Natural Healing: Eat Your EFAs

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Recipe:

• Salmon Tostadas with Fresh Mango Salsa 

After years of diligently filling the grocery cart with fat-free products, you may be surprised to learn that some fats are beneficial. In fact, studies show that the wholesale elimination of fats from the diet can jeopardize your health.

During the past century, when food processing was developed and became highly streamlined, many naturally occurring “good” fats were eliminated from foods and replaced with unhealthful hydrogenated oils, saturated fats and trans fatty acids, which increase low-density lipoprotein (“bad” cholesterol) levels. Researchers now believe that more diseases stem from consumption of too many bad fats and not enough essential fatty acids (EFAs). They’re called essential because our bodies can’t manufacture them and we must obtain them from dietary sources.

Why Fat Matters

There are two types of EFAs: linoleic (omega-6) and alpha-linoleic (omega-3). Both promote normal brain development, joint lubrication and properly functioning immune and digestive systems, and both help the body use nutrients, create energy and cell membranes, produce blood, transport oxygen and regulate cell division.

Udo Erasmus, a research nutritionist from Los Angeles who has created tools for pressing and packaging healthful oils, recommends that a well-balanced diet contain 15 to 20 percent essential fatty acids. In Fats That Heal, Fats That Kill (Alive Books, 1993), Erasmus states that the seeds and oil of flax (Linum usitatissimum) are the richest sources of omega-3 fatty acids, and safflower and sunflower seeds and oil are the richest sources of omega-6 fatty acids.

Heating oils during cooking, however, destroys EFAs, so they should be used in salad dressings or other unheated dishes. Omega-3s are also found in trout, salmon, mackerel, sardines, tuna and eel; eating fish three times a week could provide an adequate amount of omega-3s (see Page 17?for a tasty recipe). If you’d prefer to get your EFAs through supplements, Erasmus recommends taking 1 to 3 tablespoons per day of an oil that blends omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids. Humans require a 4-to-1 ratio of omega-6s to omega-3s, a balance that allows the body to create prostaglandins, hormone-like substances that reduce inflammation and pain, and help regulate blood pressure, blood clotting, allergic response and heart, kidney and gastrointestinal function.

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