Sally Fallon asked me to re-post this article, correcting some problems
with punctuation codes caused by transmission errors (and my carelessness)
the first time, and also correcting an error regarding calcium. Here it is
again; I'll try to remember to re-do the archives to fix this.
To: Dr. Cordain and members of the Paleodiet Group
Re: Answers to questions of May 26, 1997
First, many apologies for taking so long to respond to your excellent
questions and comments of May 26. Our replies follow:
1. You now have the reference for Voegtlin's book. As you point out,
Voegtlin errs in asserting that plant foods are needed to prevent scurvy.
Uncooked or minimally cooked flesh of organs of animals contain either
vitamin C or a vitamin-C-like substance that prevents scurvy. Dr. Weston
Price made this discovery when studying the Indians of Northern Canada. (1)
When they killed an animal, the Indians immediately divided up the adrenal
glands and gave a piece--raw--to every member of the tribe, and they
understood that this would prevent scurvy. Dr. Voegtlin is also wrong about
vitamin K, which is found in butter and animal fats. So it can be said that
all the known vitamins, minerals and needed macronutrients can be obtained
from animal foods. However, we should not rule out the possibility that the
various phyto-chemicals, alkaloids, etc. found in plant foods, while not
classified as vitamins, are necessary for optimal health, at least to some
individuals.
2. We have consistently argued that the current high levels of CHD have
nothing to do with the consumption of saturated fat from animal sources,
(2,3,4) but rather are due to foods relatively new to the human
diet--particularly excess polyunsaturates, hydrogenated oils and refined
carbohydrates. The anti-cholesterol, anti-animal-fat campaign is a phoney
issue invented and promulgated by the vegetable oil and fabricated food
industries during the 50s and 60s in order to get the upper hand in marketing
their products. It amounts to propaganda designed to denigrate nutritious
traditional foods so that the consumer will buy highly refined and processed
food items instead. The amount of saturated fat in the American diet
remained the same between 1935 and 1974--the period of greatest increase in
heart disease.
3. The LDL/HDL issue is also phoney and does not stand up to rigorous
scrutiny. LDL is necessary to carry cholesterol from the liver to the cells,
particularly to the brain cells, which unlike other cells in the human body,
do not manufacture cholesterol. However, it is true that oxidized LDL is a
problem, and does initiate foam cells in the arteries. Oxidized cholesterol
is found in products that have been heated to very high temperatures in the
presence of oxygen, such as powdered eggs and milk. Powdered eggs are added
to many processed foods and powdered milk is added to 1% and 2% milk to give
it body. People drinking reduced fat milk in order to "avoid heart disease"
are actually taking in large quantities of oxidized cholesterol which is a
causative factor. You are also right in pointing out that high levels of
commercial polyunsaturated oils (virtually all of which have a high N6 to N3
ratio) increase LDL oxidizability. It is the excess of polyunsaturated
oils that cause the problem--not the saturated fats, whether in the modern
diet or in traditional cuisines. In fact, SFAs have been shown to lower
Lp(a) which, unlike total serum cholesterol, HDL or LDL, is a very good
marker for increased risk of CHD. (5)
4. We believe that the amount of protein in the diet as related to CHD is
another phony issue. One can point to populations with relatively high
protein consumption (30-40%) with little or no CHD, and to populations with
relatively low protein consumption (15-20%) with little or no CHD. In any
event, we have no way of knowing the exact ratios of macronutrients in the
Paleolithic diet, and in fact, there probably was a lot of variation
depending on season, locality and tribal custom. The danger lies, as we
pointed out in our article, in diets high in animal protein but low in fat.
This seems to have been generally recognized by the hunter-gatherer.
5. We would like to know what kind of fat combined with carbohydrates
exacerbate the postprandial lipemic excursions. We can well believe that
excess polyunsaturated or trans fats would do this. We know that fats taken
with carbohydrates, especially traditional fats such as butter or any of the
tropical oils, lower the glycemic index, thereby preventing blood sugar
swings. We are not aware of any studies showing carbohydrates were eaten
separately in pre-industrial societies. American Indians made pemmican from
meat or fish, fat, maple syrup and cranberries; succatash was made from meat,
fat, beans and corn. Orthodox dieticians/nutritionists contend that high
carbohydrate diets improve blood lipid profiles. All this emphasis on
protein and carbohydrate content is, we believe, misplaced. The real issue
is the kind and quality of the macronutrients--how they are produced,
processed and prepared.
6. We look forward to seeing your research and intriguing findings about the
varying lengths of SFAs in wild and domesticated animals. Stearic acid
(18:0) has been shown to raise cholesterol in some studies--and in any event,
the whole cholesterol issue is bogus. There may be differences in the N6/N3
ratios in wild and domesticated ruminant adipose tissue, but in both overall
total PUFA is low. The real imbalances come with modern farming methods (for
eggs, fish, vegetables, etc.) and with the introduction of high N6 oils into
the diet. Excess N6/N3 ratios result in profound imbalances at the cellular
level that can lead to MI, cancer and many other diseases. (6, 7) We
certainly do agree that high levels of N6 in the diet are a problem, but the
source of excess N6 is not domesticated beef and lamb.
7. We do not know when milk product consumption became general, but it is
fair to assume that the adoption of a nomadic/herder life-style--and
therefore the domestication of animals--preceded agriculture. We cannot
understand how dairy products per se can be blamed for the CHD epidemic.
Counter examples include France (low CHD, high consumption of butter and
cheese); Soviet Georgia (famed for longevity, high consumption of whole milk
products); the Masai (high consumption of whole milk products, no CHD);
Switzerland and Austria (life span almost as long as Japan, diet rich in
butterfat and whole milk products) and America at the turn of the century
(diet loaded with butterfat and whole milk products, very little CHD.) If
CHD is associated with milk consumption within individual countries, the
finger must be pointed at modern production methods (inappropriate feed for
the cows, cows bred to have a low butterfat content) processing
(pasteurization, homogenization) and additives (powdered skim milk containing
oxidized cholesterol and synthetic vitamin D2 or D3. Synthetic D2 has been
very conclusively shown to cause calcification of the soft tissues including
the arteries, and large amounts of synthetic D3, which has largely replaced
D2 as an additive to milk, have been implicated as a causative factor in the
initiation of pathogenic lesion development in the arteries. (8) The N6-N3
ratio of the small amounts of PUFAs in bovine milk fat is excellent--about
2/1--whereas total N6/N3 in the modern diet exceeds 20/1. So once again,
while we agree that high levels of N6 in the diet are a problem, the source
of excess N6 is not butterfat. Dietary saturated fats contribute to
improved assimilation of EFAs. (9) In other words, we need less of the EFAs
when there are enough SFAs in the diet. Magnesium does seem to protect
against CHD. The fault lies not with high levels of calcium from milk
products, but with the deficiency of magnesium in modern diets. Weston Price
found that the diets of healthy "primitives" contained at least four times
the amount
of calcium as the American diet of his day (and ten times the fat-soluble
vitamins A and D!) (1) Sources of magnesium include nuts, meat and grains
such as buckwheat.
8. As we stated earlier, modern man is not consuming high levels of SFAs
compared to pre-agricultural man. The blame for inactivity should be placed
on the lower nutrient content of the total diet, composed as it is of high
levels of refined and devitalized foods. When the diet supplies all the
needed factors, humans need no incentives to exercise.
9. Finally, on the question of salt, a distinction must be made between
processed salt, which contains many problematic chemicals including
aluminium, and from which the magnesium salts and all the valuable trace
minerals have been removed. Modern salt comes attached to modern food
products, which are invariably refined, rancid and laced with additives; and
it is difficult to separate salt from these other variables in dietary
research surveys. Some studies have shown that with low salt diets,
hypertension becomes worse. In the 1930s, researcher McCance demonstrated
that when dietary salt is lowered, all manner of inappropriate physiological
responses ensue--including cramps, weakness, lassitude, loss of taste
sensation and severe cardiorespiratory distress on exertion. (10) The recent
contribution to this debate, describing various American Indian methods for
using salty blood in the preparation of their meat, supports our contention
that Paleolithic diets contained sodium chloride. Salty animal blood and
urine form an important part of the diet in salt-poor Africa. The
concentration of population, and the rise and fall of civilizations
throughout the world, can be positively correlated with the availability of
salt. (11)
To summarize, the hypothesis that modern chronic diseases like CHD and cancer
are due to consumption of saturated fats, red meat, milk products and salt
does not stand up to careful scrutiny. These have been in the diets of
healthy population groups for millennia. Media denigration of such
traditional foods is a distraction that diverts the attention of both the
public and the scientific community from the real culprits--modern farming
techniques, inappropriate processing, refined carbohydrates, commercial
vegetable oils, food additives and rancid & altered fats.
P.S. The rest of citation #2 is Coronary Heart Disease: The Dietary Sense
and Nonsense, George V Mann, ed, Janus Publishing, 1993, available from the
Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation (619) 574-7763. Mann's involvement with
the Framingham Study, and his studies of the Masai, whose diet is high in
saturated fat but who do not suffer from CHD, led him to the following
conclusion: "The diet-heart hypothesis has been repeatedly shown to be
wrong, and yet, for complicated reasons or pride, profit and prejudice, the
hypothesis continues to be exploited by scientists, fund-raising enterprises,
food companies and even governmental agencies. The public is being deceived
by the greatest health scam of the century." Confirmation of Mann's
statement comes from none other than William Castelli, Director of the
Framingham Study, who stated, "In Framingham, Massachusetts, the more
saturated fat one ate, the more cholesterol one ate, the more calories one
ate, the lower peoples serum cholesterol. . . we found that the people who
ate the most cholesterol, ate the most saturated fat, ate the most calories
weighed the lease and were the most physically active." (Archives of
Internal Medicine, 1992)
1. Price, Weston A DDS, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, 1945 Keats
Publishing, Price Pottenger Nutrition Foundation (619) 574-7763
2. Fallon, Sally with Mary G Enig, PhD and Pat Connolly, Nourishing
Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and
the Diet Dictocrats, 1996 ProMotion Publishing (800) 231-1776
3. Fallon, Sally and Mary G Enig, PhD, "Diet and Heart Disease: Not What
You Think", Consumers Research Magazine, July 1996 (615) 337-3322
4. Fallon, Sally and Mary G Enig, PhD, "Our Friend Cholesterol", Health
Freedom News, April-May 1996, National Health Federation (818) 303-0642
5. Pramod Khosla, PhD and K C Hayes, DVM, PhD "Dietary Trans-Monounsaturated
Fatty Acids Negatively Impact Plasma Lipids in Humans: Critical Review of
the Evidence" Journal of the American College of Nutrition, Vol 15, No 4
3250-339 (1996)
6. Horrobin, David F, PhD, "The regulation of prostaglandin biosynthesis by
manipulation of essential fatty acid metabolism," Reviews in Pure and Applied
Pharmacological Sciences, Vol 4, 339-383, Freund Publishing House, 1983
7. Fallon, Sally and Mary G Enig PhD, "Tripping Lightly Down the
Prostaglandin Pathways", Price Pottenger Nutrition Foundation Health Journal,
Vol 20, No 3 Fall 1996 25-29.
8. Huang, William Y, Akinori Kamio, S-J C Yeh and Fred A Kummerow, "The
Influence of Vitamin D on Plasma and Tissue Lipids and Atherosclerosis in
Swine", Artery 3(5):439-455 (1977)
9. Garg, M L et al, FASEB Journal 2:4:A852 (1988)
10. McCance, R A, "Experimental Sodium Chloride Deficiency in Man",
Nutrition Reviews, Vol 48, 145-147 (Mar 1990)
11. Bloch, M R, "The Social Influence of Salt", Scientific American 121-129
(July 1963)
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