FATS, SHEDDING LIGHT ON A MYTH…
FATS ARE ESSENTIAL TO OUR HEALTH, WE NEED BOTH ANIMAL AND VEGETABLE FATS (YES, THIS MEANS BUTTER IS OK)

Without healthy fats we may experience:
-musculoskeletal issues
-endocrine issues
-cardiovascular issues
-allergies/skin problems
-depression, etc
Roles of fats:
-source of energy
-make-up of cell membranes
-necessary for healthy liver function: building healthy cholesterol and bile
-required for the absorption of fat soluble vitamins A,D,E and K
-required for the adequate use of proteins
-serve as protective lining for the organs
-slow the absorption of food for proper energy regulation
-are imperative to managing the inflammatory process
-make food taste good
-storage locker for toxins

What is a general guideline for consuming good amounts of healthy fats:
We need a mixture of healthy fatty acids in our diets to maintain optimal health. Below are some very general guidelines, keep in mind that everyone’s needs may differ based on heredity, blood type, etc.
30% saturated fats, like butter, grass fed red meats, coconut oil, etc
10% polyunsaturated fats, Omega 3, 6 and 9, like fish, flax, walnut, and other nut oils etc
60% monounsaturated fats, like olive oil, good vegetable oils

General guidelines for keeping fats intact and healthy:
1. Cooking, oxygen, heat and light may destroy most mono and polyunsaturated fatty acids, eat fish raw and never heat the Omega3, 6 and 9 fatty acid oils (store them in a dark bottle in the refrigerator)
2. Grain-fed beef is completely void of Omega 3’s, whereas grass-fed beef is not!
3. Our most stable fats are the saturated ones, choose raw and cultured butter, extra-virgin coconut oil, these will make the best cooking/frying pan fats.
4. When using nut oils, purchase extra-virgin ones, and store in the fridge

Unhealthy Fats that are not optional for human consumption:
Hydrogenated fats, partially hydrogenated fats, highly processed vegetable oils, fried fats. These fats are toxic and interfere with the essential roles fatty acids play within a healthy body. Super market oils like Wesson oil, Canola oil, Corn Oil, Rapeseed or Mustard seed oil, Soy and Cottonseed oils are highly processed oils and should be avoided.
Safest for cooking:
- Lard
- Ghee
- Beef and Lamb Tallow
- Chicken, Goose and Duck Fat
- Coconut Oil –organic and extra virgin
- Red Palm Oil – organic and extra virgin
Unsafe for any kind of heat exposure DON’T USE FOR COOKING
- Vegetable/Soybean Oil
- Corn Oil
- Flax Oil
- Hemp Oil
- Pine Nut Oil
- Pumpkin Oil
- Safflower Oil
- Sunflower Oil
- Grape seed Oil

Safer For Cooking: (quick stir-frying, light sautéing, and slow/low simmering)
- Olive Oil (unfiltered is best, should be golden yellow/green in color and cloudy)
- Peanut Oil
- Avocado Oil
- Macadamia Nut Oil
- Sesame Oil

When buying oils purchase these healthy options:
- Organic
- First-cold pressed or Cold-Pressed
- Expeller-Pressed
- Unrefined
- Extra-Virgin

Avoid these Oils:
- Refined
- Hydrogenated
- Partially-Hydrogenated
- Cold-Processed

Resource to learn more about fats:
Put Your Heart In Your Mouth by Natasha Campbell-McBride
Eat Fat-Loose Fat by Dr. Mary Enig and Sally Fallon
Know your Fats by Dr.Mary Enig
General good reading: Omnivores Dilemma by Michael Pollan

I prefer that people buy a supplement that contains fish oil or Krill oil. The fatty acid present in these oils is ready for the body to use. Flax seed oil or hemp oil requires the action of a digestive enzyme called delta-6 desaturase which is a highly involved metabolic process. Often this conversion occurs only very inefficiently, if at all. So you can make it easy on your body and go straight to the fatty acid present in fish/and Krill oil and enjoy the benefits of the EPA and DHA fatty acids. Cod liver oil is an excellent source of Omega-3’s, but it is mainly a supplement for vitamin A and to a lesser amount-vitamin D. A blend of different fats is nice; just make sure that it contains fish oil with a mixture of other vegetable oils, such as flax seed, hemp, borage or evening primrose oil.
The optimal balance between Omega 3’s and Omega 6’s seems to somewhere between 1:1 and 1:4. Modern diets supply as much as twenty parts of Omega 6’s to Omega 3’s. Balance is critical, and every person has different requirements. Balance can be achieved my observing three important things:
1. Ensure adequate intake of Omega 3’s (more about this a little further down)
2. Minimize, or eliminate dietary grains, feedlot meats, and processed vegetable oils,( only a little olive oil is ok), and of course avoid sugary and starchy carbohydrates
3. Completely avoid trans fats, and hydrogenated oils, like margarine, vegetable shortening, commercially made foods and baked goods, commercial vegetable oils and salad dressings, and my favorite, fast food.

How much should you take if you want to take a good essential fatty acid supplement? The answer varies greatly, depending whom you ask, you could be taking as many as one capsule for every ten pounds of body weight. I mostly go with the recommendations on the bottle, and while the recommended dosage on the bottle is more of a maintenance dose, I usually have people start with double the amount for a more therapeutic dosage. It is always best to have a personal assessment. using the unique tools I have at my disposal. If you would like to find out more about yourself and your essential fatty acid status, call or email me to schedule an appointment. And allow me for one more moment to add one more thing. While you could be taking all the wonderful fatty acids, your body may need some help breaking them down. Sometimes our bodies need a little help with fat digestion and fat assimilation. If you have any concerns in that area please call upon your nutritional therapist to assist you, and make the best out of the products you are taking. Keep in mind, that if you eat a diet rich of naturally occurring Omega 6’s, like nuts and the healthier vegetable oils, then you possibly need to focus on balancing this with more Omega 3 fatty acids.
Call or email to schedule your complimentary discovery session, 303-416-7171

2 cups raisins

2-4 heaping TBS coconut oil

1 cup chopped nuts of your choice

½ – ¾ cup shredded coconut

1 TBS vanilla extract

1. Chop apricots and raisins along with the coconut oil and vanilla in a food processor until they become a mass.
2. Turn out onto a jelly roll pan.
3. With clean hands, knead in the remaining ingredients
4. Flatten everything in the pan, so you can square off the sides as you flatten to make a more regular shape
5. Refrigerate until firm
6. Cut into bars and remove from pan
7. Store in fridge or freezer, as these will become soft at room temperature.

In my practice I often get asked which supplement a person should take if at all. Naturally this varies for most clients, depending on each person’s specific deficiencies and health challenges. Generally I recommend only three things, at a minimal level: Water, a good quality Probiotic and a good quality Essential Fatty Acid (EFA) supplement. Let me go a little deeper into why these nutrients are so important.

Water is essential as our bodies cannot function without it and many of the health issues I see in my clients can be directly traced back to dehydration. Dehydration has become a chronic health condition for many of us, especially if you drink caffeinated beverages. For every caffeinated beverage you drink you need to replace it with 1.5 times the amount of water and that is in addition to your normal daily requirements for water intake.

Let’s look at Probiotics: probiotic means pro-life and our gut contains about 4-6 Pounds of bacteria, good and bad. The trick here is to make sure that it contains a balance of both but you want to make sure that the good guys outnumber the bad ones. Why are these guys so important? Most of our immunity resides in our gut. To be effective, a good probiotic must multiply itself in the gut, while decreasing the amount of non-beneficial or disease causing bacteria. Drinking chlorinated water, eating meats from animal fed antibiotics, antibiotic use, stress and plenty of other factors influence our gut flora and its balance. So, eating cultured dairy, cultured vegetables and taking good quality probiotics is more important than most people realize. You always want to keep your gut guessing by giving it probiotics or cultured foods with many different strains of bacteria.

And last but not least EFA’s: these are ESSENTIAL fatty acids, meaning our bodies cannot make these and we need to get them from our food. These are often referred to as Omega 3’s and Omega 6’s. These fabulous fatty acids are responsible for our bodies to manage healing and inflammation. Ideally, you would take these every day, in a wide variety and in plentiful quantities. Balance is key here, most people get way more Omega 6’s than 3’s in their diets, due to the large amounts of  vegetable oils in people’s diets.

Unless people are really deficient I don’t recommend taking a multi-vitamin/mineral product just because. I always help my clients figure out what a well-balanced and nourishing diet looks like for them AND I make sure that their bodies are utilizing the wonderful foods they are eating to the fullest extent, and then ideally  they won’t have to take so many supplements.

Want to know where you stand? Have more questions about some of the often confusing advice out there? Need some recommendations on good quality supplements? Call or email to schedule you free initial consultation.

Today I’d like to write about healthy diets and what does healthy eating really mean? Does it mean that I should follow the USDA food guidelines? Should I eat a low-fat or no-fat diet? All organic? Local foods? The latest new diet?
A healthy diet means a lot of different things to different people, depending on where they live, their ethnic background and their economic status, etc.
I would like to talk about healthy eating from a nutritional AND human perspective. How we eat can often be more important than what we eat. We as humans are multi-fold beings, meaning that there is more to us than just our bodies, we also have minds, emotions and a spirit. All those levels are involved in eating and nourishment. So let’s start with our feelings when we sit down and eat. Are we able to relax and focus on eating? Are we really enjoying what we are eating? Can we disengage from our day and simply be in the moment of what we are doing? And let’s not forget our thoughts, the ever-spinning wheel in our heads, telling us what we should be eating, already racing ahead to the next thing, maybe thinking that what we are eating is making us fat, ugly, etc.. Are we even aware of all the many thoughts and feelings surrounding our body image and our eating culture? All these things directly influence the effects of our food on our bodies and our soul. A healthy digestion begins before we eat, before we put that first bite into our mouths. It begins with our attitude, thoughts and feelings when we eat. If you are one of the many people dealing with digestive issues, take a moment and observe (without judgment) what goes on inside you before you enjoy that first bite of food. Your stress level will directly influence the way your body is able to digest food. Internal stress, such as negative self-talk, negative self-image and thoughts are very powerful stressors we deal with on a daily basis. Simply observe and watch what happens. My wish for all of us is to enjoy our food and allow it to nourish us while we slow down, even just a little to see if a little change can bring about a big difference. This can be the start to a whole new idea around healthy nutrition, don’t you think?

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a food processor, combine sunflower seeds, sea salt and garlic clove. Process for a couple of minutes, until the meal looks moist. Add sesame seeds and process again for about a minute. The sesame seeds are so small that they will not break up too much; you need only incorporate them.
2. Add cheddar cheese and pulse to combine. Make sure there are no shreds left, but it is all blended well. Add the chives and pulse again, as little as possible. (If you over process, the chives will no longer be flecks in your crackers–instead, they will make the dough green!) Add up to 1/4 cup of water and pulse until a ball of dough forms. The amount of water you need will depend on how humid it is where you live. The dough should just come together.
3. Roll the dough out between two pieces of parchment paper to the desired thickness; I did about 1/8th of an inch. Pull off the top piece of parchment paper and, using a pizza cutter, cut into the size squares you prefer for crackers.
4. Transfer squares to a parchment-lined baking sheet, with a small spatula if needed, and bake for 15 minutes or until nicely browned and crisp.
5. Slide parchment off the cookie sheet immediately to stop the crackers from cooking too long. They cool quickly, so you may be able to put them directly onto your counter, depending on your material
6. Do not store in an airtight container as this makes the crackers lose their crispness.
Source: http://www.ournourishingroots.com/white-cheddar-and-chive-crackers-grain-free/