The best fats contain high levels of monosaturated vegetable oils that have never been exposed to heat or chemicals--like virgin olive oil. Use small quantities of olive oil for salad dressing. Monosaturated fats also have far less tendency to go rancid than any other type. Vegetable oils with high proportions of unsaturated fats, the kind that all the authorities push because they contain no cholesterol, go rancid rapidly upon very brief exposure to air. The danger here is that rancidity in vegetable oil is virtually unnoticeable. Rancid animal fat on the other hand, smells "off." Eating rancid oil is a sure-fire way to accelerate aging, invite degenerative conditions in general, and enhance the likelihood of cancer. I recommend that you use only high-quality virgin olive oil, the only generally-available fat that is largely monosaturated. (Pearson and Shaw, 1983)
When you buy vegetable oil, even olive oil, get small bottles so you use them up before the oil has much time being exposed to air (as you use the oil air fills the bottle) or, if you buy olive oil in a large can to save money, immediately upon opening it, transfer the oil to pint jars filled to the very brim to exclude virtually all air, and seal the jars securely. In either case, keep now-opened, in-use small bottles of oil in the refrigerator because rancidity is simply the combination of oil with oxygen from the air and this chemical reaction is accelerated at warmer temperatures and slowed greatly at cold ones.
Chemical reactions typically double in speed with every 10 degrees C. increase in temperature. So oil goes rancid about six times faster at normal room temperature than it does in the fridge. If you'll think about the implications of this data you'll see there are two powerful reasons not to fry food. One, the food is coated with oil and gains in satiety value at the expense of becoming relatively indigestible and productive of toxemia. Secondly, if frying occurs at 150 degrees Centigrade and normal room temperature is 20 degrees Centigrade, then oil goes rancid 2 to the 13th power faster in the frying pan, or about 8,200 times faster. Heating oil for only ten minutes in a hot skillet induces as much rancidity as about 6 weeks of sitting open and exposed to air at room temperature. Think about that the next time you're tempted to eat something from a fast food restaurant where the hot fat in the deep fryer has been reacting with oxygen all day, or even for several days.
Back to butter, where we started. If you must have something traditionally northern European on your bread, you are far better off to use butter, not margarine. However, Mediterranean peoples traditionally dip their bread in high-quality extra-virgin olive oil that smells and tastes like olives. Its delicious, why not try it. But best yet, put low-sugar fruit preserves on your toast or develop a taste for dry toast. Probably the finest use for butter is melted over steamed vegetables. This way only small quantities are needed and the fat goes on something that is otherwise very easy to digest so its presence will not produce as many toxins in the digestive tract.
Milk, Meat, And Other Protein Foods
Speaking of butter, how about milk? The dairy lobby is very powerful in North America. Its political clout and campaign contributions have the governments of both the United States and especially that of Canada eating out of its hand (literally), providing the dairy industry with price supports. Because of these price supports, in Canada cheese costs half again more than it does in the United States. The dairy lobby is also very cozy with the medical profession so licensed nutritionists constantly bombard us with "drink milk" and "cheese is good for you" propaganda.
And people naturally like dairy foods. They taste good and are fat-rich with a high satiety value. Dairy makes you feel full for a long time. Dairy is also high in protein; protein is hard to digest and this too keeps one feeling full for a long time. But many people, especially those from cultures who traditionally (genetically) didn't have dairy cows, particularly Africans, Asians and Jews, just do not produce the enzymes necessary to digest cows milk. Some individuals belonging to these groups can digest goats milk. Some can't digest any kind except human breast milk. And some can digest fermented milk products like yogurt and kiefer. Whenever one eats a protein food that is not fully digestible, it putrefies in the digestive tract, with all the bad consequences previously described.
But no one, absolutely no one can fully digest pasteurized cows milk, which is what most people use because they have been made to fear cow-transmitted diseases and/or they are forced to use pasteurized dairy products by health authorities. I suspect drinking pasteurized milk or eating cheese made from pasteurized milk is one of the reasons so many people develop allergic reactions to milk. Yet many states do not allow unpasteurized dairy to be sold, even privately between neighbors. To explain all this, I first have to explain a bit more about protein digestion in general and then talk about allergies and how they can be created.
Proteins are long, complex molecules, intricate chains whose individual links are amino acids. Proteins are the very stuff of life. All living protoplasm, animal or plant, is largely composed of proteins. There are virtually an infinite number of different proteins but all are composed of the same few dozen amino acids hooked together in highly variable patterns. Amino acids themselves are highly complex organic molecules too. The human body custom-assembles all its proteins from amino acids derived from digesting protein foods, and can also manufacture small quantities of certain of its own amino acids to order, but there are eight amino acids it cannot make and these are for that reason called essential amino acids. Essential amino acids must be contained in the food we eat. .
Few proteins are water soluble. When we eat proteins the digestive apparatus must first break them down into their water-soluble components, amino acids, so these can pass into the blood and then be reassembled into the various proteins the body uses. The body has an interesting mechanism to digest proteins; it uses enzymes. An enzyme is like the key for a lock. It is a complex molecule that latches to a protein molecule and then breaks it apart into amino acids. Then the enzyme finds yet another protein molecule to free. Enzymes are efficient, reusable many many times.