The Art of Mastering Healthy Mayo
By Heathar Shepard/ October 9, 2020
The Art of Mastering Healthy Mayo
Who doesn’t love mayo? I can honestly say, I LOVE mayo! But, there’s a lot of “health controversy” over high fat foods such as, mayo. And, throughout this article, I’m going to help you dissolve the myth that says, high fat, high cholesterol foods lead to clogged arteries and heart disease. I’ll reveal the factors that actually do cause clogged arteries. I’ll discuss the invaluable and amazing antioxidant roles that cholesterol plays in the body. I’ll teach you all about healthy fats and not so healthy fats. And, I’ll teach you how to make the most delicious, bangin’ mayo in your own kitchen.
I will say, over the years, I’ve had a love-hate relationship with mayo. During my vegetarian stint - that turned out to be a train wrek for my health and took me just short of a few years to recover from - I chose Veganaise as my mayo of choice. Veganiase is a diary-free commercial mayo made with vegetable oils. They prize their mayo for its “heart healthy” attributes where vegetable oils such as grapeseed and soy replace the cholesterol-rich and hypothesized clogged-arteryforming, eggs and egg yolks. A vegan and vegetarian dream, a hormonal, liver and mitochondrial health nightmare.
As I was transitioning out of my vegetarian years, I started to dive head first into animal products- my body literally couldn’t get enough of them. This was the phase where I poured on the mayo (and bacon). Albeit my mayo choices always consisted of organic, the oil base of standard conventional and organic mayos is often canola and/or soy. These oils are a B-line to extremely high inflammation levels throughout the entire body. Not to mention their super detrimental impact on the thyroid gland and healthy fertility levels.
Eventually, I started to learn about the negative health effects of liquid vegetable oils. Namely, from a pioneer in this field, Mary Enig, PhD.
When I first started learning about the detrimental health effects of vegetable and seed oils, which was over a decade ago, I decided to give up mayo completely. There were literally zero commercial mayo brands out there worth blinking an eye at regarding my health. So, I threw in the mayo towel.
But then, the Keto, cauliflower and coconut phase came in. This movement inspired me to get more creative in the kitchen - - I started looking outside-of-the-box when it came to my food creations. Not only did this inspire my inner #kitchenwitch, it also led me to create a healthy mayo recipe sans cauliflower, of course.
Today, I enjoy homemade mayo - a mayo that I can lean on and trust when it comes to my health and, also, to slather on my fried eggs, dollop into summer cucumber and fresh dill salads, spread over smoked salmon and drizzle over my Ahi Tuna.
Here’s the secret to homemade mayo - when it comes both to taste and to your health…you have to invest in healthy fats. Healthy fats are the backbone to health. They support healthy hormones, a healthy weight, they prevent and help one recover from type II diabetes and they’re a superfood for anyone healing from a chronic disease.
Mayo Making + Radical Health Tip #1: Why Fats Matter
One of the biggest health fallacies today (STILL) is the story we’re being told around liquid vegetable and seed oils. Since Paleo and Keto diets hit the scene, so have more processed oils. I know this might sound counterintuitive to the health and healing that these diets aim to promote, and that’s exactly my point.
Avocado, almond, walnut, grapeseed, sunflower oils and many others gained serious popularity with the birth of Keto and Paleo diets. Before these oils became popular however, it was canola, Crisco, corn and soy oils that held the “heart healthy” badge. When the negative health affects of such liquid oils become more known, they were quickly replaced with “healthier” Paleo and Keto versions of liquid oils. However, the Paleo and Keto prized oils are no better. Especially when it comes to heart health, hormonal and metabolic health as well as our energy production needs.
Bottom line, these oils are rancid, highly processed and have no business being in anyones mayo or health supportive diet for that matter.
Mayo Making + Radical Health Tip #2: Ancestral Wisdom
While there are hundreds of peer reviewed studies that demonstrate the ill effects of liquid vegetable and seed oils, I always like to refer to the fundamentals of health AKA ancestral wisdom and Mother Nature when making my food choices. Mother Nature is our most accurate, non-biased study of all time despite what the studies reveal. We can easily assess the nutritional content and value of fats by simply pondering this single question:
How many varieties of vegetable and seed oils did our ancient ancestors consume - before commercial food products hit the shelf?
The answer is, zero.
With the very minimal exception going to olive oil. Which, back then, was super scarce due to lack of processing equipment and simply a lesser amount of olive trees compared to present day.
We know that our ancient ancestors did not experience epidemic rates of chronic disease. In fact, cases of cancer, heart disease, obesity, stroke, type II diabetes and autoimmunity were all considered an anomaly 100 plus years ago. These people ate seal blubber, pork belly, fish eggs, butter, cream, lard, beef tallow and bear grizzle sans clogged arteries or chronic disease.
This all began to change however, when liquid vegetable and seed oils, indoor living, antibiotics and vaccinations began to hit the scene.
Vegetable and seed oils do not contain saturated fats or cholesterol (with the exception being coconut and palm oils and cocoa butter - which all contain saturated fat but not cholesterol). And, just to clear the cholesterol air, cholesterol isn’t found in plants - it’s a hormone only present in animals. So, any vegan or vegetarian food AKA plant-based food is naturally going to contain zero cholesterol.
What most people don’t know (due to inaccurate education around cholesterol), is that cholesterol is actually one of the most important molecules in our body. Our cell membranes, hormones, vitamin D levels and detox capabilities all rely on cholesterol to achieve these vital tasks. While we’ve been taught that LDL cholesterol is bad and is the main contributor to clogged arteries, this is very inaccurate. And, the absurdity of this inaccuracy is causing people to be much sicker than they otherwise would be if they piled on the butter, egg yolks and sunshine (more on the importance of sunshine when it comes to preventing clogged arteries in a second…) instead of the margarine, avocado oil and safflower oil.
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Mayo Making + Radical Health Tip #3: What Really Causes Clogged Arteries?
Arteries become clogged when cholesterol hangs out in the arteries for a prolonged period of time. Cholesterol is naturally designed to go into the arteries and various parts of the body to clean house. Cholesterol is a highly under championed antioxidant. We need it to remove toxins, chemicals, poisons, germ toxins and heavy metals from the body. This is why during acute infection, cholesterol levels go through the roof - they’re cleaning house, not clogging arteries.
Arteries become clogged when the cleaning crew - AKA cholesterol - falls asleep for months-toyears on end causing cholesterol to oxidize. Instead of that buyout, fluffy health-promoting cholesterol particle, it oxidizes into a small, dense, jagged rusty piece of iron. This is one of the real driving factors behind arterial plaque. It’s not cholesterol that’s bad and dangerous, it’s how cholesterol acts in your body that makes the difference. And, the good news is, you have the ability to manipulate how cholesterol acts in your body!
An important consideration…Oxidized cholesterol is NOT the same cholesterol that your blood work/labs test for. LDL, HDL and triglycerides do not test for levels of oxidized cholesterol in the body. There are other western lab tests that can do so, but these standard lipid labs are not one of them. This is why taking these readings to heart when it comes to your heart health, is an anxiety provoking fallacy. It simply isn’t an accurate measure of heart health. But, we all have been trained to think this way for one simple reason. Statin drugs.
So, what causes cholesterol to oxidize?
Does eating foods rich in cholesterol and saturated fats cause cholesterol to oxidize in your arteries? No, it does not.
But, what does cause cholesterol to become immobile and oxidized includes:
- Sunlight deficiency
- Sedentary lifestyle
- Indoor lifestyle tethered to modern technology and artificial light
- Vitamin D deficiency (see The Sunlight Rx eBook remedy this)
- Stress
- Pathogen load that hasn’t been cleared from the body #tryhomeopathy
- Toxins or chemicals that haven’t been cleared from the body
- Liquid vegetable and seed oils
To really get the message balls-on-dead-center about cholesterol…let’s do a quick physiological fact check.
We know that many acute and ALL chronic diseases today are a result of a vitamin D deficiency.
To tackle the vitamin D deficiency issue…we have to again revert back to Rule #1: Mother Nature + ancestral wisdom.
Did she design you to make vitamin D from a pill? No, she sure didn’t. In fact, taking supplemental vitamin D without practicing The Sunlight Rx can be counterproductive to your health goals. And, supplemental vitamin D ALWAYS artificially raises vitamin D levels (unless you’re simultaneously getting your Sunlight Rx on).
So, 3.5 billion years ago, how did Mother Nature design you and me to make vitamin D?
Using this formula: LDL cholesterol + 312nm light (AKA UV-B sunlight).
This should raise huge red flags around the dangers of reducing LDL cholesterol. Many of my clients actually have LOW LDL cholesterol levels (below 200 mg/dL), not high. And, as a result, they have LOW vitamin D levels because they don’t have enough LDL cholesterol - the precursor to vitamin D - to actually make vitamin D.
If you want to start building your vitamin D levels the way nature intended, you can grab a copy of The Sunlight Rx eBook to start taking the bull by the horns when it comes to improving your heart health in effective, natural ways.
This is also why statin drugs, which by taking swaps heart attack for debilitating back pain, heart failure and type II diabetes (where do I sign up?), is one of the biggest health deceiving and dangerous Rx drug practices today (as well as avoiding the sun!).
And, all of this insight lead me to…
Creating the healthiest + most delicious mayo on the planet.
Hi, I am Heathar
With over 12 years experience as an alternative healer, integrative health coach and one who has been through severe physical injury trying every remedy under the sun to heal myself with no avail…I’m here to tell you, all of those things are not only attainable but are foundational to achieving optimal health and are core elements to overcoming all chronic and stubborn diseases.
At the age of 23 I suffered a TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury) preventing me from the ability to engage in physical activity for over 12 years post my car accident. Today, I know I could have recovered from this injury much quicker if I had known then what I know now! But….the accident lead me down the healing path. A path that I was destined to take to help myself heal and to learn how to help others heal complicated and chronic disorders as well.
During this time, I learned two things: How to harness the healing power of sunlight and how to utilize frequency based medicine to facilitate biological transformations in the body - all the way down to the mitochondrial level.
Today, I lead an active life and you can bet I’m uber passionate about teaching others how they can overcome even the most daunting health experiences that most medical professionals have band-aid solutions for, at best.
And today, my health continues to improve each day and I now lead an active, healthy lifestyle - all of which I thought would never be possible to achieve again. All it took was discovering the most effective path to health and healing to get me there and now, to help my clients get there as well!
Ancestral Mayo Recipe
Ingredients
2 pasture-raised eggs, at room temperature
2 pasture-raised egg yolks, at room temperature
1/2 Cup Organic, cold pressed, virgin coconut oil, melted
Juice 1/2 lemon
1 tablespoon white vinegar
1.5 tablespoons stone ground mustard
1/2 teaspoon Celtic sea salt
Directions
If your coconut oil is solid, place in a saucepan and gently melt. Be careful not to get the coconut oil too hot as it will scramble the eggs.
Separate the egg from the yolk in 2 of the eggs.
Place all ingredients EXCEPT COCONUT OIL in blender, Vitamix or food processor.
Blend together for a few seconds.
*This is the part that you need patience - patience is key when making homemade mayo.*
Remove the plastic attachment at the top of your Vitamix and pour the coconut oil into the mix drop by drop for about 1 minute.
After one minute, pour coconut oil in a slow, steady stream into the mix.
You do not want to dump the oil in nor do you want to pour too fast as the mayo will not thicken. It should take around 5-7 minutes to make the mayo.
Once you’ve added all the coconut oil, pour into a glass jar and store in fridge or use immediately on your favorite mayo inspired dishes.
Dang! Amazing read! So much truth. Can’t wait to try the recipe!!