Can Fat Make You Thin?
Obesity is a prevalent condition in our society... even more so in the United States than in other countries. Our increased consumption of sugar and greasy, fried, fast foods doesn't help, but this is fairly prevalent in other countries as well. One thing that we may have overlooked is the dramatic decrease in our consumption of conjugated linoleic acid (CLA).
Until the turn of the century, CLA was an unrecognized nutrient. It was so new, very few medical and nutritional texts even mentioned it. However, CLA is an essential component for good health. It's found in beef, lamb, turkey, and some milk products. Ruminants (cud-chewing animals such as cows, sheep, goats, buffalo, deer, etc.) have a form of bacteria in their stomachs that converts the fatty acid linoleic acid into conjugated linoleic acid. This same bacteria has been detected in the human intestinal tract, but for some reason our bodies aren't capable of producing significant quantities of CLA. We must get it from our diet. [J Nutr OO;130(8):2036-9]
Before the year 2000, CLA deficiencies were probably uncommon. But with the relatively recent changes in the way the above foods are being produced and the changes in our dietary preferences, CLA intake has dropped dramatically. As a result, the incidence of obesity and other related health problems has steadily increased.
No one knows exactly how CLA works. But we do know that the body must be able to transport dietary fat into cells where it can be converted to energy or used to build muscle tissue. Without CLA, your body stores fat in new fat cells instead of burning it or converting it to muscle.
Primary Sources of CLA
The two primary sources of CLA in the American diet are beef and milk, both of which have fallen out of favor recently because of their saturated fat content. To make matters worse, the CLA content of both beef and milk has been steadily falling for the last 60 years or so. Compared to past generations, our diets are severely deficient in CLA.
In the early 1960s, the CLA content in milk was almost 3%. By the 1990s, the CLA content was less than 1%. The percentage of CLA in beef has also been dwindling as a direct result of cattle being fed prepared feeds in feedlot environments, rather than being fattened by grazing on natural grass pastures. Cattle and milk producers discovered that feedlot cattle and cattle fed prepared feeds gained far more weight much quicker than, or produced almost twice the amount of milk of, cattle fed pasture grasses.
Obviously the CLA content of the end product isn't a primary concern for the beef and milk producers. There are studies indicating that the CLA content in the milk of cows eating prepared feeds dropped to less than half that of grass-fed cows (4.6 milligrams of CLA per gram of milk compared to 10.9 milligrams, respectively). [J Dairy Sci 98;81(6);1630-6]
Nutritional pioneer Dr. Weston Price studied, among other things, the diets of primitive peoples around the world and their propensity to develop various diseases. Based on his research, he found that butter was an extremely important and beneficial food for many of these groups, particularly for children and expectant mothers. The greatest value was placed on the rich, dark yellow butter produced by cows on spring pastureland. He attributed many of its beneficial properties to the fat-soluble vitamins it contains, particularly vitamin A. Based on this new research, could it be the higher CLA content of spring butter might also have been a major factor?
Even to this day, the rich butter produced by pasture-fed cattle in both New Zealand and Australia is far superior to anything in the USA. Australian pasture-fed beef contains as much as four times the CLA of our American beef but the rumor is it may also be high in DDT since they did not ban the use of that chemical until 1989. Based on these findings, we face a real dilemma. Even if we increase our intake of milk and beef, we're not likely to get as much CLA as people did just a few decades ago. This is particularly true if you drink non-fat or skim varieties of milk, which are essentially devoid of any fat -- especially CLA.
Increasing our levels of CLA can have a dramatic impact on our overall health as well. But before I list it's other benefits, let me first share some more information on the weight reduction studies of this previously unknown nutrient.
Log in to read the rest of this article addressing the related topics below:
- Weight Loss and Reduction of Body Fat
- Cancer
- Diabetes
- Heart and Artery Disease
- Immune System
- Osteoporosis, Rheumatoid Arthritis, and Bone Formation
- Where to Find CLA
- CLA in Supplement Form
- Damage Control with Tea or C
