Mondays, we build your grocery list with one food, focusing on this month’s main topic.
For the month of May, we zero in on those best foods to help support a reduction in your own personal burden of stress. Today, let’s talk…
ANIMAL FATS.
For those who wish to know the ‘why’ behind this idea, I’ll give you three things to think about.
BECAUSE ANTI-INFLAMMATORY
Much like last week’s post, if you understand that a personal high burden of stress is really code for chronic inflammation, then it will make sense that in order to lower your own personal burden of stress, you need to look at reducing your body’s own inflammation going on.
Animal fats are brilliant allies in providing useable forms of fat soluble vitamins that help reduce that inflammation in the body. Vitamin A in animal form is known as retinol. Vitamin A is a key nutrient in immunity (1), working essentially as an immune enhancer. Heyo— inflammation is a response mounted by the immune system. Nourishing it is key to help meet the inflammation, and as you’ll note below, key nutrient too in helping reduce the root piece of inflammation. Vitamin D3 inhibits inflammation (2), and is found in lard and animal meats (including organ meats), butter and duck fat. (3) Vitamin E is a brilliant antioxidant that helps do the clean up from inflammation. And Vitamin K2, the animal version, is found in good amounts in animal fats like butter + ghee, and helps get calcium where it needs to be as opposed to in our blood vessels, contributing to things like atherosclerosis and increased risk of heart disease. (4) It’s also a great ally in reducing your cancer risk. (5)
If you understand that at the root of inflammation is damaged tissue at the gut lining, then this next section will make sense…
BECAUSE GUT LOVE
Yes, honey pie! The gut is ground zero for inflammation! Ergo, anything you do to love up your guts will inherently reduce your inflammation. And this, my honey pies, is how you reduce your own internal burden of stress.
Why animal fats? Well here, specifically, it is looking to the butter and ghee for the vitamin A in animal form, retinol. This vitamin is a crucial piece of maintaining a healthy gut lining, targetting deep nourishment for your mucosal lining. (6) When you work hard at tightening the junctions between the intestinal cells and nourishing that mucosal lining, so now you reduce inflammation at ground zero: in the gut. Reducing this here, now takes the pressure off of your whole system, and goes miles towards reducing your personal burden of stress.
BECAUSE ANCESTRAL WISDOM
Again. Listen. This is how the people who came before you ate. They feasted and used all parts of every animal they had to slaughter. Nothing was left to waste, every piece of the animal had a function. In some cultures, animal fats served as the fuel for their source of light in the darker months, and turned into soaps in other cultures. Animal fats were revered as a traditional source of deep fuel in so many different cultures. If you think of this, and realize that your own genetics evolved with this way of eating, then it only makes sense to know that you too would do well to include these fats in your diet.
Lard!
Want to learn how to render your own lard? Check this post out by Nourished Kitchen.
Think you can’t handle butter because of the dairy content? Try ghee instead. It’s the butter fat (great source of vitamin A) without having any casein or lactose.
Want to get to know butter a bit more? Check this post out.
Worried about the saturated fats? Have you not heard about the myth busting on this one yet? Check this post out.
Aiming to Keep Well? Got a high burden of stress? Want to start taming that inflammation dragon? Need some help in feeling real good?
Get in touch by clicking here. Let’s meet up to start drawing up your road map to support you in both quantity and quality of life.
*This is not medical advice.