Lex's Journal

[goodsamaritan]

My 2 cents about the water issue is about the usable water issue.
My guess about myself is that my body utilizes only 20% or less of plain old water.
But my body seems to make more efficient use of raw fruit and raw veggies water content.
Somehow the water in raw fruit and raw vegs are more efficiently utilized by my body.

So when I'm stuck with plain old water I have to drink a lot of it.
Like you said, you consume a gallon of plain water a day.

[PaleoPhil]

...on another note, son-in-law eats lots of fruits and suffers from bouts of gout as well....

That's interesting, Lex, as fructose has been one of the key factors implicated in gout, but even people who implicate fructose like Dr. Lustig have assumed that fruit is OK. On the other hand, some traditional peoples avoid gout while eating plenty of fruit, so I suspect it's a combination of factors and that your son-in-law probably eats modern foods along with the fruit.

[lex_rooker]

I was just reminded that my pemmican and jerky manuals are posted on the Dirty Carnivore forum as is my short bio.  Good folks there and highly recommend you add the site to your list of regular places to visit.  Here’s the links:

http://www.dirtycarnivore.com/snacks.html

http://www.dirtycarnivore.com/Lex.html

This, (RawPaleo), is my home forum, and though I'm a member of dirtycarnivore and follow those threads that interest me, my Journal and 99% of my posts are here.

Lex

[lex_rooker]

GS,
I’ve always assumed that my body was using 100% of the water I drink as long as it goes in my mouth and exits as urine.  There is more urine output when I drink straight water as there is no glucose, salt or other nutrient that tends to cause my body to retain a portion of the water to maintain proper nutrient dilution and fluid balance.

I’ve read where every gram of glucose requires the body to retain 6 grams of water for the body to maintain proper fluid balance.  When drinking sugar laden fruit juices, much of the fluid must be retained to offset the sugar in the juice.  If this is true, and you are convinced that less urine produced equals better efficiency, then you are correct that the juice you are drinking is being “efficiently used”  as the body tries to offset the sugar by retaining much of the water.  To me, drinking fruit juice is much like drinking sea water.  Much of the water is not available as it is bound up in maintaining proper fluid balance.  In my case, all the water is available to wash and cleans the system as it is free water with little mineral or nutrient concentrations that must be diluted in the body.

The effect of water storage from glucose is one of the reasons that VLC and LC diets like Atkins are so effective so quickly.  With no carbs in the diet, glucose levels drop dramatically and the water needed to maintain fluid balance is rapidly released.

Bottom line is that I believe that my body is using 100% of the water I drink.  It’s just that more of it is available to wash and cleans the body as it is absorbed through the stomach and then passed out the kidneys.   I guess it all depends on what you believe is the proper role for water and your definition of efficiency.

Phil,
As is true with all body functions and systems, everything is interconnected and any given symptom is most likely created by a confluence of many factors – especially metabolic disorders like gout, diabetes, kidney stones, arthritis, and a host of others.

Since changing any one of a number of things could bring relief (even if temporary), it makes fertile ground for patent medicine cures and snake oil salesmen.  

Lex  
 

[PaleoPhil]

...As is true with all body functions and systems, everything is interconnected and any given symptom is most likely created by a confluence of many factors – especially metabolic disorders like gout, diabetes, kidney stones, arthritis, and a host of others.

Yes, and I think this is why your point about simplicity is an important one. Nassim Taleb and others have also talked about unknown risks increasing when humans introduce new elements not found in nature, such as juicing fruits instead of eating them whole.

[lex_rooker]

I received a private e-mail asking about my current fat intake as a percentage of calories.  After reading my reply I thought others on this forum might be interested as well so here it is.

I don't measure stuff when I'm not doing an experiment so I hit the kitchen with scale in hand and put together a typical meal, then ran the numbers.  
 
My normal mix of Slankers pet food and ground beef comes out to about 19% protein and 15% fat by weight.  My daily meal starts with 500g of this mixture.  This works out to 95g protein and 75g fat so the initial protein/fat ratio by calories is about 35/65.  Total calorie count is about 1,050. I then add about 175g of rendered beef fat to this mix.  This gives me 95g protein and 250g of fat.  The protein/fat ratio by calories for this is 15/85.   Total calorie count is about 2,630.
I've found that the longer I stick to this way of eating the more I prefer the higher fat content, so much so, that if I eat out, I often come home and eat a 100g of rendered fat to top off the meal.  The two 16oz ribeye steaks that I normally order just don't have enough fat to satisfy me.
 
Calorie intake has increased from around 1900 to the current 2600 and the result is that I've put on some weight.  I used to weigh between 155 and 160.  My weight is now stable between 165 and 170.  An interesting observation is that the 10 lb increase seems to have been distributed fairly evenly over most of my body rather than added as belly fat.  Waist, hips, and chest have all increased about 3/4 inch.  I do notice that I fill out my shirts and pants a bit more, but have not had to increase the size.  I still wear a 32/33 waist pant and a medium shirt.
 
Lex

[Michael]

Thanks for sharing that information Lex.  That will be invaluable as ever I'm sure!

Glad to read you're doing well and are in a good place with regard to simplifying your diet to allow enjoyment of the important things in life!

[Taste Sense]

Lex,

Great journal! I've been following it with much interest. I just did the math and was surprised to find out that you eat so little raw protein each day - just under 4 ounces!? I've been struggling with eating raw steaks for a while now, and wonder whether I was gobbling just too much for me, like a pound at a time, and not getting enough fat. I would get severe stomach pains from raw and hence had to resort to cooking. I think I have no or very little stomach acid as I get no burn feeling in my chest irregardless of the amount of intake of HCI pills. On the other hand, I react horribly to carbs: fruit - toothache and hunger, vegetables and grains - tired and sleepy. So zeroing in on carbs seems like an appropriate undertaking for me. But cooking meat is effort, requires spices, gives off odor, and is unappreciated by this community due to toxins - AGEs, PAH's, amines, etc. Anyway I gonna give it a try and eat less raw protein and twice as much fat. How do you add rendered fat to mix? Do you melt it first or something? Cause it is hard and not very tasty. Also you seem to have upped your fat intake all the way to 85% by calories. Any future plans to go any higher or lower?

[lex_rooker]

TS,
I have never worried about all the alphabet soup, AGE’s, PAh’s, Amines, free radicals and all the others.  Lots of theories that they cause problems but it’s all just theories that sound good and the lab tests don’t seem to translate well outside the lab.  There’s now even a theory that free radicals are necessary for our bodies to function properly.  Can’t measure any of this stuff so I just don’t waste any time worrying over it.

I melt the rendered fat and mix it into my normal ground meat mix.  The amount of fat I eat varies from 75% of calories to about 85% of calories.  I just scoop, melt, and stir and don’t spend much time making accurate measurements when I’m not doing an experiment.  I’ve developed a feel for about how much fat I need to add to satisfy my hunger.  I spend very little time thinking about, preparing, and eating food – maybe 30 minutes per day.  The other 23 hours and 30 minutes are focused on living my life and doing things I enjoy.

I have no current plans to make any formal changes to my diet.  Fat content will vary a little each day based on what I feel for, but my core diet remains pretty much unchanged: ground grass fed beef mixed with a little Slankers pet food and rendered fat ‘till it looks right. 

Sometimes I don’t melt the fat and just kneed it into the meat.  A bit different texture but when you are truly hungry, it tastes just fine.

Lex

[brwr]

"I recall someone once said, with regards to NASA, "when failure is not an option, success becomes very expensive." "   I just ran across this sentence on the web.  After reading all 114 pages of Lex's  journal with his ups & downs, the many BG tests, physicals, KSs, etc. this sentence seemed appropriate.  Keep up the good work Lex.

[PaleoPhil]

Admission by Gary Taubes that he was wrong about carbs being required to store fat

Lex, if I understand correctly, your journal experiment was inspired as a test of Gary Taubes' hypothesis that people can't add body fat from eating fat in the absence of carbs and that calories are therefore irrelevant on ZC. Gary Taubes revealed in the interview below that this hypothesis wasn't stated explicitly in his book, but that he did propose it in his old lectures (before he revised them).  Although he did write in his book, "Dietary fat, whether saturated or not, is not a cause of obesity" and "carbohydrates make us fat and ultimately cause obesity." Based on the interview, I think he still believes these points, as he apparently sees fat as much less of a factor than carbs.

Taubes has at least partially recanted his hypothesis, though he claims that the exception of glycogenolysis (the degradation of glycogen) and probably the production of insulin from excess protein intake (http://jcem.endojournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/81/11/3938) [and the one previously mentioned in this forum--gluconeogenesis ("the generation of glucose from non-carbohydrate carbon substrates such as lactate, glycerol, and glucogenic amino acids." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gluconeogenesis)--and who knows what else]. You apparently found that your experimental results disproved the hypothesis. Gary even mentioned that some bloggers had refuted it, and who knows, maybe you were one of the people he was referring to.

In my opinion you've basically been vindicated, though Gary apparently learned of his error from some scientists some time ago, according to him, and I suspect that there is more to this than Gary has discussed, including more beyond what I've added with a little searching.

A (Cooked) High Fat Diet Can Cause Obesity and Atherosclerosis

Alpha glycerol 3 phosphate enables the storage of triglycerides in fat tissue. Both carbs and the glycerolneogenesis of dietary fats can produce Alpha glycerol 3 phosphate. Thus gluconeogenesis and glycogenolysis can cause body fat gain and dietary fat can provide the raw material for gluconeogenesis and glycogenolysis. A high-fat diet in mice produced the liver lipid metabolites hepatic triacylglycerol and diacylglycerol (Study reveals trigger for insulin resistance in liver, potential drug targets, http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/27763.php).

A (cooked) high fat diet can cause hepatic insulin resistance. Hepatic insulin resistance "is sufficient to produce dyslipidemia and susceptibility to atherosclerosis (http://www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/abstract/S1550-4131(07)00368-3). Hepatic insulin resistance also causes "an increased rate of production of glucose, due to gluconeogenesis and glycogenolysis." (Arner,P. 2002. Insulin resistance in type 2 diabetes: role of fatty acids. Diabetes Metab Res. Rev. 18 Suppl 2:S5-S9.) And thus the circle is complete.

Gary Taubes basically admitted to it here (though he includes some defensive language, but after this excerpt he makes some rather astounding and candid concessions that may lose him hundreds or even thousands of potential readers:

41:05 [He made a mistake in his lectures, not in his book. In his older lectures he] talked about glycerol 3 phosphate (alpha glycerol phosphate) being raid?-limiting and that you need carbs to provide the glycerol 3 phosphate to store triglycerides in the fat tissue, so therefore the more carbs you have the more fat you store, which turned out to be wrong. Glycerolneogenesis [sic; glyceroneogenesis] can produce glycerol 3 phosphate.

45:56 [However:] "Insulin so fundamentally determines fat accumulation, that it doesn't really matter. … The more carbs, the more alpha glycerol 3 phosphate, the more fat you can store. That's all still true, but you can store fat without the carbs and in fact you have to be able to store fat without the carbs, because you're constantly recycling fat and you release more fat into your bloodstream than you're gonna burn in any one period of time [Plus, as I pointed out some time ago, not being able to make fat from fat would have made life for Arctic peoples very difficult if not impossible]. So much of the fat that you release into the bloodstream is fatty acids, [which] end up back in your fat tissue being stored again as fat. So you have to be able to do it. … And I always knew you had to be able to do it, but somehow, in the lectures, <pphhh> it got a little skewed…."

http://www.thelivinlowcarbshow.com/shownotes/2403/the-return-of-gary-taubes-episode-401/

Gary seems exhausted and depressed in the interview. I felt bad for him while listening and still do thinking about it. No doubt he's been put through the wringer due to the firestorm that his controversial views ignited and the way the LC thing has taken over his life. [I empathize with Gary and I'm not looking for an argument with any of his defenders, though if anyone has corrections to make or info to add, please let me know. Thanks.]

Things seem to be tilting the raw Paleo way lately, what with Stephan Guyenet and Dr. Davis writing about AGE's and now Gary Taubes publicly admitting that (cooked) fat intake can create body fat.

I threw this together, so I've probably made errors and feel free to correct them.

[lex_rooker]

Phil,
Yes, my original objective was to test the hypothesis (implied in his book and rather plainly stated in his lectures), that if you didn’t consume carbs that you couldn’t/wouldn’t gain weight.  My direct experience showed this to be incorrect, and after many months of data I felt secure that I could openly state that eating a Zero Carb diet would not stop weight gain, and further, that once your body was fully adapted to using fatty acids as its primary fuel, calories would indeed count again.

For those of us with an open mind and a willingness to accept as fact, data that do not support our current beliefs, revelations such as this are merely another learning opportunity and at most may cause us to make a minor course adjustment.  For those that treat diet as a religion, and hold Gary Taubes (and others) as their high priests, admissions like this can be earth shattering.  Taubes’ experience is the very reason that I have no wish to be given guru status.  I applaud Taubes initial purpose which was to question the very foundations upon which modern dietary theory is built.  He never claimed that he was a scientist or that everything he said was gospel – only that his research showed fundamental flaws in our modern approach to diet, and that maybe we should reevaluate some of our core dietary beliefs.  Just because one statement or idea he put forth in a lecture was found wanting, it in no way reduces the validity and value of the firestorm he single handedly set in motion.

Yes, my own tests showed flaws in one of Gary’s assumptions (or at least my interpretation of it), but as far as I’m concerned, he’s a hero for formally taking on the establishment.  The face of Helen of Troy is said to have launched a thousand ships, and my guess is that Taubes work has launched as many or more dietary studies – many in an effort to prove him wrong.  To me it’s not about whether he’s right or wrong on any given point, it’s the fact that he’s been a major catalyst for change that is important.

Lex

[a87.pal]

Hi Lex,

I'm experimenting with a diet change inspired by you and was wondering how long you have been consistently consuming tallow?

I have a large, perhaps unreasonable fear, that consuming high quantities of cooked fats and hormones puts unnecessary stress and confusion on the body.

Also, I'm curious why you switched away from mixing in the suet/back fat raw.

Thanks for the info.

[masterducky]

Let me add one word to Lex's and PaleoPhil's last posts.

So maybe the experience shows that we can gain weight also on a zero carb diet with a great fat ratio
but lets not forget about the argument that fat doesnt seem to raise insulin levels as carbs do.

[lex_rooker]

I'm experimenting with a diet change inspired by you and was wondering how long you have been consistently consuming tallow?

Well over a year. 

I have a large, perhaps unreasonable fear, that consuming high quantities of cooked fats and hormones puts unnecessary stress and confusion on the body.

What hormones?  The meat and fat I get isn’t raised with hormones.  I’ve also found little difference between using rendered fat and raw suet other than convenience.  Rendered fat is much easier to store and use than raw suet.

Also, I'm curious why you switched away from mixing in the suet/back fat raw.

I live in a modern world and take advantage of those things that make my life easier.  I store my meat in a freezer and/or refrigerator, I render my fat to save freezer space, I’ll pop frozen meat in the microwave for 30 seconds to thaw it if I forget to take it out early enough, etc, etc, etc.  I’m not a purist.  There is no such thing as the perfect diet.  I’m into what works and I don’t want to spend any more time on eating than necessary.  I have more important things to do - like take a nap…..

Lex

[PaleoPhil]

Calorie intake has increased from around 1900 to the current 2600 and the result is that I've put on some weight.  I used to weigh between 155 and 160.  My weight is now stable between 165 and 170.  .... An interesting observation is that the 10 lb increase seems to have been distributed fairly evenly over most of my body rather than added as belly fat.  Waist, hips, and chest have all increased about 3/4 inch.

Hi Lex, my understanding from the past is that you went from 160 to 180 lbs. on ZC when you didn't restrict your calories and that much of the 20 lbs was body fat, then you restricted your calories and dropped back to 160, and that this is your evidence that you can add significant body fat on ZC and that dieting is therefore not "all about the carbs/insulin". A skeptic pointed out this above quote of yours and I can imagine where some might go with it: since the weight you have since added is well distributed, maybe it is healthy fat and maybe it's impossible for you to become overweight or obese or develop excess fat in unhealthy depots (like the visceral fat, the belly, love handles, breasts and front of the neck) on a ZC diet. Do you wish to respond to this potential argument?

Thanks,
Phil

[lex_rooker]

... since the weight you have since added is well distributed, maybe it is healthy fat and maybe it's impossible for you to become overweight or obese or develop excess fat in unhealthy depots (like the visceral fat, the belly, love handles, breasts and front of the neck) on a ZC diet. Do you wish to respond to this potential argument?

Just reporting on what's happening.  Since I have no idea what my body is doing internally, why it is doing it, and no way to measure it, there is nothing to defend or argue over. I have no way of knowing if the weight gain is good or bad - it just is.  No matter what I say there will be those that wring their hands and agonize over stuff like this.  Nothing I can do about it.

Lex

[PaleoPhil]

That's fine. I would think a fat caliper would be one way to measure it, but if you're not interested, that's fine. If I were in your shoes I probably wouldn't bother to try to prove it further either.

[lex_rooker]

That's fine. I would think a fat caliper would be one way to measure it, but if you're not interested, that's fine. If I were in your shoes I probably wouldn't bother to try to prove it further either.

Not sure what would be the point.  What is good body fat?  What is bad body fat?  Who made the decision, the same people that have gotten it wrong on the food pyramid, the cholesterol hype, and a host of other dietary matters?   We're cautioned about pear shaped bodies as being unhealthy and told that an apple shape wards off heart disease, yet everyone, regardless of their shape will die and I can find no significant statistical difference in death rates. We are told that over weight and high cholesterol (over 200) put you at risk of an early demise from heart disease, yet people who are rail thin with cholesterol levels of 125 die from massive heart attacks early in life while those with levels of 275 and 50 lbs overweight live well into their 80's.  You either believe the stuff the mainstream press and the modern medical establishment publishes or you don't. I'm in the latter camp.  In fact, my personal experience has led me to question just about everything regardless of the source.

Not sure why you would think caliper readings would show something different than a tape measure.  They are both measuring devices, one in inches, the other in millimeters.  The tape measure records the total gain in diameter where the caliper measures the gain in thickness of one spot.  They both tell the same story, just in a different way.

The tape measure says that waist, hips, and chest all increased about ¾” in diameter.  Caliper readings show similarly equal increases in fat in all areas (abdomen, chest, thigh, etc).   At 155-160 average caliper readings were Ab-7.5 Chest-6.5, Thigh 11.
At 165-170 the readings are Ab-12, Chest-10.5, Thigh-17.  Therefore the caliper measurements increased about 60% in all areas.  Not sure that this tells us anything useful other than confirming that body fat increased as calorie intake increased.  Is the fat good or bad - who knows?  I guess there is one conclusion that we can draw.  Even on a ZC diet calories do count, but I think I’ve made this point several times before.

Lex

[PaleoPhil]

Not sure what would be the point.

There seems to be a lot of interest in the subject and your experiment increased my curiosity, so I guess you could say that you're to blame for my questions. Beyond general curiosity, the point would be that there is a wrinkle remaining in the discussion. While Taubes now admits that it's possible to add body fat from eating fat, he basically said in the Jimmy Moore interview that he doesn't think it's an important factor. He still considers it so insignificant that he decided not to include discussion of glyceroneogenesis or other methods of adding body fat without carbs in his upcoming book (given the intensity of the online debate on this subject, I'm surprised that he's not going to address it in his book). So while he has made a concession, it seems the discussion/debate is not fully resolved and if you're still interested in putting Taubes' hypothesis to the test, then this question remains (at least in the eyes of Taubes).

We're cautioned about pear shaped bodies as being unhealthy and told that an apple shape wards off heart disease, ....

I thought it was allegedly the other way around (http://nephropal.blogspot.com/2010/05/sex-and-omega-3-highly-conserved-nsfw.html), at least as far as females are concerned, with pear-shaped women being less prone to heart disease than apple-shaped, and hourglass-shaped even less prone (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_body_shape#Social_and_health_issues), and maybe that's what you meant?

I agree that not all body fat is necessarily unhealthy and am much less phobic about body-fat as well as dietary fat than most people. There is even a consensus that mitochondria-rich brown fat is "healthy" in the sense of promoting fat burning and thermal regulation. Mitochondria are also known to provide other health and performance benefits, some of which you have discussed before.

In fact, my personal experience has led me to question just about everything regardless of the source.

Same here. Question everything is one of my mantras, which is one of the reasons your writings attracted me to this forum.

Not sure why you would think caliper readings would show something different than a tape measure.

I didn't mean to imply that. You said you had "no way to measure it" and caliper just came to mind, as it's something that's frequently mentioned. If a tape measure is equally good or better, than that's fine too--whatever works, if anything. Of course, both caliper and tape measure readings are not direct measures of what is going on inside the body, but maybe they might give us some clues in the way that acne signals that there are certain inflammatory processes going on inside the body--or maybe not. Perhaps there are other better measures. You've provided data on quite a few health metrics and the sense I get is that you remain healthy overall even when you add body fat on your very low carb diet. One difficulty we face in your experiment is that it wouldn't be ethically responsible for us to ask you to see how much body fat you can add on ZC, even if you were up to the task, given the lack of survival need for body fat in modern society, the extra cost of the additional food intake required, the hypothetical risks (even though no actual risk factors have presented themselves yet), and the potential cosmetic and social issues.

[klowcarb]

I get my body fat taken every 8 weeks with callipers. I do find them superior to any other method. But bodybuilding is my hobby; I could see how others would not be interested.

I don't see why it matters to experiment with how much fat you can put on with ZC. The point of ZC is that we don't need carbohydrates for energy or health, and that without them, it is easier to maintain or become lean. It is not a guarantee. No one living naturally and respecting their hunger would starve themselves or stuff  themselves. I happen to use Fitday to track calories to make sure I get ENOUGH for my active lifestyle and my hobby of strenght-training, but I believe that once fat-adapted, as I am after 18 months of pure ZC, I could naturally control my intake to some extent.

The problems I have seen with those trying to go ZC have not been with ZC, but with the person. They eat too much protein, or they eat too often and not when really hungry. They eat junk ZC foods like pemmican (yes, I said it)--overcooked, lifeless meat and think that is all they need. They fear eggs or grassfed butter for dairy will make them "fat." They think they can eat medium muscle meat only. They want to eat tons and sit on their asses. They eat tons of bacon and supermarket meat and think that is what ZC is about.

Sorry to hoard your journal, Lex, but I get sick (reading other forums--why do I bother??) of the anti-ZC furor that comes and goes. I am not genetically Inuit--I'm Italian and Irish, but I'm doing just fine. I have tons of energy. My lifts and muscle have increased-I have independent corroboration from a trainer I hire to take my BF analysis and measurements. I am not sick or fatigued. I have no cravings. In short, I am thriving. But I am not dabbling in ZC and I take it seriously.

[PaleoPhil]

I don't want to get into a broader debate on the merits of ZC for all here in Lex's thread, Katelyn. It would likely hijack the thread and I think I have a good grasp of your views on it already. I'd like to stick to Lex's experiment and his thoughts on it and related issues. I'm also limiting my discussion of the broader issues relating to failure of some to lose excess body fat or improve health on ZC to the Dirty Carnivore forum right now, because it's too confusing and redundant trying to participate in two separate discussions of the same topic at the same time. Congrats on your success.

[klowcarb]

I hope you didn't take that as in insult, PaleoPhil...you know I think you are great. I would love, of course, to follow the discussions on Dirty Carnivore, but as you probably know, I am not welcome there because I actually believe ZCers don't need to eat seaweed.

[PaleoPhil]

No insult taken. Thanks, Katelyn. Yes, I know. The topic is complex. If I learn significant new info on it, I'll try to summarize what I learn in this forum in the future. Right now I'm still in the learning phase on it.

[lex_rooker]

Phil & Katelyn,
I generally agree with Katelyn’s take on the subject of over eating on ZC.  Not sure there is any value whatever in purposely trying to gain as much weight as possible under any circumstances.  I have clearly shown that in my case, once I fully adapted to my new lifestyle, I again put on weight if I ate more than necessary and this is supported by the experience of others as well.  Not sure what remains unresolved regarding Taubes’.  The implication that you can’t gain weight if you don’t eat carbs has been proven to be false – at least to my satisfaction, and apparently Taubes’ satisfaction as well.  Not sure what else we need to know to live full and productive lives.  I may be going out on a limb here, but I’m willing to state that regardless of the dietary protocol, once your body has fully adapted to it, if you consistently take in more food than your body needs, you will gain weight. 

I probably mixed up the apple/pear/banana/kumquat and whatever other body shapes there are supposed to be, mostly because I care very little about it.  I’ve come to trust that if I eat a biologically appropriate diet my body will assume the biologically appropriate shape and I won’t have to waste even one minute of my time agonizing over it.  Now here’s the rub with the above statement:  just what is a biologically appropriate diet?  I must admit that have no idea, however, I’ve had great success eating raw red meat and fat as my primary food and all the research that I’ve been able to find seems to point to this being our paleo ancestor’s primary dietary protocol for several hundreds of thousands of years and this is good enough for me at this time.  That said, I assure you that if there is a significant change to my health and wellbeing that appears to be diet related I’ll change what I’m doing in a heartbeat.

As far as the color of my fat, I have no idea and I have no wish to do surgery on myself to find out.  Again, if I’m eating the right foods then I trust that my body will make whatever type or color of fat it needs.  If my body fat is brown, white, or some other color I’m fine with it. I’m not at all prejudiced against fat of any color, and I don’t think that knowing the color of my body fat would enhance my life in any meaningful way.

I also agree with Katelyn that eating just pemmican or any muscle meat based diet might be problematic in the long run.  This is why I continue to eat a good measure of mixed organ meats in the form of Slanker’s pet food as part of my daily food mix, and only eat pemmican when fresh meats that meet my criteria are unavailable.  Pemmican is a marvelous food when fresh meat is scarce, but I suspect it has its problems if you attempt to eat it to the total exclusion of fresh meat.  Do we need organ meats?  I have no idea.  All I know is that what I’m doing has served me well for these many years and I have no interest in changing something that is working well just to see if I can create a problem.

As to the complexity of the issues, I think we make them far more complex than necessary.  After all, our ancestors for millions of years before us did well enough without modern science to get us here.  I also don’t know of any other animal in its natural habitat that finds choosing what to eat such a problem.  It is only humans which seem to lose their way and “learn” to make inappropriate but politically correct choices as they achieve higher and higher levels of formal education.   I’ve found my greatest challenge is to unlearn all the garbage that I was taught and try to rediscover what it means to be human.

Lex