As far as I can tell, if we are talking about vegetable-based fat, then there is absolutely no problem with fat in a diet (with the exception of its high caloric load of 9 calories per gram vs 5 for carbohydrates). Perhaps we could call them lipids and everyone could get past the “anti-fat” marketing of the past.
The food industry (and fake researchers) lied to us, rammed sugar down our throats, and gave us the obesity epidemic. Thanks. Vegetable fat is fine. And fats induce satiety (vs carbs), so their high caloric load may be countered by that, but it depends on hunger being a relevant issue.
Keep in mind that there is no Canola oil; it doesn’t exist. And as soon as you add junk to vegetable fat (margarine), it becomes a processed food. Avocado oil, coconut oil, olive oil — there are many choices and they are all good. Well, sort of. The olive oil producers have lied to us, and much of olive oil isn’t really olive oil. Sigh…who is in charge of this world?
And, of course, we can’t use the term “saturated fat” as a proxy for “this is bad for you,” since there’s an awful lot of saturated vegetable-based fat such as fat in avocados, which is totally fine.
That leaves the topic of animal-based fat. I think we’re slowly coming around to a consensus that this should be limited, but is not the deadly item it was made out to be. Certainly, lean meat is healthier than meat that’s full of fat, but cooking some meat changes that proportion. So, in the end, buying a lean hamburger and cooking it probably yields the same amount of fat as a non-lean hamburger. And the way most people cook bacon eliminates most of the fat. (Hint, cook it in the oven on a baking sheet.) Still, I think there’s a good argument for trimming the fat off of steak before one cooks it. And it’s probably better to eat chicken without the skin, which is mostly fat. There is likely no reason to eat animal fat if it’s not attached to animal protein. And, who knows, folks are saying that vegetable-based hamburgers are almost there.
Then there is a question of whether the real problem is the way we cook meat. High temperatures not only destroy valuable nutrients, but generate all those carcinogens. So, yes, BBQ meat is probably bad for you because of the flame rather than the meat. The reality is that grills are a bad idea. And, of course, cooking meat quickly requires very high temps. Food for thought.
Should we say meat is fine (in terms of eating, not for the planet) if you cook it slowly and trim off the fat? Who knows, but it is probably a better strategy.
The bottom line is that we should add real vegetable based lipids to whole foods and eliminate sugar wherever we can. Make healthy choices to have healthy outcomes.
