Amadeus Schmidt wrote:
>
>
> Concerning Udo Erasmus I'd like to know what exactely you name as
> "a lot of really wrong ideas (at least about nutrition) that are bad
> for your health".
> His writing may be inconvenient for some and contains some more
> speculative thoughts. However I'm impressed by the valuable and well
> referenced in-depth information I could find in his book "Fats that
> Heal, Fats that Kill".
>
> Could you elaborate?

I'm glad you asked, because now I can come clean! I haven't even read
his book and there I was criticizing him. My comment was based on a
review of his book by Fallon or Enig that can be found on the
westonaprice.org website. Their claim is that there are many people out
there who, because of him, are consuming dangerous amounts of flax oil.
Apparently we are adapted for the consumption a certain amount of
alpha-linolenic acid, but shouldn't get too much. We're better off
getting the longer chain omega-3's instead, which is what we would be
getting from wild meats, organ meats, and fish. The animals eat the
alpha-linolenic, which is in grass and other plants, and alter some of
it for us so we are consuming more of the longer-chain acids,
pre-formed. A better supplement than flax oil would be fish oil or cod
liver oil, if you can keep it protected. Some say you need ALA
supplements, such as flax oil, to balance out excess LA, but why not
just eliminate the excess LA from your diet and eat foods with
evolutionarily appropriate fatty acid profiles? That seems to be what
this email list is about. According to Enig/Fallon, Erasmus is
recommending ALA supplementation as a remedy for a deficient diet, and
(again, according to Enig/Fallon) those supplements are bad for us in
the levels people are using. They also claim that in his book, mixed
with a lot of other good information, there is serious misinformation
about coconut oil, saturated fat, canola oil, and hemp oil. You may know
more than I do about these issues and you have read the book in
question, so I'm interested is what you have to say about this.

Hilary McClure
Danville, VT

ps I find a lot of what Enig and Fallon have to say to be fascinating
and very valuable, but seriously question some of their ideas.