The Gumby Diet

[Pointedstick]

I've been slowly trying to move my family more toward the Gumby Diet and so far I have to say we've had good results. I've felt more full between meals and less afflicted with sugar and carb cravings. I overeat less, too.

Among the changes: We eat a lot more meats and have a breakfast of bacon and eggs every day. We cook huge meals with soaked beans that don't cause any gas (really awesome) and the leftovers last for a week. We've thrown out our canola oil, and now mostly use coconut oil as an all purpose cooking oil and avocado oil for high-temperature frying and baking. We also take high-quality fish oil supplements.

I still have a few questions though: Peanut butter. Good/bad? How about honey? How important is is that meat and eggs be from grass-fed animals? Is it true that organic is little or no better than non-organic for most products?

Also, I got some natural sea salt and my body adores it. I find myself resisting the urge to eat it raw from time to time!

[Gumby]

Pointedstick, that's great! I'm glad you're having a lot of success with it so far. But, just so there's no confusion for others reading this thread, this is not my diet. In fact, one of our fellow board members, Smurff, has been following this diet far longer than I have, and he knows much more about it than I do.

(Disclaimer: Eat at your own risk!)

The diet is popularly known as "Nourishing Traditions," and it is advocated by the Weston A. Price Foundation (also known as WAPF). Strangely enough, WAPF wasn't started by Weston Price or his family — however, the diet is based on his research. The foundation was started by Sally Fallon and Mary Enig. (Enig pioneered research on discovering the dangers of Trans Fats, despite enormous criticism from the food industry).

What can be confusing is that there are other diets that are very similar to WAPF. The Primal Diet and The Paleo Diet are both very similar, but it's important to understand the differences.

http://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com/ ... or-primal/

While I don't follow Paleo or Primal, the diets are similar enough where you can borrow some recipes and advice from the followers of those other diets. For instance, Chris Kresser (of Paleo) will often invite Christ Masterjohn (of WAPF) onto his weekly podcasts for some terrific discussions about the raw data from medical research.

Anyway, I hope Smurff can join in on this discussion and give us his expertise, but I'll try my best to answer questions.

I still have a few questions though: Peanut butter. Good/bad?

I believe peanut butter is generally good. But, I'll defer to Smurff to give the details.

How about honey?

Raw honey is excellent. But, never give raw honey to infants.

How important is is that meat and eggs be from grass-fed animals?

I'm still learning about this. But, I think it's pretty important. My understanding (and I could be wrong) is that non-grass fed cattle are often fed some pretty toxic foods.

Is it true that organic is little or no better than non-organic for most products?

It's true that there's no proof that you'll live longer by eating organic foods. However, there is proof that conventional foods contain pesticide residue. Sometimes you can wash it off and avoid the residue. Others, not so much. I believe each year the Environmental Working Group publishes a dirty/clean dozen list:

http://www.ewg.org/foodnews/summary/

[Storm]

Would you guys be willing to share a few recipes from this diet?  I've been thinking of switching over... it's not that big of a change for me since we are already eating a lot of these foods.

By the way, if you have a Trader Joes near you, I've found their grass fed ground beef is only $5.99 a pound (85% lean) and they also have this amazing grass fed sharp cheddar cheese that is $3.99 a block and tastes awesome (much better than any other cheddar cheese I've had).

I have a question regarding other Organic foods - in particular poultry:  I've heard that in order for chicken and eggs to be considered organic, the chickens have to be free range - is this true?  We eat only organic chicken and eggs, but I want to make sure they aren't just feeding the chickens organic corn.

[Gumby]

I asked Smurff the same thing awhile back. He suggested that I buy the original book, Nourishing Traditions, by Sally Fallon and also follow thehealthyhomeeconomist.com blog for additional resources. It's a great book, but be prepared to get introduced to a wide range of interesting organ meats. I really have just started to taste a few of these things, so I am by no means deep in this yet. And truthfully, my family will never want to eat brains on a regular basis.

And interestingly enough, Smurff recommended the original first edition of the "Joy of Cooking" cookbook.

Once you get the ideas, you can easily find recipes from many cookbooks. For instance...

For instance, I recently picked up this great book...

Fat: An Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient, with Recipes by Jennifer McLagan and Leigh Beisch

But, I will say that the great thing about Nourishing Traditions and vintage cookbooks is that they do traditional preparation of grains very well.

Anyway...I'm still new at this, so I wouldn't say I'm an expert. My main goal is just to eat tasty food. But, here it goes...

Breakfast: Pastured scrambled eggs (using 3 yolks, 2 egg whites per person) cooked in a little coconut oil and spooned over sliced ripe avocado or asparagus with a side of pastured bacon or sausage. Maybe some raw milk, raw kefir or raw yogurt on the side if I have time and it's available. I'll occasionally have a slice of sprouted wheat toast as well.

If I have almost no time for breakfast, I might just down some raw yogurt or raw milk and crack two or three raw pastured/organic egg yolks into my mouth. (Supposedly there is very little chance of getting salmonella from organic eggs). Just make sure you never swallow a raw egg white, because a raw egg white (specifically the uncooked albumen) can interfere with protein absorption.

In reality, the traditional daily colonial breakfast would have really been porridge, so I'll try to make porridge every few days if I remember to soak the oats in advance. The night before you take a cup of rolled oats and soak them in a cup of filtered water and a Tablespoon of buttermilk (or similar acid medium). Leave it covered on the counter overnight to soak. The next morning, add another cup of filtered water and a large pinch of sea salt and cook until it reaches the desired cons is.

Lunch: A Warm Duck-confit salad... Take a tablespoon of coconut oil (or bacon drippings saved from breakfast) and sauté some mined onions. Take some chopped good quality mushrooms (Shiitake or Oyster are good) and add them in after the onion has softened. Crank some sea salt directly onto the mushrooms and sauté some more. After about two or three minutes the mushrooms should be nicely cooked (which unlocks the nutrients), take a garlic clove and run it through a garlic press and sauté for only about 30 seconds before adding in some leafy greens. Just blanch the greens for about 30 seconds (off heat is fine) and transfer to a plate. Top with meat from a warm pre-cooked duck leg or duck breast (I get mine locally-sourced from a nearby market) and then drizzle some olive oil and balsamic vinegar on top as well as some salt and pepper. Yum.

Occasionally I'll try to eat liver or pate if I'm feeling adventurous.

Dinner: Maybe a grass-fed burger. Or perhaps a roast chicken. Or maybe some Faroe Island Salmon. Serve any of those with roast vegetables. Roast chicken is incredibly easy to make. Just salt and pepper the bird and rub down with coconut oil (or even use bacon drippings from breakfast). My great grandmother would save chicken fat and use it to coat her next roast chicken. There is a great book, Roasting: A Simple Art by Barbara Kafka, and it teaches you everything you need to know about roasting anything. It's terrific.

(Interestingly, in colonial times, lunch was called "dinner" and what we know as dinner was called "supper". Their lunch was the big meal of the day and supper was just a few bites of porridge and/or leftovers.)

The great thing about this diet is that a lot of gourmet cookbooks are still using some traditional approaches. Many renowned chefs (such as Jennifer McLagan) already choose lard and rendered fat in their dishes because it tastes better and they know that the "science" against natural fats is pretty bogus. Most of Barbara Kafka's recipes just say to roast in "some kind of fat", so you get to choose whatever you want. Had some bacon earlier in the day? Just pour it into a glass bowl and cover, and later in the day you have a great and flavorful cooking fat. Had some duck? Save the rendered fat for frying potatoes. As time goes on, you start to understand how some fats are better for certain applications. For instance, I don't eat french fries very often (due to the Acrylamide), but they taste amazing when you make them with fresh potatoes and use rendered beef tallow or duck fat.

Anyway... you get the idea. Once you understand traditional ingredients and preparations, you can use just about any cookbook you want to and modify the recipes accordingly by avoiding modern oils and highly refined grains.

[Gumby]

It's also worth pointing out that Sally Fallon and Mary Enig (and WAPF) believe that it's essential to supplement this diet with a fermented cod liver oil and high vitamin butter oil — as was originally recommended by Dr. Weston Price, based on his research of the diets of indigenous cultures in the 1920s and 1930s. The Weston A Price Foundation website has all of the details on which brands of cod liver/butter oil to use (they consider the Green Pastures brand to be the best, since it is produced without any heat). Unfortunately, the WAPF website has been infected with malware, and is currently blocked by Google. But, basically and adult takes 1 tsp of fermented cod liver oil and 1/2 tsp of high vitamin butter oil per day. Kids and infants would take half that amount.

thehealthyhomeeconomist.com has a recipe for creating your own high vitamin butter oil if you want to save money.

And just a quick word about the basis of this diet. It was inspired by traditional cooking and on the research of Dr. Weston Price, a dentist who traveled the world during the 1930s documenting the diets of indigenous cultures who were supposedly free of chronic diseases. His observations (along with photos) were published in his book, "Nutrition and Physical Degeneration". What he discovered was that these indigenous cultures has excellent dental health and did not appear to have modern chronic diseases — until some members were exposed to modern diets, when physical degeneration became apparent. And all of these indigenous cultures had the same things in common...

1) They all had high consumption of saturated fats.
2) They all had high consumption of Omega 3s.
3) They didn't eat highly refined grains or sugar
4) They all employed some kind of lacto-fermentation to preserve their foods.

It turns out that lacto-fermentation is key to preserving foods and digesting plant matter. All natural herbivores can lacto-ferment in their guts — specifically their cecums (which is loaded with plant-fermenting bacteria). But, since humans only have a teeny cecum (attached to where the appendix is found) we need to lacto-ferment our vegetables in order to access all the nutrients in them. Otherwise it's just easier to eat the organs of an herbivore which reduces the nutrients into the most easily digested and bioavailable form (i.e. organ meat). Meat is easier than plant matter to digest since our stomachs are acid and pepsin based. In otherwords, it appears that our ability to partially digest plants might indicate that plants are a fallback food for our species when pastured organ meats aren't available.

Truth be told, I don't eat a ton of lacto-fermented vegetables since I'm still pretty new to this. But, currently I do eat organic sauerkraut, raw milk, raw kefir, raw butter, raw yogurt and raw cream for the beneficial bacteria and nutrients.

Again, would love to hear from Smurff when he has some time to share with us!

[Storm]

Great stuff, Gumby!  I really appreciate the time it took you to share all of this great information, including some delicious sounding recipes...  I just ate breakfast (2 organic eggs, 2 slices of sprouted wheat bread toast, 1 slice of organic cheese, and a banana) and you're already making me hungry.    I sure would love to put some bacon back in my diet, so here goes!

Regarding the lacto-fermentation - if you live anywhere near a Chinatown, or more specifically, a Koreatown, I've found one of the best places to buy good kimchi is at Korean grocery stores.  Most of them make their own in the store and you can buy in bulk by the pound.  They also use a number of different types of vegetables, from the traditional cabbage to bok choy, cucumbers, and many other types, so you can experiment and get some variety.  We often head in to Flushing or Queens NY on a Saturday and hit up the Korean grocery store and buy a few pounds of good kimchi from a helpful lady that stands in front of huge tubs of it and will scoop it into whatever sized container fits your order the best.

[FarmerD]

Great stuff, Gumby!  I really appreciate the time it took you to share all of this great information, including some delicious sounding recipes...  I just ate breakfast (2 organic eggs, 2 slices of sprouted wheat bread toast, 1 slice of organic cheese, and a banana) and you're already making me hungry.    I sure would love to put some bacon back in my diet, so here goes!

Regarding the lacto-fermentation - if you live anywhere near a Chinatown, or more specifically, a Koreatown, I've found one of the best places to buy good kimchi is at Korean grocery stores.  Most of them make their own in the store and you can buy in bulk by the pound.  They also use a number of different types of vegetables, from the traditional cabbage to bok choy, cucumbers, and many other types, so you can experiment and get some variety.  We often head in to Flushing or Queens NY on a Saturday and hit up the Korean grocery store and buy a few pounds of good kimchi from a helpful lady that stands in front of huge tubs of it and will scoop it into whatever sized container fits your order the best.

You could also just make your own plain kimchi.  Just soak some chinese cabbage in a salt brine over night, rinse off the next morning, then spread the kimchi powder over all the leaves and stuff it in a jar.  I'd eat it over the next couple weeks.  Beyond that, it starts getting a little too fermented for my taste. 

Of course, if your really want to get traditional Korean, add raw oysters, raw crabs, or fish to the kimchi jar, then let it ferment for the next year.  Drives me out of the house every time my wife eats that stuff. 

[Gumby]

I sure would love to put some bacon back in my diet, so here goes!

Bacon can be a little confusing. There is uncured and cured bacon. "Uncured" bacon is still cured but the ingredients are different. There is some debate as to which is better or worse. I just get my bacon from a local market that uses a simple traditional curing method.

The craziest thing about this diet is that I didn't want to lose any weight and now I'm too thin. My actually wife gained weight at first and then she lost weight gradually.

One theory/explanation of why someone might temporarily gain weight is...

When someone is not used to eating a lot of fat, their gallbladder isn't used to secreting bile. If they suddenly start eating lots of fat, they may feel queasy for a few days or weeks as their gallbladder starts to wake up and pump bile again. As the bile starts to flow, it begins to flush out the liver. And whatever kind of deposits that were sitting around in the liver are flushed out into the bloodstream (fatty liver deposits, etc.).

So, quite often, someone who starts this diet might actually see a spike in bad blood chemistry and have some weight gain for a few weeks after starting this diet. However this is a good thing because the body can then proceed to process the bad things that got out of the liver and into the blood and excrete it over time. Within a few months, the blood chemistry should normalize.

It's worth noting that there are some people who have a specific genetic code in their body (specifically the ApoE4 allele) that may cause them to have elevated LDL cholesterol on a high cholesterol diet. However, I believe there is no concrete evidence that these ApoE4 individuals are more prone to death from heart disease. It seems that they have trouble excreting cholesterol from their bloodstream. No one is entirely sure if it's definitely problematic or not. However, ApoE4 is also linked to Alzheimer's, so this is a complex topic, and it does seem to cause a lot of confusion and therefore ApoE4 individuals should do their best to fully understand what they are doing. Interestingly enough, it's believed that our meat-eating paleo ancestors might have all had the ApoE4 allele, but now that allele is considered to be a defect. So, it's possible that these ApoE4 individuals have high cholesterol and it makes no difference to them. Nobody really knows.

While a Nourishing Traditions diet is not a paleo diet (see previous comment, above), this is one of those situations where paleo resources can be very helpful. If you Google "ApoE4 paleo diet" you'll find some interesting information about people with ApoE4 who choose to eat a high cholesterol diet. And some of them have not been able to reproduce the so-called side effects in their blood chemistry. Many of them even report feeling happier and healthier on their high cholesterol diets.

So, I would say that you need to do what feels right. But, it can take a few weeks for your body to get used to this kind of food — particularly if it isn't already used to eating fat and cholesterol. In general, most people do just fine.

I believe Chris Kresser and Chris Masterjohn have discussed this on Chris Kresser's podcasts and will likely do so again in the future.

http://chriskresser.com/category/podcasts

[MachineGhost]

I still have a few questions though: Peanut butter. Good/bad? How about honey? How important is is that meat and eggs be from grass-fed animals? Is it true that organic is little or no better than non-organic for most products?

Peanut butter should be natural and not from a commercial brand as they add palm oil (and sugar) to replace trans-fats.

Honey should specifically be or state "unheated" to be truly raw.  Any other term is a con.  True unheated honey will show evidence of crystalization at room temperature.

Grassfed meat is a no brainer, but the taste is entirely different than factory farmed (more gamey due to higher Omega-3 which is fishy tasting).

Organic is superior for avoiding pesticides, a better taste and a slightly improved nutritional profile.  But the term has rapidly gone the way of corporatism, so biodynamic is more in the true spirit of what organic used to mean.

[MachineGhost]

Bacon can be a little confusing. There is uncured and cured bacon. "Uncured" bacon is still cured but the ingredients are different. There is some debate as to which is better or worse. I just get my bacon from a local market that uses a simple traditional curing method.

It's all a scam until the USDA clarifies regulations.  Natural hot dogs and bacon with added celery juice or powder can have more nitrates than the commercial brands they're supposed to be replacing!

Hormel Natural Choice is one commercial way to get lunchmeat without nitrates.  They use extreme high pressure processing to kill the bugs.

[Storm]

You could also just make your own plain kimchi.  Just soak some chinese cabbage in a salt brine over night, rinse off the next morning, then spread the kimchi powder over all the leaves and stuff it in a jar.  I'd eat it over the next couple weeks.  Beyond that, it starts getting a little too fermented for my taste. 

Of course, if your really want to get traditional Korean, add raw oysters, raw crabs, or fish to the kimchi jar, then let it ferment for the next year.  Drives me out of the house every time my wife eats that stuff. 

It's cheap enough that it might just be easier to buy it, although I can appreciate that making your own ensures organic ingredients, etc.  You made me laugh... My friend's wife is Korean and he jokes about how when his mother in law visits from S. Korea she "takes dead things that have been buried in the ground for a year, packs them in her suitcase and brings biological weapons with her."

[Gumby]

Peanut butter should be natural and not from a commercial brand as they add palm oil (and sugar) to replace trans-fats.

Paleos, Primals and WAPF all consider Palm Oil to be a relatively "healthy oil." For instance, 'Red palm oil' is one of the richest sources of CoQ10 and Vitamin E. There's no need to avoid palm oil when it appears in your food. Like most natural saturated fats, palm oil is stable, withstands heat very well and doesn't go rancid very easily. The biggest problem with palm oil is that the harvesting practices tend to be very destructive to the environment.

FYI, the fat profile of Palm oil is roughly: 50% saturated, 40% monounsaturated and 10% polyunsaturated.

Bacon can be a little confusing. There is uncured and cured bacon. "Uncured" bacon is still cured but the ingredients are different. There is some debate as to which is better or worse. I just get my bacon from a local market that uses a simple traditional curing method.

It's all a scam until the USDA clarifies regulations.  Natural hot dogs and bacon with added celery juice or powder can have more nitrates than the commercial brands they're supposed to be replacing!

Very true. My local market makes their own bacon with sea salt, a little bit of cane sugar and a small amount of nitrates. What I can't figure out is how people made bacon back in the pre-1700s. Were they using nitrates back then too?

[smurff]

In fact, one of our fellow board members, Smurff, has been following this diet far longer than I have, and he knows much more about it than I do.

Well, that's very kind of you to say, Gumby.    I learn a lot from this forum, not just about investing, and I like giving to it, too.  

"Food" vs. "Ingredients":  The standard processed food (I hesitate to use the word "food") supply has become a dumping ground for lots of leftover materials and chemicals that would be toxic waste if buried under ground, or that have to be handled under fume hoods and while wearing hazmat suits.  As a result, much of the stuff sold from supermarket shelves are made primarily from "ingredients" and not "foods."  It even says it on the labels!  All foods start out as living things. 

Rule of thumb:  All foods are ingredients, but not all ingredients are foods.  If you can't put a teaspoon of an "ingredient" in your mouth and safely eat it, it's not a food.  Chicken is a food.  Lettuce, rice, and lard are foods, as is honey, maple syrup, and sugar cane.  BHA, however, is not a food, and neither are phosphoric acid, Yellows No. 5 and 6, sodium phosphate, E250, nor caramel color, just to name a few examples.  (There is a small group of ingredients, like baking soda--sodium bicarbonate and salt, that you can't do the teaspoon test with, and that do not start out as living things.  They usually have dual uses with foods and nonfoods.  But they have been around since pre-civilization and our bodies have adapted to them.) 


Here's a list of foods eaten all over the world, arranged by food families.  (In taxonomy, "family" comes after "class" and it comes before "genus" and "species.")  A person with an allergy or sensitivity to a particular food will often have allergies/sensitivities to other foods in the same food family, hence these charts to help understand the possibilities.  They are also useful to help people living here in the 21st Century understand some of what actually constitutes food:

http://www.thesuperallergycookbook.com/ ... Family.pdf

People differ in their ability to find healthy foods to incorporate into their diets, but the overall goal is to arrange your life so that as much of what you eat is made up of "food" as possible, while consuming as few  (non-food) "ingredients" as possible.  Right now, for many people, it's the reverse.  Carbonated sodas are about as close to non-food as it gets, but for some people they actually constitute the majority of calories consumed in a day.  Some people actually drink them as their only water supply.

Peanut butter:  It's a great food, unless you have food allergies.  (Try to insure that the peanuts are from a source that's free of aflatoxin, which causes cancer.)  Be sure to read the ingredients labels of everything you buy to eat, even if you have safely eaten it before.  The only stuff in the peanut butter jar should be peanuts and salt.  Even better, get the salt-free kind and add your own sea salt.  If there is sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated or partially-hydrogenated fats, or mono- and diglycerides--forget about it.  If you want sweet peanut butter, add your own sweet to it.  If you want a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, use your own jelly.  (In other words, avoid the stuff in the jar with a "swirl" of jelly running through it.)

With this basic peanut butter you have to stir it frequently or it will pack down in the jar.  The liquid peanut oil will rise and sit over the carb and protein solids.  (This is one reason hydrogenated fats were added to peanut butter--since they stay solid at room temperature, there's less liquid oil to rise, and the peanut solids don't pack down.)  It won't be impossible to get out of the jar, but will require some elbow work if it gets packed.


Grass-fed vs. grain-fed beef and milk:  Green grasses are the natural foods of cattle.  Because grains--the actual seed part of the grass that we call corn, wheat, rice, etc-- are also part the grass, healthy cattle may consume small bits of grain as they eat in pasture.  But they get fat if they are fed exclusively or primarily on grains, and that excess fat scatters through the muscles, which is not good for the cow.  It's  the "marbling" one sees in conventional grain-fed beef cuts.  Supposedly this marbling effect leads to more tender and juicy beef, but there are many debates about this.

Grass-fed cattle produce many more CLAs (conjugated linoleic acids) in their meat and milk than grain-fed cattle.  I read somewhere that it can be as much as 500% (five hundred percent--that's not a typo) more.  CLAs affect the metabolism and immune function of mammals; if you don't get enough CLAs your body undergoes inflammatory processes and you get lots of body fat.  CLAs fight this inflammation and may have anti-cancer properties.  Because grain-fed cattle tend to get sick more often, they may be fed or injected with all sorts of pharmaceuticals.  Most of the antibiotics used in the USA, for example, are fed to livestock, especially cattle, primarily to enhance the fattening effect (a side effect of antibiotics that can happen in humans, too), but also as a prophylactic to deal with infections.  It's not just antibiotics, however--another big class on the list are hormones of all kinds, and in dairy cows, there are growth hormones made by genetically-modified organisms.

Bacon: The concern with sodium nitrite is that it forms nitrosamines when heated, browned, or charred, and nitrosamines are known to cause cancer.  (Sodium nitrite also causes migraines in some people.) 

Early in the 20th Century meat processors added lots of sodium nitrite to meat--it gives it the characteristic red color we've become accustomed to, helps keep the fat from becoming rancid, and makes it harder for microorganisms to grow, particularly the spores that cause botulism.  That was before there was widespread refrigeration.  Deep freezers for residential use just did not exist, unlike today.  It was discovered that sodium nitrite contributed to stomach cancer, a major cause of cancer death in those days.  One of the first big drops in cancer incidence in the USA from a science-based change came about when the government mandated that the amount of sodium nitrite in meat be dramatically reduced.  That was in the 1920s.  Supposedly the incidence of stomach cancer dropped dramatically right after the change.

Nitrites occur naturally in spinach, lettuce, celery, etc.  Often in nature, a problematic part of an edible plant will come with a feature that alleviates the problem, if not cancels it outright.  (Example:  The soluble and nonsoluble fibers in fruits help alleviate the toxic features of fructose.)  But spinach, lettuce, and celery are foods (see above), whereas sodium nitrite is not.  Still, there are hot dogs, bacons and hams made without any celery or other nitrite source, whether inorganic or natural. Whole Foods carries a bunch of different brands.

Don't forget, before humans began eating pre-cooked, pre-processed, and packaged ingredients, we made good stuff all by ourselves, from food. 

You can make your own bacon:

http://www.imafoodblog.com/index.php/20 ... moke-bacon

[MachineGhost]

Paleos, Primals and WAPF all consider Palm Oil to be a relatively "healthy oil." For instance, 'Red palm oil' is one of the richest sources of CoQ10 and Vitamin E. There's no need to avoid palm oil when it appears in your food. Like most natural saturated fats, palm oil is stable, withstands heat very well and doesn't go rancid very easily. The biggest problem with palm oil is that the harvesting practices tend to be very destructive to the environment.

Well, they're not using cold-pressed or red palm oils in commercial, natural peanut butters!  But I suppose there's an exception somewhere.  It seems like Norway is phasing out all palm oil from their processed products, just as they did with trans-fats.  From Wikipedia:

The use of palm oil is controversial because it is considered to be detrimental to people's health, while production of palm oil also leads to huge environmental damages.

- Norwegians eat the rainforest - without knowing it. Major environmental destruction of the rainforests is the consequence of an increasing use of palm oil in foods and other products, the general manager of Green living, Tone Granaas, has stated.

To make Norwegians aware of the content of palm oil in foods, they made a palm oil guide, where you can look up information on how much palm oil specific foods contains.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 084827.htm

Fifteen adults, both male and female, volunteered for the study. Their levels of LDL "bad" cholesterol were moderately high at 130 milligrams per deciliter of blood or above, and all were aged 50 or older. They each consumed each of four 35-day experimental diets. The fats tested were partially hydrogenated soybean oil (moderately high in trans fat), palm oil (high in saturated fat), canola oil (high in monounsaturated fat), and soybean oil (high in polyunsaturated fat).

The findings suggest that consuming either of the diets enriched with equivalent high amounts of palm oil or partially hydrogenated soybean oil would result in similar unfavorable levels of LDL cholesterol and apolipoprotein B (a protein, attached to fat particles, that carries bad cholesterol throughout the bloodstream). That's when compared to consuming either of the diets enriched with canola and soybean oils high in monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats, respectively.

The results suggest that palm oil would not be a good substitute for trans fats by the food industry, the authors wrote.

I'm still not convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that excess saturated fat is healthy.  Our ancestors were not eating a diet composed of more than 10% of total calories from saturated fat because non-factory farmed game meat was lean by default.  Eating non-lean meat, bacon, butter, every day ala Atkins style seems to be way overdoing it.  Are there any long-term (10+ years) Atkins-style saturated fat eaters with quantifiable evidence of optimal health from lab tests?  That'll start to convince me.

[Gumby]

Paleos, Primals and WAPF all consider Palm Oil to be a relatively "healthy oil." For instance, 'Red palm oil' is one of the richest sources of CoQ10 and Vitamin E. There's no need to avoid palm oil when it appears in your food. Like most natural saturated fats, palm oil is stable, withstands heat very well and doesn't go rancid very easily. The biggest problem with palm oil is that the harvesting practices tend to be very destructive to the environment.

Well, they're not using cold-pressed or red palm oils in commercial, natural peanut butters!  But I suppose there's an exception somewhere.

I'm not arguing that the palm oil they put in commercial food is wonderful for you. You're right, it probably isn't great, since it's probably cheap palm oil that may have been overheated and processed. But, the palm oil is still stable enough that it should do a better job standing up to the heat better than other oils. Palm oil very stable and is less likely to become rancid and break down from heat and oxidation — that's a fact. So, if you're going to eat a commercial product, and you have a choice between a vegetable oil or a hydrogenated vegetable oil, or a palm oil.... you go for the one with palm oil in it.

It seems like Norway is phasing out all palm oil from their processed products, just as they did with trans-fats.
 From Wikipedia:

The use of palm oil is controversial because it is considered to be detrimental to people's health, while production of palm oil also leads to huge environmental damages.

Norway is phasing out palm oil because it is terrible for the environment and it believes the flawed theory that saturated fat causes heart disease.

Fifteen adults, both male and female, volunteered for the study...They each consumed each of four 35-day experimental diets.

Fifteen adults? Only 35-day "experimental" diets? Data was compared to soybean and canola oil? Gee, I wonder if any particular industry fronted the money to set up that gold-standard study? Most studies where billions of dollars are riding on the outcome tend to be terribly flawed. And simply observing high levels of LDL after 35 days of using a particular type of oil proves nothing. It certainly doesn't prove that palm oil causes heart disease. All it does is scare people into using low quality canola and soybean oils.

I'm still not convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that excess saturated fat is healthy.  Our ancestors were not eating a diet composed of more than 10% of total calories from saturated fat because non-factory farmed game meat was lean by default.

First of all, nobody is advocating eating factory-farmed meat. Second of all, the studies that suggest that wild animals are (or were) leaner mainly looked at trimmed muscle tissue. Fat is essential to animal organs and can be found in subcutaneous fat, marrow fat, brain fat and fat around organs like the kidneys. And since fat is the only way to store and transport the fat soluble vitamins A, D, E and K, these animals would have had to have enough fat to pass those nutrients along to their young via dairy transport. So, the argument that wild paleo animals were entirely lean is false. The organ meats and marrow were preferred and that's where most of the nutrient-dense fat was stored.

Most paleo-dieters initially believed the "lean meat" theory — at the time, the first paleo-diet authors (such as Loren Cordain) tried to stay true to the diet-heart hypothesis by recommending the non-saturated fats — using some data that happened to show that many animals happened to have high monounsaturated fat profiles. Cordain went so far as to tell people to use processed canola oil and rub flax oil on their meats before cooking (heating flax oil would be highly carcinogenic). But these days, many Paleo-dieters have turned their backs on Cordain's assertions and the diet-heart hypothesis and now agree with WAPFers about fat. I believe this evolution of Paleo-diet thinking is called Paleo 2.0 or something like that. "Primal" dieters also agree with WAPFers about fat, but I believe they side with Paleos and neither do much traditionally prepared grains. So, most WAPFers, Paleo 2.0ers and Primals tend to generally be on the same page about animal products these days.

Finally, every indigenous culture on the planet has been documented to prize the fat of their kills. These cultures all went out of their way to obtain energy from animal fats and preferred fatty kills to lean ones. It's actually ridiculous to imagine primitive cultures tossing away fatty tissues when making their way through a carcass. It's only been during the last 100 years that people stopped trying to obtain energy from animal fat. Why? Because the food industry found it more profitable to create its own versions of animal fats.

Eating non-lean meat, bacon, butter, every day ala Atkins style seems to be way overdoing it.

It's a myth that all animal fat is overwhelmingly saturated fat. For example...

Duck and Goose Fat are semisolid at room temperature, containing about 35% saturated fat, 52% monounsaturated fat (including small amounts of antimicrobial palmitoleic acid) and about 13% polyunsaturated fat.

Chicken Fat is about 31% saturated, 49% monounsaturated (including moderate amounts of antimicrobial palmitoleic acid) and 20% polyunsaturated

Lard or pork fat is about 40% saturated, 48% monounsaturated (including small amounts of antimicrobial palmitoleic acid) and 12% polyunsaturated.

Beef and Mutton Tallows are 50-55% saturated, about 40% monounsaturated and contain small amounts of the polyunsaturates, usually less than 3%. Suet, which is the fat from the cavity of the animal, is 70-80% saturated.

Olive Oil contains 75% oleic acid, the stable monounsaturated fat, along with 13% saturated fat, 10% omega-6 linoleic acid and 2% omega-3 linolenic acid

Peanut Oil contains 48% oleic acid, 18% saturated fat and 34% omega-6 linoleum acid

Sesame Oil contains 42% oleic acid, 15% saturated fat, and 43% omega-6 linoleum acid
Source: http://www.westonaprice.org/know-your-f ... y-on-fats/

Are there any long-term (10+ years) Atkins-style saturated fat eaters with quantifiable evidence of optimal health from lab tests?  That'll start to convince me.

Yes. About 2 million years ago humans started hunting animals and eating their fatty brains, marrow and organs in order to obtain fat-soluble vitamins that were essential to life. Indigenous cultures around the world all did this, including some who obtained their saturated fat from tropical plants. Evidence of heart disease was minimal in these populations until the introduction of mass-produced sugar and vegetable oils were introduced. Dr. Weston Price obtained a wide range of samples from indigenous cultures around the world and found this to be true.

In all seriousness, I'm confused as to why you would believe a controlled study — filled with flaws and monetary biases — when human history and basic fat-soluble nutrition proves otherwise. Most studies are incredibly flawed — particularly the ones that get published. The idea of a "low-fat" diet has only existed for a few decades — during which time chronic disease and pharmaceutical use has been rampant.

[Tortoise]

Rule of thumb:  All foods are ingredients, but not all ingredients are foods.  If you can't put a teaspoon of an "ingredient" in your mouth and safely eat it, it's not a food.

Here's a list of foods eaten all over the world, arranged by food families.  (In taxonomy, "family" comes after "class" and it comes before "genus" and "species.")  A person with an allergy or sensitivity to a particular food will often have allergies/sensitivities to other foods in the same food family, hence these charts to help understand the possibilities.  They are also useful to help people living here in the 21st Century understand some of what actually constitutes food:

http://www.thesuperallergycookbook.com/ ... Family.pdf

I notice that most common spices (cinnamon, pepper, thyme, paprika, etc.) are listed in that PDF file, suggesting that they are indeed "food" and are generally okay to eat.

However, what about the amounts or types of spices we add to our food? For example, I'm guessing the "spices" our distant ancestors added to their food--if any--were relatively minimal by today's standards. Somehow I doubt most hunter-gatherers walked around with a sack full of dried/concentrated spices to season their food before they ate it.

The reason I'm wondering is because a lot of very tasty whole food recipes call for fairly heavy amounts of spices--especially dry rubs for meat and things like that. Although the spices are mostly just dried versions of plant parts, I'm wondering if eating a lot of them might be problematic since spices are a quasi-processed/concentrated food, not whole food. (Recent discussions on this forum have implied that practically every other aspect of my previous diet has proved to be unhealthy in some way--so I figure why not spices as well? )

[Gumby]

However, what about the amounts or types of spices we add to our food? For example, I'm guessing the "spices" our distant ancestors added to their food--if any--were relatively minimal by today's standards. Somehow I doubt most hunter-gatherers walked around with a sack full of dried/concentrated spices to season their food before they ate it.

A WAPF-style diet attempts to recreate the diet of our not-so-distant ancestors (traditionally-prepared grains and all). The basic idea behind WAPF is to eat what your 18th and 19th century ancestors ate. The documentation on our 18th and 19th century ancestors shows that, on average, adults lived to their late 60s and early 70s, but they mostly died of preventable diseases — chronic disease tended to be rare. If you were trying to be "primal" you'd be attempting to eat what your pre-agriculture ancestors ate.

Nevertheless, spices are still an ancient tradition. Humans have been using spices since at least 50,000 BC.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spice#History

I may be wrong, but I have a hard time believing that spices could ever make up more than a small portion of anyone's food consumption — even on a dry rub. As far as sea salt goes, we also know that people used to eat a LOT more sea salt than they do now.

[Pointedstick]

As far as sea salt goes, we also know that people used to eat a LOT more sea salt than they do now.

That's because it's friggin' delicious. I can't believe what I was missing out on with the crap Safeway iodized salt. I didn't even get super special fancy Whole Foods stuff either; just Morton's sea salt. The difference is amazing.

[smurff]

The wet-looking Whole Foods stuff (celtic sea salt) is even better.

[MachineGhost]

In all seriousness, I'm confused as to why you would believe a controlled study — filled with flaws and monetary biases — when human history and basic fat-soluble nutrition proves otherwise. Most studies are incredibly flawed — particularly the ones that get published. The idea of a "low-fat" diet has only existed for a few decades — during which time chronic disease and pharmaceutical use has been rampant.

I didn't say a controlled study.  I just want to see objective evidence of internal health markers and conditions that are not deranged from eating a long-term, high (>10%) saturated fat lifestyle that isn't the S.A.D..  How about a site where everyone ups their lab test results similar to the hair testing site?  Long ago allegedly empirical evidence is a bit too subjective for me.  Price could have easily faked or lied about his observations to sell his pet theory, etc..  A lot of what you say makes sense, but so does the Aquatic Ape hypothesis.  Only repeated and conclusive evidence will turn a hypothesis into a theory.
 
Another problem is the diet-heart hypothesis has only existed for a few decades as well.  It seems to me you can't just switch to eating a WPF/Paleo/Primal diet and expect any conclusive evidence for another few decades until autopsies are done.  I'm not willing to make that gamble on my life when scientific consensus, flawed or not, is still in opposition to saturated fat.  I have no desire to be a 120-year old invalid who had a stroke 30 years previously because I ate too much saturated fat, etc..

And I know you like to downplay the causation saturated fats play to other disease states, but just wishing it were not so isn't going to make the problem go away merely by a fervent belief that it doesn't matter.  "True believers" don't perceive or ignore contradictory evidence.  I'm not going to fall into that trap (again).

[MachineGhost]

That's because it's friggin' delicious. I can't believe what I was missing out on with the crap Safeway iodized salt. I didn't even get super special fancy Whole Foods stuff either; just Morton's sea salt. The difference is amazing.

Pretty amazing considering I highly doubt that commercialized crap is even unrefined sea salt.  From what I see, it just doesn't have the toxic fillers and sugar that regular salt has.

Try some Celtic or Himalayan and then get back to us. 

[flyingpylon]

I'm curious to see how this new organization does:

Nutrition Science Initiative

[Gumby]

I just want to see objective evidence of internal health markers and conditions that are not deranged from eating a long-term, high (>10%) saturated fat lifestyle that isn't the S.A.D..  How about a site where everyone ups their lab test results similar to the hair testing site?  Long ago allegedly empirical evidence is a bit too subjective for me.

Yes, it certainly would be nice to have data like that. I know that there are plenty of Primal and Paleo-dieters who have seen their labs improve over the long term when they switched to a high fat diet. Anecdotally, some Primal and Paleo-dieters report seeing their labs get worse after a few weeks of switching to a high fat diet, and then re-testing a few months later showed an overall improvement in their labs. But, overall, most people see an improvement. As I explained in a previous comment, one theory why some initially receive poor results is that it's believed to be a temporary side effect of the liver getting cleansed.

Also, I believe Smurff has previously commented that his doctor is stunned by his excellent blood lab tests since switching to this diet.

All I can say is, there is no evidence in the historical record of rampant heart disease or cancer and everybody ate a lot of saturated fat back then.

And I know you like to downplay the causation saturated fats play to other disease states, but just wishing it were not so isn't going to make the problem go away merely by a fervent belief that it doesn't matter.  "True believers" don't perceive or ignore contradictory evidence.  I'm not going to fall into that trap (again).

Not exactly sure what you mean. There has never been any concrete evidence that saturated fats "play to other disease states." Some food-industry sponsored studies have certainly attempted to make this conclusion, but there are also plenty of studies that show that eating saturated fat is good for you. So, I don't know how you can definitively come to any conclusion about saturated fat from studies.

All we can do is look at the historical record, and the historical record is quite clear that arteriosclerosis began to increase considerably during the late 1800s, as the mechanization of refined sugar was introduced. The historical record then shows heart attacks increased incredibly rapidly after 1920 — coinciding with the increased consumption of refined vegetable oils a few years earlier. So, what exactly does saturated fat have to do with heart disease and chronic disease when saturated fat consumption dropped during the 20th century as the incidence of these diseases exploded? History proves that there's no correlation. Yet, the "studies" and media headlines suggest otherwise. Go figure.

[Gumby]

Price could have easily faked or lied about his observations to sell his pet theory, etc..  A lot of what you say makes sense, but so does the Aquatic Ape hypothesis.  Only repeated and conclusive evidence will turn a hypothesis into a theory.

That occurred to me. However, one of the assertions of a traditional high fat diet is that it can help cure tooth decay — as evidenced by the impressive dental hygiene Price observed in the indigenous populations he visited. (He was a dentist, after all). I found a lot of anecdotal evidence on the Internet that those who followed this diet were able to heal cavities and tooth decay in their children. It sounded too good to be true, and I didn't think much about it...

...Until one day, about three months ago, I noticed that my dog — who already eats a raw meat diet — had worn down one of her premolars and one of her molars. The teeth looked like they had been sawed in half and they both had large brown areas in the center. (She was chewing on a lot of twigs and tennis balls, which tend to wear down teeth). After reading Sir Edward Mellanby's study on healing cavities in dogs, I decided to try it out on my own dog. It was either that or send her in for dental surgery/extraction. So, I continued her raw meat diet, but I added the butter oil/fermented cod liver oil to her food each day as well as a few tablespoons of raw milk and some trace mineral drops. Last week her molar completely finished healing and her premolar is about 80% healed.

It would appear that Price's and Sir Mellanby's recommendations worked at least when it came to curing tooth decay. And since the teeth and gums are widely considered to be a key entry point for bad bacteria, infection and chronic disease, it would make sense that excellent dental hygiene prevents major chronic diseases. And in fact, this is widely supported by modern medicine...

See: http://yourlocalsecurity.com/in-good-me ... oss-or-die

[MachineGhost]

Anyone tried this?  It's not raw but its pasteurized at a lesser temperature than ghee and the wax is removed.

http://nutraprointl.com/2010/01/27/gras ... ter-oil-2/