Diet Debate

Hi Louise,

Here's a view that helps us understand how such conclusions can be reached. And yes, saturated fats and refined carbohydrates are quite bad. When a study is run on people on the SAD (Standard American Diet), if they eat less saturated fat, they usually are eating more white flour. Not much difference is seen, especially when the study starts with a food recall questionnaire, which is inaccurate, and then follows them for 10 years, assuming the diet did not change, which it often does.

http://www.pritikin.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1565:saturated-fat-should-be-demonized&catid=58:nutrition&Itemid=67

Best regards, EngineerGuy

Animal fats today can be thought of as processed food. The food is processed in the feed lot or cage or gigantic chicken house or pen where movement is restricted and where artificial diets are provided for the livestock.

Game animals are about 4 per cent fat and the animals move around a lot. Insects are about the same with a couple of exceptions like termites which are about 24 per cent fat. Of the 4 per cent in game animals which graze or browse, the percent of saturated fat must be mighty small.

dolores

If saturated fat were bad then I would be dead! The very fact that I am talking to you should make you worry...

Saturated fat is not bad or unhealthy! I doubt if you find any recent study that would prove it unequivocally in a clear-cut trial! Try it. If Pritikin said so, that did not automatically make it true. Even if he won a marathon.

Not even sugar must necessarily be always bad. In some cases sugar in low caloric settings may be better than starch (for rodents)!

Yes the saturated fat study is not very accurate but it does demonstrate the utter lack of any negative trend! In spite of what all the low fat vegan promoters have been claiming for years.

You are making too many assumptions such as in " if they eat less saturated fat, they usually are eating more white flour." As if they were automatically true. Even if your assumption were correct it would only led us to believe that saturated fat is supposed to be as bad as white flour. Since all the studies that I have seen comparing white and whole wheat food showed only a small marginal difference, you would run up against a politically incorrect notion of whole wheat being only slightly "less bad" than the white!

Also you have absolutely no grounds to imply that a more accurate data would have somehow vindicated Pritikin's anti-fat bias. It might in fact bury him even deeper...

Stan (Heretic)

I don't care how many studies you do. There is always going to be a group of people who defy the study. The Okinawans on their traditional diet eat a high carb diet with a little tofu and fish thrown in and are long lived and healthy. A group of Sardinians eat lots of meat (only their goats are vegetarian) and live a long time. Other Sardinians live normal lifespans. Seventh Day Adventists on a vegan diet (with lots of nuts) live a long time. There is a group of Eastern European Jews who eat a high fat diet and are very long lived.

The Okinawans seem to continue to have high DHEA levels which in most of us decrease with age. The long lived Sardinians lack an enzyme which seems to allow them to live long on any diet they want. The rest of us might have something unique about us (which we will probably never know) that makes us thrive on one type of diet or another. What is right for me? is the question each of us has to answer. Because one person or another thrives on this diet or that diet does not make it right for me no matter what the studies show.

I am very glad Heretk is alive and well on his high fat low carb diet but I am not going to try it unless what I am eating now is causing health problems. So far my blood sugars are between 75 and 85 and my eyes show no signs of retinopathy, cataracts, glaucoma or ARMD. If things change I hope I am not so stupid as to not switch my diet because of a theory I want to hold on to.

Dolores

My fasting insulin level is very very low....even below the recommended range

Problem is my DHEA level is also very low.

I have a lot of counter markers one very good the next very bad.