What If Saturated Fats Are Essential?

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Re: What If Saturated Fats Are Essential?

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WiseOne wrote: Gosso, thanks for the link to that thread about blaming doctors.  Sorry Medium Tex, but there's nothing in that post I haven't heard a million times before.  I'll just say this:  please don't shoot the messenger.
I don't want to shoot anyone, but it sounds to me like what you are saying is that doctors shouldn't be blamed for the poor health of their patients because they don't really know that much about what it takes to be healthy in the first place.

That seems like a strange position to take about the professional class that most people look to for all of their advice about treating illness and returning to health as quickly as possible.

As I recall, what I was trying to get at in that post was that people shouldn't place as much faith in doctors as they often do, and this seems to be what you are saying as well.

Just to make my position clear, I am always willing to let someone earn my respect, including doctors, and I have had encounters with many doctors for whom I developed great respect, but I don't automatically give intellectual and professional respect to doctors (or much of anyone, really) based solely upon a credential or title.

But please don't think I was blaming doctors for poor health outcomes.  If anything, I was trying to do the same thing you are trying to do, and that is to let people know that doctors don't know as much about many aspects of health as people often think they do. 
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Re: What If Saturated Fats Are Essential?

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It's sort of comical that so far the discussion about saturated fats has been a lot more heated than the discussion about the death penalty.  :D
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Re: What If Saturated Fats Are Essential?

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MediumTex wrote: It's sort of comical that so far the discussion about saturated fats has been a lot more heated than the discussion about the death penalty.  :D
I think it's more of a rich, creamy simmer.
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Re: What If Saturated Fats Are Essential?

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Gumby wrote: Which seems to suggest that nobody has proven anything terribly bad about Arachidonic Acid and saturated fat.

All I know is that cultures, all over the world were eating high levels of saturated fat for thousands of years and did just fine.
It's all pontificating, selective theory to support Weston's propaganda.  Atkins took it to heart and he was in gawd-awful condition from the autopsy.  The simple way to test it: eat some saturated fat alone and then have your inflammatory markers checked.  Or better yet, eat some alone and detect any physical inflammatory changes (I can do this myself).  It's that simple.

All those so-called cultures that would be mentioned aren't in the list of long-lived cultures.  The long-lived cultures don't over indulge in saturated fats, unless they're so insular they are genetically adapted to it, sort of like that African tribe that lives off nothing more than cow's blood and milk.

Inflammation is the root cause of just about every disease known to man.  Eat inflammatory foods at your peril!

Here's just one of the inflammatory pathways from arachidonic acid:

http://www.lyprinol.com/index.php/lipox ... on-pathway

If you want a conspiracy to burst, its not saturated fat.  Its in the demonizing of all fats and cholesterol.

MG
Last edited by MachineGhost on Tue May 01, 2012 7:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: What If Saturated Fats Are Essential?

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WiseOne wrote: What went wrong?  It was the way that the side effects were catalogued in the trials.  The real drug will of course have a higher rate of side effects of all kinds than placebo, so a person taking the drug will be more likely to say yes.  Which means that they then have a greater opportunity than the placebo group to check off "suicidal ideation".  Of such things are great results made.
So correlation is not causation?  Well, I'm not sure the victims of Columbine and other high school or public shootings would find that much comfort.  All of those shooters to date have been on SSRI antidepressants.

I remember way back when Bush I revelead he was on an antidepressant, rumors circulated about how it actually increased suicide risk.

MG
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Re: What If Saturated Fats Are Essential?

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Gosso wrote: I agree with your comment "eat what your grandmother ate".  Of course we can clean it up a little bit more by eliminating any transfat.
I heartliy recommend this supplement as our great-grandparents would literally savor the stuff:

Vital Glands
Vital Glands provides peptones from glandular meats which have been processed into a free flowing powder using a special "low-temperature" process to assure the maximum freshness and nutritional biological activity for this food.

MG

P.S.  I haven't grown a big enough pair yet to try it...
Last edited by MachineGhost on Tue May 01, 2012 7:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: What If Saturated Fats Are Essential?

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Gumby wrote: If you've ever seen a cook book from the late 1800s, it's shocking how much cream, butter, fat drippings, egg yolks, whole milk, etc were in nearly all of the recipes. But, that's what people ate...
The average age of death was also 30-40.

If you want to ignore almost 150 years of scientific evidence in favor of Price's propaganda, I won't stop you.  You can find plenty of modern day evidence on PubMed that excess saturated fats aren't healthy.

MG
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Re: What If Saturated Fats Are Essential?

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MachineGhost wrote:Atkins took it to heart and he was in gawd-awful condition from the autopsy.
More lies. Atkins gained 60 Lbs during his coma, from fluid retention, and no autopsy was ever performed.

http://www.snopes.com/medical/doctor/atkins.asp
MachineGhost wrote:The average age of death was also 30-40.
If you think that proves anything, then I guess I can understand why you've convinced yourself that you have all the answers. The death statistic you've cited is "life expectancy at birth" and it includes infant and child mortality — a terribly flawed way to deduce the deaths from heart disease. Seems kind of odd that you would throw out such a flawed and misleading statistic.

If we look at "Life Expectancy by Age" — a far more accurate representation of how long adults typically lived for — we see that anybody in the year 1850 who lived to see the age of 30 was expected to live to the average age of 64. And those who actually managed to live to the age of 60 in 1850, were expected to live to the average age of 75 — eating tons of butter, fat and cream for nearly every meal.

See: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005140.html

The expected lifespans of adult Americans in 1850-1900 were actually very impressive — considering the number of incurable diseases populations were exposed to.

For instance, here's a list of famous artists born before 1900.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Am ... efore_1900

These were not individuals who exercised all day. Notice how most of them who were born before 1850 had long life spans averaging well over 65 years of age — with some living well into their 70s and 80s.  
MachineGhost wrote:You can find plenty of modern day evidence on PubMed that excess saturated fats aren't healthy.
The evidence is inconclusive, at best. It's never been proven that saturated fats lead to heart disease. You won't find any conclusive proof of it on PubMed. You'd think after all these studies researchers would find some concrete evidence. But, after decades of research, no proof.

In fact, here's a 2010 study that concludes that there is no evidence that saturated fats contribute to heart disease:

http://www.ajcn.org/content/early/2010/ ... 5.abstract
Conclusions: A meta-analysis of prospective epidemiologic studies showed that there is no significant evidence for concluding that dietary saturated fat is associated with an increased risk of CHD or CVD. More data are needed to elucidate whether CVD risks are likely to be influenced by the specific nutrients used to replace saturated fat.
Source: http://www.ajcn.org/content/early/2010/ ... 5.abstract
Last edited by Gumby on Thu May 03, 2012 12:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: What If Saturated Fats Are Essential?

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Wow everyone.  Where to begin....
As I recall, what I was trying to get at in that post was that people shouldn't place as much faith in doctors as they often do, and this seems to be what you are saying as well.
Couldn't agree more.  I just want to politely add that there is a difference between this and demonizing doctors.  Like I said, there's no sinister plot.
The average age of death was also 30-40.
Definitely also agree about following a pre-1910 diet - much easier than remembering all those arcane ingredients!  Those cookbook pages were spectacular.  Regarding the above life expectancies....I don't think it was that bad in the 1800s, and in any case the problems were mostly infections and poor sanitation.  You could argue that 95% of the success of modern medicine is due to vaccines, antibiotics, water treatment, and modern sanitary engineering.  

I once spent 2 months at a mission hospital in Kenya, where the diet was mostly ugali (grain mixture), greens, onions, green bananas, peanuts, and eggs if you could figure out where the chickens liked to hang out.  And water collected off the roof when it rained.  The local people were incredibly healthy...until they weren't.  Infectious diseases, cancers that are known consequences of infections, and accidents were common.  Mortality among children in the hospital was about 20%, mainly from malaria.
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Re: What If Saturated Fats Are Essential?

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WiseOne,

Welcome to the forum.

I appreciate your contributions and perspective.
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Re: What If Saturated Fats Are Essential?

Post by Gosso »

MachineGhost wrote: You can find plenty of modern day evidence on PubMed that excess saturated fats aren't healthy.
It seems that Stephen Guyenet from Whole Health Source has already gone through the hassle of combing through Pubmed and other online journals for relevant research on the connection between saturated fat and heart disease.  In my mind he does a good job of discrediting the diet-heart hypothesis in the links below.  Stephen has earned my respect and trust when it comes to diet research, he doesn't have a book or supplement to sell, he is simply researching something that he is passionate about and will adjust his opinion if the facts change.  Plus he has a whole bunch of letters after his name, if that impresses anyone.

http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.ca/20 ... heart.html

http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.ca/20 ... s-new.html

http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.ca/20 ... -isnt.html

http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.ca/20 ... cular.html

There are plenty of other posts regarding this topic on his site, but this should make the point fairly clear -- saturated fat is not a bad guy.  Although I'm not going to start drinking cream straight from the carton (unlike Gumby ;)), but rather simply include it in my diet without fear or guilt.
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Re: What If Saturated Fats Are Essential?

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Thanks, Medium Tex - although apologies, perhaps, for getting a little carried away in an investment forum, but hard to resist such a thoughtful discussion.

And it's not entirely irrelevant, because of the impact of rapidly increasing health care costs.  I started listening to Harry Brown's Money Show archives.  His perspective has been refreshing and educational, and it is presented in a clear and simple way that easily passes the "b.s." detector.  He comments several times on how health care is expensive specifically because it is run by the government, rather than the free market. 

There is something to be said for that, e.g. the controls & regulations passed in the last couple of years have been literally crushing and have resulted in almost breathtaking amounts of money being spent on things like electronic medical record systems that are primarily intended to tighten controls on what "providers" can do.  The entitlement problem does not help either; if you pay nothing for a service, you won't use it wisely and you won't value it either.  On the other hand, there are such things as serious, chronic conditions that can't be blamed on poor habits, that render a person unable to work, and that cost a lot of money to treat.  The fact that any of you don't have such conditions is sheer luck, and for all you know your luck could change tomorrow.  I have no idea how the free market could cope with these situations without creating an essential injustice.

Anyone?
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Re: What If Saturated Fats Are Essential?

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WiseOne wrote: Thanks, Medium Tex - although apologies, perhaps, for getting a little carried away in an investment forum, but hard to resist such a thoughtful discussion.
The PP is such a simple and boring strategy that we turn to other topics to fill out our internet time.

It's a good group here.  Smart, courteous and curious.
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Re: What If Saturated Fats Are Essential?

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MediumTex wrote:
WiseOne wrote: Thanks, Medium Tex - although apologies, perhaps, for getting a little carried away in an investment forum, but hard to resist such a thoughtful discussion.
The PP is such a simple and boring strategy that we turn to other topics to fill out our internet time.

It's a good group here.  Smart, courteous and curious.
The "Other" section is my favorite section.

I have read some great books b/c of this section.
I have seen some good movies. 
I have changed the way I exercise.
I have watched Breaking Bad.
I have changed my diet and lost weight. 
"All men's miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone."

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Re: What If Saturated Fats Are Essential?

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AdamA wrote:
MediumTex wrote:
WiseOne wrote: Thanks, Medium Tex - although apologies, perhaps, for getting a little carried away in an investment forum, but hard to resist such a thoughtful discussion.
The PP is such a simple and boring strategy that we turn to other topics to fill out our internet time.

It's a good group here.  Smart, courteous and curious.
The "Other" section is my favorite section.

I have read some great books b/c of this section.
I have seen some good movies. 
I have changed the way I exercise.
I have watched Breaking Bad.
I have changed my diet and lost weight. 

Dittos to everything you said.  As a general rule I try to hang around people who are smarter than me so I can learn and there's an awful lot of smart people on this forum. 
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Re: What If Saturated Fats Are Essential?

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Gumby wrote: More lies. Atkins gained 60 Lbs during his coma, from fluid retention, and no autopsy was ever performed.

http://www.snopes.com/medical/doctor/atkins.asp
I stand corrected.  Timeline:

2000: Develops cardiomyopathy.  Coronary arteries reported to be "free of blockages".
2002: Cardiac arrest.  "Extraordinarily healthy cardiovascular system".  "6 feet tall and under 200 lbs".
2003: Slips on ice and causes bleeding around the brain and goes into a coma.
2003+2w: In intensive care, body detoriates rapidly into massive organ failure, retains enormous amount of fluid, and weight blows up to 258 pounds.
Official Cause of Death: "blunt impact injury of head with epidural hematoma".
2004: Medical examiner's report: "suffered a heart attack, congestive heart failure, and hypertension before his death".

I'm not doctor, but is such rapid degeneration normal for just 2 weeks in a coma?  The lack of glycogen reserves could have contributed to such a rapid breakdown of his body.
The evidence is inconclusive, at best. It's never been proven that saturated fats lead to heart disease. You won't find any conclusive proof of it on PubMed. You'd think after all these studies researchers would find some concrete evidence. But, after decades of research, no proof.
As a reminder, for a "silver bullet" cause of heart disease, anyone would be rationalizing from "inconclusive evidence" that it "allows" them to eat massive amounts of highly saturated fat foods carte blanch.  The overall evidence for heart disease is not inconsclusive when combined with the other 20 or so independent risk factors.  Saturated fats are just one piece of this much larger puzzle.  The "silver bullet" propagandists like the Price Foundation or the pharmaceutical industry with its anti-statins do a terrible disservice in "dumbing down" decades of multi-disciplinary scientific research.

I'm gonna throw a monkey wrench into this topic.  There is a scientist or journalist, who name escapes me at the moment, who contends that it is refined Omega-6 that actually causes heart disease, literally as the composition of arterial plaques is full of refined Omega-6.  His argument makes some sense, but is not widely accepted by the mainstream.  This effect is not related to the Omega 3:6 inflammatory balance, but the trans-fat particles caused by the act of refining Omega-6.

MG
Last edited by MachineGhost on Thu May 03, 2012 1:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: What If Saturated Fats Are Essential?

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I'm not doctor, but is such rapid degeneration normal for just 2 weeks in a coma? 
Definitely could happen.  Without knowing exactly what happened, I can hazard a guess.  An epidural hematoma expands very rapidly because it is arterial bleeding, increasing intracranial pressure.  This would depress autonomic functions (breathing, heart rate) within minutes to maybe hours.  Multiorgan failure would then ensue.

This is why my favorite term for the ICU is "God's waiting room".
This effect is not related to the Omega 3:6 inflammatory balance, but the trans-fat particles caused by the act of refining Omega-6.
??  Trans-fats are caused by artificial hydrogenation of any unsaturated fat.  You can avoid it by not buying anything with the word "hydrogenated" on the ingredient label.  Omega-6 and omega-3 are types of fatty acids, which are the building blocks of fats and oils.  The reason that the average U.S. diet is rich in omega-6's is that nearly everything you buy at Stop and Shop or similar places ultimately derives from seeds, mainly wheat, corn, soy, and rice.  You can buy fish-oil supplements to increase omega-3 intake, but why not spend the money on grass-fed beef, pastured pork and poultry, and wild-caught (not farmed) fish.  Look for local farmers' markets and get to know the people you buy from.  It makes food shopping an altogether different experience.

Still waiting for someone to correlate the rise in obesity and heart disease with the prevalence of grain-fed beef and gzillions of corn products, which began to take off around 1950.  Now that would be an interesting study.
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Re: What If Saturated Fats Are Essential?

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MachineGhost wrote:As a reminder, for a "silver bullet" cause of heart disease, anyone would be rationalizing from "inconclusive evidence" that it "allows" them to eat massive amounts of highly saturated fat foods carte blanch.
I think you're looking at it backwards. For thousands of years, people ate massive amounts of highly saturated fat foods! Much higher levels of saturated fat than we do now. When I mentioned this earlier, you replied with a very common misconception...
MachineGhost wrote:The average age of death was also 30-40.
No. That's false. That was average life expectancy at birthadult life expectancy was much higher.

When you exclude childhood deaths, and deaths due to infectious disease and war, it becomes very clear that people often lived well into their 60s, 70s and 80s, before 1900. And they ate massive amounts of saturated fats. We know that from the historical record. Any survey of well-known pre-1900 historical figures shows a more realistic picture of average adult life expectancy.

Hippocrates lived to 90
Plato live to 80
Leonardo da Vinci lived to 67
Michelangelo lived to 60
Galileo lived to 77
Queen Elizabeth I lived to 69
Bernini lived to 81
Rembrandt lived to 63
El Greco lived to 73
George Washington lived to 67 (probably died from acute bacterial epiglottitis complicated by his medical treatments)
Thomas Jefferson lived to 83 (died of uremia, severe diarrhea, and pneumonia)
Aaron Burr lived to 80 (had a stroke at 78)
William Penn lived to 73
Thomas Paine lived to 72
Noah Webster lived to 84
Paul Revere lived to 83
Benjamin Franklin lived to 84 (died of an abscess in his lungs)
John Adams lived to 90
Abigail Adams lived to 83 (died of typhoid fever)
John Quincy Adams lived to 80 (died of massive cerebral hemorrhage)
Samuel Adams lived to 81 (died of complications from an essential tremor)
James Madison lived to 85
James Monroe lived to 73
Andrew Jackson lived to 78
Martin Van Buren lived to 79
William Henry Harrison lived to 68 (died of pneumonia and pleurisy)
Zachary Taylor lived to 65 (died of an unknown digestive ailment)
William Blake lived to 69
Millard Fillmore lived to 74 (died of affects of a stroke)
James Buchanan lived to 77 (died from respiratory failure)
Franklin Pierce lived to 64
Andrew Johnson lived to 66 (died from a stroke)
Ulysses S. Grant lived to 63 (died of throat cancer)
Immanuel Kant lived to 79
Paul Cézanne lived to 67
Winslow Homer lived to 74
Claude Monet lived to 86
Edgar Degas lived to 83

The list goes on... One does not have to look hard to find famous historical figures that lived past 60. Many well-known historical figures lived long lives.

What do all of these famous historical figures have in common? They all lived during a time when people ate much more saturated fats than we do now. They cooked with lard. They lived during a time when people ate lots of eggs and butter and cream and whole milk and fatty meats. The people listed above were not laborers. They generally lived sedentary lives.

Heart disease and obesity was extremely rare before 1900. In fact, the first known heart attack didn't appear in the historical record until after modern refined vegetable oils came into existence.

So, to sit around and now tell us that "PubMed" and modern research has shown evidence that saturated fats cause heart disease is total crap when you consider that humans lived very long lives for thousands of years — on a diet of mostly saturated fats — with very little heart disease.

Chronic heart disease is a modern epidemic. Saturated fats have been around forever.
Last edited by Gumby on Thu May 03, 2012 8:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: What If Saturated Fats Are Essential?

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Gumby wrote: Any survey of well-known pre-1900 historical figures shows a more realistic picture of average adult life expectancy.

Hippocrates lived to 90
Plato live to 80
Leonardo da Vinci lived to 67
Michelangelo lived to 60
Galileo lived to 77
Queen Elizabeth I lived to 69
Bernini lived to 81
Rembrandt lived to 63
El Greco lived to 73
George Washington lived to 67 (probably died from acute bacterial epiglottitis complicated by his medical treatments)
Thomas Jefferson lived to 83 (died of uremia, severe diarrhea, and pneumonia)
Aaron Burr lived to 80 (had a stroke at 78)
William Penn lived to 73
Thomas Paine lived to 72
Noah Webster lived to 84
Paul Revere lived to 83
Benjamin Franklin lived to 84 (died of an abscess in his lungs)
John Adams lived to 90
Abigail Adams lived to 83 (died of typhoid fever)
John Quincy Adams lived to 80 (died of massive cerebral hemorrhage)
Samuel Adams lived to 81 (died of complications from an essential tremor)
James Madison lived to 85
William Blake lived to 69
Immanuel Kant lived to 79
Paul Cézanne lived to 67
Winslow Homer lived to 74
Claude Monet lived to 86
Edgar Degas lived to 83
Just could be a little selection bias here. Not arguing either way about your fat hypothesis, but is certainly easier to become famous if you don't die at 30.
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Re: What If Saturated Fats Are Essential?

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BearBones wrote:Just could be a little selection bias here. Not arguing either way about your fat hypothesis, but is certainly easier to become famous if you don't die at 30.
It's not selection bias. It's indicative of the expected life span. If you died at 30 or 40, it probably wasn't due to heart disease. People usually died early due to infection, disease or war. If you managed to avoid infectious disease, you often lived well into your 60s, 70s or 80s.

Heart disease is a modern epidemic. It was very rare before 1900.
Last edited by Gumby on Thu May 03, 2012 8:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: What If Saturated Fats Are Essential?

Post by MediumTex »

Gumby wrote:
BearBones wrote:Just could be a little selection bias here. Not arguing either way about your fat hypothesis, but is certainly easier to become famous if you don't die at 30.
It's not selection bias. It's indicative of the expected life span. If you died at 30 or 40, it probably wasn't due to heart disease. People usually died early due to infection, disease or war. If you managed to avoid infectious disease, you often lived well into your 60s, 70s or 80s.

Heart disease is a modern epidemic. It was very rare before 1900.
Is it possible that people back in the old days ate less in general?

Isn't lower caloric intake (up to a point) correlated with better health?

As far as life spans go, I'm really surprised that anyone lived to be old back then without antibiotics or an understanding of the importance of sanitation.
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Re: What If Saturated Fats Are Essential?

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Quote from: Gumby on May 03, 2012, 06:13:33 PM
Quote from: BearBones on May 03, 2012, 06:02:53 PM
Just could be a little selection bias here. Not arguing either way about your fat hypothesis, but is certainly easier to become famous if you don't die at 30.

It's not selection bias. It's indicative of the expected life span. If you died at 30 or 40, it probably wasn't due to heart disease. People usually died early due to infection, disease or war. If you managed to avoid infectious disease, you often lived well into your 60s, 70s or 80s.

Heart disease is a modern epidemic. It was very rare before 1900.

Is it possible that people back in the old days ate less in general?

Isn't lower caloric intake (up to a point) correlated with better health?

As far as life spans go, I'm really surprised that anyone lived to be old back then without antibiotics or an understanding of the importance of sanitation.
Very likely yes.  There have been several studies correlating low caloric intakes and low body weight (below what we consider to be normal for height) to increased longevity.  Of course, low body weight could be due to other factors than low caloric intake.

One big difference between how people ate then and how we eat now, is that there were periods when food was scarce.  This may be a key element to staying healthy.  A great example of this is the Navajo, who have extremely high rates (around 80%) of obesity and type 2 diabetes currently, which was of course not the case 100 years ago.  Their traditional diet was dictated by desert ecology, where rains are scarce and there were long periods in between with little food.  Another example is increased hypertension risk among African-Americans descended from slaves.  This same increased risk of hypertension is not present in African Americans from the same areas of Africa, but who immigrated more recently and eat a similar diet.  It's been proposed that the ocean journey in slave ships, where many died due to lack of water and food, selected for those who could retain salt and water.  That same talent with today's overabundance of food is now maladaptive.

Do your own reading on this, but it is possible that humans were designed for feast/famine cycles, and not for constant feasts.
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Re: What If Saturated Fats Are Essential?

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MediumTex wrote:Is it possible that people back in the old days ate less in general?
Yes, almost certainly. And I believe proponents of a diet that includes saturated fats have argued that saturated fats actually curb your appetite, by triggering the release of the hormone cholecystokinin, which causes fullness and slows digestion. Fats also slow the release of sugar into your bloodstream, reducing the amount that can be stored as fat.

In other words, if you ate a diet that was high in saturated fat, you probably didn't feel the need to eat as much. Dinner plates — and the cupboards to hold those plates — were actually smaller back then. In today's society, we've reduced our intake of saturated fats — our digestion rates increased — and people started demanding larger portions and larger dinner plates. Go figure.

Reducing saturated fat has literally caused people to eat more. It actually sounds like a recipe for increasing revenue in the food and synthetic edible oil industries.

Interestingly enough...
The rate of heart disease began to climb in the 1930's. By 1950, it was apparent that there was a huge increase in heart disease, particularly myocardial infarctions [heart attacks]. The American Heart Association was formed, and in their original statement, they singled out the trans fatty acids found in hydrogenated oils as the probable source of heart disease. Hydrogenated fats are made from vegetable oils that are artificially hardened. However, Dr. Fred Matson who worked for Proctor and Gamble (who makes hydrogenation equipment and hydrogenated fats) was on the American Heart Association Advisory Board, and he was able to persuade them to drop all reference to trans fatty acids in hydrogenated oils, and instead they laid the blame for this great increase in heart disease on saturated fats from animal products. These altered documents actually encouraged the consumption of the very hydrogenated oils that were the prime suspect. The edible oil industry has a lobby called the Institute for Shortening and Edible Oils which supervised what was happening at the American Heart Association. The result was that dieticians were trained to promote processed foods. Finally in the 70's and 80's this same Dr. Fred Matson held two controlling positions in the Lipid Research Clinical Trials that led to the National Cholesterol Education Program.

By the early 70's, the American Heart Association stated that Americans had elevated levels of cholesterol in their blood and it was necessary to lower these cholesterol levels in order to avoid heart disease. All Americans in the "at risk" category were encouraged to substitute polyunsaturated vegetable oils for all saturated fats. The people behind this advice were the Institute for Shortening and Edible Oils. But they were pushing this lipid (fat) hypothesis without really having any evidence that there was any truth to it. In the early 70's, research was coming in from all over the world and some of it supported the lipid hypothesis, but much of it did not. The dissenting testimony was ignored. Their final report claimed that animal fats caused cancer and heart disease, and vegetable oils prevented them.

Source: http://www.consumerhealth.org/articles/ ... 0303194521
Last edited by Gumby on Fri May 04, 2012 9:05 am, edited 1 time in total.
Nothing I say should be construed as advice or expertise. I am only sharing opinions which may or may not be applicable in any given case.
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Re: What If Saturated Fats Are Essential?

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Gumby wrote: I think you're looking at it backwards. For thousands of years, people ate massive amounts of highly saturated fat foods! Much higher levels of saturated fat than we do now. When I mentioned this earlier, you replied with a very common misconception...
For thousands of years, human health wasn't worthwhile to emulate nor were they eating low cost, factory farmed, grain-fed meat.  Exceptions to Hobbe's "poor, nasty, brutish and short" isn't scientific evidence.

My "backwards" perspective is that of a life extensionist, not the "normal" agenda of growing old and increasingly decripit by hedonistcally eating anything you can while you're still able to.  So I just don't perceive the saturated fat issue as so narrowly.  Trading one of many risk factors for heart disease in lieu of getting cancer or many other diseases by pigging out on inflammatory saturated fats is just silly.  All diseases are ultimately triggered by inflammation.

Even with grass-fed meats, you won't see a significant difference in the composition of the Omega 3:6 in terms of absolute quantity vs grain-fed meat.  Certainly not to justify the doubling or tripling in price per pound (I don't deny there are other valid reasons to buy such, but they seem pecuniary).  Half of meat fat is approximately Omega-9 anyway.  It's more cost effective on many fronts to just take a fish oil supplement and stick to buying low-fat, lower-cost grain-fed meat (and even add in Vitamin A and D for Price's infamous "Factor X").

MG
Last edited by MachineGhost on Fri May 04, 2012 1:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: What If Saturated Fats Are Essential?

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WiseOne wrote: ??  Trans-fats are caused by artificial hydrogenation of any unsaturated fat.  You can avoid it by not buying anything with the word "hydrogenated" on the ingredient label.  Omega-6 and omega-3 are types of fatty acids, which are the building blocks of fats and oils.  The reason that the average U.S. diet is rich in omega-6's is that nearly everything you buy at Stop and Shop or similar places ultimately derives from seeds, mainly wheat, corn, soy, and rice.  You can buy fish-oil supplements to increase omega-3 intake, but why not spend the money on grass-fed beef, pastured pork and poultry, and wild-caught (not farmed) fish.   Look for local farmers' markets and get to know the people you buy from.  It makes food shopping an altogether different experience.
He position was the heating and high tempreature processing to refine Omega-6 oils and make them shelf stable also produced trans-fats and other toxic deranged byproduct.  Partial-hydrogenization is not strictly necessary for oils to be unhealthy.

Be as it may, I did try a self-experment with unrefined Omega-6.  It proved just as inflammatory as any saturated fat, so I minimize both (not at easy task without home cooking).

MG

P.S.  I found the guy, he's at http://www.brianpeskin.com/
Last edited by MachineGhost on Fri May 04, 2012 1:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.
"All generous minds have a horror of what are commonly called 'Facts'. They are the brute beasts of the intellectual domain." -- Thomas Hobbes

Disclaimer: I am not a broker, dealer, investment advisor, physician, theologian or prophet.  I should not be considered as legally permitted to render such advice!
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