Well, does it? Be honest.

Actually, I just wanted to get your attention, but I will admit that my jeans feel a bit snug after a long winter of stews, soups, and casseroles. But that’s changing since I’m drifting into my spring eating habits. I like to wander culinarily from season to season. I’m into the fresh stuff right now, which is naturally lower in calories, so I never stress much about small weight fluctuations either way.

But I do fuss about it when my jeans start feeling too tight. Maybe I shouldn’t. Ladies, the next time you’re doing that thing in front of the mirror where you squirm around twisting and twirling, trying to see whether your jeans look too tight or your bum looks too big, just stop – don’t even bother. You’re way too smart for that. Seriously. Research shows a direct correlation between an ample booty and increased cognitive ability – in women and their offspring.

Huh?

And whose idea was it to do a study on curvy women and brain power, anyway?

I wonder.

But, I’m also not complaining. In fact, I’m thinking it’s about dang time. Yippee, hallelujah, and pass the gluten-free snickerdoodles!

The study I’m referring to has to do with omega-3 fatty acids (no pun intended), a woman’s waist-to-hip ratio (WHR), and the relative proportion of upper-body fat to lower-body fat. We’re talking smaller waists and bigger rear-ends and hips, so this full-figured, hippo-mamma featured above wouldn’t qualify. She doesn’t exactly have a small waist, but I think we can safely say she’s bottom heavy.

Dr. William Lassek, a rather geeky* University of Pittsburgh epidemiologist, co-authored a recently released study entitled, Waist-hip ratio and cognitive ability: is gluteofemoral fat a privileged store of neurodevelopmental resources? Published in Evolution and Human Behavior, it suggests that men prefer women with smaller waists and wider hips for evolutionary reasons. Survival of the fittest – those women are smarter and have a heightened survival advantage. In addition, the study found that the children of vee-vee-la-voom moms also scored higher on cognitive tests.

The body fat around a woman’s hips is higher in omega-3s, which improves brain function and is important to fetal neuro-development. Omega-3s also boost fertility and overall health. According to Dr. Lassek and his colleagues, it stands to reason that for survival purposes, men would prefer women who are smarter, more fertile, healthier, and who produce brighter offspring. The curves just come with the territory.

Oooh – so, men can’t help it? I see. Gawking at curvy women is just a matter of male genetic expression. Slack-jawed drooling can’t possibly be part of the natural selection process, so don’t get carried away, but this is certainly interesting and entertaining research.

Little did we know that waist-to-hip ratio has been of interest to evolutionary psychologists for years now. Several studies, including an analysis of data collected by the US Department of Health and Human Services (our tax money at work), link female body shape with mental performance. Lower-body fat is higher in omega-3s while abdominal and upper-body fat is higher in omega-6s and saturated fats. It is hypothesized that omega-6s are less important to brain development and function and may even be detrimental. Omega-3s are thought to enhance communication between brain cells, making for zippy intelligence.

Using data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), researchers compared female waste-to-hip ratios to scores on cognitive function tests and found that a lower WHR correlated with higher scores. They also found that as the mom’s ratio goes down, the children’s intelligence scores go up. The data is fairly persuasive. The study sample included more than 16,000 women and the curvy girls with hourglass figures outsmarted the skinny ones on cognitive tests – same with their offspring.

Are you wondering how you figure out this magical ratio and how your IQ is somehow connected to your rear-end? You divide your waist measurement by your hip measurement and hope for the best. According to these guys (remember these are guys doing the research), this study suggests an “ideal” WHR of somewhere around 0.6 to 0.7. Think J-Lo – small waist, ample booty.

Bottom line? Next time you shop for new jeans and have to give up after 10 minutes of shimmying and wrestling with a size that just won’t cooperate with you, let it go. You’re too smart for those jeans anyway!

In good health,
Melissa

If you want more info on fats and oils, check out my “do you need an oil change” post.

* I actually find “geeky” rather appealing, but back in caveman days, the nerdy guys most likely didn’t last long. Plus, curvy women – if they were that smart – probably chose the guys who could protect them from the sabertoothed tigers. But here we are a bazillion years later and it’s the nerdy guys doing research on the curvy girls. Hmmm, a bit ironic, wouldn’t you agree?

Life is confusing enough without factoring in the debate over what constitutes healthy eating. Think back to the “olden” days when food consisted of catching the next rabbit or stumbling upon a new berry patch, and that’s if you were lucky. It wasn’t a matter of what we should or shouldn’t eat, but what we could find to eat. And that meant plants or animals in their natural state. No discussion about good fats or bad fats, the ratio of omega-3s to omega-6s, the link between transfats and sperm motility (hey guys, are you paying attention), or whether you might fail a drug test because you added hemp seed oil to your muffin mix and it contained traces of THC. Sifting through all the information, opinions, fads, and trends is rather daunting. And if you throw in clueless consumers (which we all are at one time or another), junk food, government regulations, food industry lobbyists, and free-will libertarians – you’ve got a recipe for disaster.

Education, awareness, and common sense, that’s what we need. But then we’re back to the starting point – where life is confusing enough as it is. How much time are we willing to spend to figure all this stuff out? Most of us have more pressing matters on our minds than how transfats were industrially created by adding hydrogen atoms to unsaturated fats – and what that means to our health. But for our own good, we need to at least have a glimpse of how this can impact the disease process.

So, I’m here to provide you with a little information to add to the mix. We’ll just do a “fats and oils 101″ version because I know you have more important things to worry about than the chemical makeup of fats. Like how to blow off work, get outside, and play in this glorious Colorado sunshine (quick before it snows again).

Fats
Fats are lipids in foods or the body, composed mostly of trglycerides. Healthy fats provide fuel, supply essential fatty acids (omega-3 and omega-6), aid in the absorption of fat soluble vitamins (A, D, E, and K), and are an important part of healthy nutrition. Hydrogenated fats and transfats are unhealthy fats. They contribute to heart disease by elevating LDL cholesterol (the bad one) and lowering HDL cholesterol (the good one).

Unhealthy dietary fats are one of the triggers for abnormal inflammation and the diseases and disorders associated with it. This can mean heart disease, asthma, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, cancer, or digestive diseases, which includes celiac, an autoimmune disease marked by inflammation of the small intestine caused by gluten exposure. Inflammation consists of the responses orchestrated by the immune system when tissues are injured – that’s a good thing if kept under control. It’s the body’s defense against injury and infection and is crucial to healing, but if it becomes chronic and out of control, a variety of diseases can result.

There are foods that promote the inflammatory response and foods that mitigate it. Unhealthy fats promote inflammation and healthy fats can shift the body back into a more balanced state. This is important for overall health, regardless of whether you have one of these conditions or not. This applies to all of us and is important in healthy aging, no matter where you are in the chronological process.

Lipids
A family of compounds that includes triglycerides (fats and oils), phospholipids (lecithin is the best known), and sterols (cholesterol).

Saturated fats
Chemically, these are fats carrying the maximum possible number of hydrogen atoms and are more stable. Animal fats and the tropical oils are mostly saturated, but only the animal products contain cholesterol. Coconut oil, palm oil, lard, beef tallow, and butter are saturated. They remain solid at room temperature and are more resistant to oxidation. All fats become rancid when exposed to oxygen.

Monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats
These fats are unsaturated (they lack the necessary hydrogen atoms that would make them saturated). They are not solid at room temperature. Monounsaturated oils include olive oil, canola oil, and peanut oil. Polyunsaturated oils include safflower oil, sunflower oil, corn oil, soybean oil, and cottonseed oil and are high in omega 6s and low in omega 3s (not so good).

Cholesterol
Foods derived from both plants and animals can contain lipids (fats), but only those from animals contain cholesterol (meat, eggs, fish, poultry, shellfish, and dairy products). The fat in plants does not contain cholesterol. The distinction between “good” and “bad” cholesterol is confusing and controversial. “Good” cholesterol is not something found in foods – it is actually the way the body transports cholesterol around in the blood. HDL is the good stuff (remember H is for Healthy). It transports cholesterol to the liver to be broken down and excreted.

Essential fatty acids
EFAs are fatty acids needed by the body, but not made by it in amounts sufficient to meet physiological needs.

Omega-3 & Omega-6
These are polyunsaturated fatty acids that are essential to health, must be obtained through food sources, and are required in specifically balanced ratios. Unfortunately, the Standard American Diet (SAD), provides us with far more omega-6s than 3s, and that’s not healthy.

Omega-3s (good, good, good)
Omega-3s provide the building blocks for an anti-inflammatory diet, which is what we want. These are found in fresh foods, cold-water fish, and grass-fed beef. Here’s a list of foods to choose from to increase your consumption of omega-3s and to help reduce systemic inflammation.
walnuts
flax
hemp
leafy greens (low concentrations, but still important sources)
sea vegetables
salmon
sardines
herring
mackerel
grass-fed beef or bison

Omega-6s (not so good)
Omega-6s, in general, increase inflammation. They are abundant in processed foods, fast foods, and refined vegetable oils. Eating the meat of animals fattened on grains increases the amount of omega 6s in the diet.

The bottom line
1. Avoid any product that lists partially hydrogenated oil or transfats as an ingredient. Hydrogenation is the chemical process in which hydrogen atoms are added to unsaturated fats to make them more stable (longer shelf life). So, if your cupcake package has an expiration date of 08/2020, it’s packed with hydrogenated fats. Hydrogenation produces transfats. Don’t go near the stuff.
2. Don’t use margarine, butter is healthier, but use it in moderation.
3. Minimize or eliminate the use of polyunsaturated oils (safflower, sunflower, corn, soybean, cottonseed).
4. Use expeller- or cold-pressed extra virgin olive oil (EVOO). “Light” olive oil has been chemically refined, which isn’t the best choice. Most vegetable oils are extracted using heat and solvents that create weird chemicals and are pro-inflammatory (not good).
5. Avoid fried foods at fast-food restaurants. The oils in the fryers often contain hydrogenated fats. Plus, as the current McDonald’s lawsuit shows, can also contain gluten.
6. Don’t eat rancid foods (nuts, seeds, or grains). That sounds like a given, but you can’t always tell. You can determine rancidity by the smell, which is a bit like paint, but you have to have sharp olfactory skills (that would be you, Megan).
7. Don’t heat oils to the smoking point, don’t breathe in the smoke, and don’t reuse oils that have been heated to high temperatures. Do I sound bossy? Hey, I’m a mom – it’s for your own good.
8. So – my current general oil choice is EVOO. If you don’t use it often, buy a smaller bottle so it doesn’t go rancid. Protect your oil from heat, light, and air. Dark bottles are better.

Does that help?

In good health,
Melissa

Disclaimer: All material on this website is provided for informational and educational use only and should not be used for diagnostic purposes. Consult with your physician regarding any health or medical concerns you may have.