A Common GAPS Mistake – Fats

“Fats!” says Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride, “Very Important!”

McBride is a Medical Doctor, neurologist, neurosurgeon and author with a PhD in human nutrition. She is considered the forerunner in gut healing with the understanding that all disease begins in the gut. Her methods and practices in her GAPS healing protocol has taken hundreds of thousands of those with damaged guts and rebuilt their systems allowing them to walk away from food allergies, intolerances, autism, bipolar and many other horrific chronic illnesses. 

Dr. McBride spoke at the 16th Annual Weston A. Price Conference in Anaheim, California in November of 2015 hitting the topic of fats thoroughly.

“What we have to understand is if you take the water away from the human body, and that’s been done, about 70-75% of (the) human body is water. The dry weight (is) about 50% protein, 50% fat. Fat is structural, it isn’t optional for us,” she says.

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When the gut is deeply damaged the nutrition isn’t getting absorbed properly. When the wrong fats, toxic fats, are eaten, they poison our bodies from the inside out causing worse damage on the cellular level. Feeding the good fats, when the damage is deep, is critical to repair.

When we eat fats that are sourced from pastured animals, which are free ranging and basking in the sun, the nutrition from their fat is insurmountable. It is also readily absorbable as our digestive system doesn’t need to do any work. The nutrition is just absorbed, sucked in for immediate use.

“Half of our structure is fat. When we analyse that fat in its chemical structure it is similar to lamb fat, beef fat, pork fat, goose fat,” McBride says. “These are the most important fats for our human physiology. They should constitute the bulk of your fat consumption.”

When we cook she recommends cooking with animal fats like the lamb, beef, pork and goose. The vegetables should be literally swimming in fat as well as heaped into your GAPS meat stocks on the introduction stage.

McBride says, “If you roast a goose for Christmas you’ll have many, many jars of beautiful fat coming out of that goose. The goose will be sitting in fat in the tray.”

This fat can be rendered the same as fat rendered from a cow, tallow, or fat rendered from a pig, lard. Pouring the fat, while it’s still warm, through a strainer then capping it in mason jars is best. This fat will keep in the refrigerator for years. 

McBride recommends all cooking, frying, roasting and other baking be done with fat from these pastured animals.

“Vegetable oils are poisonous. Don’t touch them, don’t buy them, never cook in them,” she says. “Those things sold in great big jars or great big bottles coming from the food industry – don’t cook in them. These fats were known from (the) 1930s – vegetable oils and their harmful effects on the body. ”

McBride does recommend cold pressed plant oils like cold pressed virgin olive oil, coconut oil or palm oil. These oils are sensitive. The cold pressed plant oils  should be extracted in cold and preferably dark environments but absolutely packaged in dark bottles so they do not oxidize. 

“Plants have many beneficial oils that are polyunsaturated which means they are fragile. They are damaged by heat, by light, by oxygen and by other influences in the world. That’s why mother nature locked these fats very nicely in the cellular structure of the plants,” she says. “All plants have these oils. So when we eat lettuce, cucumber, tomatoes, fruit, vegetables, we are getting plenty of these oils in their clean, pristine, unadulterated state.”

Processing is a different story.

Heat, solvents, pressure, oxygen and chemicals all damage the fragile nature of the plant oils. This destroys the fragile polyunsaturated fatty acids. The chemical structure changes in this method of extraction and treatment causing the plant oils to be unnatural in our bodies. 

This process changes the plant oil, “Turning them into many harmful things, into pollution for your bodies,” McBride says. “Unfortunately, because of the commercial propaganda coming from the companies that manufacture these oils the whole world has been convinced that this is good for us, that we should cook all our food on these oils while butter and lard and animal fats are dangerous for us. The truth is just the opposite.”

Butter from grass fed cows is one of the healthiest fats around. The skin from a pastured chicken ranks just as high. Turkey skin is phenomenal. 

McBride says you can not overdo it! Her clients that are most severe in their gut damage who have been thriving on over 70% fat intake for years. 

McBride addresses the concept of cholesterol and heart damage in her book, Put Your Heart In Your Mouth. She lays out her extensive protocol for gut healing in her GAPS book.

For a delicious snack made into a mousse from high quality fat clicks here. 

*Nourishing Plot is written by Becky Plotner, ND, traditional naturopath, GAPS who sees clients in Rossville, Georgia. She works as a Certified GAPS Practitioner who sees clients in her office, Skype and phone. Since her son was delivered from the effects of autism (Asperger’s syndrome), ADHD, bipolar disorder/manic depression, hypoglycemia and dyslexia through food she continued her education specializing in Leaky Gut and parasitology through Duke University, finishing with distinction. This is not a news article published by a paper trying to make money. This blog is put out by a mom who sees first hand the effects of nourishing food vs food-ish items. No company pays her for writing these blogs, she considers this a form of missionary work. It is her desire to scream it from the rooftops so that others don’t suffer from the damaging effect of today’s “food”.

“GAPS™ and Gut and Psychology Syndrome™ are the trademark and copyright of Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride. The right of Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Patent and Designs Act 1988.