4. Fats — the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (not the ones you think)

4. Fats — the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (not the ones you think)

Disclosure: Plantation Bay’s opinion on this subject differs from current majority medical opinion, but our opinion is aligned with an ever-larger minority view and supported by the actual clinical evidence available. See Annex, “Available Clinical Evidence on Mortality Benefits of Replacing Saturated Fats with MUFAs and PUFAs — NONE”.

Chemistry lesson. A “saturated” fat has no chemical “loose ends”; all the possible points for chemical bonding are occupied; a better term would be “stable fat”. Common kinds of stable fats are in pork lard, beef tallow, and coconut oil.

A “mono-unsaturated” fatty acid (MUFA) has one vacant connection point. Through an intermediate process MUFAs help lower blood cholesterol, but no valid study has ever demonstrated that simply lowering blood cholesterol in turn lessens all-cause mortality.

A “polyunsaturated” fatty acid (PUFA) has many loose ends, and can easily combine with many other molecules, such as cholesterols, but also oxygen, which would make it what we call “rancid”. Two PUFAs can be unconditionally regarded as “good” — EPA and DHA, referred to jointly as Omega-3.

One PUFA, Omega-6, is officially considered necessary for health but in practice it is unhealthy beyond a certain very low amount. If you cook with seed oils (corn, soy, sunflower, canola, etc.) or regularly eat fast food, you could be ingesting 20 times more Omega-6 than is good for you. The science behind this surprising information is discussed later in this article.

There are many kinds of fats in all three categories, and different kinds can be present in any given food.

The actual types of fats in supposedly unhealthy foods may surprise most people, especially those who simply parrot that “saturated fats are bad” while ignorant of the facts.

A well-marbled ribeye steak, for example, has only 50% saturated fat (stearic, palmitic, and myristic acid — which are on balance widely regarded as neutral or beneficial) and surprise! — 45% monounsaturated fat — oleic acid, the exact same thing that makes olive oil healthy.

Pork belly, an Asian favorite, typically has over 50% MUFA (also oleic acid), 40% saturated fat (palmitic and stearic acids), and about 10% PUFA (Omega-3 and -6).

We have all been told how great olive oil is. Against beef and pork, how does it stack up? It depends on the manufacturer and the variety of olive used, but as an average, olive oil is 75% oleic acid (Omega-9, a monounsaturated fat), 15% stearic acid (a saturated fat, the same stearic acid as in beef and pork), and 10% linoleic acid (polyunsaturated, Omega-6).

In brief, olive oil is not “night-and-day” different from pork or beef as most of the Medical Establishment wants you to believe, but actually somewhat similar. If you were to forgo eating 300 grams of pork (which consists of proteins and fats), to get the same amount of oleic acid you would have to drink 4 tablespoons (60 grams) of pure olive oil (but then you wouldn’t get the protein).

All “clinical studies” purporting to show that MUFAs and PUFAs are good for health are based on the argument that they will tend to lower LDL. Yes, that has been fairly well proven, but no one yet has proven that lowering LDL blood count in turn avoids cardiac events or even all-cause mortality. Otherwise, it is mostly just oft-repeated hearsay and generalities jumping from A to D without showing B and C, rather than demonstrated biochemical pathways.

The outcomes of MUFA/PUFA studies are all over the place.

One meta-study concluded no difference in mortality or MACE (Major Adverse Coronary Events) between saturated fat diets, MUFA diets, and PUFA diets, holding total fat intake constant (a meta-study is one that combines many individual actual studies and tries to draw an aggregate conclusion): https://www.researchgate.net/publication /317093560_. A few legitimate studies have shown a slight benefit to replacing saturated fat with more olive oil, but the most-cited studies, PREDIMED and the Cochrane Systematic Review, prove almost the opposite. See the last several articles in this Nutrition and Metabolism series.

This study (2025) reports that beyond a moderate amount, consumption of oleic acid (Omega-9, the stuff in olive oil) actually leads to obesity: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211124725002980. (It probably does, just as overeating anything can lead to obesity.)

In contrast, this study (2020) says oleic acid helps you get slim: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7360458/. (It probably does, up to a point.)

This recent paper, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10386285/, points out that in practice, most Western diets contain 20 times too much Omega-6, mostly due to the Omega-6 in seed cooking oils. Omega-6 crowds out Omega-3 (EPA and DHA) as a structural component of cells, including brain cells.

Why is that bad? As you know, our bodies are composed of many individual cells. Cell membranes (the outer layer that encloses the cell) are partly composed of fatty acids. The kind of fatty acids affects how well the cell functions and how efficiently it “passes on” nutrients and information, cell-to-adjacent-cell.

Laboratory tests demonstrate that Omega-6 competes with Omega-3 for incorporation into cell membranes. Brain cells and neurons, in particular, need Omega-3. Insufficient Omega-3 means more general inflammation (in turn leading to the entire range of diseases from cancers to autoimmune disorders), smaller brain size (I’ll say that again: smaller brain size), neurological dysfunction, thicker blood, and mood swings.(https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6411441/).

Do not feed a growing child Omega-6 through seed cooking oils. Give your child Omega 3 (EPA and DHA) either through fish (canned sardines and tuna okay) or supplements. Do not feed grown adults Omega-6 either; they get enough from eggs, meat, and other foods, without having to contend with a flood of Omega-6 from seed cooking oils.

Finally, coconut oil is 90% saturated fat, but most of that (60%) is of the type called Medium-Chain Triglycerides (MCTs). Unlike most other fats, MCTs are directly converted by the liver into ketones, which translates into higher energy and alertness. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8650700.

Interesting collateral supposition: Prehistoric Filipinos, fed on lots of ketones from coconut, plus Omega-3 from fish, navigated thousands of miles between islands, never got scurvy, and populated the Pacific, becoming the most intrepid sailors and explorers the world has ever known, light-years beyond Columbus, Magellan, or Lewis and Clarke. Much more below on ketones.