On Mon, 26 Oct 1998, Wade H. Reeser wrote:
> >But the point has been made repeatedly, by experts such as
> >Cordain and Eaton, that the *kind* of fats eaten by these people
> >is significantly different from what most of us "supermarket
> >hunters" are getting.
>
> But the experts don't provide definitive evidence of problems with the
> animal fats of domesticated animals. It has only been in recent times
> (1900's) that these domestic animal fats are being blamed for creating
> these problems. People seemed much healthier with respect to
> athersclerosis and obesity before the advent of the vegetable oils that
> plague us today and cooked in good, old-fashioned lard.
Yes, but the question is made more complicated by the fact that
the composition of animal fat has itself changed in this century.
Cattle are now bred and fed in a manner to bring about
accelerated obesity. This is not to deny that fattened cattle
have been prized for a very long time (see the parable of the
prodigal son), but the means of fattening the animals has
changed, and with it the composition of the fat has changed.
It would be helpful if we had studies comparing the health of
people eating comparable amounts of domesticated animal fats
versus wild animal fats, but we are unlikely to get such studies.
Therefore we have to work inferentially from clinical and
epidemiological studies and try to put the pieces together.
Cordain has argued -- persuasively, in my view -- that animal
fats in the paleolithic diet were significantly higher in
monounsaturates, lower in saturates, and had more w-3 fats. We
have evidence that modern diets that have these properties, such
as the so-called Mediterranean diet, are healthy. In my own
case, making these changes corrected the elevated cholesterol
problem. Regardless of whether cholesterol is linked to disease,
my high cholesterol was clearly abnormal and uncharacteristic of
HGs. The fact that these changes corrected the abnormality (and
my cholesterol is still slowly dropping) is consistent with the
theory that fat composition matters. I am aware that continuous
high-volume nut ingestion was not a paleo option; it is only a
way of approximating the monounsaturate content of a paleo diet
without eating clearly nonpaleo foods.
> >It sure looks that way. And we are not Inuit. There is
> >scientific evidence that the Inuit are metabolically *different*.
>
> They do seem to suffer disproportionately from various disease when fed a
> typical american diet. What does this mean to you? Or is the paper not
> written yet...
It means to me that it is a mistake to assume that we are
metabolically just like the Inuit. And this is, of course, not
the only such metabolic peculiarity that has been identified in
the Inuit. Add to that the fact that the kinds of fats eaten by
the Inuit differ from what most of the rest of us are getting and
you have still more reason to withhold generalizations.
> >Eating fish a couple of times a week is not particularly paleo.
>
> What does this mean? Many people fished, some more than others. There are
> some arguements whether it was a significant amount of the daily diet which
> are unresolved.
There weren't a lot of sardines lying around on the savannahs.
Cold water fish are a good source of EPA but I'm not aware of any
argument that they were an important part of the human diet
before the Great Leap Forward about 40,000 years ago. A similar
point might be made about olives for monounsaturated fat. I'm
not arguing against eating fish or olives, only pointing out that
these are basically ways of "hacking" the modern reconstructed
paleo diet to create some of the nutrient balance of what we
think the actual paleodiet had. I'm not against this.
> I have seen some of the literature for the problems with fish oils because
> of pollution. Do you have specific references to problems with organ meats
> or are you just popping off some you heard.
I have mainly secondary sources, but I'll look through
bibliographies, etc. and see what I can come up with.
Todd Moody
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