Adrienne said: it supposedly: 1) stimulates a "dangerous oxidation" that
>accelerates aging and is correlated with higher cancer rates;  2) is toxic
>to the thyroid gland; and 3) increases cell permeability which he thinks is
>harmful.  Thoughts?

Marianne:
>Unfortunately, he doesn't mention omega 3s at all, so I don't know how he
>reconciles that part - how get omega 3s without fish or flax seed oil or
>unsaturated fats?
>and...  he seems to be saying that you want to AVOID
> unsaturated fats, definitely including flax seed oil.

I have read Peat's paper.

Basically he is incriminating low antioxidant states as dangerous
- which is IMO right at insufficient intake levels, so in many cases.

Then he's incriminating PUFAs as the culprit for this
- which is IMO partially right at low intake of antioxidants.

Then he's mixing up all deleterious facts about a high w-6 loaded diet
and making it synonym with high PUFA
- which is IMO dangerously wrong.

Then he doesn't hesitate to claim that EFAs, namely LA and ALA could be
made in the body - which is in contrast to all publications I've read.

The good warning to derive of this paper for me are:
- it's bad to eat rancid oils
  (many oils become rancid easily, in particular high PUFA and even more
   oils high in w-3 or with it's vitamin E removed)
  Thus, eat oils which are fresh and which still have their vitamin E
  or are normally high in vitamin E or add some vitamin E)

- it's bad to eat an excess of w-6 PUFAs
  (nothing new)

His claims that PUFAs were imune suppressing and thyroid suppressing
obviously come because he lumps all high PUFA oils together. W-3 and w-6.
Which is right in many cases, because there's only one high in w-3 oil
and this is flax oil and only some medium w-3 oils like hemp.
Excess w-6 is inflammatory and imune suppressing.
(now I tend to see the d5d-competition from w-3 oils I mentioned recently in
a posting as a major reason for it's benefits).

At last what was new for me Peat claims that "these oils" would block
digestive enzymes. I'd like to see a reference for this.
I think fact is that all fats slow protein digestion in the stomach and
at the same time of course slow down stomach resting time.

I've uploaded a table of fat data for some basic foods
with PUFA/SFA percentage, w-6/w-3 ratio and palmitic acid at
http://www.geocities.com/paleolix/lipidbasics.html (some 260k big).
Just browse through the column with the PUFA percentage.
The *only* low PUFA percentages (less than 10%) are commercial meats.
That's simply not natural, weather you'd eat plants or game.
If you look at game, the percentages are very much higher than in comercial
meat, but still generally a little low (10-20%).
But look at the total fat. It's extremely little.
Where the wild game is fat - in the arctic - it's fat is loaded with
w-3 and PUFA.

regards

Amadeus
keep an eye on toco*erols