Up until now I've tried to avoid discussing saturated fatty acids (SFAs)
much because the issue tends to spark some rather heated debate, whereas I'm
more interested in sharing information and learning. However, I'm ready to
try to delve into the topic in a way that I hope will facilitate calm,
reasoned discussion. 

One factor that contributes to the heated nature of the SFA debate is the
existing anti-saturated fat dogma and the strong reaction to it. I have no
allegience to the existing dogma, I do think it is knee-jerk and goes
overboard, and I would be happy to help in overthrowing it completely if I
found that the evidence supported that. I would prefer that SFAs turn out to
be benign or healthy, because that would enable me to eat more foods that I
enjoy, but I will try not to let that bias influence my judgement. 

This is a complex issue that I would like to try to resolve for myself and
my friends. I'm only interested in following the facts wherever they lead
me. So if what I write appears to favor one side in the argument, it is only
because the information I have examined and reported leans that way. If
someone can provide me with better information, I welcome it.

In looking over the pro and con arguments in the saturated fatty acid (SFA)
debate here at PaleoFood, at the PaleoDiet archives, and elsewhere on the
Web I noticed some apples-to-oranges comparisons may have prevented coming
to a mutual understanding. The pro faction tends to cite the SFA levels in
wild animal tissues that are highest in SFA (such as the kidneys and adipose
tissue), whereas the con faction tends to cite levels in muscle tissue or
whole carcasses or in the overall diets of hunter-gatherers.

Fallon and Enig argue that hunter gatherers like the American Indians hunted
mostly mature adult male animals because they were the fattiest. This
doesn't jibe with what I've read of the habits of Paleolithic European
Neanderthal and Homo Sapiens hunter-gatherers, who reportedly preferred to
hunt prime-aged and juvenile animals. The preference for prime-aged animals
reportedly became more pronounced in the Middle to Upper Paleolithic
beginning around 45 thousand years ago (Sources: Clive Gamble, The
Paleolithic Societies of Europe, 2002 edition; Teresa Eleanor Steele, Red
Deer: Their Ecology And How They Were Hunted By Late Pleistocene Hominids In
Western Europe http://www.paleoanthro.org/dissertations/teresa%20steele.pdf
and Variation In Mortality Profiles Of Red Deer (Cervus Elaphus) In Middle
Palaeolithic Assemblages From Western Europe, 2004
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/abstract/109061929/ABSTRACT?CRETR
Y=1&SRETRY=0; Mary C. Stiner, Honor Among Thieves: A Zooarchaeological Study
of Neandertal, 1994). This prime-age prey strategy makes sense because the
other large predators, such as wolves, tend to hunt the old, the very young
and the feeble, leaving plenty of healthy juvenile-to-prime-age prey
available for hominids to hunt. 

In making their case Fallon and Enig also write that American Indians used
SFA in making pemmican because SFA remains unspoiled longer than other fats.
They seem to imply that the American Indians discarded some of the other
fats, or that the other fats regularly spoiled, whereas they used all the
SFA of a kill, because that is the only way I can see this point supporting
their case. If the American Indians ate all the monounsaturated and
polyunsaturated fats from a kill, it doesn't matter how long they stored the
SFAs--the fat ratios consumed would still be the same, and the whole-carcass
fat ratios would be more relevant than the kidney or adipose tissue ratios
alone. 

Discarding or letting spoil the non-SFA fats conflicts with the reported
tradition among American Indians of not wasting anything from a killed large
prey animal. This probably occurred at times, but it doesn't seem likely
that it was a regular practice and I have seen no evidence that it was,
except possibly among mammoth-hunters who preceded the Indians. Even during
the time of the mammoth, not all hunters specialized in hunting mammoth, nor
were mammoth plentiful everywhere on the planet. So even if all mammoth
hunters were wasteful, this would not necessarily apply to all hunters of
the time. I still consider the question open as to how wasteful the Stone
Agers of the Americas, Europe and elswhere were who pre-dated the American
Indians, but it appears that by the time the 500+ First Nations that we
recognize came into being, hunter-gatherers around the world were thrifty
rather than wasteful. Yes, the Indians ate "guts and grease," but they also
ate lean meat. In _The Education of Little Tree_ Forrest Carter says that
Little Tree was taught in the Cherokee way, "to take only what is needed,"
not to take more than you need and waste the rest.

Cordain and the rest of the anti-SFA faction argue that hunter-gatherers
traditionally consume an entire kill, so whole-carcass figures are more
relevant than kidney or adipose tissue figures alone. Since meat tissue
forms the majority of a kill, Cordain also argues that the fat ratio of meat
is more important than the fat ratio of smaller tissues like kidneys. The
figures that Cordain and others report have changed over time as they have
gathered more evidence, so I do not consider their current data to be
necessarily the final answer.

The question comes down to whether you believe that hunter gatherers usually
consume all the edible parts of an animal, or whether they preferentially
hunt the fattiest animals and discard some parts of the kills that are lower
in saturated fats. Below is some data from people in the pro faction (Fallon
and Enig) and the con faction (Cordain, Speth, Sinclair and O'Dea).
Unfortunately, sometimes percentages are used and sometimes gram weight is
used, which makes comparisons more difficult, but I think this data shows
the difference in emphasis on fatty vs. lean or whole tissues that made
agreement difficult and that is the crux of the debate.

Description					% Fat		Saturated
Fat	Cited by
Antelope, kidney fat			_		65.04%
Fallon, Enig
Bison, kidney fat				_		34.48%
Fallon, Enig
Caribou, bone marrow			_		22.27%
Fallon, Enig
Deer, kidney fat				_		48.24%
Fallon, Enig
20th Century hunter-gatherer diets	_		3.6-17.6%
Cordain
11 species of wild ungulates		3.6		_
JD Speth
Several species of wild ungulates	2-5		_
AJ Sinclair, K O'Dea
Caribou, whole carcass, yearly avg	_		11.10%
Cordain
Bison roast, wild, 100 g		16		0.91 g
Cordain
Antelope roast, wild			17		0.97 g
Cordain
Deer roast, wild				19		1.25 g
Cordain