Are you still caught up in the low-fat mantra of the past couple decades? Do you think you can't eat much fat if you are trying to lose weight? These ideas are still so prevalent in our media and in the low-fat products you see everywhere that it's no wonder you may still believe this. In fact, even many doctors still believe this.

However, according to the U.S. Center for Disease Control, in 1999-2000, an estimated 64 percent of adults in the United States were either obese or overweight. That's almost two thirds of the adult population, and one third of our children are now overweight as well. In the past 30 years, the number of overweight children has doubled. In just the past decade, the number of obese people in the U.S. has gone up two and one half times.

Fifty years ago, only a small percentage of the population had problems with their weight. Now it's an epidemic! All this has happened while we cut back from 40 to around 32 percent fat as a percentage of our diet.

Low-fat diets not only don't work, but they're not healthy, not natural, and they tend to promote weight gain! Research confirms this statement. The famous Framingham Study that started in 1948 is still going on, and it shows that the more saturated fat, the more calories, and the more cholesterol a person ate, the lower their serum cholesterol! The results also show that the more fat they ate, the less they weighed!

So, we are eating less fat as a nation, but are gaining weight. There are a number of reasons for this. One is that since fat gives foods much of their flavor, when manufacturers cut out the fat, they add sugar, MSG and other chemicals to the food to enhance the taste. These can all have adverse effects on both our weight and our health.

Saturated Fats Are Necessary for Good Health

Many of us, doctors and laypeople alike, were taught that red meat and fat, and especially saturated fats, are to be avoided. We still hear that they cause all sorts of problems, including high cholesterol, heart disease and weight gain. However, if you carefully study the research, you will see that it shows the opposite to be true. Saturated fat is a vital nutrient and is necessary for good health.

In order for your body to properly use fat-soluble vitamins, you need to have the fat in your foods. Calcium, too, needs fats for proper absorption. So it's important to use full-fat dairy products and put butter and cream on your calcium-rich leafy green and other vegetables and eat salad with oil-based dressings. If you eat this way, you will increase your absorption of the vitamins and minerals contained in those salads and other vegetables.

While we Americans have been lowering the amount of fat in our diets, especially saturated fats like animal meats, butter, lard, coconut oil and full-fat dairy products, not only have obesity rates skyrocketed, like previously discussed, but heart disease rates have also increased. A wealth of research points to vegetable oils, sugar, especially high-fructose corn syrup, and refined grains as a major cause of obesity, and to trans-fats, and vegetable oils and shortening as a major cause of heart disease.

FACT: By 1950, butter consumption had dropped from 18 lbs per person per year to just over 10. FACT: Heart disease caused probably no more than 10 percent of US deaths prior to the 1920's. By the 1950's it had risen to 30 percent or more.

According to Dr. Ron Rosedale, when you eat lots of carbohydrates, especially simple carbohydrates like sugar and white flour products, your body converts them to sugar and then burns that sugar instead of burning fat. Saturated fats act as a carrier for the fat soluble vitamins A, D, E and K. When the fat is removed from foods in our diet, many of these vitamins are also removed, and our absorption of these vitamins also goes way down.

Saturated fats protect the liver from alcohol, drugs and other toxins. Saturated fats also support the immune system, which helps keep you from getting sick. Saturated fats are needed for correct bone development and in order to prevent osteoporosis. A high level of fat in the diet needs to be saturated in order for the body to properly utilize calcium. This means that a low-fat diet with plenty of calcium and/or calcium supplements is not necessarily going to prevent osteoporosis, and this is seen today in the high rates of osteoporosis.

Saturated fatty acids are necessary for proper functioning of all our cell membranes. They give our cells the firmness necessary to maintain structural integrity. All your cells and organs, especially the brain, need saturated fats in order to function properly. So stop worrying about eating low fat. Add real old fashioned fats back into your diet like cream and butter and watch the excess pounds slowly disappear.