Fat Boy

Yes, yes and yes.

Dietary cholesterol is not closely linked to blood cholesterol. Nearly every cell in your body has the capacity to produce cholesterol. If you don't eat it, your body will produce it naturally. Eat the freakin' egg yolk.

If you have something like tuna, then get the pole and troll caught. They tend to be smaller fish and have less heavy metal poisoning. The best answer is getting small fish like sardines, though, which are good for you all the way around. I like salmon, but I tend to just get it when it's on sale and when I do, it's the wild, Alaskan variety as opposed to Atlantic fish. I can sometimes find smoked salmon 'end pieces'. These are small chunks of salmon that are cut off when they are making the nice lox 'sheets'. You end up with a bunch of little chunks that work just right on a salad and it's about 1/2 the price of normal smoked salmon.

Fat Boy

Here's another thing for people to think about. Organ meats are cheap and very nutritious. We get too caught up in just eating muscle meats. Having some liver, heart, etc. every once in a while is a positive.

Sixty Fiver

We were just discussing the menu plan here and liver is something we have once a week and we have some heart stewing as I type this.

Even the kids like it.

Machka 

Eggs don't make me feel ill ... they make me feel pain.

And no, I don't think that fat = evil. Animal fat = pain. A fatty steak, aside from tasting horrible going down = pain.

Plant-based fats, on the other hand, are all right. I like to include a handful of nuts in my diet just about every day.


It is ... but because my iron levels run a bit high, I've had Drs advised me to take it easy on the consumption of red meat and other high iron food.

Sixty Fiver

Maybe you have an allergy to animals.



I must be easily confused as when you said you enjoyed a low fat diet that equates to a diet that may not have enough of it... as long as the fat sources are natural and unprocessed they are very healthful and we get a lot from olive oil and coconut oil (we use this generously) and wish we could have avocado but my wife is deathly allergic to it.

One of the things that happens when you practice a low fat diet is that you lose your ability to digest fats and this can cause all kinds of digestive problems until your system restores itself... this may be why animal fats bother you unless you have an additional moral objection to eating tasty animals.

Tonight we are enjoying some delicious stew that was made with beef heart, I braised a little in a little fresh lard for lunch and then let the rest stew all afternoon. This is a very lean dish and the benefit of heart over other muscle meats is that it provides Q10 in abundant amounts and this is a substance that statins inhibit.

In addition to animal sources (heart is best), olive oil and avocado are the best plant based sources for Q10 so it is important for vegetarians and vegans to get the right amounts but if anyone is well informed on this I am preaching to the choir.

Machka 

Who knows ... maybe!


And no, by low fat, I mean low animal fat, low trans-fats, low saturated fat ...

When I think of a high-fat diet, I think of McDonalds burgers and chips every day for lunch, deep fried cinnamon rolls, fatty meats, processed foods that are high in trans fats, ice cream ... etc. etc.

All the things that any dietician will tell you to reduce or eliminate from your diet.

Sixty Fiver

One of the largest studies on the effects of saturated fat and coronary heart disease / stroke studied 348,000 people for 23 years and concluded that saturated fat played no role in increasing the risk factors for these health issues.

Fat isn't our problem.

Statins aren't the answer for the majority of people.

Any dietician that follows food guides that are 50 years out of date is probably not going to be giving you the best information.

When folks were eating more meat, eggs, cheese, butter, and lard and nothing was low fat they were not dropping dead from heart attacks in any higher numbers and diabetes was not the epidemic it is today.

What changed ?

GeorgeBMac

1) Weight
2) Sedentary lifestyles
3) Processed foods
4) 44 oz colas
5) Fast Food

Machka 

People who were eating a lot of those things were also eating a lot of grains and vegetables too. My grandmother and great grandmother, for example, had huge gardens. And baked goods, like bread and buns, were a staple of the diet.



One of the main things that changed is exercise. People are less active now. Back in the day, people were burning off whatever they ate.

Modern conveniences are keeping us sitting, and recent studies have shown that a sedentary lifestyle is almost as bad as smoking.

wolfchild

There is a big difference in eating McDonald burger and eating beef liver for example. While both of these foods may be high in saturated fat there is a huge difference in nutritional value between the two. McDonalds burger or any other type of fast food has absolutely no nutritional value and is loaded with all types of chemicals which are very toxic to the body, while beef liver is a like a huge vitamin pill that will supply your body with all types of essential nutrients. So yes eating McDonald everyday will probably give the person a hear attack or cancer, while eating liver once every two weeks or once per month will keep you healthy. I don't think any of us
high-fat dieters is advocating people get their fat from fast food , potato chips and cookies loaded with trans-fats. I am not anti-carb, I include complex carbs in my diet but I just limit their intake.

wolfchild

The grains of long time ago were genetically different from modern grains. In the old days the grains were prepared and processed differently from today. Modern breads and baked goods at the grocery store have absolutely zero nutritional value. The bread and gruel(cereal) of 3000 years ago was a lot more nutritious then modern bread or some modern cereal. Fat and oils have always been the most highly prized food items, everything else was of secondary importance.

GeorgeBMac

This has been a good discussion and one that I have enjoyed reading...

When it comes to diet, it seems that everybody has an opinion -- but few seem to have ALL of the real facts. And, I do not mean that derogatorily, because, well, neither do the experts who are supposed to know those things...

I found this video to be really helpful to me in understanding the basis and rational for many of the diets that we are discussing here. The video is old (13 years) -- but it is a debate between the originators of many of the diets (or their progenitors) that we are still arguing over: Atkins, Ornish, McDougal, Zone Diet, Sugar Busters, etc...

It is long (2 1/2 hours), but if you have the time and do not have a solid understanding of the justification for each of these different diets, then this video is worth watching:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feCpP40ZHqI

p.s. The originators of these diets were not always as well mannered as we have been here on this forum, at times, the debate gets a little heated...

Machka 

But this is where you've got to be careful with vocabulary.

When you say to someone, "I eat a high fat diet" ... they aren't thinking beef liver, they're thinking McDonalds, KFC, potato chips.

And limiting food intake in general is a good thing.

GeorgeBMac

But, how much difference is there between a cheeseburger from McD's and one from your grill? Yes, I know that today people are arguing things like "grass fed" and such -- and that the McD's may not even come from skeletal muscle -- so there probably is 'A' difference -- but is it enough to make a difference?

(But I am not the one to argue that. I think that both of them are poison)

Machka 

There probably isn't much difference between one cheeseburger and another.

But when I said I try to eat a low fat diet, 65r assumed that I didn't eat any fat ... which isn't true at all, of course.


When I think of a "high fat" diet, I think of all the bad fats (trans fats, saturated fats) and "bad" foods.

When I think of a "low fat" diet, I think of a healthy diet which includes lean meats like chicken or fish, nuts, olive oil, etc.

Carbonfiberboy 

Cost has been mentioned and various choices noised about. We like a fairly high protein diet. We also have to watch our food expenditures. So we buy bulk whey protein and that's pretty much it except for vegetable sources. Maybe once every couple of weeks we'll eat a little fish. We eat a few eggs here and there and the two of us go through about a quart of milk/week. We also eat a little cheese. So not a heck of a lot in our usual real food diet compared to the 1.5g/kg/day we'd like to see. Thus we supplement with whey protein. If you look it up, it's vastly less expensive than any meat source and even less expensive than powdered non-fat milk if you figure cost per gram of dry protein.

We buy whey protein online, flavored, in bulk, and drink it mixed into plain water. We do read the label and pick brands with low cholesterol. Some are quite high. The two of us go through about 20 lbs. every 3 months.

GeorgeBMac

Yes, semantics is a problem in nutrition. "Low Fat" is a good example. When Esselstyn says low fat he is talking about NO added fat (like oils) and not even fatty plant food like nuts or avocado's. But even with eliminating "all" fats, his diet still tends to come out as 10-12% fat -- because even oatmeal has fat in it.

Conversely, most people consider 30% to be "low fat" -- and I guess it is if you usually eat 40-50% of your calories as fat.

I try to keep mine under 20%. I don't know what I did today -- but it came out as 6% which is the lowest I've ever got it. I cut back on fats not because I don't 'like' them (at least the 'good' ones) but because, when I started tracking my input I realized how many calories they were adding -- and for no good reason... So, I've been cutting back. For instance: I was putting both pecans and sunflower seeds on my salads. But looking at the results, both of them just added to much fat (and therefor calories). So now I use either one or the other...

Machka 

And calories is the second thing I look at when I consider a food choice. The first is whether I like it or not.

An interesting co-incidence ... if the calorie count isn't very high, it is usually both low fat and low sugar.

Too many calories, and I pack on the weight, especially since I haven't been as active as I was a few years ago. So going back to one of my first posts ... we cut way back on the ice cream (fat and sugar!!), starting a few days before that post was made, and I dropped 2.1 kg. That's a good result.

Fat Boy

I think I'd say that any dietician that is 100+ years out of date will probably give you some pretty good information.

Fat Boy

Whey protein is a fine supplemental protein source. It certainly has it's place. I think you're underestimating the importance of your protein source if your biggest selling point is cost, though. If someone is using whey protein post workout as a way to quickly get their muscles rebuilding themselves and weight gain is not an issue (or even a goal), I think that's a fitting use. I think you'd be hard pressed to find any scientific information backing up using whey as a primary protein source long term. If you notice, nature never gives us whey all by itself. Hell, even Little Miss Muffet had some curds with hers. Why do you think that is?

Fat Boy

If you don't have fat in your diet what are you replacing them with? We will naturally limit ourselves at some point on protein (and I doubt you're even 1/2 what it takes for that to happen), so you must be adding carbs. That's just the way the pendulum swings. I guess I just don't understand the notion that you say the fats were adding calorie 'for no good reason'. Fats are a necessary component of our diet. They are a very good fuel. They provide all sorts of positives from brain function to immune support to inflammation reduction to any number of other capacities.

I'm sure you're eating your salad for the micronutrients they provide (that's 1 reason I do, anyway). Well, nearly all of those micronutrients are fat (not water) soluble. If you don't have fat there as a transport mechanism, they are not going to get absorbed.

The carbs that you're eating in place of fat has 2 functions, they can be used directly as fuel for the body or they can be stored in adipose tissue. There is no other option. They will cause an insulin release (even complex carbs) that fat does not. You can try eating a bunch of high volume, low calorie dense foods as a way to fill you stomach, but it doesn't provide the satiety signals that an equivalent fat (and/or protein) calories will. Beyond that, the satiety signals that is does supply are relatively short lived compared to a higher fat meal (of equivalent calories). Yes, the fatty meal will have less volume, but that is a completely different matter than providing satiating feeling. If this weren't the case, then we could drink a couple glasses of water when we were hungry and feel 'full'. Of course, we cannot.

There's no need to change your views based on what I've written, but I'll make you a deal. You keep and open mind, and I will, too.

Fat Boy

To start with, I think a big point that has been neglected is the satiety effect. I can eat a hell of a lot of lettuce, and get a bloated stomach doing it, but I never really feel 'full'. On the other hand, if I want a snack, then a bit of jerky and a few macadamias will carry me for quite a while. That's not a perfect analogy, but I want to demonstrate that satiety is not strictly a function of food volume.

Calories are not a bad thing. Too many calories are (as is too few). We need to fuel appropriately, so I really would caution you against measuring the 'good' or 'bad' of a food based on volume.

The ice cream... A lot of times when people ask me about food I say to start by not eating the stuff that you damn well no isn't good for you. It's too bad, but I think ice cream falls squarely into that category.

Sixty Fiver

I assumed nothing... I thought you might be fat deficient, being that you said you ate a low fat diet and equated saturated fats as being bad fats. You also seem wholly unfamiliar with those who practice a healthy low carb / high fat lifestyle and the numbers of people who do this are growing exponentially after years of being given bad information by their government and the medical community on what constitutes a healthy diet.

Fish, nuts, and olive oil are chock full of saturated fats and they are good fats... you cannot function without them. Chocolate is also a good source of saturated fat.

Please look into the Framingham study...

"In Framingham, Mass., the more saturated fat one ate, the more cholesterol one ate, the more calories one ate, the lower the person's serum cholesterol. The opposite of what… Keys et al would predict…We found that the people who ate the most cholesterol, ate the most saturated fat, ate the most calories, weighed the least and were the most physically active." - Dr. William Castelli, Director

Ancel Keys is the physician who published the flimsy research on the correlation between saturated fats and heart disease in the 1950's and his theories do not stand up to scrutiny - he cherry picked the data to support his hypothesis to show a correlation that does not exist. If he had used the full data set it would have shown the opposite in that, the more calories you derive from fats the less chance you will experience a lower chance of coronary issues.

Keys work has been debunked by so many people and the list just keeps growing as it was bad science.

Margarine, shortening, and partially hydrogenated oils are far worse for your health than saturated fat and there is an interesting story how Crisco came to be. It was originally used by Proctor and Gamble to make candles and soap and after electrification caused a decline in candle sales Proctor and Gamble introduced the first commercial trans fat and sold it as food.

Sixty Fiver

100 years ago heart disease and diabetes were not an issue.

Did they even have dieticians ?

Machka 

What makes you think heart disease and diabetes weren't problems 100 years ago?