killer in America

The #1 killer of North Americans is heart attack caused by eating high amounts of saturated fats over time.  The heart is the core organ of the body.  It's purpose is to pump blood throughout the body.  Satan is very determined to attack it.  Satan reverses the order.  Animal products like meat and cheese should be the minor, secondary part of a meal with plant food the major part.  Satan has America addicted to animal food.  It is tasty.

In Good Fat, Bad Fat, "Instead of rationalizing reasons to keep on eating fat, every morning ask yourself, 'what can I do today to prevent more fat from plugging any coronary arteries?'"

"If you want to have clean and open coronary arteries, you can."

"It's simple, but not easy."

"If you want to change the odds, start living more like the people who almost never have heart attacks.  To begin with, that means watching your diet."

"Just take a look at the eating patterns and lifestyles of people who do not get fat plaques in their coronary arteries -- called atherosclerosis -- and the eating patterns and lifestyles of those who do."

"As you may already know, meat and other animal fats, lard, butter, whole milk, ice cream, egg yolks, cheese and many other things contain saturated fat.  Tropical oils such as coconut and palm also contain lots of bad fat.  These oils are in many of the things you eat, such as baked goods and especially junk food."

"Most youngsters in our culture grow up eating hamburger, fries and shakes -- to say nothing of butter, cheese, bacon, sausage, fried foods and fatty meats."

"People anywhere in the world who eat the same way as people in North America also have very high heart-attack rates."

"So, what about people who don't get heart attacks?"

"Around the world, people eat vastly different foods with some interesting basic similarities.  Each diet is built on some type of grain -- wheat in the United States, Canada and Russia; rice in Japan and the orient; and corn in Mexico, Central America and much of Latin America.  Many also eat fish and seafood to complement the grains with essential amino acids."

"Compare this eating pattern with the vast quantities of meat, eggs and whole-milk products that a major part of the typile who do have heart attacks."

Don't Drink Milk

"Another consistent dietary factor among cultures with low heart disease is that, for the most part, they are not milk-drinkers.  Cream, regular whole milk, cheese and ice cream contain butterfat."

"'Wholesome milk is an essential food.  Isn't it necessary in our diet?' you may wonder.  Most of us have grown up learning and believing this is true.  Commercials keep shouting at us to drink more milk to be healthy."

"Only 2% of the people of the world drink milk after they are weaned."  They say they get this statistic from Dr. Frank Oski who was one of the top pediatritions in America.  He was the editor-in-chief of The Yearbook of Pediatrics.  His books are the medical bibles for pediatricians.  We write more about Dr. Oski later when we focus on how deadly milk is.

The authors of Good Fat, Bad Fat continue saying "Good evidence suggests it isn't coincidence that the traditional Japanese, Eskimos and others who don't have heart attacks usually don't drink milk or eat very much cheese or ice cream."

"If you have to drink milk or eat cheese, at least use fat-free (nonfat) milk, yogurt and dairy products."

Another thing about the Japanese, Eskimos, people from the Pacific islands and other cultures where heart attacks are rare or non-existent, is that many of them get much of their protein form fish and seafood."

True Father, as usual, is right.  He is on target by focusing of fish for protein in the diet.

During WWII, in Europe, "People couldn't get the rich foods they were use to eating -- especially meat, butter, cream and milk.  Troops came to the farms and took the livestock away for their own use.  The Europeans, rich and poor alike, were deprived of meat, butter and cream.  They had no choice.  They lived on plain, ordinary foods like grains, vegetables and fruits.  Fat plaques disappeared by 1942 -- and so did heart attacks -- until after the war when the people were once again able to eat lots of fatty foods."

Fat Plaques

Plaque build up begins in childhood and in the young-adult years.  This becomes evident when autopsies were performed on American troops killed in the Korean War.  The average age of the men killed in that war was 22 years and three fourths already had fat streaks in their coronary arteries."

"Think about these fat plaques every time you or your family eat greasy hamburgers, fries, doughnuts, butter and other things loaded with fat.  And keep in mink that as this fat goes in, your body makes cholesterol and triglycerides.  Little by little these add to deposits in your coronary ateries that may cause a lot of grief."

"Four times more women die of heart disease than of breast cancer.  If you, or someone in your family, eats like a typical North American, odds are almost 50-50 that you will die of a heart attack or stroke.  This is true for men and women."

"No one likes lousy odds in a bet, yet sometimes people don't pay much attention to poor odds when it comes to themselves or their health.  Too many think, 'It won't happen to me.'  We hope you won't kid yourself with this misdirected reasoning.  Plugged-up coronary arteries can happen to you."

You can significantly change the odds.

The authors teach we must go "on a budget -- a bad-fat budget.  Bad fat means a total of saturated fat and trans-fatty acids which are in hydrogenated food products such as margarine and shortening.  If mayonnaise and salad dressing are prepared with hydrogenated ingredients, they also will contain trans-fatty acids.  [These are not put on food labels!] Figure there is as much bad trans-fatty acids as there are saturated fats in these hydrogenated products."

If you are at risk "your budget is 10 grams of bad fat a day -- no higher!  If you're not in a high-risk group, your budget is 20 grams of bad fat a day.  Don't be like most North Americans who currently eat 40 to 50 grams per say -- some as much as 100 grams."

"Just count the grams of bad fat you eat during a day.  Quit when you've hit your limit!"

We believe everyone should eat as little of bad fats as possible so they can lower their cholestoral to less than 150.

 

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