The Definitive Guide to Saturated Fat
It’s probably the one thing that prevents people from fully buying into the Primal Blueprint. Almost anyone can agree with the basic tenets – eating more vegetables, choosing only clean, organic meats, and getting plenty of sleep and exercise is fairly acceptable to the mainstream notion of good nutrition. The concept of Grok and a lifestyle based on evolutionary biology can be a harder sell, but anyone who’s familiar with (and accepts) the basics of human evolution tends to agree (whether they follow through and adopt the lifestyle is another question), at least intellectually. But saturated fat? People have this weird conditioned response to the very phrase.
“But what about all that saturated fat? Aren’t you worried about clogging up your arteries?”
In fact, “saturated fat” isn’t just that; it’s often “artery-clogging saturated fat.” Hell, a Google search for that exact phrase in quotations produces 4,490 entries (soon to be 4,491, I suppose). Most doctors toe the company line and roundly condemn it, while the media generally follows suit. The public, unsurprisingly, laps it up from birth. The result is a deeply ingrained systemic assumption that saturated fat is evil, bad, dangerous, and sinful, a preconceived notion that precludes any meaningful dialogue from taking place. Everyone “knows” that saturated fat clogs your arteries – that’s treated as a given – and attempting to even question that assumption gets you lumped in the crazy category. After all, if you start from such a “fundamentally incorrect position,” how can the rest of your argument be trusted? Thus, talk of the superior cardiovascular health of the Tokelau (with their 50% dietary saturated fat intake) or the Masai (with their diet of meat, blood, and milk) or the Inuit (with their ancestral diet of high-blubber animals) is all disregarded or ignored. If they even deign to listen to the facts, they’ll acknowledge the existence of healthy populations eating tons of saturated fat while muttering something about “genetic adaptation” or “statistical outliers.” It’s all hogwash, and it’s infuriating, especially when there’s so much literature refuting the saturated fat hypothesis. If you’re interested in more information on these three oft-cited high-saturated fat groups, check out Stephan’s entries on the Tokelau, the Masai, and the Inuit.
It all started, of course, with the infamous Ancel Keys and his Seven Countries Study, which tracked the fat consumption and heart disease levels of various nations. It was named for the seven countries that saw an increase in heart disease cases correspond with increased fat consumption, but it should have been named the Twenty Two Countries Study for all the data he omitted. Data, I should mention, that demolished his hypothesis of fat intake causing heart disease. The original paper noting Keys’ omissions was largely ignored and is tough to track down, but Peter over at Hyperlipid had access to it and shows the original graph with all the nation data included (with the Masai, Inuit, and Tokelau thrown in for fun represented by the red dots).
Try drawing a straight line through those data points… I dare you! As you can see, there is a faint, weak correlation between fat intake and heart disease, but it’s just that: a correlation. It shouldn’t confirm anything except the need to run controlled experiments to directly measure the effects of dietary fat. Unfortunately, that correlation was enough to get Keys the front cover of Time and widespread acclaim as the father of dietary science. His hypothesis gained traction in the scientific community and mainstream CW, a position it has never really relinquished. Subsequent controlled experiments to measure the effects of saturated fat have been either inconclusive, poorly designed, or completely unsupportive of the saturated fat-is-evil hypothesis, but because the starting point assumes it to be true, those inconclusive or unsupportive results become aberrations while the poorly designed studies become canon. Meanwhile, Keys’ peer, British scientist John Yudkin, was finding even more compelling connections between dietary sugar and heart disease, but his ideas gained no traction and garnered no significant follow up experimental studies. Keys got the cover of Time and heaps of public adulation; Yudkin was relegated to publishing now-out-of-print books, writing letters to scientific journals (PDF) that were only ignored, and languishing in relative obscurity. Americans, as you can guess, got the real shaft. I suspect I’m getting a little off track here, so I’ll just point people toward Good Calories, Bad Calories for a full discussion of the Yudkin-Keys issue.
For a quick summary of the Ancel Keys debacle to send to friends and family worried about your saturated fat intake (who might not be interested in reading a blog post), check out this quick clip from Fat Head.
What is Saturated Fat, Exactly?
Saturated fatty acids (SFAs) are referred to as saturated because all available carbon bonds are tied up with a hydrogen atom. That is, there are no openings for rancidity or spoilage, whereas a polyunsaturated fatty acid containing two or more pairs of double bonds without hydrogen atoms occupying the open space is wide open for oxidation. SFAs are shelf-stable, resistant to heat damage, and essential to many bodily functions. Roughly half of our cell membrane structure is composed of saturated fat, and saturated animal fats, like butter or fatty organ meats, contain huge amounts of essential fat-soluble vitamins (K2, A, D, among others). (Sure, you could just take them in capsule or liquid form, but the very fact that these (universally praised) vitamins naturally occur in evil saturated fat indicates that maybe, just maybe it’s not so evil after all. Researchers were particularly dumbfounded at one study (PDF) indicating high-saturated-fat fermented cheeses containing large amounts of Vitamin K2 actually reduced cardiovascular mortality, but they soon came to their senses and recommended opting for supplements rather than real food. Ridiculous.)
Saturated fat is also a fantastic source of energy, at least if you trust your body to make the right decision – otherwise, why else would we store excess carbohydrates as saturated body fat? In fact, when we burn body fat for energy, either through exercise or through dieting, we are quite literally consuming huge amounts of saturated (and monounsaturated) fat. Body fat is energy to be used for later; dietary fat is energy to be used immediately. Whether you’re burning through your stores of adipose tissue or downing flagons of warm ghee, all that fat goes through the same processes in your body to be converted to energy. Burn your ass flab, take a bite of fatty rib-eye – it doesn’t matter. Your body treats that fat the same way. As Richard and Tom have said before, losing weight is like eating pure lard, which has nearly the same fatty acid composition as human adipose tissue. To vilify saturated fat is to assume that, over the span of our evolution, our bodies have somehow developed a predilection for a deleterious energy source that contributes to cardiovascular disease. That’s absolutely preposterous, unless Darwin and company somehow got it all wrong with the whole natural selection thing. Somehow, I’m leaning toward trusting the millions of years old case study known as evolution.
Where Do They Get Off, Anyway?
Since Keys has been thoroughly discredited (not if you ask most people with any real say in the matter) and there are plenty of examples of groups eating a high saturated fat diet and retaining optimum cardiovascular health (“Those are just outliers!”), how does the outcry against saturated fat continue unabated? Well, it all starts with cholesterol, yet another vilified substance that our bodies naturally produce because, well, it’s completely essential to proper bodily function (though if you listen to the experts, our bodies are suicidal entities who can’t be trusted to do the right thing). Elevated cholesterol has long been fingered as a player in cardiovascular disease, and saturated fat has been shown to increase cholesterol levels, so saturated fat is therefore to be avoided. Sounds relatively sound. So high total cholesterol levels are bad, right? Not so fast.
As I detailed in my last big post on cholesterol, total cholesterol doesn’t tell the entire story, and it doesn’t even necessarily indicate risk for cardiovascular disease. Just take a look at the graph plotting global total cholesterol versus cardiovascular disease. There’s absolutely no positive correlation, and there may even be a negative correlation. Far more likely is that there’s no connection at all.
Nowadays, most “experts” will agree that total cholesterol isn’t everything; they instead move the goalposts and focus on LDL, or “bad cholesterol,” which is increased by eating saturated fat. Eating more saturated fat does seem to increase serum LDL (“bad” cholesterol) in certain cases, but it also increases HDL (“good” cholesterol). Okay, so saturated fat increases LDL, which is “bad.” So global levels of saturated fat intake should predict cardiovascular disease, right? It doesn’t seem to pan out that way. Do you see a correlation? I don’t.
Oh, but saturated fat increases triglycerides, they say, which – even I agree – are a good marker for poor heart health. Except that it doesn’t. Carbohydrate intake increases triglycerides, not saturated fat intake (honest – even the AHA will tell you that!). This is either a blatant lie, or it’s willful ignorance. Maybe even both. Either way, the end result is a continuation of the saturated fat vilification. The average person will go to cnn.com, read the headline, and skip ahead to the meat: “…eating lots of saturated fat can all add up to higher triglyceride levels.”
As far as heart disease goes, I still have yet to hear a workable process by which saturated fat contributes to it. It increases LDL, but the LDL it increases is large, fluffy, and almost impossible to oxidize. The layman’s notion of saturated fat literally clogging up the arteries like grease in a drain isn’t taken seriously by researchers anymore (who know it’s really all about inflammation and oxidized LDL), but it’s still the most prevalent explanation for why saturated fat is so bad. We now know that the HDL/triglyceride ratio is far more predictive of cardiovascular events than LDL, but still LDL gets all the attention. The “alternative hypothesis” (which is really the one that makes the most sense) focuses more on oxidized polyunsaturated fats and imbalanced Omega-6/Omega-3 ratios rather than saturated fat intake, which (as is pretty obvious by now) doesn’t matter one way or the other. The observational data doesn’t add up, the actual physiological process can’t be explained, and the body seems to prefer saturated fat. I have to ask… if we know that arteries don’t “clog up” from concentrated fatty acids in the blood like bad plumbing and that SFAs aren’t prone to oxidation, just what is the issue with saturated fat and heart health?
They’ve also tried connecting saturated fat intake with various forms of cancer. Breast, colon, pancreatic – you name the cancer, researchers have probably warned against saturated fat intake as a risk factor for it. But every study that suggests a link between saturated fat and cancer is purely observational. These aren’t controlled studies, folks – these are often studies in which dietary information is gleaned from questionnaires asking people about their dietary habits for the last five years. The subjects are often elderly or middle-aged, people busy with life and all its stresses… and they’re expected to remember their exact dietary habits for the past five years? Give me a break. And even if every one of the subjects were to recall their eating with perfect accuracy, what does a correlation with pick-your-cancer really tell us? It tells us that the Standard American Diet, with its massive amounts of grains, sugar, starches, margarines, vegetable oils, and yes, some red meat and artery-clogging saturated fat, is bad for us. The researchers may try to seize on a single aspect of the diet (usually saturated fat), but that only tells us that saturated fat has a bad reputation. Is it deserved? We certainly can’t draw any conclusions from an observational study confounded by dozens of other variables. And yet still the crazy headlines jump out from all angles: “Saturated Fat Linked To Pancreatic Cancer!”; “Colon Cancer And Red Meat: Is Your Burger Killing You?” I think I did a decent job disassembling the latest red meat (read: saturated fat) scare study, as did Dr. Eades.
What About Cordain’s Stance on Saturated Fat?
Although he’s softened his stance a bit recently, Loren Cordain still maintains that saturated fat never formed a significant portion of the Paleolithic diet. He even suggests that because it increases LDL, saturated fat does play some role in cardiovascular disease. While we’re all in debt for Dr. Cordain’s impressive work cataloguing the possible diet of Grok and highlighting the dangers of grains, legumes, and sugars, I believe it’s becoming increasingly clear that he’s got it wrong with his (albeit tempered as of late) condemnation of saturated fat.
To begin with, man has a taste for fat. It’s delicious, and that’s no mistake. Given the choice between a lean chicken breast and a fatty, crispy thigh, most people instinctively go for the thigh. Social anti-fat conditioning might direct a few of us toward the dry breast, but fatty cuts just taste better. I think even Cordain would agree that Grok would opt for the fatty cuts first; where we differ is in our opinion of Grok’s access to such fatty cuts. Cordain believes the fatty acid composition of ancient game was mostly monounsaturated, while I doubt it was so clear cut. According to the WAPF’s Mary Enig and Sally Fallon, the fatty acid composition of wild game available to native Americans varied, with the most prized sources of fat (kidneys) being primarily saturated. In fact, Vilhjalmur Stefansson, hallowed purveyor of pemmican and admirer of the high-fat Inuit diet, spent considerable time with the northern native Americans and noted that they seemed to “hunt animals selectively.” They would specifically pass on the tender calves and go for the older caribou, the ones with huge slabs of back fat that could be rendered and stored. This caribou fat was about 50% saturated. These are more modern animals, but they’re still wild, and I don’t see how the large animals being consumed by Grok would have inexplicably been low in saturated fat.
Cordain himself allows that most (73%) pre-agrarian hunter-gatherers got more than 50% of their calories from animal foods (with some going as high as 70%), and he figures that wild African ruminant fatty acid composition (a basic model for Grok’s game) was similar to that of pasture-raised cattle. I eat a lot of 100% grass-fed steak, and I will tell you: there is a fair amount of fat on certain cuts, including organs. It’s leaner than grain-fed, but not by much. Plus, when you consider that hunter-gatherers (Grok and modern alike) use the entire animal, especially the fatty organs, it becomes clear that saturated fat was consumed in relatively large amounts by many groups of paleo-era humans. Maybe not all of them, but it certainly wasn’t unheard of.
The justification for the anti-saturated fat campaign that has raged on for half a century is largely baseless. Even if saturated fat does increase (large, fluffy) LDL, it increases protective HDL right along with it, and cardiovascular mortality has never been explicitly demonstrated to increase with saturated fat intake. Several studies have been attempted and – though their results were inconclusive – supporters repeatedly cite them as evidence for the connection. The Finnish Mental Hospital study, which the saturated fat critics tend to hang their hats on, has been discredited for its poor control. Most analysis of the Lyon Diet Heart study focuses on the low levels of saturated fat, while the real benefits came from an improved Omega-6/Omega-3 ratio. If you’re interested in more breakdowns of the saturated fat studies, just visit Whole Health Source (or Hyperlipid, or Free the Animal, or any of the many Primal friendly blogs on the interwebs). One of the most important things we can do is band together to undermine the dangerous, counterproductive CW. We may have truth and science on our side, but – as the past hundred years of nutrition research have shown – it isn’t always enough.
I’d love to hear you thoughts, so hit me up with a comment. As a side note, due to the length of this post I almost made it a two-parter. What do you think? Are you okay with the length or would you have preferred receiving this article divided up into more manageable sizes?
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Posted By: Mark Sisson
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Ok, Where I’m a little lost is where to monounsaturated fats and polyunsaturated fats come from. Say I take a chunk of fat form a 100% grass fed steak or a slab of bacon is that all saturated fat or a mixture? How bout I eat an avacado, or some olive oil what kind of fat is that?
Maybe someone can explain this or link me to somewhere that does. Thanks.
A good guide (if somewhat simplified) is “is the fat a solid or liquid at room temperature?” Liquid fats (vegetable oils) tend to be polyunsaturated, while fats with higher melting points (animal fats) tend to be saturated or monounsaturated. Hydrogenation of vegetable fats (removing some or all of the unsaturated spots) is what makes margarine solid at room temperature.
Most nut oils tend to be monounsaturated, I believe.
Short answer: it’s usually a mixture.
However, mammals tend to store spare calories and pack on insulation as saturated fat, so a lot of lard, tallow, etc. will be saturated.
Seriously, google is your friend when it comes down to specific fat balances for a particular food. And you’ll need to be precise. Pasture-raised beef has less fat and much less Omega-6’s than CAFO (unethical) beef, but about the same amount of Omega-3’s.
You can easily check for yourself here: http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/search/
For example, 1 cup of lard contains:
saturated: 80.360 grams
monounsaturated: 92.455 grams
polyunsaturated: 22.960 grams
Barry Groves’s article “Fats and Oils: The Siginifance of Termperature” will clear it up for you ….
http://www.second-opinions.co.uk/temperature-of-oils.html
http://www.second-opinions.co.uk/fats.html
I have eaten a large amount of high quality fats even since I was a young kid. I have a resting heart rate in the 50’s and low blood pressure. When I eat bread or pasta it feels like I just had a cup of coffee, its a buzz and not natural at all. I love your blog and plan on buying your book, primal outdoor living and real eating is in my opinion the clearest path to a happy life. GREAT POST! Also high intake of saturated fat (quality fats) seems to correlate with lower lpa levels, and organic veg with enzymes do the rest, its so easy!
That certainly was definitive!
Thanks for taking another swing at CW. This is the same kind of “science” that is driving our leaders to try and implement a cap and trade system for greenhouse gases which will have disasterous consequences for our economy. When will we ever learn.
Rafiki I know avocado and olive oil, along with nuts, have good amounts of monounsaturated fats, but I don’t know the mix of fats or why.
The article is quite long, but I think this is an important issue. Especially since MDA-ers are even discussing this amongst themselves in the forums. It’s nice to have one good article when it comes to these “meatier” subjects (pun intended
This is a very interesting post.
I think the true media bias, (and it is bias) against saturated fats is really aimed at hydrogenated oils, which generally have a different C-chain length then the naturally occuring saturated fats.
As far as saturated fats in animals goes, I can tell you from my experience harvesting (and slaughtering) wild game like venison and elk are very lean meats, with saturated fat layered between muscle and organs. By comparison, cattle have fat marbled throughout the muscle tissue. This is the reason beef is more tender than most wild game.
i just don’t understand why saturated fats are so condemned. If they aren’t bad for you, what’s the big deal? Perhaps it’s the sfa from packaged foods and processed things that are causing cardiovascular disease. sfa’s that are naturally occurring such as from animals can’t be bad right?….we’ve survived, and have been healthy overall with them, for thousands of years.
They are condemned because the original studies that implicated saturated fats implicated solid fats (which included both saturated fats and synthetic trans fats). Nobody ever bothered to separate the data because they were considered equivalent.
Now that we now how horrific a franken-food partially hydrogenized fats are, we should redo many of the studies. Unfortunately, that costs money and most of those with research money see no issue with saturated fats being demonized. It’s just not on their radar.
Rafiki:
Rarely do you find a food that’s all one thing or the other. Most fats in food are a mixture of saturated, mono, and poly. The monounsaturated fat that makes up the bulk of olive and avocado is oleic acid, which is also the monounsaturated fatty acid that makes up most of that component in lard, and in your body fat (as Mark mentioned in the article). Olive and avocado tend to be about 15/70/15% breakdown amongst sat/mono/poly. Saturated fat in your body tends to be palmitic acid.
Even coconut oil, which is widely reputed to be all saturated fat, is actually 92% saturated fats (of various lengths, including medium chain fatty acids), 6% monounsaturated (again oleic), and 2% linoleic acid (the primary omega-6 fat in our diet).
Even lard is only around 40% saturated fat, with 50% made up of oleic acid and a bit of palmitoleic acid, and 10% of poly.
The polyunsaturated fraction is where the Omega-3 and Omega-6 fats (including the subset that are essential) show up. So the larger a fraction of a type of fat is polyunsaturated, the more you need to worry about the ratio of Omega-6 to Omega-3 in that food. Coconut oil at 2-3% and olive oil at 8% will give you very little omega-6, but grapeseed oil at 72% linoleic acid will give you a ton.
Wikipedia is a great reference for looking up the exact breakdown of fatty acids in a given food, fyi.
Thanks for clearing it up for me Nick. I appreciate it.
The length of the post is fine, Mark. Some topics require more details. No worries!
The length is fine.
I skimmed this post because I’m at work, but quick question:
If carbohydrates are what causes the triglyceride levels to rise, then why did the Atkins diet cause heart disease (unless I’m totally wrong there too)?
Was it the larger omega 6:3 ratio due to the mass consumption of conventionally (and terribly) grown meat?
Um, where do you get the idea that Atkins causes heart disease? Check this article for an opposing viewpoint: http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2006/11/hsph_low_carb.html
As for the omega6:3 ratio, it’s because the cow is fed grain instead of grass. Turns out that grain isn’t just bad for us, it’s bad for our food. (Check the omega 3:6 ratio of wild versus farmed salmon for a perfect example of this)
what most people don’t know is that the human heart uses saturated fats exclusively for energy
I like the longer article – thanks!
Great stuff. I wrote a post questioning the “saturated fat is bad” idea a couple of weeks ago:
http://www.nourishingdays.com/?p=1802
So what’s the typical fat profile of a human, both in good and bad health? And what implications might this have on what we regard as the optimal diet?
(DISCLAIMER: I have no interest in a cannibalistic diet. This question is raised solely in the interests of curiosity and discovery.)
According to the post above your question, the average human has an O3:O6 ratio of 1:17… So people are NOT good eats from this regard.
So that means that cannibalistic communities must be ridden with heart disease and cancer, right?
Maybe someone could follow up on that. :]
Cannibalism should be fine as long as you stay away from eating vegetarians or vegans
SerialSinner – you’re hilarious!
Things to do today . . . avoid cannibalizing vegetarians and vegans. Check.
A good read, thanks for that.
Obviously a contentious subject due in part to issues with the early research and the inflexible position of health organisations that followed.
As per 90% of the relevant litrature fails to address but it is the source of the fat (the food) and the context of that fat source (rest of diet) and the context of diet (lifestyle, activity type/duration) that would appear to be the issue.
Problem is, with so many confounds how long is it going to be before we get a decent body of supporting research which involves interventions as evidence.
A long time I fear.
excellent article, Mark.
for further reading, Anthony Colpo’s ‘Great Cholesterol Con’ is, imo, the most exhaustive and compelling dismantling of the lipid hypothesis.
Nice touch commenting on Cordain’s anti-SFA stance. I always found it odd that he would suggest that it was not plentifully available. I have not done rigorous scientific study on the topic as he supposedly has done. But I look at it this way.
a)HG sought out fattest game
b)HG sought out fattest parts of whatever game they killed
c)Even on a relatively lean animal like a caribou, deer, or moose, (the types of animals Cordain cites in his papers) which hover around 6-8% BF, the actual fat on this animal is huge.
For example, a moose sits at about 6% BF, but weighs 1500lbs.
Thats about 90lbs of fat!
game fat is typically 35-55% sat fat.
That means for a kill like this moose there is about 30-40lbs of pure saturated fat. How many tribal group memebers could gorge themselves on SFA with that ONE animal? And that’s a ‘lean’ animal!
Now tell me HG didn’t have access to SFA.
Really enjoyed your article about saturated fat. I appreciate how you always back up your statements with references to other scientific studies, articles, etc. Even if people don’t agree with your statements initially, it should force them to really question the information (or “CW”) that’s out there and possibly create a change of habits on their side.
Regarding meat consumption and the benefits to a Primal life style, what are your thoughts on how “green” raising livestock for human consumption is (ie, to help support this planet’s inhabitants…). In these modern times with much discussion on “environmentally sound” or “sustainability”, I’m uncertain how this planet’s remaining resources will support a planet of Groks. Sorry if you’ve posted about this previously. Thanks, Bob G.
(All my opinion and no scientific backup. Just my thinking.)
I don’t believe the Earth is spacially fit to feed a world of over 6.6 billion Groks. For instance, to pasture a cow takes up a lot more space than to raise a cow on a feedlot, yet let’s replace amount of the feedlot meat in the average American diet with 100% grass-fed/truly naturally grown meat. We wouldn’t have enough space in the US.
Then again, let’s say we somehow revived all the ecosystems we’ve changed/destroyed for farming and timber in the world and it’s previously natural inhabitants, well, reinhabited this forest. And let’s say that humans reverted to their former hunter-gatherer lives… Modern medicine would cease to exist and a lot of the population will die off from disease (and perishing in the survival of the fittest).. THEN we’d have enough resources.. ^^
Sorry. I just started ranting out my thoughts in a jumbled mannerin that last paragraph there. Teehee.
When you considered the feedlot cow did you consider the space it took to grow all the grain the cow eats? Did you account for all the oil (or other energy source) it takes to run the equipment that grows the grain? Pasture raised cows need much less energy input.
this just oozes awesomeness. thanks mark!
I find it hilarious that the AHA link that Mark provided in his post clearly mentions that carbs increase triglyceride levels.
They then go on to say that one therapy for lowering triglyceride levels is “eating a heart-healthy diet”. If you click on the “heart-healthy diet” link, you will be told to “Eat at least 25 to 30 grams of dietary fiber each day — preferably from whole grains, fruits, vegetables and legumes.”
Doesn’t whole grains and legumes have a lot of carbs?
No wonder this stuff is confusing!!
triglyceride
Awesome guide Mark, really hit the spot. This is the kind of thing I can pass on to people who question my high intake of fats, saturated in particular, maybe they may even listen.
Wow wow wow, Mark.
You’ve really been keeping track of everything, haven’tcha? My humble thanks for including me amongst such giants and heros.
This is a bit tongue in cheek, but with regard to that graph plotting sat fat against CHD deaths, I had a physicist blogger, Robert McLeod of Entropy Productions, run those numbers to check for a trend.
http://freetheanimal.com/2009/03/saturated-fat-epidemiology-for-math-geeks.html
His notable quote:
“Although the statistics appear fairly poor, we can make one statement of interest. A positive slope is equivalent to a positive correlation between CHD and saturated fat (i.e. saturated fat bad!) and a negative slope is a negative correlation (i.e. saturated fat good!). Evaluating that statement using confidence intervals we have a 0.9 % chance of a positive slope and a 99.1 % chance that the slope is negative.”
cool statistics
plus doesn’t SFA increase Testosterone…which is good by me!
but… that wouldn’t be great for ladies, right? I wonder if sat fat regulates it better instead of just automatically increasing the hormones.
I disagree with your comments about large LDL:
“On a per-particle basis, and after adjusting for small/large LDL particle correlation and risk factors, each 100 nmol/L increment in small and large LDL-P was associated with 7.4% and 7.1% higher CHD risk”
http://circ.ahajournals.org/cgi/content/meeting_abstract/116/16_MeetingAbstracts/II_219-a
http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=18739694
http://circ.ahajournals.org/cgi/content/meeting_abstract/116/16_MeetingAbstracts/II_787-c
Thus, even an increase in large LDL-C is artherogenic and at just about the same rate as increases in small LDL-C.
Excellent post!! I’m a big sat fat fan and get pretty tired of hearing how bad it is!!
My own experience with low carb diets resulted in little change in HDL, LDL and a major drop in triglycerides. Once I increased my sat fat intake, however, triglycerides dropped more and HDL almost doubled!
Also….from an anti-inflammatory angle, sat fats are protective, while veg oils (particularly omega6) are pro-inflammatory!
My last test had my HDLs at 134. Trigs remain under 50.
Curiously, where I had calculated LDL of just over 100, a direct measure put it in around 70.
No surprise, I eat lots of sat fat too, especially via coconut milk, oil and butter.
Awesome article, it was really time for a definitive guide. It’s better that it is in one article, so that people can find and read it more easily.
The prospective studies (e.g. Western Electric & Framingham) didn’t ask what you’d eaten for the last 5 years and they weren’t just “elderly and middle-aged”. Read the literature rather than summaries for the general population. The studies collected both dietary diaries (prospective) and short term recall and also measured serum cholesterol (and bunches of other stuff).
There is a clear relationship between total serum cholesterol and mortality over the following 20-25 years in individuals. The dietary results were not as strong; and yes they adjusted for smoking, blood pressure and other causes. Some of the analyses also looked at other diets. The researchers weren’t dummies.
There is a small ethical problem with running long term randomized diet trials with human beings (e.g. mortality trials), so its silly to criticize the researchers for not doing so.
The physicist who analyzed the cross-sectional country-level data might want to look up the definition of “ecological fallacy”, something epidemiologists are quite familiar with. Keys knew about that, too.
“The physicist who analyzed the cross-sectional country-level data might want to look up the definition of “ecological fallacy”, something epidemiologists are quite familiar with. Keys knew about that, too.”
I did tag that as tongue in cheek.
If researchers were mindful of the ecological fallacy, then they wouldn’t even put this sort of data together in the first place.
Instead, if they get the results they’re looking for in the first place, it’s fine & dandy. If not, it’s ecological fallacy, outliers, or simply ignored.
Ecological fallacy or not, the trend is not positive, not remotely so — 99.1% not remotely so — and it clearly will never even be close.
What you are in essence claiming is that if a certain cross-section of the population of those countries were randomized and then studied similarly, the trend would miraculously go positive.
Bullshit. You’re not fooling anyone.
“There is a clear relationship between total serum cholesterol and mortality over the following 20-25 years in individuals.”
The clear relationship is net zero. There is a slight negative correlation between death from heart disease and total cholesterol and a slight positive correlation between death from cancer and total cholesterol. When you add up the two curves, there’s a local minimum at 240 for men and 220 for women.
Ah the tragedies of using an intermediate result instead of a terminal result.
And then, when you begin looking at all-cause mortality and then begin looking at different age groups and gender, all bets are off.
Richard
“What you are in essence claiming …” I am not claiming anything. I pointed out the fallacy in the plot, and yes, the literature is loaded with counter-examples where the between group goes in one direction and the within group (individual) goes the other. When you publish stuff like that, the text usually lists all the caveats, which is why you need to actually read the articles. Sometimes you have to go with the data you have, and follow-up with the stronger studies later.
Ross: I believe the relationship in the Western Electric study held between total mortality and total cholesterol, as well as cardiac mortality and total cholesterol. I’ll have to look it up. Its been 30 years since I wrote that.
Thanks , great article. As always so well documented, for further readings.
Hi Mark,
I like your articles, and I agree with you about fats.
However, I wonder about dietary information beyond “eat what’s natural (i.e., non-processed food, or efls’s, and being as “natural” as possible (untampered with, organic, etc.)), in season, from your local area.”
These studies all seem to point to one thing – people live for about 75-100 years.
The folks from the areas with higher mortality rates live in places where medical care and hygiene are comparatively low; and in some cases, where warfare or death due to violence is comparatively high.
The human body, like any organism, has a high degree of adaptability (which is why we’re still around), and it seems to me that the body will find a way to subsist on anything “natural” as long as it isn’t poisonous (either as a quality or as a quantity (excess)).
Fats, carbohydrates, proteins…whatever, in any crazy combination, as long as you aren’t getting too many or too few of one over the other two, which doesn’t really happen if you’re eating the way mentioned in the first paragraph.
I don’t know, though, I’d really like to hear/read your thoughts on this.
Thanks
That’s the problem, Josh. The body can “subsist” on just about anything. (Seaweed and show leather in the case of many Irish during the potato famine.) But subsist is not what we are after here at MDA. We are after “thrive.”
The studies that you posted are interesting, and they certainly give pause regarding conventional wisdom regarding a proper diet. I just have a little problem with the evolutionary arguments. No, I’m not a creationist. But the process of natural selection doesn’t really “care” whether we die of heart attacks at the age of 40, as long we have the opportunity to reproduce first.
That’s certainly true, but I don’t see why the very same dietary patterns that allowed us to flourish and survive until reproduction would then turn on us.
It doesn’t happen with dogs, who are fertile almost immediately. When you feed them the correct ancestral diets (raw meat, organs, bones), they far outpace kibble-fed dogs long past reproduction.
We aren’t dogs, but we are animals.
Larry:
MS also doesn’t care if you live to be 125. It just worked out that healthy people live into their 70s, 80s & sometImes beyond.
There was no imperative, just worked out that way. Perhaps humanity went through long periods of thousands or tens of thousands of years that survival was so arduous that only the super strong even made it to reproduction. That pressure for super vitality could be what eventually gave us the ability to live far beyong our ability to progenate our genes.
Actually natural selection does care how long you live after you are no longer able to reproduce. Grandparents can gather food for the mother too pregnant to get out and gather for herself. Grandparents latter can either watch the children while parents gather food, or gather food for the grand kids. Of course there is a point where too many old folks around are taking food from those who are able to reproduce.
Slowly, slowly we’re starting to see articles moving away from the accepted conventional wisdom show up in the mainstream outlets. Check out this one from Forbes (of all places):
http://www.forbes.com/2009/07/07/healthiest-foods-nutrition-lifestyle-health-healthiest-foods.html
“Remember “whole” foods means exactly that–foods in their original form. Our robust ancestors did not eat “low-fat” caribou; we don’t need to eat “egg-white” omelets.”"
Wild game is, almost by definition “low fat.” Ever eat elk? Very little fat compared to a similar cut of beef.
This couldn’t have come at a better time for me.
It is a little long, but definitive guides are supposed – definitive! If its too long for some, bookmark it and come back!
GREAT POST!
Love to see these kind of well researched articles…Now if we can just get everyone to read it!
Two cents: I prefer reading the whole dang thing – the subject is engrossing, and one I’ve had to deal with continually in my fitness career. I tried veganism for up to 2.5 years and “failed to thrive.” That wan, drawn, lobo look. I’ve been vegetarian for 42 years but now occasionally eat fish when my body seems to demand it.
The problem I find with sat-fat is that, while the foods that contain them make me feel happy and healthy, they ARE fattening. The moment I add even small amounts of dairy, I start gaining weight – even when I’m running 40 mpw and lifting heavy 1-2 days, walking 2 days. I conclude that sat-fats are needed metabolically, but only in fairly small amounts; otherwise, they get stored in butts and guts.
As an athlete I find that a buttermilk smoothie is a marvelous recovery drink, and eggs are a wonderful pre-hard-exercise prep. But I can’t avoid drawing the obvious conclusion from my experience – eating sat-fat at other times adds pounds. And, so does eating more than small amounts of mono-fats (olive oil, avocado). Perhaps other factors are in play: my sedentary hours as a writer, a placid metabolism – who knows?
The (strange to me) exception is almonds and almond butter, which I’ve read is calorie-neutral; in fact, I can eat several tbsp daily without gaining an ounce.
I’d love to hear Mark’s thoughts about this. “Most good things, pursued to excess, become liabilities.” Or?
Let me offer a counter anecdote.
I have lost 70-80 pounds of fat over the last two years while gaining 10-20 pounds lean for a net loss of about 50. I am now in weight territory not navigated in about 15 years.
How? Three things:
1 Lots and Iean lots of sat fat. Coconut milk, oil, butter. And lots of meat and I’m pretty good at fatty sauces.
2 I only eat twice per day
3 I practice IF
4 I work out only an hour per week at most, 2 intense sessions, one very heavy lifts, the other a crossfit mélange.
I also walk about 20 miles per week. However, I began that in 2000 and in the ensuing years to 2006, doing only that for a fitness strategy, put on 25-30 pounds.
Runbei, the problem may be that you defer to too many carbs to fuel your 40 mpw running habit. A vegetarian that eats low fat must, of necessity, make it up in carbs (’cause there sure ain’t a surplus of protein there). A higher carb diet means more insulin. More insulin means that more fat (of all types) AND excess carbs gets stored rather than burned.
I eat loads of saturated fat, and I’ve lost 38 pounds in the last 6 months (eating primal!). That’s the weight I put on from 13 years of vegetarianism. There’s no way saturated fat makes me fat.
Dairy doesn’t agree with some people. It has nothing to do with the fat…it’s the protein that’s hard to digest. It could be you’re sensitive to dairy. Try eating meat and ditching the dairy.
As Mark put it the problem is the carbs.
I am also eating a lot more saturated fat these days, and have lost about 15 pounds. I guess at most 15 more to go. I am already as lean as I was in College.
I am still mostly vegetarian, and still eat lots (not as many as before) carbs. But I make sure that I go low carb some times. This I do by IF or by eating a grilled chicken as dinner.
I also eat much less carbs than before.
You might want to take care of not eating too much almonds/butter because of the omega6 problem. You are taking fish to balance though.
I am also mostly sedentary, being on the computer most of my day. The only exercise is heavy lifting 2-3 times a week.
Almonds fill you up quickly. Maybe you aren’t realizing it, but after you eat almonds, you don’t eat foods you otherwise would’ve eaten if you hadn’t had those almonds that, in the time that the almonds kept you full, would have added up to more calories than the almonds.
Am I making any sense? xD
Don’t eat fat and carbs together (where together is over a 1-2 week period). As you already know, eating low-low-fat means failure to thrive. Eating low-low-carb, you’ll thrive and you’ll keep the weight off.
The worst of both worlds is “balanced” carbs and fat. The presence of the carbs guarantees a big insulin response and all of the fat gets packed away.
runbei, I am an endurance athlete who will train 10-15 hours a week. Even with a lead up to a half ironman in early May, I was consuming 4000 calories a day, with 2200 of those coming from fat (mostly MUFA, some PUFA and SFA). CHO was about 30-35%, protein made up the rest. I also lost weight in the last month leading up to it (timing of eating was just as important as # of, and context of calories).
Have you considered total number of calories? Let’s say you consume 3000 calories/day w/ a low fat/sat fat diet. But when you add add’l fat/sat fat, you don’t cut carb, which means your calories go up (lets say to 3500). If you maintain your current volume of running, then you will gain weight since you are consuming more calories than burning.
I was a vegetarian for quite a while too. What I found was that as I got into my thirties, it didn’t matter how much exercise I did, I would slowly gain fat around the gut. I switched to a high meat/fat, low carb primal diet a few months ago, and now I’m back to the same weight and body composition I had when I was 20, only thicker and even leaner, and I feel much better than when I was a vego. Much more even moods is a standout.
I’ll be interested to see what happens when I start doing a few weights…
I like turtles.
I like you. :3
Mark, the article definitely isn’t too long because this is important info. And. . .I believe you will need to keep putting this topic up periodically with the latest research you find. The whole saturated fat phobia is probably the toughest one to overcome for many of us, and, I’m afraid, many believe what they have been taught over what they have experienced. Say it again, say it again, say it again.
Mark,
Thanks for the great article. Definitely hte mainstream media has gotten it all wrong and they want us to believe their way!. I am a low carber for the past 1 year consuming 80% fat every day in a 2300 calorie diet. All my vital parameters are normal. I check comprehensively once in 3 months.
One quick question: If sat fat is rigid and can withstand heat, why coconut oil has a low smoking point than PUFA oils and Olive oil? I personally take a Tbsp pf coconut oil and swallow. I do not fry anything using coconut oil though I see that coconut oil is much better one compared to PUFA and MUFA oils.
Please reply.
Thanks
Venkat
Thanks, Mark, Richard, and others for sharing your interesting weight-loss results with high-sat-fat diets. I’m intrigued. Mark, I’ll search the site for your insights on getting just enough carbs for a given level of exercise, and timing them right. Potatoes give me excellent energy, but of course any excess just turns to fat.
Proof’s in the pudding, as they say…so if the people telling me my diet of 70 percent (high quality) fat is so bad have off the chart low tryglycerides, off the chart high HDL cholesterol (literally, my lab results have a little asterisk on them, not within normal range! And my lipids used to be so bad that my doc was threatening statins!) and healthy LDL, low body fat and a flat tummy and can climb cliffs and mountain bike up killer hills for hours on end at age 47…then I’ll say their diet must be good, too.
I was just talking to my friend Chris about PB and how saturated fat has gotten a bad rep and how carbs are the reall killer. I turned him on to the Apple so hopefully he reads this article.
Great timing Mark.
On my part, when I am telling about Saturated fats to others I don’t start from saturated fats at all. I just tell them that Carbohydrates convert to Triglycerides which are saturated fats. Now when you put things that way, you have put forward the idea that carbs are at least as bad as saturated fat.
After this I explain that the reason why carbs are converted to saturated fats is because it is the preferred fuel source for the body. Otherwise why would the body do this.
I also tell that the ghee (butter oil) is very good, and traditionally everybody in our country used to have it. Then I tell them why that was a good thing to do.
I also talk about the problem of high omega 6 and why refined oil are bad for them. People (in India) are more amenable to thinking of traditions as good. So I tell everybody that traditional foods are good, because they use a lot of healthy ghee.
The thing is nobody can contradict what I have said. But unfortunately, they just cannot go back to eating ghee. I know people who have stopped fearing ghee, but they have not gotten rid of refined oil. People don’t change unless the see a present danger.
Obesity is at best a far away problem.
The website above that was posted in response to the “Atkins causes heart disease post” : http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2006/11/hsph_low_carb.html totally refutes the primal lifestyle doesn’t it? Unless I am reading correctly, it states animal fat does cause heart disease.
OK…first off, consumer affairs staff are likely not medical people. Even if they are, they likely look at mainstream medical for criteria to decide if something is “good” or “bad” for us.
Low carb diets lower triglycerides, increase HDL, both of which are felt by just about anyone to be a good thing. Low carb diets also “may” increase total cholesterol and LDL cholesterol.
“Experts” have long claimed that these 2 things are indicators of heart disease or impending heart disease. The research, however, does not prove this!
The latest research now seems to implicate small particle LDL as the biggest problem. Other studies that shown that low triglyceride levels lead to a higher % of large fluffy LDL and a smaller % or small dense LDL. So, even if your LDL does go up on low carb, it’s likely that, since your triglycerides are probably low, your LDL are mainly the large fluffy ones!
Additionally, when you have low triglycerides (under 100) the formula used to estimate LDL doesn’t work! With low triglycerides only direct measurement of LDL is accurate and when done usually shows a much lwer level than the calculation does!
http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/weight-loss/low-carbohydrate-diets-increase-ldl-debunking-the-myth/
Great article Mark and the length was long but about right.
This fear of saturated fat is getting out of hand. My daughter took her 2 year old in for her routine check-up, and because she (the 2 year old) increased in weight (and height) from the below 75th percentile to midway to the 95th percentile, she was advised to avoid saturated fats. For a 2 year old. I told my daughter I thought that was ridiculous, and fortunately she agreed. They don’t eat junk food, and the kid loves peas and apples. I still can’t get over it. A 2 year old avoiding saturated fat.
I give my 11-month old the fat trimmings off of roasts. She loves it (as long as it isn’t too strongly spiced) and goes crazy for more.
Saturated fat is ALL GOOD in our household. (mind the specific fatty acids too, but saturated animal fats and coconut/palm oil are net positive).
The only bone I have to pick with this article is the argument that saturated fat is healthy AS INDICATED BY the human preference for eating it.
Um…no.
Not “No, humans don’t love saturated fat,” but, “No, thinking something tastes good doesn’t make it healthy.” Sugar is a prime example of this. The human taste buds LOVE sugar. And that means it’s obviously good for us? Not so much.
Otherwise, great article.
We evolved taste buds to help us discern between good and bad foods available in our surroundings.
We love sugar because sugar is a very high quality, but SCARCE, nutrient. It makes sense that we are hard-wired to take as much advantage as if we happened to encounter it.
I had the exact same thought. I think you should remove it. All your other arguments are good; this silly statement detracts from your credibility.
The point is that because humans prize fatty meat over lean meat, our ancestors would have done the same – which means we’ve been picking the fatty cuts over the lean ones for many thousands of years. Our long and storied history with certain foods is what makes them suitable and healthy to eat.
I think it’s a great article, and the length is fine by me. Lots of interesting comments too. I do get a kick out of the AHA being willing to admit that high triglycerides can be caused by “and/or a diet very high in carbohydrates”…
Yet they can’t even bring themselves to *say* “cut your carbs” when they talk about how to get your triglycerides lowered. As an another poster commented, they point you to the carb-heavy “heart healthy diet”, and they *do* say: “limit beverages and foods with added sugars” – which is a step in the right direction, but they just can’t say the C-word.
I *love* my sat fats! I had some pork chops from pastured pigs last week. They tasted like pork chops I remember from childhood, nice and juicy with a nice rind of fat, unlike the hockey puck chops you find in most supermarkets. I also love my organic butter from grass-fed cows, my raw almonds and my organic almond butter, and right now I’m eating veggies straight from my own garden, and soon my raspberries will be ripe too. I don’t miss bread, pasta, rice, grains, sugary items at all. I avoid all trans and hydrogenated fats, and PUFAs – and I feel so much better.
Of course neither am I losing an ounce, despite having over 100+ pounds to lose, but I guess that is another sad story for another day.
Can anyone further explain how carbohydrates once converted to triglycerides in the liver are stored in fat cells as saturated fat? I tried reading the article referenced to this statement, but honestly I found it a bit over my head. Are triglycerides saturated fatty acids by definition and chemical make up, or is there some process that converts triglycerides to another form when they become stored? Thanks:0
Most of the time, lipids (oils) are carried in our blood by lipoprotein (cholesterol) particles (which resemble balloons with gates to let the oils in/out). The triglycerides inside those cholesterol particles are carried from place to place in the body, most of them delivering the lipids where needed.
When we eat fructose, however, there is a problem. Fructose is HIGHLY reactive/damaging, much more so than glucose, and glucose is pretty risky stuff (google “Advanced Glycation Endpoints” for more). Luckily, blood from the gut passes through the liver before it reaches the rest of the body, and the liver gets a chance to “clean up” the fructose.
When your liver detects fructose coming from the gut, it stops everything else and starts converting fructose to fatty acids, which get bound to a glycerol molecule (can be from the blood or synthesized as needed) and you’ve got a triglyceride. So the liver tries to pack these triglycerides into lipoproteins so that they’ll be carried normally in the blood, but it fairly quickly runs out. For whatever reason, the liver really is in an emergency mode and DOING NOTHING ELSE, not even creating new LDL particles, and fairly quickly, the amount of triglycerides exceeds the available carrying capacity of the LDL already in the liver.
At this point, any additional triglycerides spill into the blood as little blobs of fat floating around in the mostly water of the blood. These little blobs of fat are what is being measured by “free triglyceride” in the cholesterol test, and they are a much higher predictor of heart risk than LDL or total cholesterol or anything so crude.
Some further thoughts. I’ve been a health nut and athlete for 41 years. Along the way, I’ve tried extreme high-carb and low-carb diets. Both failed. On high-carb/no-fat (Pritikin), I lost 2 lbs/week but suffered greatly reduced athletic performance and baffling midsummer immune ailments (bronchitis). The moment I added 1 tsp of flax oil to my daily diet, sprong! went my energy.
Later, I tried extreme low-carb. I lost a ton of weight, but my 3.5-hour long runs became death marches. The body’s most carb-hungry organs are the brain and heart, and the body rigorously protects their energy supply by shutting down other systems if we don’t eat enough carbs. When I ate just ONE CUP of rice pilaf, sprong! went my energy.
I tried a vegan Eat to Live diet but failed to thrive. Finally, I concluded that balance is necessary, and that what really counts is the proportions: JUST ENOUGH carb, just enough fats including sat-fats, and let the bull out of the barn when it comes to fresh, organic fruit and veggies.
BTW, on Eat to Live I ate TONS of fruit even as the weight melted away; it takes enormous amounts of oranges, watermelon, etc. to put on weight. Starchy carbs are a very different matter: a very small amount goes straight to the fore and aft nether portions. Anyway, I thought it might help to share these thoughts. I’m presently just trying to figure how much is “JUST ENOUGH” of both fats and carbs. With all respect, I do wonder if 70 percent is WAY more than enough for metabolic needs.
I also find that for aerobic activity, just enough carbs turns a slog into a fun time.
But I do pack in as much fat as possible, and really try to find that minimum amount of carbs that keeps me going.
As for fruit, watch out for the fructose. In moderation, there’s no problem, but if you scarf it down or drink lots of full strength juices, you can quickly overwhelm your liver’s capacity to safely convert it to LDL and you end up with very high triglycerides (one of the most significant risk factors for heart problems).
Great article Mark! I was following the Paleo diet for about 9 months, but disagreed on the saturated fat stance based on other readings I found. That is why I switched to Primal (as well as every other aspect of the Primal Blueprint). As far as the length of the article – I like meat.
Notice arrived of a comment by Ryan that hasn’t appeared here yet – I assume it will. Anyway, Ryan, thanks – your idea seems entirely right: total calories count. Lots of food for thought here.
runbei,
If you want some evidence that you can achieve elite athletic performance on a high-fat,low-carb diet, you should check out the CrossFit games website and look at what these guys put themselves through over the course of 2 days.
http://games2009.crossfit.com/
Just to give you a sense, they started with a 4.5 mile trail run with brutal hills. Followed that up with deadlifts that started at 305 pounds, and increased by 10 pounds all the way up to 505 pounds. Then a quarter mile run uphill carrying 70 pounds worth of sandbags. They finished day one w/ 2 more equally brutal workouts that required strength and endurance. Day 2 was even more insane in terms of the overall strength, endurance and athleticism required just to finish the workouts.
The overwhelming majority of these athletes are following a low-carb, high fat Paleo/Primal diet protocol. Most of them say their performance did not take off until they lowered their carbs and increased their fat intake. Their is an almost cult-like devotion to bacon and all of it’s fatty goodness by the CrossFit crowd. The guy from my gym that qualified for the games eats a whole avocado every day and less than 150g of carbs.
To me this group of athletes is like a giant control group that is just begging to be studied by modern scientists. Fit, strong, athletic, healthy individuals eating high fat, low carb and doing short intense workouts and virtually no long cardio sessions.
Anyhow, just more anecdotal evidence (from a fairly large population of people) that you can be fit and perform well on low carbs.
I think the bad reputation of saturated fats comes in part from the hydrogenation of vegetable fats like coconut or palm that makes them into trans fats. Before we knew they were trans, we just thought they were saturated. Plus, the meat industry did their own product in by feeding it grain, loading it up with anti-biotics and hormones. Which are stored in the fat of most animals. Eat those animals and get all that unnatural stuff in your body, naturally, you get heart disease.
No one bothered to look closely at the omega-6/omega-3 ratios of most commercial beef or the hormones or the conditions they were raised in, or the hydrogenation issue. They just labeled it as “FAT. FULL OF FAT. BAD” and went on their merry way.
I guess I’m kind of straddling the fence, because I’m trying to do low carb, but without much animal fats or protein. For me, that means lots of mono-unsaturated fats from avocados, pecans, walnuts, flaxseed, peanut butter, and extra virgin olive oil. Any comments on that, anybody?
High protein, low fat – which I think is what this Cordain guy was recommending people – is dangerous. You get depleted of Vitamin A, which already too low by miles in modern diets. Real hunter-gatherers, as opposed to fantasy ones invented by intellectuals, never did that. The Indians had a term for when you couldn’t get enough fat – “rabbit starvation”. Fortunately, they usually had plenty put by.
Low protein, low fat. That’s another kettle of fish. As you also say low carbohydrate as well, you get me thinking “what’s left?” I guess a lot of nuts, as you say.
it’s probably inadvisable. A doctor called Edward Howell did try eating loads of nuts at one time. He got extreme nausea after after a couple of months. He thought this was down to the enzyme inhibitors present in them. What health problems there might be in the longer term, I don’t know.
They’re a good food source in moderation. And in larger quantities would be OK if you dealt with the enzyme inhibitors by soaking them overnight in salt water and then dehydrated them, so they’d keep. They do contain a lot of minerals and also B group vitamins, like meat (and wheat bread) does.
But meat is a very good food source, too. Most people in traditional societies ate plenty of it, and their health tended to be very much better than that of others. You don’t get B12 except from meat (or eggs or dairy produce). You probably do want some saturated fat, too – although you can make your own (as covered in the essay above). Then there are those all-important fat-soluble vitamins. There is a precursor to A in carrots, for example. But I understand that not everyone can convert it, and really it’s best to eat those animal fats for their high content of A and D (and others) if for no other reason. The amounts of A & D in the traditional diets of some of the last surviving hunter-gather groups around in the 1930s were found to be some ten times greater than that in the American diet of the day. The gap would be wider now. It’s probably a good idea to start the day with two teaspoons of cod liver oil and two of butter, if you do nothing else.
Mark – could you please post links to larger scale versions of the second two graphs:
- showing mean total cholesterol vs. cardiovascular mortality rate
- showing saturated fat energy (%) vs. coronary heart disease (deaths/100k/year)
Thanks!
Yes, the well studied link between saturated animal fat and cancer/ heart disease will keep primal type diets too controversial for mass adoption, just as the Atkins diet had its 15 minutes and is now widely discredited.
Pubmed study for support:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19307518?dopt=Citation
“Yes, the well studied link between saturated animal fat and cancer/ heart disease will keep primal type diets too controversial for mass adoption, just as the Atkins diet had its 15 minutes and is now widely discredited.
Pubmed study for support:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19307518?dopt=Citation”
Ah yes, the ludicrous and widely discredited MR-FIT study. LOL.
the following is from the TomMed post above…
“CONCLUSION: Red and processed meat intakes were associated with modest increases in total mortality, cancer mortality, and cardiovascular disease mortality.”
For the record, I generally like the idea of primal, but I’m on the fence about sat-fats and cholesterol. I understand that mainstream beliefs on the matter can be questioned. However, I notice that people on this board have also “made up their minds” like all the the mainstream doctors etc. that are (slightly) ridiculed on this site. The links below list scientific studies that dismiss the idea that LDL particle size “matters” for heart disease. I would like to see someone address the findings of these studies…
rts wrote
“I disagree with your comments about large LDL:
“On a per-particle basis, and after adjusting for small/large LDL particle correlation and risk factors, each 100 nmol/L increment in small and large LDL-P was associated with 7.4% and 7.1% higher CHD risk”
http://circ.ahajournals.org/cgi/content/meeting_abstract/116/16_MeetingAbstracts/II_219-a
http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=18739694
http://circ.ahajournals.org/cgi/content/meeting_abstract/116/16_MeetingAbstracts/II_787-c
Thus, even an increase in large LDL-C is artherogenic and at just about the same rate as increases in small LDL-C.”
Interesting article: http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig10/deutsch1.html
“So, eating saturated fat is not harmful for most people. It may even be good for you. But, if you have fallen for the conclusions drawn from the bad science initiated by Ancel Keys and promulgated by the American Heart Association, government agencies and many other advisors on nutrition, it is a fat nocebo and could kill you.”
The problem with saturated fat is that it can increase inflammation, and decrease insulin sensitivity
http://jn.nutrition.org/cgi/content/abstract/139/1/1
Saturated fatty acid-mediated inflammation and insulin resistance in adipose tissue: mechanisms of action and implications.
Kennedy A, Martinez K, Chuang CC, LaPoint K, McIntosh M.
Department of Nutrition, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, NC 27402, USA.
This review highlights the inflammatory and insulin-antagonizing effects of saturated fatty acids (SFA), which contribute to the development of metabolic syndrome. Mechanisms responsible for these unhealthy effects of SFA include: 1) accumulation of diacylglycerol and ceramide; 2) activation of nuclear factor-kappaB, protein kinase C-, and mitogen-activated protein kinases, and subsequent induction of inflammatory genes in white adipose tissue, immune cells, and myotubes; 3) decreased PPARgamma coactivator-1 alpha/beta activation and adiponectin production, which decreases the oxidation of glucose and fatty acids (FA); and 4) recruitment of immune cells like macrophages, neutrophils, and bone marrow-derived dendritic cells to WAT and muscle. Several studies have demonstrated potential health benefits of substituting SFA with unsaturated FA, particularly oleic acid and (n-3) FA. Thus, reducing consumption of foods rich in SFA and increasing consumption of whole grains, fruits, vegetables, lean meats and poultry, fish, low-fat dairy products, and oils containing oleic acid or (n-3) FA is likely to reduce the incidence of metabolic disease.
I’ve seen other studies that highlight this inflammatory effect, and a TV programme that showed there was vascular constriction after a high sat fat meal.
It is still better I believe than excess omega 6 which has a greater inflammatory effect especially when the omega6 to omega 3 ratio is high. The worst thing a person could do is replace sat fat with omega 6 which is what has happened all over the world with disastrous results.
Personally I’m sticking to small amounts of sat fat, using mainly mono and omega 3 fats.
Well, that seemed very bizarre to me, so I asked Stephan at Whole Health Source (whom Mark links to in the post).
Here was his series of responses:
~~~
“Saturated fat does reduce insulin sensitivity in the short term, relative to MUFA and PUFA. But that’s based exclusively on short-term trials of 2-3 months or less, as far as I know. I haven’t looked into it in detail, but I have a really hard time believing saturated fat promotes inflammation in humans. I bet most of those data come from animal models that aren’t adapted to saturated fat. Try creating inflammation in a dog using saturated fat… In any case, even if it does contribute to inflammation, the effect can’t be on the same order as an n-6:3 imbalance. Saturated fats aren’t eicosanoid precursors. I may look that paper up so I can evaluate the evidence. If it needs debunking I may take it on.”
Then, a bit later:
“I just took a look, it’s basically BS. It’s based almost entirely on cell culture and mouse studies. They try to imply a link to human health but have almost no human data to back it up. I don’t even know if this is worth debunking, honestly…
“By the way, even if saturated fat does reduce insulin sensitivity in the long term (which is not clear), I don’t necessarily see that as a problem. Insulin sensitivity is a marker of metabolic dysfunction in modern America, but it’s more complicated. Insulin does a lot of things besides signal sugar to enter cells. There may be physiological (non-pathological) reasons to induce mild insulin resistance. It probably has nothing to do with the insulin resistance you see in people with metabolic syndrome or diabetes. As far as I can tell, SFA have never been consistently linked to overweight, inflammation-related, or insulin resistance-related disorders.”
And then:
“I just perused the literature on PubMed, the data linking SFA to inflammation in humans is basically nonexistent unless I missed something.”
~~~
For me, the paleo / primal / evolutionary principle tells me that it would be odd indeed if SFA as an independent variable had any ill affects of humans whatsoever. After all, our own body fat is roughly the equivalent of lard in terms of SFAs, so for this to be in any way true, it would mean that our own natural biochemistry and fat storage and metabolism is inflammatory, unhealthy, and dangerous.
Preposterous!
http://freetheanimal.com/2009/04/losing-weight-is-pretty-much-like-eating-lard.html
Also, see Stephan’s series on the highest SFA consuming population in the world (50% of energy from SFA). I have the posts listed here:
http://freetheanimal.com/2009/01/saturated-fat.html
I have to comment on this one, since for my entire adult life I’ve blamed my overweight condition and poor health on meat,fats, the accepted demons.
As of July I gave up all grains, sugars, starches and really ate a LOT of saturated fat. Well, I’m shrinking, and feeling divine.
My own experiment is all the truth I need, but it’s so comforting to read articles like this that pull all the ignored and slandered facts together!
Many people who eat loads of saturated fat get heart disease, but they also put that pototoe and buttered white bread right beside that steak. Later they eat a tub of popcorn at the movies and wash that down with a huge sugar soda. Thats been my problem all along it seems. Thanks for such a detailed and comprehensive account Mark!
My doctor got on my case last week about my blood sugar, which wasn’t out of control yet but was heading in that direction. I’ve been put on diets since I was nine years old (I’m thirty-eight now) and when I was thirty I said “hell with this!” and stopped trying to lose weight. At that point I was already 370 pounds. I maintained that weight for seven-plus years… and then my father died and I dove into high-carbohydrate eating: chips, pasta, sundaes, you name it, I had it. And I put on 27 pounds in three months.
Thank ghu that I stumbled across a low-carbing site when I went looking for diets that lower blood sugar! I’m still a little freaked out at the idea that I can really eat all the things I’ve always been told were bad, bad, bad (like meat, and high-fat meat at that!) but I’ve been low-carbing for five days now, and my sugars went from an average of 170 to an average of 120. And they’re still dropping.
My one problem with the low-carb eating plan is this: where do I find low-carb foods that aren’t loaded with sodium? Is there any way to do this that doesn’t require me to be in the kitchen cooking all the time?
I’m also a seeing is believing person. I have Rheumatoid Arthritis and have completely normal inflammation markers! Both my primary care doc and my rheumy agree it’s a combination of the lack of processed foods and the high fat/sat fat diet. My fat intake is often 65-70% (or more) and sat fat is about 1/3 of my calories. Since increasing my sat fat intake my HDL has also almost doubled.
The correlation in the second chart seems to be to the average temperature of the locations in which the deaths take place.
Whether thats because people in warmer climates exercise more, who knows.
“As of July I gave up all grains, sugars, starches and really ate a LOT of saturated fat. Well, I’m shrinking, and feeling divine.”
, I gave up all grains, sugars, starches, PUFA oils and processed foods, and added more saturated fats in *January* and I am NOT shrinking even a bit. Darn, I’m happy for those for whom it’s working, but I sure wish I could be one of them – though I do *feel* better, just no smaller.
Fine with it being in one part, but it did take me a few days to get through. Nine-month old (paleo) babies tend to be a distraction.
I think it’s simpler than Keys getting the cover of Time. It’s because to the uneducated, dare I say unenlightened, fat seems like the thing that would make you fat, not a bagel. Or whole wheat toast. I know better. Most of your readers know better. But wasn’t there a time when you didn’t know better? When you didn’t understand the science and the role of insulin? Well that’s MOST Americans. What would you think if you didn’t know any better? You’d probably think “Well I don’t want to GET fat so I shouldn’t EAT fat.” The basic “You are what you eat” logic. I think it’s THAT simple. It’s just simple ignorance. So keep educating them Mark!
Now as to why the masses will accept Olive Oil as healthy but not bacon fat…. I don’t know. Maybe the bubbling bacon reminds them of their own fat body and therefore something to be avoided, but a “pretty” jar of olive oil does not. Maybe saturated fat just needs to be sold in prettier bottles.
Your site with scientific links is great, just have a thing about organic, is the use of chook poo as a nitrogen fert. Doesn’t sound bad until you see it with all the chicken heads and feet in there as well. What with all the hormones and stuff fed to chooks where this poo is collected,the really bad diseases they carried (and died of)doesn’t stack up on the health side. (Not allowed to feed protein to stock)
NZ farmer myself one of the few countries that is mainly grass fed systems. Really annoys us NZ farmers that our farming system is claimed by feedlot producers as not good for the welfare of the animal, but is the most natural and our dairy cows have close to double the life span which tells you something of their health.
There was a previous post about the total number of calories being the important factor in losing fat. Good Calories Bad Calories by Gary Taubes is an amazing book for anyone who has not heard of it or read it. It is the quality of the calorie not the number of them that is important in fat loss and wellness. 500 cal from apples is going to affect your body differently that 500 cal from a steak. As most, I am sure have noticed – the amount of fat and protein you can eat is self limiting. If I gave you a steak and then a trout and then a chicken, you could not eat them all. But if I gave you an icecream, a bag of sweets, a packet of chips etc you could most likely polish them off (typical person). Read the above book – it is life changing. Thank you for this site.
Instead of focusing on saturated fat, one should look at the bigger picture. The correlation between the rise of affluence and CHD can be attributed towards a subsequent rise in sedentary behaviour as a result of affluence; and by “affluence,” I mean a society’s technological advances and standard of living. So you make a very strong argument for saturated fat being a contributor and not an overwhelming cause. The research article on ‘Dietary Factors in Arteriosclerosis’ is a reminder of how an overall unhealthy lifestyle including sedentary behaviour is most detrimental to health and constituent factors such as elevated saturated fat intake further increase the “snowball” effect.
wow that paragraph was hard to read lol
I’m sorry, the above post isn’t exactly on point, and I wish I could delete it. I am misunderstood and you do not believe that there is any solid evidence that saturated fat contributes in any way to CHD. I will finish reading this very insightful article. Your graphs are great.
[continued]
I think what I MEANT to say was:
This is a very insightful blog that instills the reader with the notion to question popular belief, in this case about dreaded “heart-clogging saturated fat.” Not surprisingly, it seems to be that there is no conclusive and definitive evidence that elevated saturated fat intake is a direct contributor to coronary heart disease, and these wonderful epidemiological graphs show the lack of correlation.
I admire your outlook on life.
Lately I have been reading about milk, and trying to decide if it is truly better to eat/drink non-fat milk or whole milk products. There are so many benefits to whole milk products, but yet skim milk is recommended generally because of a lower fat content. I try to get all of my dairy doses from yogurt because it has live active cultures(good bacteria for your stomach, digestion, immune system) added back into it after pasteurization. I think if we actually took good care of our cows we wouldn’t have to pasteurize any of our milk products and they would all have this beneficial bacteria naturally occuring, no problems… I also think that since we do pasteurize our dairy products (because our cows are sick), the beneficial bacteria should be added back into all of them, instead of just yogurt, cottage cheese, and sour cream. Anyway.. getting onto my point, recently I noticed that whole milk yogurt actually has about a 3rd less sugar in it per serving than non-fat yogurt, although whole milk yogurt has a little more saturated fat. So I was thinking if I was a diabetic, or someone who is trying to avoid too much sugar in my diet.. I would probably get whole milk yogurt as opposed to low fat. The difference is 2 grams Saturated fat in a serving of low fat yogurt.. to 5 grams in regular. This made me wonder how much saturated fat should a person get in a day? That is how I stumbled upon this article. If this article is right on.. then I guess I don’t really have to worry much about getting a few more grams saturated fat in a day. Plus it seems to me that generally the closer the food source is to being in it’s originaly state the better it is for you. If you’re trying to lose weight and avoid eating a lot of sweets.. Try satisfying your craving by having some whole milk yogurt with fruit, and cinnamon, and a pinch of ginger… To me it tastes just as good as ice cream, and it’s way better for you, and has way less calories. Fruit is high in antioxidants. If you get your sugar from fuits, you’ll be a lot healthier than if you get them from grains in my opinion. Sugar is a grain, and your body turns other grains into sugar, and humans have been eating grains for a lot shorter period of time than other food groups.
When considering whether dairy should be a healthy part of my diet, I thought of Mark’s character Grok. I think if Grok was lucky enough to come across a huge, slow mammal like a cow he would throw a spear into it and eat it. I HIGHLY DOUBT Grok would tie a rope around the thing and then FEED IT just so he could milk it and drink the milk or make the milk into other foods. So for me dairy is not a regular part of my diet. It’s an occasional indulgence that I fully know is for TASTE not health. I just really can’t see primal man consuming ANY dairy.
Awesome article. So much truth in it… I even laughed a few days after reading this, when a person started asking me a question with: “but saturated fat, which is the one that settles in your arteries(…)”, I had to stop him right there and tell him I cannot even answer that since the very question has a wrong statement. I remembered this article and smiled a bit. People truly think saturated fat clogs your arteries like grease in a pipe, it’s funny.
I absolutely love this Website and all the articles I’ve read so far. You’re doing an awesome job, keep it up.
You know I’ve tried switching to whole milk yogurt, and I do feel like it’s making it a little harder for me to keep at a good weight. Dairy products are a good source of calcium, but so is spinach, and broccoli. Dairy products can have live active cultures, but only certain kinds of yogurt, sour cream, and cottage cheese. This could be helpful for someone suffering from a yeast infection, and my aunt said that back in the day when you got a yeast infection you just ate a small bowl of yogurt each day for a few weeks and it went away. Although I know that their are fermented foods that have good bacteria, and there are foods that support the growth of good bacteria(that eat yeast) like kelp, and alfalfa sprouts…so these options very well may be much better than dairy. Although fermented foods are really expensive, so making them yourself might be a better bet, but also obviously a little more work. I think it is a sign that maybe some humans haven’t evolved enough to tolerate certain foods such as dairy, and gluten containing grains when people often times show allergy to such things, and maybe it is better to do without them… but some people believe that the reason human brains are so incredible, and the reason we have the control that we do on this earth is because we eat from a variety of sources. So maybe it is best to do like that other fellow said and not cut these foods out completely, but avoid their consumption more often than not. I don’t know.. Just thought I’d ramble on a bit.
I like how Mark used a picture of bacon to make a point. I’m amazed no one has commented on it. The fact that 50% of the fat in bacon is mono and only 38% is saturated so not a good example of a high sat food. though this is what most non primal folks think when they see bacon.
I have no idea why there would be any evolutionary drive for the body to avoid heart disease from saturated fats, when very few people lived long enough for it to be a concern. Grok’s Aorta may have been chock full of plaque when he got eaten by a saber tooth tiger, he would likely be dead long before any plaque became an issue.
I suspect the cardio and resistance training he got hunting and dragging kill back to the cave kept most of the worst in check, but I have problems believing his body evolved to avoid something that wasn’t particularly a threat.
The evolutionary arguments about saturated fats not being bad for us aren’t very persuasive. The data you present from various studies is much more persuasive.
Mark, I have been reading some or your past articles, and in several from 2007 you keep mentioning “lean” protein…and certainly nothing about coconut oil. Is your passion for fat new?
those graphs are hard to read do you know where i can find some more i need to find some for econ??
What’s funny here is if you go to the AHA link provided, they do confirm that carbohydrates are the reason for high triglycerides. But if you then click the link they have for ‘eat a heart healthy diet’, they suggest:
“…eating a diet rich in vegetables and fruits, with whole grains, high-fiber foods, lean meats and poultry, fish at least twice a week, and fat-free or 1 percent fat dairy products. Also, the diet should be low in saturated fat, trans fat and cholesterol.”
Ah, good ol’ CW!
do you have a link for the studies that contain the 2 graphs of heart disease versus saturated fat/cholesterol consumption in various countries?
High saturated fat in the absence of adequate consumption of fruits and vegetables is the major issue…modern diets fail to give nutrients in the balance they naturally appeared or were naturally consumed. Primates eat all day, but they’re eating vegetables all day which does not amount to many calories or blood sugar fluctuations. I think there’s a natural urge for humans to graze throughout the day, but look at what we’re grazing on!
i totally get it, but the community dieticians i work with dont get it. They highlight the increased risk of cancer… bla bla bla.
Just out of interest, how does life expectancy fit into this discussion. Pattern of life would suggest that an individual who eats a balanced diet with a reasonable amount of carbs, and is reasonably physically active will live longer nowadays in comparison to ye old cave man who ate mainly sat fat and the odd berry lol. DO i have a point or is this a useless rant? Basically what im getting at, is that humans are always evolving. And eating grain obviosuly isnt un natural for us as our body has the ability to use it as energy.
Are there any longitudinal studies? following someone who healthy cholesterol levels as a results of a recduced carb high fat diet? I wonder what happens when they get older?? do they live longer than people with a high percentage carb diets. I suppose you could look at people with the longest life expectancies and see what they eat.
ps can anyone give me some motivation to not eat crap all the time pleasssseee.
Also, what do you think about the keto diet?? I might give it a whirl after crimbo
First posting. It’s likely I’ll not be a frequent contributor, but as today is 1 January and I’m taking a bit of a break, I thought I’d use this to show you and other readers just what caribou fat looks like. If it’s working, my avatar shows a fine specimen, shot yesterday, that I’ve been skinning. Probably about 8 pounds or so of easily-obtainable fat, mostly near the lower back, on a carcass that will weigh in at about 140-170 pounds.
Grrrr…avatar doesn’t show up for me. Any other way to share photos?
Here’s my question: Why is it that most doctors today will tell you that the link between saturated fat consumption and heart health is all but certain? Your article makes a lot of sense, but it seems to treat the medical establishment as if it were one big, anti-saturated fat conspiracy.
What is the motive for this? If the evidence is so weak, how did it become so widely accepted, and how has it not been challenged more often?
Moreover, do you have any evidence that increased levels of saturated fats are GOOD for your heart (besides the Inuit, Masai data which are, by definition, outliers)? The article focuses on discrediting opposing data instead of supplying data to support it’s own thesis.
Because most doctors haven’t followed the literature and research on this subject since they were in medical school. Besides, groups like the AHA and ADA still recommend low fat diets high in “healthy grains” and so they just go along with the recommendations. And it has been challenged constantly. If you are into a lot of scientific detail, read Gary Taube’s bookd “Good Calories Bad Calories” and you’ll learn more than you wanted to. If you would rather have a layman’s presentation, with a side of humor, rent the documentary “Fat Head”.
As for the Inuit and Masai being outliers, read Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers and you’ll realize that it is a term that more often than not doesn’t apply. Both the Inuit and Masai were/are hunter gatherer societies similar to what all human tribes were until about 10,000 years ago. Their genetic makeup is 99.98% the same as ours so you really can’t say they are Outliers.
I’m more curious as to why doctors aren’t more divided on this.
I find it hard to believe that the vast majority of doctors would keep encouraging a certain type of diet (low fat/high carb) if they can see it is not effective.
BTW, this is coming from a guy who eats a high protein/high fat diet. I just can’t wrap my head around why saturated fats continue to be vilified by the medical community if the evidence to the contrary is so overwhelming.
I don’t know why they do either other than herd think and basing their advice on what the “authorities” promote. My wife’s cholesterol numbers were high on her last checkup and the doctor just told her to go on a low fat diet. She is ignoring that advice and has cut out grains and is low carbing it. When she goes back in March for a retest it will be interesting to see what her numbers are like.
Alright, one more question.
For the sake of argument, assume Grok’s high saturated fat intake led to clogged arteries and poor heart health. How would we know? By the time it became a problem, Grok would have reproduced many times over, thus passing his genes on. Most likely, he would die out on a hunt or in a fight with another tribe or something. I’m not quite sold on the evolutionary arguments about saturated fats, given that primal man simply didn’t live long enough for heart health to be an issue.
Yeah that theory has been proposed before, unfortunately it doesn’t hold up to the anthropological evidence as presented by people like Cordain (author of The Paleolithic Diet and professor at CSU).
One must be careful when saying that our ancestors didn’t live as long as we do. Their average lifespan was reduced by child mortality and accidents causing injuries that can be easily treated by modern medicine today. If Grok survived to adulthood and stayed safe he was able to live a long and healthy life.
Yes, and Cordain promotes a diet low in saturated fats.
“If Grok survived to adulthood and stayed safe he was able to live a long and healthy life.”
You simply can’t know that. Paleolithic man’s life expectancy was 35.4 years. Sure, this was due in large part to infant mortality, predators, infections, etc., but how many people do you know under 40 who have ever had a heart attack? Very, very few. Grok may have eaten a ton of saturated fat, but when he died at the ripe old age of 35 at the hands of a grizzly bear, it simply wouldn’t have had time to affect his health.
This isn’t to say that you’re wrong, or that anyone else is right, but simply that we can’t know.
Cordain has changed his tune about saturated fat according to Mark. You are right that we can’t know but we can make educated guesses based on the evidence and I think the studies of bones showed them to be in excellent health. But more importantly NO studies done in the past 50 years have conclusively shown that saturated fat causes heart disease. If you can identify one let me know but Gary Taubes couldn’t and he spent years researching his book Good Calories Bad Calories.
I don’t think the onus is on proponents of eating saturated fat to show that it doesn’t cause heart disease, the onus is on the people who claim that it does.
eric, i think your statements are spot on. we cant know! surely a nice balanced diet is the best! nice amount of complex cards, plenty of meat and a few budweisers
Actually, I think the evidence is pretty convincing that grain carbohydrates should be a very minimal part of a “balanced” diet. It’s harder for me to swallow that there is no danger to saturated fats long-term.
But I’m with you on the budweisers!
“surely a nice balanced diet is the best!”
Every time I hear some health professional advocate some mythcal “balanced diet,” I run for the door because I know they’re getting ready to promote a diet of 50-60 percent carbs which will cause me intestinal discomfort, insulin spikes, blood glucose spikes and dips, intense chest pain and sometimes emergency room visits for EKGs.
“Balanced diets?” No way!
So, I can eat lots of bacon, then?
Hi could anyone list good sources of saturated and monounsaturated fats?
And is it ok to buy supermarket meats and consume all of it?
Thanks
See Mark’s post for Wednesday January 20th for a guide to oils.
As for your second question I’m not sure what you mean by consume all of it. I try to avoid supermarket meats and get grass fed and natural meats from a natural grocer. It costs more but is better for you.
I came to this site after reading Gary Taubes ‘Diet Delusion’ and running the conclusions I came to by a friend who put me onto MDA.
Reading DD turned everything I thought I knew on it’s head. The answer to a lot of your queries above regarding proof and evidence can be found in that book. It has a bibliography at the back at least an inch thick!
It is a difficult read, both because it’s very scientific and thorough and because it is really disturbing to discover that the conventional wisdom is potentially killing many overweight people.
As I read it so many bells were ringing in my head I actually found it hard to think straight. I’m in the UK and last week we had headline news about surgical obsesity cures and whether they should be more freely available on our healthcare system, I wanted to scream and shout – you’ve got it all wrong, go read The Diet Delusion.
I’m a 42 year old female vegetarian, I’m also a (sub 11 hour IM) triathlete and train up to 15 hours a week – I’m a bit of a fanatic (!), I followed what was considered the ideal diet 65/15/20 carb/fat/protein, I maintained a race weight (around 56 kg at 5 5) but was weirdly (or so it seemed at the time and mystified my Coach) 25% bodyfat, and was never able to increase strength and muscle mass.
Since beginning of December I dropped the carbs (all sugar and grain-based – an interesting 36 hours of shakes and sweats ensued – which really made me think), I’ve maintained being veggie for now at least, and funny old thing I’m no longer starving hungry (whilst pregnant 20 years ago I was a gestational diabetic, so I clearly have an insulin sensitvity issue although not diabetic otherwise), currently I’m getting my protein from eggs and cheese mainly so my sat fat intake is through the roof compared with before and I’ve increased my power output on the bike by 16%.
I’ve yet to check the body fat comp but my masseur says I’m leaner and I look leaner but am the same weight. Next difficult decision; not sure being vegetarian is such a great idea … Lol!
Keep up the good work, it’s so important.
ps I put my brother onto this site and as I type he’s lost a kg a week since the beginning of December, Grok rocks!