Benefits of saturated fats is one important issue seldom emphasised. Even those who campaign against trans fats usually advise consumers to stop / reduce both trans fats and saturated fats.

However, we need to seriously re-think this position – because saturated fats are highly beneficial in many ways, and most probably not at all harmful.

The commentary below was published in The Straits Times in August 2006, with the headline “Saturated fats may actually be healthy”.

It was written in response to initiatives by the Singapore Health Promotion Board to encourage food hawkers switch from saturated fats to other cooking oils.

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BENEFITS OF SATURATED FATS - high heat cooking

Two factors characterise traditional Chinese hawker food – the use of saturated fats such as pork lard and the use of high heat.

This pairing makes perfect sense because saturated fats can withstand high heat. It is a scientific fact that polyunsaturated cooking oils become rancid when exposed to heat, light and air. Rancid oil is highly toxic.

The most suitable oils for high heat cooking are therefore the saturated fats – lard, butter, ghee, palm oil, coconut oil etc. Monounsaturated fats, such as olive, sesame and peanut, can also tolerate high heat.

Polyunsaturated fats – such as corn, soybean, safflower, canola, etc – in their natural state, turn rancid most easily. Yet they are typically extracted by high heat and chemical solvents.

In the 1980s, the US made fast food companies switch from beef fat to vegetable oils for deep frying. These companies started frying with man-made hydrogenated fats, which can withstand high heat. Today, scientists realise that hydrogenated fats contain trans fats that are much more harmful than saturated fats!

Rather than try to avoid saturated fats, we should understand their role in the human diet.

Saturated fats have traditionally been used for thousands of years – lard in China, butter in Europe, ghee in Northern India, coconut and palm oil in the tropics. The people of Okinawa, famed for their good health and longevity, cook mainly with pork lard!

Yet heart disease was rare. The rate of heart disease began to rise in America only after the 1930s and in other countries, including Singapore, only more recently.

Moreover, the rate of heart disease rose during a period when the consumption of saturated fats fell!

A number of scientists are thus beginning to dispute the theory that saturated fats cause heart disease.

Rather than being harmful, saturated fats:

• are needed for energy
• are need for hormone production
• are needed the absorption of calcium to prevent osteoporosis
• preserve the integrity of cell walls
• protect cells against attack from viruses
• help the body to store and use beneficial Omega-3 fatty acids
• impart many other health benefits.

Certain classes of saturated fats – the medium chain triglycerides (MCTs) – have powerful anti-virus, anti-bacteria, anti-fungi and anti-parasite effects. They even help weight loss!

Preliminary scientific research found that lauric acid, an MCT, destroys the HIV virus – without causing harmful side effects. Lauric acid is abundant in coconut oil, which is gaining a reputation as ‘the healthiest oil in the world’.

To learn more about the health benefits of saturated fats, click here.

It is unwise to switch from coconut milk to cow's milk in dishes such as laksa (see footnote).

Plenty of scientific evidence has emerged linking cow's milk with health problems such as asthma, allergies, diabetes and female cancers.

BENEFITS OF SATURATED FATS – Framingham Heart Study

The Framingham Heart Study, started in 1948 and still on-going, is one of the biggest research projects on heart health. In 1992, study leader Dr William Castelli wrote in Archives of Internal Medicine:

“In Frammingham, Massachusetts… the people who ate the most cholesterol,
ate the most saturated fat, ate the most calories, weighed the least
and were the most physically active.”

Footnote:
Laksa is a dish of rice noodles in coconut milk curry and often containing cockles. Variations of this dish are popular throughout Southeast Asia.

Because of the use of coconut milk, which is high in saturated fats, laksa has acquired the reputation of being one of the most unhealthy foods in the Singaporean diet.

The addition of cockles, which contain some cholesterol, only serves to reinforce this unsavoury reputation.

Over the years, the Singapore Health Promotion Board, along with nutritionists, dieticians and other health “experts”, have been constantly advising Singaporeans to prepare dishes like laksa with cow's milk – especially skimmed / low fat milk – instead of coconut milk.

They are overly concerned about the supposed harm and they fail to see the benefits of saturated fats.

This has ruined the taste of laska. As any connoisseur will tell you, laksa prepared with coconut milk is much more delicious than that prepared with cow's milk, or even with a mixture of cow's milk and coconut milk.

It encourages the population to consume cow's milk even though the majority cannot take it because of lactose intolerance.

Plus, there is plenty of scientific evidence that cow's milk (except perhaps raw milk, which is practically impossible for most people to obtain) causes a wide range of degenerative diseases.

This is yet another example of how failure on the part of health authorities to appreciate the benefits of saturated fats – in products like coconut milk – has caused much more harm than good.