Dear Mark: PUFAs
In last week’s Dear Mark I took up a reader question about trans fats. While we’re on the fat subject, I figured it was a good time to keep the conversation going and cover an email I got last week about polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs). Thanks to Brent for this one.
I loved your posts on trans fats last week, but now you have me wondering about all the other truths I know but can’t explain. How about polyunsaturated fat? When I was reading the Definitive Guide to Oils, I was having a rough time remembering exactly why PUFAs aren’t recommended. Can you jog my memory, Mark?
Let me take this one apart – separate out the good PUFA from the bad from the downright ugly. We’re talking everything from grains to nuts, corn and canola oil to fish oil. When it comes to PUFAs, it truly is a mixed bag.
What Are They?
Chemically speaking, polyunsaturated fats have more than one (hence the “poly”) double bond in their carbon chain. They’re further determined by the position of these double bonds in relation to the end of the molecule. For example, omega-3s sport a double bond three “links” down from the “methyl” end of the molecule.
These double-bonded carbon links are in essence missing their hydrogen atoms. (As you recall, if all the links have their hydrogen, you’re looking at a fully saturated fat.) Because they’ve got multiple “incomplete” double bonds to their name, polyunsaturated fats are, as a class, chemically unstable and prone to oxidation.
What Do They Do?
PUFAs can be a real Jekyll and Hyde. On the one hand, PUFAs include the essential fatty acids, including our favorite omega-3s. But when oxidation comes into play, we’re looking at a whole different animal. Heating in particular sets a bad course in motion, but simply exposure to air, light and even moisture can incite the process. We’re now looking at lipid peroxides, which initiate a free radical free-for-all. The free radicals make their way through the body pillaging at every turn. Their damage takes a toll on everything from cell membranes, to DNA/RNA strands, to blood vessels (which can then lead to plaque accumulation). The harm adds up over time in the organs and systems of the body and can cause significant impact, including premature aging and skin disease, liver damage, immune dysfunction, and even cancer.
What’s a Good Primal Type To Do?
Grok – and even Grandma – got their fat intake mostly in saturated forms. (Who among us doesn’t love butter, lard, tallow, and the like?) These days, we drown ourselves in PUFAs with all the vegetable oils (typically corn, canola, soybean, sunflower and safflower) we use. It’s a completely unnecessary response to the saturated fat scare that CW has drummed up over the last several decades. Those clowns that think Canola oil, no matter how rancid it’s gotten sitting in a hot warehouse for 10 months, is somehow still preferable to Grandma’s fresh rendered lard.
On the other side of the spectrum, some strict paleo followers, for example, choose to forgo nuts and seeds and their oils. I agree that avoiding PUFAs in general is a good rule of thumb, but I straddle the line – with a little extra time and care – in order to take advantage of what I deem valuable nutrient (PUFA) sources.
I like my nut butter (which I make myself) and occasional seeds for my salads. I buy them raw and as fresh as possible from sources I research. I’m a stickler for proper storage. Opaque containers. Refrigeration. Although I enjoy some nut oils on salads or other dishes now and then, I rarely buy them because I don’t want the remainder going bad in my frig. (Besides, I’d rather eat the whole foods in most cases than bother with a lineup of oils that had to go through at least some processing. I keep a couple good bottles of great quality cold-pressed olive oil (which, as you’ll remember, is mostly monounsaturated anyway) around and use them up quickly. Look for the darkest bottles you can find. Dated products are even better.
As for fish oil, I use and suggest the same basic principles. Buy the freshest products you can find. Buying direct from a reputable manufacturer offers the advantage of minimizing storage and transport time/scenarios. Some research suggests that taking fish oil with vitamin E reduces oxidation within the body. Refrigerate fish oil supplements to prolong freshness, but use them up in a timely manner.
Finally, I make sure my diet is chock-full of antioxidants (including vitamin E) and minerals to counter any oxidative stress from PUFAs or any other source. As careful as I try to be with PUFAs, there’s nothing wrong with a little extra insurance.
Now it’s your turn. Let me know your take – and intake (or not) – of PUFAs. Thanks as always for the questions and comments, and keep ‘em coming!
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Posted By: Mark Sisson
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So much to know about the almighty fat,
Where does it end!
The book The Coconut Oil Miracle does a really great job of explaining fatty acids and why the bad ones are bad and the good ones are good.
Videos with Bruce Fife, author of The Coconut Oil Miracle: http://www.ihealthtube.com/aspx/search.aspx?sp=BRUCE++FIFE&displayType=videos
Thanks for the video links. I read his book years ago and was turned onto coconut oil. It’s nice to hear the info playing while I research other sites!
It’s all too complicated, Mark.
You need to write your own book of food rules. like Michael Pollan’s, with these changes:.
1. Have food rules
2. Mostly simple rules
3. Not too many (like 10)
“Mark’s 10 Food Commandments,” maybe?
The 50 Best Health Blogs
I’m not much of a multivitamin person – I just know that they have a TON of ingredients. Do most of the name brands (like Centrum) have enough antioxidants in them to be useful, or we better off taking something more specific?
Good info Mark! A few things that come to my mind:
1. Two most important things to buy organic are coffee and butter. These are the two most chemically laden foods you can buy if you don’t choose organic.
2. There’s more olive oil sold today than is produced, the additive? Seems to be soy oil. To test if your olive oil is pure, leave it in the fridge overnight. There should be sediments at the bottom and a slight cloudy texture in the middle of the bottle (I haven’t tried it yet).
4. Do not eat Peanut Butter, even the natural kind; it contains a mould that has phyto-estrogens in it.
and remember the peanut is a legume
I just decanted my fish oil from a large bottle to smaller one for ease of use since it was getting low. Thing is, it still smelled fishy but a little bit rancid too??? I spent a lot of money on this fish oil (!) and have kept it 100% propely stored. Is it possible it went bad? OR, should I just use it b/c its not a concern???
What fish oil product did you buy?
This is why I package my fish oils in gel capsules.
Mark, have you thought about a Krill Oil supplement in your product line?
On a side note, your product ‘Responsibly Slim’ has ingredients like soy protein isolate, sunflower oil creamer and mineral blends in oxide form that is probably not the most bio-available. Would you agree that some of these are not very healthy?
Kishore, krill is no better (or worse) than fish oil. It all comes down to which resource you feel you’d rather not deplete first. Other than the fact that krill is more expensive, they are both excellent sources of EPA and DHA.
As for the Responsibly Slim, it was designed initially for weight loss and as a great-tasting source of protein. I never intended for it to replace real food. The soy isolate is present as a raw source of amino acids in minute amounts (a few grams) to enhance the PER of the Whey protein. It is not the same as soy oil or soy bean (no lectins, phytoestrogens, etc). The oxide forms of minerals are not unhealthy – some might be less bioavailable.
This could have been made as the most natural protein-powder meal replacement possible…but it would have tasted terrible – inedible, actually – and have rancidified on the shelf fairly rapidly. I chose to make it taste great, last long on the shelf and serve as a legitimate meal substitute now and then. I made it for me, and I use it regualarly.
I’m just going to comment with a quote from another comment I made on a similar post about vegeteble oils:
“I do think people forget animal fat is NOT 100% saturated – not even close. Even if you ate only animal fats you’d still be getting in a good deal of monounsaturated and some polyunsaturated fats. There’s really no need to go out of your way to eat any other kind of oil, besides a little omega-3 supplementation if you think you need it.”
In fact, animal fats from grass-fed/pastured have an excellent omega 6:3 ratio.
I don’t think eating some polyunsaturated oil is bad (if you follow the recommendations Mark suggests above), but if it doesn’t come natural to you to include them in your diet, you’re probably not missing out on much.
Grass fed beef only has 25mg of omega-3 per ounce while corn-fed has about 10-12mg. Either way, beef is not a great source of omega-3, you need a solid fish oil supplement. Good reasons to eat organic grass-fed beef? CLA content,low pesticide load, humanely finished (lower levels of adrenaline in the cow while slaughtered) and no hormones (eventhough there is some debate that animal hormones degrade as low as 135-150F, so if you cook your meat enough, no worries).
So what would the Udo’s 3-6-9 be? I started using that on my salad when I started reading the Primal Blueprint- instead of just normal Olive Oil.
Thoughts?
Dear Mark,
great post, as always.
I was reading this article recently, on antioxydant, which indicates that they could in fact be detrimental to metabolic changes after exercice – I was wondering was is your take on this?
Luc
http://www.pnas.org/content/106/21/8665.long
Luc, that’s a very unconvincing study, in my opinion. There are twenty years of study results favoring antioxidants and exercise. They need to do a whole lot more in this area to even begin to convince me to change my regimen.
“Grok – and even Grandma – got their fat intake mostly in saturated forms.”
Don’t forget the fat from nuts, almonds, seeds, wild olives, fish and shellfish!
I like to keep it simple…
-Coconut oil or ghee (homemade) for high heat cooking. Perfect oils for cooking a steak on the stove or making a stir-fry.
-Olive oil to dress my salads and give them flavor. I will only eat olive oil raw, no heating.
-I take fish oil daily.
I don’t have access to local, grass-fed lard or tallow, but the research makes me believe they are very good to use for cooking.
Most vitamin E oil [capsules] is made from soy oil.
I take fermented cod liver oil daily. Because of oxidation, I take it with red palm oil, which is naturally high in full-spectrum vitamin E oil and saturated fat.
A few years ago The New Yorker magazine did a story on [imported] olive oil (perhaps the article is on-line). Because demand is greater than supply, many of the producers/companies add soy bean oil to it. So, you have to be really, really careful that the olive oil you purchased (particularly, from Spain) is 100% olive oil. I’m lucky, in that I am able to get olive oil directly from the producer here in northern California.
Yup, that’s why I’ve switched to using olive oil only from California sources. I can even get it at the local farmer’s market.
I also use fermented high-vitamin CLO. I could be wrong, but I was under the impression that the fermentation process actually preserved and protected the oil from oxidation. I still consume it within about two months of opening the bottle, but I store it at room temp to make it easier to poor into the spoon. If kept in the fridge it gets very cloudy and viscous.
Great article Mark! Awesome info! There are just so many kinds of fats: good fats and bad fats! I take my fish oil. Antioxidants are so good for us. I liked what you said about getting the freshest products. That will help! Enjoyed the article, thanks!
Jen
If oxygen radicals are so bad, why is exercise so good? Think about it. We need occasional intense oxidative stress to keep our endogenous production of antioxidants in top shape.
There is enough minimal PUFA in meat (beef, pork, etc.) to give you all that is required. I would not touch vegetable oils or nuts.
An interesting article you may want to check out if youre taking fish oil http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/fishoil.shtml
So which side of the fence do you come down on for Sunbutter?
I researched this online, and found that there’s about three times as much PUFA as MUFA or saturated fat in sunflower seeds. And of the PUFA, it is almost all omega-6; there’s only trace omega-3. So sunflower seed butter wouldn’t rank too highly. Most commercially produced sunbutter has a ton of sugar in it anyway.
No natural fat is exclusively made up of saturated, monounsaturated or polyunsaturated fatty acids but some permutation of all three.
You could just eat animal sources of fat (no nuts or seeds) and get plenty of polyunsaturated fats – including the omega-3s from fatty/oily fish like salmon.
This is the direction I take.
As do I. I don’t even think eating fish is strictly necessary as long as your sources for mammal/poultry meat are pastured, since pastured meat typically has a good ratio of omega-6 fats to omega-3s in the first place. It’s also arguable that the genus Homo evolved in the grasslands of central, eastern, and southern Africa, as did our predecessors, the Australopithecines, and so would not have had much access to fish anyway. They were, however, evidently big ruminant eaters, which is one reason why I like to base my diet on beef and lamb (nothing to do with those being delicious foods, of course. Nothing at all.)
That is not to say that fish should be avoided – quite the opposite, really. I personally love the taste of fatty fish and eat smoked salmon or sardines once or twice a week. I try to source my meat, dairy, and eggs properly, so I don’t worry too much about the omega-3/omega-6 issue.
Of course all that comes with the caveat that I avoid industrial vegetable oils like the dickens and cook most of my food in pastured butter or beef tallow anyway.
I think all the nutritionist types who are jumping on the fish oil train would do much better to recommend people stop eating vegetable oils, but that’s just me…
nothign!
QUITTING fish oil was one of the best health decisions I took lately. Heavy metals, lowered immunity, disturbed glycemia were my primary reasons for trying it.
To ensure a proper supply of intact PUFA in my diet, I get a tablespoon of freshly grinded flaxseed and a teaspoon of a sunflower/evening primrose oil mix in my cottage cheese every morning (all organic and cold press). The list of benefits over a few weeks are spectacular — especially in terms of weight and appetite control, mood stabilization, stamina, stopped gum bleeding, and relief of all sort of aches.
This convinced me that overdosing on fish oil may be as bad an idea, if not worse, as overdosing on omega 6. We keep reading that we have plenty of omega 6 in our diet, but what part of it is actually intact, considering the heating, the poor storage (I’m very much with Mark on that one), not to mention all sorts of processing? Just because we get too many damaged omega 6 doesn’t necessarily mean we get enough omega 6 in general.
To boost my EPA, I still take fish oil instead of flaxseed… on fridays only!
I agree – just because omega-3′s were the ‘darling’ of the moment in health & fitness circles, everyone seemed to think the more the better! We only need them in very small amounts daily – the same with omega-6.
Another thing that annoys me is this striving for a 2:1 or 1:1 ratio between omega-3 and omega-6. If you look at which EFA is required for (and contained within) which tissues and cells in the entire body, you will find we have a requirement for around four times the omega-6 to omega-3! So a ratio of 4:1 is more realistic.
HI MARK, IT’S THE INDIVIDUAL’S GENETICS AND THE FOOD ENVIRONMENT THE GENETICS EVOLVED IN, THAT IS THE KEY TO OPTIMUM HEALTH. DR. JARVIS COMMENTED ABOUT THIS IN HIS 1958 BOOK (STILL IN PRINT) CALLED “FOLK MEDICINE”. HE EXAMPLE WAS, THAT AS YOU MOVE FROM THE MEDITERRANEAN AREA NORTH THROUGH EUROPE UP TO THE NORDIC AREA, THE GOWING SEASONS BECOME SHORTER, AND THUS THERE IS LESS VARIETY AND DIFFERENT FOODS THAT GROW IN EACH AREA.
I CALL IT “LATITUDINAL NUTRITIONAL GENETICS”. GENES DON’T CHANGE FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS, BUT YOU CAN MOVE A BODY’S (GENES) ALL OVER THE WORLD, BUT YOU WON’T CHANGE IT’S OPTIMUM NUTRITION INGREDIENTS WHICH GREW WHERE THEIR GENES EVOLVED. I HAVE RARELY SEEN THIS TAKEN INTO ACCOUNT IN MOST NUTRITIONAL ADVICE, STUDIES, DIETS AND DOCTOR’S TREATEMENTS. YET, IN MY OPINION, LOGICALLY IT SHOULD BE REQUIRED, SINCE WE ARE ALL DIFFERENT. MARC
Marc, no need to shout…The reason you don’t see this taken into account is because most of my readers live in parts of the world where DNA has mixed so thoroughly that we/they have become one giant international DNA mosaic retaining little, if any, of the possible localized genetic adaptions to a region in which ALL prior 300 generations lived and ate. That’s an example (one of many, actually) of why blood-type diets fail.
I agree – humans are the most homogeneous species on the planet. There is very little genetic difference between races, so little in fact that on a genetic level we are all one race – the human race.
What people mistake for genetic differences are actually epigenetic (how our environment influences which genes are expressed or not depending on where we live and what we eat). This can be passed down from generation to generation but can be altered relatively quickly, unlike actual genetic changes.
Here are the oils and fats I use:
Extra virgin coconut oil and olive oil
a small amount of cold-pressed Grapeseed oil
Real butter from pasture-raised cattle
Tallow – from pastured cattle
Lard – from pastured hogs
Green Pastures Blue Ice Royal Fermented Cod Liver Oil and Butter Oil mixture – it’s fabulous and completely digestible, even for people who have compromised immune/digestion (which applies to many people in developed countries and those who eat the Standard American Diet).
Here’s a link to this wonderful product – best I know of on the market: http://www.greenpasture.org/retail/?t=products&a=line&i=royal
Here’s an article I wrote about oils served in restaurants – most people who visit this site understand how unhealthy those are, but it’s important, I think, to learn why:
http://www.agriculturesociety.com/?p=1318
How about pinenut oil? Is it healthy?
“4. Do not eat Peanut Butter, even the natural kind; it contains a mould that has phyto-estrogens in it.”
Then you should also drop a lot of other food deemed healthy…
Table 1. Foods high in phytoestrogen content.
Phytoestrogen food sources Phytoestrogen content (?g/100g)
Flax seed
379380
Soy beans
103920
Tofu
27150.1
Soy yogurt
10275
Sesame seed
8008.1
Flax bread
7540
Multigrain bread
4798.7
Soy milk
2957.2
Hummus
993
Garlic
603.6
Mung bean sprouts
495.1
Dried apricots
444.5
Alfalfa sprouts
441.4
Dried dates
329.5
Sunflower seed
216
Chestnuts
210.2
Olive oil
180.7
Almonds
131.1
Green bean
105.8
Peanuts
34.5
Onion
32
Blueberry
17.5
Corn
9
Coffee, regular
6.3
Watermelon
2.9
Milk, cow
1.2
“Some studies indicate that phytoestrogens have health benefits including potential reduction in breast cancer, prostate cancer and cardiovascular disease risks, possible protection against osteoporosis (bone loss) and menopausal symptoms. Besides, both flavonoid and lignan phytoestrogens have antioxidant activity.”
So I’m a bit confused by your comment.
“On the other side of the spectrum, some strict paleo followers, for example, choose to forgo nuts and seeds and their oils.”
For me, this strains the credibility of the Paleo diet. From everything I’ve read, nuts, including peanuts, are probably the healthiest food humans can eat. I find it a shame that the year is 2011 and fairly soon we will be curing diseases with genetic manipulation and nano-technology but there is no real concensus on what we, as humans, should put in our mouths to lead a healthy life.
Why? What is wrong with other animal-sourced fat?