EAT fat to lose fat.
Wait, what? You mean eat no fat to lose fat? Or at least eat less fat to lose fat?
Nope, you read that first sentence right. And it seems like the food pyramid had it all wrong all along.
Remember that familiar-looking chart, with the largest group of carb rich foods at the bottom, followed by fruits and vegetables, then your proteins, and finally at the top of the pyramid–which means we should eat as little of it as possible–the bad old fats?
Well, what did we know? We all, like all good boys and girls should, followed what the food pyramid said. Lots and lots of grain and pasta and bread. Of course the Filipino loves his carbohydrates. From pancit, to spaghetti, from palabok to luglug, and rice of all kinds. Add to this the countless sweet kakanins that we like to end our meals with, and we are a nation of starch eaters.
And what did this religiously following the food pyramid mean for many of us?
Well, truth be told, it made many of us look like pyramids. Big at the bottom, small at the top. From play school kids to grand moms and dads, we have become a nation of really large people. And in no small measure is this down to what we were told about how we should be eating.
Today, it seems, modern nutrition science tells us that the food pyramid should be inverted. Not the shape, so much as the proportion of the food groups that we should be eating. The ones that were at the bottom should really be at the top. It’s okay to eat lots and lots of avocado and virgin coconut oil. But we should avoid unli-rice like the plague if we are to stop the trend of Filipinos becoming super-sized.
Many doctors and nutrition experts are now asserting that it is avocados and not apples that keep the doctor away. And that the coconut, oh poor old coconut that we have bad-mouthed all these years, should really be the king of all nuts.
The science is a little too complicated to explain here in full, but it all has to do with how the fat storage mechanisms in our bodies work, and the critical hormone–insulin–that keeps the whole process working. Eating far too much carbohydrates, sugars and other starchy foods makes the whole insulin thing store all those starches as fats, which explains our bulging waistlines.
And so, if all that rice makes us fat, what doesn’t then?
Fat. Yes, that’s right. It’s fat that does not make us fat. Believe it or not, the low-carb, high-fat (LCHF) way of eating is now the one being pushed by many doctors and scientists as the fixer of bad metabolism, the nemesis of bulging bellies, and the key to making our country slim again.
The good news is that one of the most sought-after superfood in this whole new way of looking at eating is one that has always been in our midst.
Until recently much maligned and relegated to the category of “must avoid” foods, the humble coconut, as it turns out, is our best friend when it comes to nutrition. The problem is, most of us have grown up at a time when much of the world was anti-coconut. Palm oil, canola oil, corn oil, whatever-else oil became all the rage, so long as it was not coconut.
Our poor coconut farmers became literally poorer. No one wanted to touch the coconut, which was deemed unhealthy and undesirable. All that until recently when coconut was crowned king again. Whether we call it VCO or MCT oil, it is all the rage once more. Our poor coconut farmers are vindicated and the nation’s savior from the scourge of fat is restored to its rightful place at least.
The coconut is king again.
(Continued next week)