“Fat Myths”
by Chris Masterjohn
A Presentation from Wise Traditions 2011, 12th Annual Conference

Friday, March 30th, 2012
DVD begins at 6:30 PM
Please come early.

Location:
Market of Choice
67 West 29th, Eugene
Upstairs in the Community Room

Conventional medicine and the main stream media all agree: dietary fat is the cause of all health ills.  Yet traditional the diets of healthy traditional people varied greatly in the amount of fat, some going to considerable risks to obtain saturated animal fats.

Are low-fat diets healthy?  Are high-fat diets healthy?  What about the dangers of arachidonic acid or benefits polyunsaturated oils?  What about studies that report to show that dietary fat causes heart disease?  What did those studies show?  What does the science really say?  Chris Masterjohn tackles these difficult questions with humor and a well-grounded basis in science.  This is a “must see” presentation for anyone following a low-fat diet or confused about fats.

Good Fats, Bad Fats: Separating Fact From Fiction
In the modern era, the nutritional establishment has created the tall tale of a mythical transition from a low-fat diet associated with poverty to a high-fat diet associated with affluence and has considered this mythical increase in fat intake to be the scourge of modern, disease-producing diets. The establishment has likewise promoted the use of polyunsaturated vegetable oils to supply our needs of “essential fatty acids” and to lower blood cholesterol. Others have maintained with equal vigor that using large amounts of fat is necessary to displace harmful carbohydrates, and that this is the key to vibrant health. Traditional, health-promoting diets, however, varied widely in their composition, some being very low in fat, others deriving over 50 percent of their calories from saturated fat alone. Healthy, non-pregnant, non-lactating adults require essential fatty acids in infinitesimal amounts. Growing children, pregnant or lactating women, and adults who are recovering from injury or suffering a degenerative disease require greater amounts of these fatty acids, but acquire them best from animal products. The use of vegetable oils likely promotes heart disease despite lowering cholesterol. Saturated and monounsaturated fatty acids play essential roles in our bodies, but we can synthesize them from carbohydrate, an option on which many healthy groups have relied. Fats provide essential nutrients and aid in the absorption of nutrients from other foods. It is the overall nutrient density and nutrient bioavailability of the diet, however, and not the specific content of fat, that produces health.

Chris Masterjohn is creator and maintainer of Cholesterol-And-Health.Com, a web site dedicated to extolling the benefits of traditional, nutrient-dense, cholesterol-rich foods and to elucidating the many fascinating roles that cholesterol plays within the body. Cholesterol-And-Health.Com is home to his blog, The Daily Lipid. Chris is a frequent contributor to Wise Traditions, the quarterly journal of the Weston A. Price Foundation, is a perennial speaker at the annual Wise Traditions conference, and writes a second blog on the foundation’s web site, Mother Nature Obeyed. Chris is a doctoral candidate in Nutritional Sciences at the University of Connecticut. He has authored three peer-reviewed publications including a hypothesis on the molecular mechanism of vitamin D toxicity published in Medical Hypotheses, a letter to the editor published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology challenging the conclusions of a widely publicized study claiming to show adverse effects of eating coconut oil, and a letter to the editor published in The American Heart Journal arguing that drugs used to raise HDL-cholesterol should not be considered safe until their potential adverse effects on vitamin E metabolism have been studied. He has also recently authored a human study on the effects of vitamin E on sugar metabolism that has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry, and a review on nonalcoholic fatty liver disease accepted for publication in Nutrition Reviews. Chris plans on graduating with his doctorate in the summer.

RSVP:
Please RSVP if you think you will be attending(email Lisa at: info@krautpounder.com). If your plans change, always feel free to just show up.

Cost:
Suggested donation of $4-10 per person
(Or please volunteer to help the Eugene Chapter).

Links:

Chris Masterjohn’s website & blogs:

• Cholesterol-and-Health.com
• The Daily Lipid
• Mother Nature Obeyed

Articles by Chris Masterjohn:

• Understanding Weston Price on Primitive Wisdom
• On the Trail of the Elusive X-Factor: A Sixty-Two-Year-Old Mystery Finally Solved
• From Seafood to Sunshine: A New Understanding of Vitamin D Safety
• Bearers of the Cross: Crucifers in the Context of Traditional Diets and Modern Science
• Vitamin D in the Infant: Requirements for Safety
• Vitamin A On Trial: Does Vitamin A Cause Osteoporosis?
• The Pursuit of Happiness
• Vitamins for Fetal Development: Conception to Birth
• The Cod Liver Oil Debate: Science Validates the Benefits of Our Number One Superfood
• Precious Yet Perilous: Understanding the Essential Fatty Acids
• Vitamin A: The Forgotten Bodybuilding Nutrient
• and more…

If this is your first time attending our Popcorn Review:
Please see our Notes On Popcorn Reviews for more information.