Am I dong more harm than good? page

[primalmontana]

I am about 95% primal. My family, however, is maybe a little more than 50%. Although I do most of the cooking and insure that every meal is primal, my husband and 4-year-old add grains to almost everything. Toast w/ our eggs in the morning, chips with soup at lunch, and rice/pasta with dinner. My husband is a teacher/coach so eats horrible fast food and school lunch 2x/week. Our daughter goes to friends houses and daycare for a few hours where she gets things like goldfish, macaroni and cheese, cookies, crackers, candy!

My mother was just advised to go on a cholesterol-lowering diet by her doctor. She is NOT convinced that primal is going to help her. She eats healthy in the CW sense but has plenty of grains, lean protein and still views fat as evil. Of course she won't listen to me over her doctor ( who probably knows much less about nutrition.)

My question: is it harmful to them to increase their intake of sat. Fat and cholesterol because they obviously have inflammation occurring in their bodies? Should I go with a leaner-primal approach for them?

[kmc]

Awesome question. Unfortunately, due to the medical implications therein, the only people that would really be within their scope of practice to answer this would be nutritionists, registered dietitians, or physicians. Unfortunately, most people trained in those fields still hold strongly to conventional wisdom about the causes of heart disease...

However, if their saturated fat is coming from healthy sources (free range eggs, grass fed meats,) they're probably better off than they would be eating SAD, even with the non primal additions. Keeping O-6 fats down and O-3 up is always good for your inflammatory health, despite other things they might be eating.

[Roary]

I've wondered this too -- is CW + Primal just high fat CW? I'm making steady progress with my husband, but he will never be 100 percent (or even 80 percent). So I hesitate to buy whole milk or add too much butter or coconut oil to his veggies ... he's very slowly leaning out even on the changes that have been agreeable, but I don't have any numbers or data on him to monitor the inside effects.

[sbhikes]

Yes, they'd be doing the worst thing for their health to both continue to eat foods that cause inflammation AND add saturated animal fat on top of that. Serve leaner cuts of meat, more fish, steamed vegetables and save the fatty stuff for yourself. This won't guarantee them ideal health, but at least it won't make things worse.

[MarissaLinnea]

I was just going to share my personal experience with this. What I have found is that when I'm eating Primally, if I allow myself to have too many treats, sugary things or off plan foods like grains, I gain weight pretty quickly which in turn will of course cause health issues if I allow it to get out of control. I have found that I can't have it both ways. I can't eat the high fat that the Primal diet requires and eat grains and sugars as well, because all those grains and sugars just raise insulin levels which makes it difficult for the body to use all those fats, so the fats get stored instead which leads to weight gain. On the flip side, I can eat sugars and grains when I eat a CW low fat diet because I'm not eating a ton of fats that are going to get stored.

I had the same issue with my family. What I try to do is make the meal not using a ton of fat and then if I need to, I will add fat to mine after the meal is made, like butter or ghee to my veggies, etc.

[Neckhammer]

Guess I disagree with the majority so far. Saturated fat does not clog your arteries regardless of the rest of your diet! It does not add to the inflammation and it does not lead to harmful metabolic byproducts....

I look at each single meal as an entity of its own for myself and family. If I make only Primal meals at home they are healthy meals (yes High fat type healthy) then all is good. If my son sneaks chocolate milk and cheetos at school I don't think feeding him crappy tasting lean meats and butterless veggies at home will make that better. I actually feed him more filling healthy fats so that he eats less of that other crap even when I am not around.

So in the end my advice is keep up with the Primal meals and let the chips fall where they may. Heck Cordain's (paleo) first book recommended having 3 cheat meals a week and reducing that number over time. I still have one full on cheat day every week myself.

[primalmontana]

I definitely try to fill my family up with the good stuff, farm eggs, local grass-fed beef, veggies, and organic grass-fed dairy. My daughter is making some "good" choices at daycare (unsweetened applesauce instead of cookies!)

I understand that sat fat does not add to inflammation or clog arteries. However, in the presence of inflammation from high stress and high O6/O3 ratio, cholesterol does bind to the arterial walls- that's it's job. So I am concerned with this.

[Neckhammer]

....cholesterol does bind to the arterial walls- that's it's job. So I am concerned with this.

But cholesterol is not the bad guy in these instances. Its there to repair damage done. Nothing wrong with that. Its necessary. I understand your concern, but saturated fat is protective in a number of ways and any association it has with cholesterol is weak at best.

That said, I'm not telling you to put butter on your bacon . Just that bacon and eggs is still a good breakfast regardless of what you have for lunch and dinner.

[sbhikes]

I can see your point Neckhammer. And it's usually when people are eating processed meats like hot dogs and lunch meats that combining animal fat and junk food is bad. So a healthy meal of real meat and veggies would be a net positive in day that's like a sea of junk. But I still wouldn't go out of my way to add fats to foods my family ate if they also ate a lot of junk food. At least not if they had a weight problem. I would serve them lean and healthy things and make them look longingly at my delicious cream sauces and well-marbled steaks and tell them too bad, they have to earn the right to eat these things.

[magicmerl]

cholesterol does bind to the arterial walls- that's it's job. So I am concerned with this.

One of the functions of cholesterol is to act like a band aid over a wound (the inflammation). Lowering cholesterol to prevent CHD is like preventing fires by getting rid of all of the firemen.