hola

[William]

What a load of rubbish! Rendering produces heat-created toxins, too.Indeed Gary Via from the other group pointed out that rendering was actually worse than simple heating, as it was a more radical process.

We need a respectable source for the claim of "toxic" tallow, and and explanation of why millions have eaten it for thousands of years without harm.

[TylerDurden]

We need a respectable source for the claim of "toxic" tallow, and and explanation of why millions have eaten it for thousands of years without harm.

I already gave 1 study as an example of the heat-created toxins in tallow. Here it is yet again:-

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jf00070a016

And people have been eating cooked animal fats for thousands of years yet still we have many people suffering ill-health as a result of eating high-quality(ie grassfed) cooked animal fats(I'm just 1 of many, in this regard).

[William]

I already gave 1 study as an example of the heat-created toxins in tallow. Here it is yet again:-

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jf00070a016

I get a notice of:"Your current credentials do not allow retrieval of the full text."

then I read what the .pdf shows, and here it is:
"The in vivo measure of protein quality indicated that storage had no significant effect on soy-based formula.
The in vitro measures indicated smaller changes in DRL and browning activity than were seen with the milk-based formula. Several factors may have contributed to this finding; (1)the storage conditions chosen did not give a maximun reaction; (2) corn syrup solids served as the carbohydrate source instead of the more reactive simple sugars; (3) the methods used were not sensitive enough to detect any differences."

If you are trying for irrelevant, you have outdone yourself.

And people have been eating cooked animal fats for thousands of years yet still we have many people suffering ill-health as a result of eating high-quality(ie grassfed) cooked animal fats(I'm just 1 of many, in this regard).

I don't doubt your reaction to cooked animal fats, after all I have similar reaction to proteins cooked more than medium, and these bad proteins are in cooked animal fats.
However, properly made tallow contains little or no such proteins. And people flourish while eating it - note delfuego's story; there are others.
Your position is unsupported

[PaleoPhil]

William, that's the end of a prior study. Look below that to find the study Tyler referred to.

In fairness, the tallow in the study was refined and deodorized, but it is still suggestive of toxins from heating of any tallow, in my opinion and my standard caution about unproven new foods therefore suggests I should not eat too much cooked fats--at least not heated to 155+ degrees, as in that study.

The more I read about cooking, the more I think early hominids probably cooked plant foods like yams first and continued to eat meat mostly raw until much later. Many plants have to be cooked to be edible, but meats don't. I don't know at what point hominids started cooking the meats, but based on the studies I'm guessing that for some reason it would take a long, long time for humans to adapt to the toxins from cooked animal fats, just as mountain gorillas have not fully adpated to eating raw plants after 5 million plus years (they have to eat clays/charcoal and feces to avoid overaccumulation of toxins and malnutrition). However, a factor in the latter incomplete adaptation may be that the plants adapt to gorilla predation by increasing their toxin levels over time to survive, whereas meats cannot adapt. Given that, I could see where it might be possible for humans to eventually adapt to cooked fats, but my guess is we are not there yet, if it is even possible.

My understanding is that Wrangham and his lot assume that hominids must have started cooking meats shortly after they started cooking tubers, because they think cooked meats taste so much better than raw. I think this is a false assumption based on his own unfamiliarity with raw meats. Most of us here find raw meat/fish tastes very good after we've gotten used to it. Hominids started out eating raw meats from birth, so they likely would have found them even more tasty raw than us.

[William]

My apology to TD for going off half-cocked. My browser ate the real article.

Re:http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jf00070a016
More junk science, as they don't say what fat the tallow was made from. Presumably that of commercial fodder fed animals, and not necessarily beef.

1- Saponified to get something to analyze.

2- Continuously heated at 155C/311F.
"The present study was initiated ("initiated is a $2 word meaning "started" WS)to investigate whether cholesterol in tallow will undergo oxidation when it is heated at elevated temperatures similar to deep fat frying

3- The subject changes to oils used for deep frying, leading me to wonder what it is they called tallow.

Since nobody uses beef tallow for deep frying  AFAIK, there would be no point in doing a study of it.
The article reports on something none of us have ever consumed, and never would. Useless.

We have been through this before, and there is still no evidence that anyone anywhere at anytime has ever been harmed by consuming properly made tallow.
There is overwhelming evidence that consuming properly made beef tallow does nothing but good.

Given the above, I can only conclude that the concern about health qualities of tallow is a result of decades of scare stories/low fat hate propaganda, and therefore not rational.

[PaleoPhil]

That's a good point about the study cooking to 155C/311F, William. When I first looked at it I thought it read 155F. I was heating my tallow to 200F, not 311F, and now I only warm it to melt it--I can stick my finger in it the whole time. It's less heat than what the sun would provide.

So we still have no evidence of suet heated to 200F causing any harm, but I'm experimenting with just warming it to be on the safe side. I discovered that other people online do the same thing.

[TylerDurden]

It's a simple fact that any animal fat cooked above 40 degrees celsius causes harm, in some fashion. Above 40 degrees celsius, the enzymes in the raw foods start getting destroyed, and even light cooking/boiling causes heat-created toxins to form, such as advanced glycation end products. While studies on temperatures lower than 100 degrees Celsius are very few and far between, it's reasonable to assume that they occur at some stage well below 100 degrees celsius, as the current figures/reports do show some levels of toxins for boiled foods, indicating a starting-point for toxin-formation at a significantly lower temperature.

As for claims re tallow coming from grassfed meat being healthy, that's absurd, all cooked meats, however grassfed or grainfed, contain some levels of heat-created toxins.

Also, William, I don't mind such nonsense claims about tallow being supposedly the perfect food, if they're in the hot topics forum(or weston-price)(as long as they're backed up by decent, solid scientific claims, not silly comments about some obscure, single member of another board(DelFuego)  but it's inappropriate to put such nonsense in a topic in this or other forums. Please desist.

[William]

Also, William, I don't mind such nonsense claims about tallow being supposedly the perfect food, if they're in the hot topics forum(or weston-price)(as long as they're backed up by decent, solid scientific claims, not silly comments about some obscure, single member of another board(DelFuego)  but it's inappropriate to put such nonsense in a topic in this or other forums. Please desist.

TD, the nonsense is not coming from me.

[PaleoPhil]

I failed to mention another reason I'm not heating anything above 40 degrees Celsius--to give the dietary model proposed by this forum a fair chance. The founder of the ZC forum requests that people try his approach before knocking it and I think that is only fair here as well. Right now I'm trying to give both approaches a try at the same time, though I do cheat every now and then.