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Thursday, January 12, 2012

Why Women Need Fat

At the end of last year I read a really great book called The Kitchen Counter Cooking School, by Kathleen Flinn. While the entire book was excellent, there was one chapter about eating out of the box, about how mixes have taken over for cooking, even though they don't really save that much time. Food out of a box is full of ingredients and preservatives that we wouldn't be eating if we just made those items from scratch. I had just finished that book and was pondering making a lifestyle/eating change when the BlogHer Book Club offered me the chance to read Why Women Need Fat: How "Healthy" Food Makes Us Gain Excess Weight and the Surprising Solution to Losing It Forever. Since I was already in the mood to read more about food, I accepted the title. It arrived during the craziness of Christmas so I didn't start reading until after the new year.

The content of the book was really fascinating, and (as the writers would hope) I thought their argument had merit. Their science made a lot of sense, and I'm more than willing to try their suggestions.  I did find the writing a bit circular and at times a tad (ok, very) dry and hard to focus on, but I found that if I skimmed those bits and came back they would make more sense. Their basic premise is that the addition of so many processed oils, replacing more natural animal fats, have lowered beneficial Omega-3s and raised the more harmful, more fat inspiring, Omega-6s. They'd have you drop processed food and oils. This jibes well with my thinking from the other food reading I've been doing, so I was willing to go along for their ride.

If you want to join the discussion and learn more about how you can add fat and lose weight, you can click through to the BlogHer Book Club page here. The first topic of discussion is "This means I get to use real butter, right?"  I mean, how can you not follow through on that?



  1. It sounds like the book would be too dry for me. I don't eat much processed food, so the message might be lost on me as well.

  2. My son has got us using all things natural, so it sounds like this book would just confirm that I'm doing the right things! At least I hope so.

  3. I was nodding along until you got to Omega-3 and Omega-6. Think that's where I would totally get lost with the book.

    Ever since I started making Elle's food from scratch, I've been thinking about our own eating. We rely heavily on processed foods, especially foods out of the box, because of Scott's allergies, but we just need to find ways around it. Scoot really wants to start canning but I don't know if our produce in Dallas would make the process cost-effective.



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