is not awakened, the pendulum will swing, and the opposite effect becomes manifest: The sugar eater becomes a sleepwalker and lives each day in an unconscious fog. The right amount of sugar( which could be none!) will support our self-awareness and our strength of personality. It seems to me, from interacting with people who have stopped using sugar, that once we become clear and comfortable with ourselves, we don’ t need sugared sweets anymore. Fats and Oils:
• Expansive
• Acid-forming
• Warming
• Buildup food Like sugar, fat appears in the diet in two forms:( a) as a single element in the form of oil, butter, or lard; or( b) coupled with protein as part of natural foodstuffs( meat, cheese, avocados, nuts, whole grains). Like all other foodstuffs, it, too, has its positive and negative effects. On the positive side, fat carries flavor and is what makes foods delicious. Truly low-fat food can be palatable, refreshing, even tasty— but never deeply yummy. Biologically, fat is the carrier for the fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E, and K, as well as a source of essential fatty acids necessary for proper cell function and for the development of the whole organism. The metabolism of fats creates body heat, and since they pack twice as many calories per gram as protein or carbohydrate, a high-fat diet helps maintain normal body temperatures in cold weather better than a high-protein or a high-starch diet could. 63( Traditional dietary customs support this observation: Healthy, rugged Eskimos consume a high proportion of animal fats, especially seal oil, whereas the long-lived peasants from tropical Ecuador attain their advanced age on a diet that derives no more than 12 percent of its calories from fats.) Furthermore, fat is a source of energy, and its presence frees up protein for tissue-repair.( Carbohydrates also have this“ protein-sparing” effect, but fat is twice as efficient.) Much has been said and written about saturated and unsaturated fats, conventional wisdom being that saturated( mostly animal) fats may encourage heart disease, whereas unsaturated( vegetable) fats may discourage, perhaps even reverse it. However, more recent research shows a possible link between processed polyunsaturated vegetable fats and cancer. 64 In our choice of cooking oils and fats, then, we are caught between a rock and a hard place. A high total fat intake appears to be positively linked with both cardiovascular disease and breast and colon cancer. Various institutions such as the U. S. government, the American Institute for Cancer Research, the New York Hospital – Cornell Medical Center, and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center now strongly recommend a reduction of dietary fat intake from 45 to 35 percent of total calories. Other health researchers, beginning with the late Nathan Pritikin, feel that it is safe to go down as low as 10 percent of total calories. In practical terms, I have found that in a healthy, mostly vegetarian diet, one to two tablespoons of cooking oil per person per day is quite enough and allows the addition of perhaps the equivalent of 1 / 4 to 1 / 3 cup nuts or seeds or other naturally high-fat food. This can come to about 20 – 25 percent of total calorie intake. Fat and oil are generic terms, and it’ s important that we identify what exactly we are dealing with. Cancer is associated with processed vegetable fats, including hydrogenated vegetable fats, such as shortening and margarine( there appears to be no increased cancer risk among Africans, Japanese, and Eskimos, whose dietary fats consist mostly of polyunsaturated fish and vegetable oils). Margarine is an unsaturated oil through which hydrogen has been forced; this process converts it into a saturated fat so that it remains solid at room temperatures. This technology is in fact a molecular manipulation, which could cause problems as yet undetected. Hydrogenation, as well as extremes of heat, can change the form of unsaturated fat by rotating the carbon-hydrogen groups at their bonds, thereby changing the actual shape of the fat molecule. 65 This detail may seem unimportant, but it isn’ t. Research has shown that the shape of molecules has great bearing on their function as well as on their effect; 66 a change in shape could thus in fact alter function, perhaps adversely. Studies on the effect of hydrogenation found that it can alter cell-membrane function, making the membranes more permeable to carcinogenic substances. 67 The best quality fats to use, in my experience, are extra-virgin olive oil, unrefined sesame oil, and ghee( sweet, preferably raw, clarified butter). I generally use only the first two, because I’ m too lazy to clarify the butter; however, I found that using a small amount of unsalted natural butter for my family is very satisfying and has not brought us any noticeable ill effects. I prefer these cooking fats because they have been used in traditional settings for thousands of years. They need low technology for their extraction