Roots to Health with Dr. Craig Keever
Welcome to Roots to Health—where we dig deep into the foundation of lifelong wellness! Hosted by Dr. Craig Keever, Northwest Arkansas’ first and only plant-based pediatrician, this podcast unearths the power of nutrition, lifestyle, and holistic health to help kids, families, and adults thrive.
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Dr. Keever breaks down the science of nutrition and disease prevention in a way that’s simple, practical, and life-changing. From raising healthy kids to optimizing adult wellness, each episode delivers key insights that challenge conventional wisdom and empower you to take control of your health.
Whether he’s debunking nutrition myths, explaining how food shapes long-term well-being, or sharing actionable tips for disease prevention, Roots to Health is your go-to guide for vibrant living—one bite, one step, and one conversation at a time.
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Roots to Health with Dr. Craig Keever
Understanding Healthy Fats and Omega Ratios in Your Diet
Fat remains perhaps the most misunderstood macronutrient in nutrition science. While many diets demonize it completely and others elevate it as the ultimate fuel source, the truth lies somewhere in between. This deep dive into the world of dietary fats reveals why our bodies genuinely need fat for essential functions—from brain health and hormone production to cell regeneration and vitamin absorption.
Most healthy individuals should aim for 30-35% of their calories from fat, yet the standard American diet often delivers more than double that amount. For those with specific health conditions like type 2 diabetes or insulin resistance, managing fat intake becomes even more critical, sometimes requiring limiting fat to just 10-15% of total calories to maintain healthy blood sugar levels without medication.
We explore the fascinating molecular differences between saturated fats (typically solid at room temperature) and their unsaturated counterparts, examining how their structures impact our health. The conversation takes a particularly illuminating turn when discussing the crucial balance between pro-inflammatory omega-6 fatty acids and anti-inflammatory omega-3s. While a healthy ratio might be 3:1 or 4:1, most Americans consume these fats at dangerous proportions exceeding 20:1, creating chronic inflammation that underlies numerous diseases.
For those with autoimmune conditions, the information shared about Dr. Brooke Goldner's protocol for healing lupus, MS, and other inflammatory conditions through omega balance optimization could be life-changing. We also reveal practical tips for incorporating healthy fats through flaxseeds, chia seeds, nuts, and avocados, while explaining why oils might not deserve their "heart-healthy" reputation. The episode concludes with a shocking reality check about restaurant meals, where a single steakhouse dinner can contain nearly 400 grams of fat—demonstrating why understanding fats isn't just about nutrition theory, but a practical necessity for anyone seeking optimal health.
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The information provided in this video is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified healthcare provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have seen or heard in this video. Dr. Craig Keever is a licensed pediatrician, but the content shared here is general in nature and may not be applicable to your individual health needs.
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So, just as a brief recap, I just discussed a little bit about one of the major macronutrients being protein, and the second major macronutrient I'll discuss is fat. Fat gets kind of a bad rap depending on what venue you're talking in, but the fact of the matter is our bodies need fat.
Speaker 2:It's really the right fat. It is the right. It is getting to be the cheerleader in some camps that were it. It shouldn't really be. You know, as far as like with keto and things like that, right, right.
Speaker 1:So the issue with the standard American diet is we get too much fat. Yeah, ok, and and, and the wrong kinds of fat, but the truth of the matter is our bodies do require fat. Our fat intake is essential for our brain function, it's essential for making hormones, it's essential for making new cells. Everything in our body relies on that. The problem is, a healthy intake of fat for the adult human is probably and there's a little fudge factor in this, but probably around 30 to 35% of your total calories. All right, that's for your average healthy individual calories. All right, that's for your average healthy individual Eating the standard American diet. It's very easy, when you're not paying attention, to go over 70% of your calories.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's very hard to stay in that 35%. Yeah, almost impossible.
Speaker 1:It's a challenge. Yeah, if you have type 2 diabetes or insulin resistance, that you're trying to reverse the other direction is also difficult. My diet, in order to control my blood sugars without medication, needs to consist of between 10% and 15% of my total calories from fat. So that's a challenge.
Speaker 2:And we've had a dance for trying to get you high enough on your protein but not loading you up in your fats.
Speaker 1:Exactly, yeah, because they often do kind of travel together. So what are the basic types of fats? Well, we've got saturated fats that primarily comes from meat, dairy and eggs.
Speaker 2:In the plant-based world, there's very little that makes saturated fats Coconut is the one thing that really A little bit and avocado and peanut and nuts, but very, very tiny, very small amount, very tiny, but in terms of really appreciable amounts, for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, because you're right, saturated fats are in just about everything to some degree, in terms of anything that contains fat, but in appreciable amounts for our body's metabolism. The main ones are going to be, for the saturated fats meat, dairy and eggs, and then coconut. Well, what's the big to do about saturated fat?
Speaker 2:well, the problem with saturated fat is, when there's too much of it, it starts creating artery clogging plaques I remember dr clapper talking about how when he was in surgery and they pull he said that looks like chicken fat and he that's because it is chicken fat and so anything that's like gelatin kind of in a jar coconut oil, very gel, you know, just very water-like.
Speaker 1:Yeah, to your point. Saturated fats tend to be more solid at room temperature. All right, so the next category of fat is going to be unsaturated fat. Well, what's the big deal about saturated versus unsaturated? What that's referring to is a fat molecule is typically made of what's called a glycerol backbone, so to speak, and usually three fatty acid chains hooked onto that. All right, and when you're talking about saturated fats, you're talking about each of those fatty acid chains is completely full of hydrogen ions. It's saturated.
Speaker 1:When you're talking about unsaturated, you're talking about those fatty acid chains that have one or more points of not having a hydrogen ion, and what that does is it creates a chemical bond that's a little bit different and it makes that fat molecule different. How is that observable? Well, typically unsaturated fats are liquid at room temperature. When they cold, they may appear a little more cloudy. So unsaturated fats are divided into two categories. Basically, you have monounsaturated fats, which is like olive oil, and then you have polyunsaturated fats. The two most important things that I'm going to talk about regarding polyunsaturated fats are going to be your omega-3 and your omega-6.
Speaker 2:This is such a big deal the omega-3 and omega-6 thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's so important. Omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids it's amazing to me. Well, and yeah, and so what's the big deal about these polyunsaturated fats? That's the omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids Amazing to me. Well, and yeah, and so what's the big deal about these polyunsaturated fats? That's the omega-3s and omega-6s. Well, these have a lot to do with our body's inflammation status. Okay, the standard American diet is chock full of omega-6s, omega sixes, yeah, and a healthy balance of omega six to omega threes depending on who you talk to is probably somewhere around three parts omega six to one omega three, or four parts omega six to one omega three. Often, in the standard American diet, you're getting more than 10 to 1, or 20 to 1. It's crazy, okay. Well, where do so many omega-6s come from? Meat and dairy, primarily, and it comes from other sources.
Speaker 2:And the oil and oils, yeah. The processed food, yeah absolutely.
Speaker 1:And the processed stuff. So why is that a problem? Well, the omega-6s are pro-inflammatory, so they're the things that when you get these saturated fats in your arteries that are starting to clog up and you've got too many omega-6s up and you've got too many omega-6s, they're going to lend it themselves to that inflammatory response to where you're going to really get those plaques and it's going to make that worse. And the flip side of that the omega-3s are they tend to be more anti-inflammatory.
Speaker 1:They heal those cells, they heal things, yeah, and so what we're talking about here is, in particular, with people specifically with autoimmune issues. This is a really big deal, really big deal. You can switch that ratio or make it normal with hyper nourishing. One of our favorite uh, uh, plant-based doctors is a dr brooke goldner who's got programs to heal autoimmune disease you can find her on youtube and she has tons of great information.
Speaker 1:Awesome stuff, yeah um and that's a lot of what I'm basing this part of my talk on is things I've learned from her. But if you can change that ratio to something that's more healthy for somebody that's in just this raging inflammatory state, MS lupus you can reverse it. Yeah, and Dr Brooke Goldner has done this herself. As a teenager she had stage four lupus and kidney disease related to that and was in terrible shape and, on multiple medications and strictly by reversing this ratio, has cured her illness.
Speaker 2:And does not have any lupus markers, does not have any kidney disease. She had stage four kidney disease.
Speaker 2:And she's helped thousands of people. I can't say enough about her program, absolutely so, yeah, so it's like the omega-3s actually are what you need, those omega-3s in high doses if the cells are damaged. That's right, because that's what something I had seen she had said and hopefully next time we can bring some of those charts but that it's brittle almost, and nutrition, even if you're plant-based, can't necessarily get in if those need, if you need more omega-3s.
Speaker 1:In terms of your ability to absorb more of those nutrients and stuff, even if you're taking it. If your body's in that high inflammatory state, it's going to have a harder time absorbing what you need Exactly.
Speaker 2:That's definitely been the case for me.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I wanted to mention here there's some other things besides what I've talked about that we need fats for, and one of those things, outside of what I've already mentioned, is if you don't have enough fat in your diet, you're not going to absorb certain nutrients, fat soluble vitamins, vitamin A, vitamin D, vitamin E and vitamin K that if you don't have enough fat in your diet, you're not going to absorb those. So again, fat is not necessarily the enemy. The enemy is more what kinds of fat we're getting and how much. That's the issue related to our standard American diet.
Speaker 2:Do you have anything to say? As far, I learned something new every time we talk about this. You show me something new every time. So nuts have omega sixes and their their ratios are higher than omega threes, but they're still a good. If you're not out of balance, that's not an issue. That's correct. It's not really considered an inflammatory food, is that right?
Speaker 1:Generally speaking, but I think that's something if you're dealing with an inflammatory illness you want to pay more attention to. If you have a normal metabolism and you don't have any auto-inflammation or auto-inflammatory problems or anything like that, then nuts can be a very good source of some nuts and you can pull up a chart.
Speaker 2:Nuts can be a very good source of some nuts and you can pull up a chart. I don't have a reference, but maybe we can put it on your website where it shows how many nuts you know like nuts. What their ratios will be? Yeah, three to six.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and there's some nuts that are better for lower levels of omega-6s.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Well, I've never heard anybody talk about the omega-3s and 6s until we started talking about it, and it's like it's fascinating to me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it really is. So, yeah, I suppose I want to reemphasize the fact here that you know, while you know, fats, I think have gotten a bad rap in some areas and and, and I think in in you know rightly so rightly so in some situations, because, again, the problem is not fat per se, but it's the amount that we've gotten that's kind of how carbs are, too like.
Speaker 2:It's not the carbs. Are the exactly the enemy?
Speaker 1:you'll talk about that later, but yes, but it's so, yeah, and we've addressed this to some degree already but what are some of the healthier sources? Where can you get this stuff? Well, in terms of the omega-3s, probably the easiest, healthiest source is flaxseed and a couple of things we've learned about flaxseed and chia seed and chia seed yeah, chia seed's up there too. And chia seed yeah, chia seeds up there too, um, but in in terms of um, using flax seed, you can get it in several different ways the whole flax seed. You can get ground flax seed, um. No, you can get flax seed oil, um.
Speaker 1:I would say the ideal way to use flax seed would get be to get a bag of the whole flaxseed. But the problem is we don't get all the goodness out of it unless we grind. It goes straight through you. It goes straight through you, yeah, so in order to actually take full advantage of the goodness, we need to grind them. Now here's the problem with buying a bag of already ground flaxseed. The omega-3s oxidize relatively quickly, All right, and I'm sorry I don't have the exact amount of time it takes, but I would say, definitely you want to. It's minutes.
Speaker 2:As far as chia seeds, I know for sure. I don't know about flaxseed.
Speaker 1:What I've heard is if you grind your own, you don't want to let that go more than two or three days. Yeah, it may be even shorter than that. I know for chia seeds it's shorter.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1:So I may have to amend this talk at some point, but I would say we're not committing to it, for sure. The bottom line is you're safest if you get your whole chia seeds, put them in your grinder, grind them up and use them right there. That's the best way to get the ultimate goodness out of getting all the omega-3s that you can get out of them.
Speaker 2:It's been my understanding that when you're counting fat grams you really don't have to worry about counting the straight flaxseed and chia seeds, because I kind of avoided them initially but then I realized that that's just healing the cells.
Speaker 1:It doesn't really go to the body as fat. Some other good sources of omega-3s and healthy fats are going to be almonds, walnuts and hemp seeds, avocados great source of plant-based fats, and I don't have an immediate reference to how many omega-3s versus omega-6s with avocados. But now my guide mentions oils and there's some controversy about this, I suppose, depending on who you're talking to, but particularly for a guy who's type 2 diabetic, insulin resistant and trying to reverse, reverse that. What's the problem with oils? Well, fats and oils have nine calories per gram that you intake, okay. So, number one, it's very calorie dense, um. Number two um, when you ingest an oil, what oil? How they've made that oil is through a certain amount of processing, and what they do, for instance, with olive oil or any nut oil or anything? What they do is they strip away all the fiber, all the micronutrients, all the other goodness, and phytochemicals and stuff.
Speaker 2:Now the body knows how to break it down correctly, right Without that.
Speaker 1:And all you're left with is this glob of oil.
Speaker 2:That's inflammatory and it's hitting the endothelium. Dr Esselstyn says every time you have oils it's a hit on your. What Endothelium? Endothelial cells.
Speaker 1:That's right. That's a problem, it's a problem, it's a problem. And so a lot of people talk about the healthy olive oil. I you know again, I think, if you've got a totally normal metabolism, maybe a little bit of that, but keep in mind it's inflammatory and it can damage your endothelium.
Speaker 2:So and something happens when all oils are heated, it it does.
Speaker 1:Something happens on a very yes, and I was going to get to that. You know, in terms of fried foods, you know, and that's why fried foods are such a detriment to anybody's health is it does change the chemical composition of the oil and makes it worse for our bodies. Yeah, and in future. It's real hard to just barely do a little bit of that In future podcasts I'll have more information about exactly that process and what it does. But suffice it at this point to say fried foods are bad. Period Exception Air fried.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay which we do all the time. We do all the time we do all the time. And in fact you know, I was just talking to somebody today who said was talking about her kids loving their air fryers and she was talking about but I hate the potatoes I cook with them and I said you know why? They don't have the fat in them. What Our tongues, unless we're on plant-based for a while.
Speaker 2:I love my air-fried french fries oh yeah, our tongues, on the standard American diet, are coated with oil and salt and that's something I wish people could remember is, initially you're going to, it's not going to taste the same. Things are going to taste different, but our palate is more alive because we aren't coated with fat sugars. Exactly, yeah, salt.
Speaker 1:So what my lovely vegan chef here does is she'll chop up the potatoes into french fry sized pieces and then we'll microwave them. Because you want them soft, you want them soft on the inside, tells you. You want to cook the whole thing to it. Microwave them until they're cooked on the inside and then throw them in the air fryer and get a nice crispy thing going on lime juice on them, and then I put all kinds of seasonings, garlic, salts, tahini so good, so there is no shortage of potatoes and fries in my house and and and so not guilty.
Speaker 2:You know, so not guilty. That's fabulous, you could eat. You can eat as many potatoes as you want, as long as you aren't adding those extra fats into it.
Speaker 1:You a word again coming from a guy who needs to limit my total fat intake to 23 grams of fat per day. Avocado is great. One avocado has 15 grams of fat. Yeah, so that can be a problem to me. Yeah, Just keeping that in mind, the average adult should do well with you know, a third of their calories coming from fat. So you're talking about 60 grams of fat.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's like you'll find your rhythm in it.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's a lot of information at once, but it's very helpful to know that, because that really kind of helps you line out what you do want to give up and what you don't.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, absolutely, absolutely. So I think I've addressed all of that.
Speaker 2:And I just wish people could understand, like at the end of a plant-based meal you're full, but you don't have that sluggish kind of just like I've got to go lay down now.
Speaker 1:Well, and I'm going to address something here Again we addressed the issue of using chronometer for tracking, something. Here again we address the issue of using chronometer of tracking. And one of my favorite stories about our history with tracking relates to fats. And when I had just found out that I need to limit my fat intake to 23 grams a day to reverse my insulin resistance, we sat down one weekend and googled um, what are some of the restaurants we used to go to? And we picked a steakhouse that we used to go to I'm not going to use any names, but I'm sure they're all about the same, yeah and we picked an average meal, you know, like a prime rib or whatever steak we had.
Speaker 2:And so you're supposed to have like to put it into perspective a day you're supposed to have how many fats? 23 grams, okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 23 grams of fat in a day. And so we put together this average meal where you get your salad with dressing and your meat and your veggies cooked in butter or whatever, and then a little salad dressing has enormous. Exactly, we were astounded to find almost 400 grams of fat in one meal. One meal, 400. Is it any wonder heart disease is the number one killer of?
Speaker 2:adults in this country. I wish people understood that. I wish people understood. I mean it grieves me to see that you know, and not to be melancholy, but it's like. It's so important, it's so great to have the hope of being able to transform your lives through nutrition.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:It's such a gift.
Speaker 1:It is. So in conclusion, a couple of take-home points. I would like to remind everybody that all fats aren't bad. Our bodies need fats. There are healthy fats to be had. Think about your omega-3s more than your omega-6s, and you'll kind of reverse some of the inflammatory processes that you have. And I'll close with a little quote here saying healthy fats fuel our bodies and minds. Embrace them in your plant-based journey.
Speaker 2:There you go, we'll see you next time. See you next time.
