killthesunshine, you are crazy!
and have the saturated fat phobia. :eek:
Although we don't normally consider saturated fat as an essential nutrient, it is just as essential to good health as the essential polyunsaturated fatty acids. We need saturated fat for proper digestive function, growth, and a host of other processes. In fact, saturated fat is an essential component of every single cell in our bodies. It is so important to proper function and good health that nature has incorporated saturated fat into almost all of the foods we eat both of animal and plant origin. Even the so-called polyunsaturated oils like safflower oil, corn oil, and even flaxseed oil contain saturated fat. The World Health Organization and even the American Heart Association recommends that we get saturated fat in our diet to maintain optimal health. This type of information is usually ignored because saturated fat is considered a health hoodlum lurking in our food just to cause problems, and the less we eat the better. But this is simply not true. Nature doesn't put saturated fat in vegetables, mother's milk, and other foods for kicks. It's there for a reason.
The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO), two international committees, recommend a polyunsaturated to saturated fat ratio (P:S) of 0.6:1.0. Or almost twice as much saturated fat as polyunsaturated fat in the diet. The membrane of our cells preferentially chooses saturated and monounsaturated fat for incorporation into its structure. Only in a few specialized structures are the polyunsaturated fats preferentially selected over saturated and monounsaturated fatty acids.
Saturated fat has been tagged a dietary monster, sneaking into our foods to cause untold health problems. Isn't it interesting that saturated fat has been a staple part of the human diet for thousands of years and yet only recently has it turned bad, or so they say. In reality, saturated fat isn't as bad as it has been portrayed; most of this negative publicity is profit motivated.
Cholesterol and saturated fat have been tagged as the biggest dietary villains of all time. Scientists are now discovering that cholesterol is not as bad as it has been made out to be. It is, in fact, vital to good health. Cholesterol is so important to the basic operations of life that without it, every cell in our body would become dead masses of fat and protein. Cholesterol is found in all body tissues and comprises an integral part of the cell membrane. Nine-tenths of all the body's cholesterol is located in the external and internal membranes of cells. It is essential in the production of nerve and brain tissue. It is used by the body to make bile acids necessary for digestion of fats and fat-soluble vitamins (A, D, E and K). Our bodies transform cholesterol into a variety of important hormones such as estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, DHEA, cortisol, and others. Simply put, without cholesterol we would be dead.
http://www.preventionisbest.com/site/saturatedfat.html