Now Let Us Praise Fat!
This article ran in Forbes FYI a few years ago. It seems timely again with the ongoing debate about wether fat is good or bad.
Let Us Now Praise Fat
Historically, there are some good reasons why humans crave a fatty diet
by Eugene Linden
It is possible to starve to death eating lean meat. I'm not making this up. The ancient tribes of the southwest knew this and would not eat female bison in the spring because nursing and pregnant bison cows burned off their fat reserves during the winter months leaving few calories in their flesh that might help the natives to digest the pure protein of the meat. Explorers like Randolph Marcy discovered this truth the hard way. Members of his expedition to Wyoming continued to weaken and lose weight even thought they consumed six pounds of horse and mule meat a day. The problem: the horses and mules were so starved that their meat had no fat.
Such stories fire the imaginations of fat lovers. We constantly remind ourselves that most of human history has been a battle to find fat, not avoid it. We note that the scrawny rickshaw drivers of Bombay and Calcutta put away thousands of calories a day and yet never gain an ounce. And is it not true that the Japanese, an ethnic group perpetually trotted out by researchers as exemplars of sensible eating (they even call their parliament the Diet) spend fortunes to buy Matsusaka beef, which comes from Wagyu cattle that have been pampered, massaged, and beer-fed to the point that the animals resemble mounds of fat with hooves, horns, and contented expressions.
It is no accident that fat adds taste to foods: evolution is reinforcing our urge to eat something that we need in order to survive. Knowledgeable explorers of the rain forest pork up before expeditions because the extra weight gives them reserves of energy should they fall ill while in the forest. At the beginning of one trip that took me into a remote area of northern Congo, the seasoned botanist leading the trip told me how pygmy trackers would pat his protruding stomach, and, nodding with approval, say, "money!"
This piece of bush savvy was music to my ears, and in the forest I consumed every fattening food imaginable -- sausages, peanut butter, cheeses, chocolate -- confident that I was going to burn it off slogging down sweltering trails. (In fact I lost 17 pounds in 12 days.) At the end of the trip I nodded wisely when I heard that a Japanese researcher, emaciated from months in this same jungle, had nearly died from malaria. Of course she got sick, I reasoned -- she had little strength to fight the invading microbes.
Unfortunately, I don't get to the forest quite as often as I should, though I have admirably built up my reserves of "energy" for the next adventure whenever it comes. Nor am I a rickshaw pusher. In fact, I spend most of my time sitting in front of a cathode ray tube, hardly the situation nature envisioned when evolution created our cravings. Come to think of it, my lifestyle has disturbing similarities to that of the cattle that become Matsusaka beef. And so, while I secretly pray for a credible study exonerating fat, I have been cutting back on rich foods. Unlike our hunting and gathering ancestors I may well live past 90 -- but I may also hate every minute of it.
