It's been called the "Silent Spring" of nutrition books for its detective work on one the modern eaters most confounding nutritional riddles: fat. There are good fats and bad fats, we've been told, polyunsaturated, trans fats, partially hydrogenated fats, animal fats, and vegetable fats. Susan Allport knows them all (and she requests the reader stop thinking of fats as either good or bad), but her particular area of interest is the Omegas. The Queen of Fats is basically a long unraveling of the convoluted information about the Omegas that we've been receiving as consumers from a muddled-up media.
Allport became captivated with the Omega-3 story after learning that this same family of fats is required for both photosynthesis and thinking (the speediest activities in plants and animals, respectively). The Omega-6s, on the other hand, slow down enzyme processes and stiffen membranes. Both are essential to human health, but they only work if balanced and (surprise, surprise), the modern North American diet is completely imbalanced when it comes to its Omegas.
I won't spoil the ending of this compelling detective story (and Allport actually manages to make what could be dry material rather juicy), but it will come as no surprise to most people that the imbalance of the fats in our diet is largely due to industrialized food production. Omega-3s come from greens and when we turn to packaged foods over fresh produce, consume grain-fed beef that never saw a lick of grass, or crack open eggs that come from chickens raised on feed rather than the grubs and greens they're meant to peck, we eliminate all our natural source of Omega-3s and start thinking of it as something that comes from a bottle in a health food store. And when these fats provide the nutrients required for brain functioning, it’s not exactly something you want to be skimping on.
Read this book to be fully informed, read it for your health, and read it for one more reason to support the farmer who lets his chickens range and his cows graze.
Available at fine book stores around BC.
