Cooking Time 25 minutes

Ingredients

• Large knob of butter
• 1 large onion – chopped
• 4 chicken breasts – chopped
• 4 cloves of garlic – crushed
• 1 red chilli – thinly sliced
• 2 red peppers – chopped
• 200g mushrooms – sliced
• 200g tin of olives – pitted
• 2 x 400g tin chopped tomatoes
• Handful of fresh thyme
• Sea salt and black pepper to season

To serve:  Wholewheat pasta or homemade chips cooked in lard, goose or duck fat (see recipes)

Method

1. Heat the butter in a large pan, then add onion and fry until soft.
2. Add the chicken and fry until cooked through.
3. Once the chicken is cooked, add all the remaining ingredients, cover and simmer for 15 minutes .

High Density Lipoproteins (HDL) – Your body’s protector!

Low Density Lipoproteins (LDL)

Very Low Density Lipoproteins (VLDL)

We are persistently bombarded by the media with television adverts and magazine articles, that tell us our cholesterol should be low….this simple isn’t true!  Not all cholesterol is bad for you.  The VLDL and LDL are the bad types of cholesterol and the HDL is the good type.  The VLDL and LDL are produced from trans fats, which go to work on the inside of your arteries, making them narrower and increasing your blood pressure.  The HDL works in the opposite way, by galvanising your arteries and protecting your body against the VLDL and LDL, preventing them from penetrating your arteries and reducing the risk of hypertension.

To increase your HDL, you should be eating more good saturated fat.  Follow this link for more information:  http://www.fitnessmatrix.co.uk/2009/04/good-saturated-fat-the-past-is-the-future/

The study revealed that the saturated fat content of many dishes from celebrity chefs’ recipes, contained more than 100 per cent
of the guideline daily amount of saturated fat in a single serving (30g for men and 20g for women).  Sian Porter registered dietitian on the fat
panel, says “having a celebrity chef treat is one thing, but eating these dishes regularly could bump up your saturated fat intake considerably”.

Yes it could and it should!  Your body wants good saturated fat, as it is its primary source of fuel, supplying sustained energy and acting as a protector, because it provides the immune system with the fuel it needs to become strong, resulting in the body being more equipped to fight-off infection.  Good saturated fat is also vitally important for the body to properly metabolise all other nutrients and receive the best from the food ingested.

I realise that this is contrary to popular belief and that you may be thinking that saturated fat will be detrimental to your health, but this couldn’t be further from the truth.  The human animal has historically lived on good saturated fat for hundreds of years, but in the last century, we have been brain-washed by the media and the power of advertising, to believe that foods that are ‘low-fat’, ‘light’ and ‘healthy option’ are good for us, but this is not the case.  Some of the products that provide good saturated fat are; whole milk, butter, cheese, double cream, free range eggs, lard, beef dripping, goose and duck fat, which are natural products and benefit from not being tampered by humans.

For more information on good saturated fat, follow this link:  http://www.fitnessmatrix.co.uk/2009/04/good-saturated-fat-the-past-is-the-future/

Today, it is still possible to get happy food from happy animals by visiting your local farm shop, where their animals roam free, are pasture fed and allowed to live a full and happy life.

Right! Now to get back to the good saturated fat. I know what you’re thinking…fat will make me fat, I’ll get high blood pressure and possibly heart problems. This is not the case at all!

Good saturated fat comes from: whole milk, double cream, butter, cheese, eggs, mayonnaise, red meat, poultry, pork, game, the fat and skin on meat, lard and beef dripping. These products provide a good, natural source of saturated fat, that do not breakdown into bad fats, with exception of cheese, which does breakdown into bad fat when cooked at high temperatures, so just add it at the end of cooking.

Good saturated fat is your body’s protector. From head to toe, it galvanises your bones, muscles, tendons, ligaments and neuro-fibres, making you stronger, giving you more sustained energy and making you less susceptible to germs and viruses.

The view in the public domain is that saturated fat is detrimental to your health and can cause problems with your heart.  There is no actual proof to confirm this, as saturated fat has been made a scapegoat for coronary heart disease (CHD).  Blaming saturated fat for CHD and other health problems, is like blaming the Fire Service for the fire that they have come to put out; they have come to help you, not to make the situation worse!

I am a Personal Trainer and Nutritional Advisor. I live on good saturated fat and recommend this to my clients, whom have lost lots of weight, have more energy and better overall well-being. My mother, whom has angina, lives on the same nutrition as myself. She also has lost alot of weight and not had an angina attack in 20 months. But in theory, according to popular belief in the media, eating more saturated fat she should have made her seriously ill, which has not been the case.