BENEFITS OF SATURATED FATS – traditional societies

Japanese in Okinawa
The people of Okinawa, an island in Southern Japan, are well known for their longevity and excellent health – to the extent that books have been written about the Okinawa diet. The main cooking oil used by the people of Okinawa is pork lard.
The Japanese, in general, are also known for their good health and long lives. This is often attributed to a low fat diet, but it is not true. Although the Japanese eat few dairy fats, the notion that their diet is low in fat is a myth; rather, it contains moderate amounts of eggs, pork, chicken, beef, organ meat, fish (fatty fish like tuna and salmon) and seafood. These are all foods relatively high in saturated fats and cholesterol.
The French
Well known for their love of good food, the French also have low rates of heart disease and other degenerative diseases compared with, say, the Americans. The French diet contains lots of saturated fats in the form of butter, cheese, cream. eggs, meats and liver, including pates.
Apart from using butter generously in their cooking, some French cuisine also feature goose fat!
in France the death rate from heart disease is 145 per 100,000, compared with 315 of every 100,000 middle-aged men who die of heart attacks in the US each year. In the Gascony region, where goose and duck liver form a staple of the diet, this death rate from heart disease is only 80 per 100,000.
The relatively good health of the French, called The French Paradox, is often attributed to them drinking wine. This could well be a reason.
But when one accepts the view that there are many health benefits of saturated sats, then the good health enjoyed by the French begin to make more sense.

Other Mediterranean groups
In general, people of the Mediterranean countries consume quite large amounts of saturated fats – and enjoy good health.
One explanation often cited is olive oil but, in fact, many of these people take far more saturated fats than olive oil. On the Greek island of Crete, for example, fat makes up about 70 percent of the total diet!
Again, while Olive oil is beneficial, these people are also enjoying the health benefits of saturated fats.

The Jews
The Jews, when they lived in Yemen, ate plenty of saturated fats from eggs, meat and butter. Yet they had low rates of heart disease and diabetes.
Modern Jews in Israel consume margarine and vegetable cooking oils – plus plenty of sugar. And they suffer high rates of heart disease and cancer.

Indians in North and South India
Originally, Indians in the North consumed plenty of meat and they cooked with ghee or clarified butter, which is high in saturated fats. Indians in the South were more vegetarian and fish eaters, and they cooked with coconut oil, which is also high in saturated fats.
Both groups originally had low rates of heart disease. Then the South Indians began to use less coconut oil and more margarine / vegetable cooking oils. And they developed a much higher rate of heart disease compared with North Indians who took a lot more saturated fats.
Now, the North Indians are also beginning to switch from ghee to margarine – and the heart disease rate is starting to increase.
Other societies
Other societies that enjoy the health benefits of saturated fats include:

• Swiss, Austrians and Greeks, who live as long as the Japanese but take much more fatty diets.
  
  
• The people of Soviet Georgia – where a study found that those who eat the most fatty meat lived the longest.
  
  
• The Eskimos who, because of their harsh environment, eat mainly meat and lard. They, too, have low rates of heart disease and “clean” arteries that are not clogged up with saturated fats.
  
  
• The Masai, an African tribe whose diet consists primary of meat, blood and milk.