Do you eat breakfast? I hope so!

I’m a huge fan of eating protein and fat in the morning. It’s stick to your ribs food and it can set you up for a whole day of stable blood sugar (read: no sugar cravings, ravenous hunger, irritability, shakiness or cloudy thinking!). On weekend mornings when we have the time, my boyfriend and I like to cook up a big breakfast consisting of veggies and protein, cooked in good fats. Here’s our creation from a few Sundays ago:

My perfect paleo/primal breakfast

Italian Kale Stir-Fry with Perfect Scrambled Eggs

Ingredients:

1 bunch of kale, washed and chopped

2/3 cup olives of your choice, sliced

2 sausage links (any favorite sausage is fine)

1 onion, sliced

4 organic, free range eggs

Cooking Instructions:

1.) Saute the onions in the coconut oil, ghee, or butter.

2.) Add sausages and olives and cook for a few more minutes. Add kale and saute a few minutes more. Season with salt and pepper.

3.) I recently read an article about how Julia Child made scrambled eggs (her secret is basically a lot of fat!). Here’s what she does.

• (for 4 eggs) Use two whole tablespoons of butter (or ghee or coconut oil). Heat in a pan over medium heat.
• Meanwhile, crack four eggs in a small bowl. Add some salt and a dash of lukewarm water. Scramble.
• Add the egg to the heated pan and stir consistently so that the fat emulsifies with the egg. Keep stirring until eggs reach desired texture. That’s it! These are very delicious scrambled eggs.

*Note about olive oil–olive oil is an extremely healthy fat, so why was it left off of my list of “good fats” above? With fats, we have to worry about damaging them through cooking. Some fats are better suited for heat and some are not. When we damage (oxidize) a fat, it can create free-radical damage in the body (the opposite of an anti-oxidant). Olive oil is best for lower heat cooking or for using in salad dressings–things that never get too heated. Olive oil has become popular lately with chefs and health conscious people and that’s great, as long as you’re not using olive oil to cook everything in. Coconut oil, butter, ghee, palm oil or to a lesser degree avocado and grapeseed oil are healthier choices for medium and high heat cooking.

So, this meal has a lot of fat in it, huh? Is that okay? For so long fat has been a four letter word, and even though studies have been coming out saying that we NEED fat and that certain fats are absolutely essential, it still takes a gargantuan cognitive shift to not think “Ooooh, that’s a lot of fat. I’m not sure I should eat that! It will go right to my hips.” Now, I believe moderation is a good principle. I’m not saying to eat an all meat and egg diet. In fact, if I made a food guide pyramid, I would put vegetables on the base of the pyramid. Good quality meats and fats would be next as well as nuts.  Next would be low sugar fruits (berries and apples are low sugar). Grains and legumes would be thrown in there too, somewhere more towards the top (maybe one serving a day at most, if you aren’t needing to lose weight or have an auto-immune condition). I personally only eat grains or beans about once a week, if that. Processed foods and refined sugar should be off the list and reserved for occasions where they simply can’t be avoided.

Back to the fats. Check out this now classic article from New York Times journalist Gary Taubes: What if It’s All Been a Big Fat Lie. Taubes also has a new book out called Why We Get Fat. The basic premise in these works is that carbohydrates are the reason we’ve gotten into such an obesity crisis, not dietary intake of fat. Heart disease and obesity were much less common before we started eating “low-fat,” which intrinsically becomes a high-carb diet. Now, as I’ve expressed before, I’m not an advocate of going on an extremely low-carb diet necessarily, unless it is for a short period of time. We need variety, it’s just that I think we can get absolutely all the carbs we need from veggies and fruit–which are much more nutrient dense and much lower calorie than grains and beans.

What are some of the benefits of eating more quality fats (coconut oil, olive oil, flax oil, fatty fish, avocados, nuts, organic butter or ghee) fats? Here are a few I can think of just off the top of my head:

• Fat creates satiety. You will actually end up eating less when you eat more fat.
• When you are satiated, you aren’t going to snack on high sugar foods. When you eat lots of high sugar foods this throws off your body hormonally because it spikes insulin. This creates a cascade of negative side effects hormonally in your body and especially affects the adrenal glands, which are in charge of your response to stress. Negative impacts of stressing the adrenals glands are anxiety, insomnia and chronic fatigue (plus a lot more). Insulin spikes can also throw off other hormones in your body such as estrogen and testosterone, leading to reproductive problems.
• We need fats to get our fat soluble vitamins A, D, E and K.
• We need fats to make up every cell in our body, and allow these cells to communicate with each other.
• We need saturated fats to create our reproductive hormones.

There is SO much more to know in the world of fats which I don’t have time to cover right now. Here are two places to start learning more if you are interested:

http://www.marksdailyapple.com/fats/

http://www.westonaprice.org/know-your-fats

I hope this helps you and your family choose healthy fats and enjoy yummy breakfasts with lots of good fat and protein.