Photo Credit: http://gmoinside.org/cant-believe-butter/
Conventional health wisdom is that saturated fats are at the root of all evil, and you should avoid at all cost. So if that’s the case, how on earth would increasing butter in your diet be related to a decreased risk in developing diabetes? Well recently, there’s been more and more evidence showing up that saturated fats may in fact be beneficial for a variety of reasons (essential fatty acids, reduced inflammation, fat-soluble vitamins, etc.), noting that the source of those saturated fats may in fact be the most important factor (which we can get into at another time). A new study provides yet another link to how saturated fat can be a good thing for health, decreasing several markers for diabetes.
In short, two groups of dolphins were analyzed for markers related to diabetes (high insulin, triglycerides, and ferritin). It was uncovered that the group with significantly lower risk for developing diabetes had much higher amounts of a particular fatty acid in their blood, independent of other dietary markers. When increasing this fat (heptadecanoic acid) in the high-risk dolphin group’s diet, the dolphins’ markers for diabetes risk came dramatically down, statistically back to normal levels.
The particular saturated fat they were targeting is found in some fish and in dairy, of which the highest concentration is in butter. In fact, butter had 10 times the amount as that of the next closest dietary source tested in the study. Although this may be surprising to some, it’s becoming more known that real genuine butter (not margarine), particularly from grass-fed cows, can be helpful for health. At a minimum, you should consider adding butter back in your diet in place of those “I can’t believe it’s not…” shenanigans ;)
In Excellent Health,
Garrett & Luc