Go ahead and eat all the fat you want — it may even save your life.
But there’s a catch: You can’t bury yourself in bacon just yet, because the fats we’re talking about here aren’t the delicious sizzling variety found in fries and burgers dripping in grease and butter.
It turns out the healthiest diet in the world is high in fat, but it’s the kind of fat found in fish, nuts and healthy choices, such as avocados and olive oil.
A Mediterranean Diet with no restriction on fat intake may protect against breast cancer, diabetes and heart attacks, according to a report published in the Annals of Internal Medicine on Monday night.
“It’s OK to have up to 40% of your daily calories from these ‘healthy fats,'” Dr. Hanna Bloomfield, the lead researcher, told The Daily News.
Her team reviewed evidence collected over the past 50 years to determine that a high-fat Mediterranean Diet was associated with lower total cancer mortality, including breast, colorectal and lung cancer, compared to other diets.
It was also linked to lower incidents of diabetes and cardiovascular events.
“You should cook with olive or canola oil, limit your intake of red meat to a few times a week, refrain from products with added sugar or refined carbohydrates (think soda and most commercial baked goods), and supplement your diet with plenty of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, and legumes (beans, peas),” said Dr. Bloomfield.
She also gave whole dairy products such as yogurt and cheese, and even red wine the thumbs-up — in moderation.
These are also staples of the plant-based Mediterranean meal plan.
These fat-packed factoids come on the heels of a Harvard study published last week that also found consuming greater amounts of unsaturated fats prolonged life. Swapping our favorite saturated/trans fats such as butter and lard with plant-based olive, canola and soybean oils lowered overall mortality risk by up to 19%.
Researchers don’t know exactly why these healthy fats are a magic bullet just yet. “Perhaps because of anti-inflammatory effects,” mused Dr. Bloomfield.
But decades of demonizing all fats to embrace “low fat” and “low calorie” foods have thrown our eating habits — and our waistlines — out of whack.
“The emphasis, in the United States at least for the past 30 years, has been it’s important to reduce fat, fat of all kinds, fat’s the bad thing,” she added. “It turns out that the obesity epidemic in this country is probably more due to our increased consumption of refined grains and added sugar.”