It was truly an amazing 5 days and I am totally in love with Panama. I am thankful we get to go again for our next visa run! Although we will try to make it to a different part of the country to explore another volcano and perhaps the Caribbean side of the country...
I was trying to think of a worthy post for today's Top 10 post and I figured that since the whole oil-free deal is the most asked about, it would be perfect.
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| A specially made vegan meal just for us! Although it was delicious and a welcome change in this meat-centric country, this is what prompted this post. It was so oily! |
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| We got to go on a jungle hike with a local farmer that has so much knowledge about plants, he was able to just pick them out easily when Ken fell off a rock an scraped his shin, it healed amazingly fast. He takes WWOOF'ers! |
Most people are the most baffled by this single dietary choice. In the past many years, we've gotten so many mixed messages from the "diet" industry who keep changing their minds on who to vilify next. First the craze was all about low-fat, but this brought on a massive surge of low-fat products that were never fit for human consumption. The list of ingredients for a low fat version of pretty much anything has a list at least double the size, with many that you'll be hard-pressed to pronounce. So with this, people began to vilify the low fat "movement" because it was making people unhealthy.
This led to the new craze of the low-carb diet that is very popular to this day.
The trends are tending much more towards whole food diets, with people still being on the spectrums of low fat/high carb, to high fat/low carb. Having tried both, I have to say that I feel and perform at my best with the high carb option, as do many people around me.
Oils are a special case, while plant-based fats such as avocados provide healthy nutrients and essential fatty acid, oils are essentially pure fat.
So these are the 10 reasons why you should avoid oils:
10. "The fat you eat is the fat you wear."
Oils are pure 100% fat, they have a super high caloric density and it's hard to measure exactly how many calories from fat you are consuming with oils. Simple put, with (on average) 1900 calories per cup, you can eat a ton of it before feeling satisfied.
9. Oil is a processed food.
No matter what technique is used to extract oil, it is a simple shadow of the food it has come from. Often they use high temperature methods that damage the molecular structure of the product. Even cold-pressed methods give a product that is nothing like what nature has provided.
8. It is not a whole food.
There is no fiber, very little vitamins and minerals. An olive is a whole food, it's oil is a fragment of it. It is stripped of the natural balance of chemicals that make it healthy.
7. It heightens the risk for Heart Disease
According to Dr McDougall "Serial angiograms of people’s heart arteries show that all three types of fat—saturated (animal) fat, monounsaturated (olive oil), and polyunsaturated (omega-3 and -6 oils)—were associated with significant increases in new atherosclerotic lesions over one year of study.9 Only by decreasing the entire fat intake, including poly- and monounsaturated-oils, did the lesions stop growing." (source). Dr Esselstyn has also provide scientific research supporting a low fat diet, with no oils.
6. It comes out of your pores.
I always had oily skin. Then, I stopped eating oils. Poof! Many people who follow the McDougall or Raw till 4 lifestyle find that their skin clears up within weeks.
5. It slows you down.
Trying to beat that PR? Or working on that 5k? Oils and fats in general slow you down, they take longer to digest and aren't the most optimal fuel for exercise. Fuel up on clean whole fruit and see the difference. Even if these aren't your goals, you'll have more energy throughout the day to conquer your world.
4. It's cheaper
You can make all the same dishes, without having to buy that pesky expensive organic coconut/olive oil. Water saute veggies, add applesauce to baked goods and experiment with blended dressing using fruits, veggies and spices.
3. It will help you have a balanced, healthy weight.
'nough said.
2. The dishes are infinitely easier to clean.
I hate doing the dishes, but I love to cook. In comes oil free cooking where most of the time a good rinse does the trick!
1. Most oils on the market are rancid when you buy them.
They don't have as long of a shelf life as you may think. The heating processes used for some make the seed rancid before it's even processed. Raw oils are not meant to keep for long just like produce. Also, most of them become carcinogenic when heated again in your pan or oven.
BONUS: Watch THIS and THIS.
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