Coconut oil and antinutrients

[TylerDurden]

Please show us where anyone has made a credible claim that pemmican contains heat generated damage and toxins.

You know as well as I do that all the studies focus on cooked animal fats in general, simply because hardly anyone eats pemmican, these days. There are no official studies focusing on the supposed positive or negative effects of pemmican. Which basically leaves us with common-sense, namely that pemmican is a food harshly altered from its previous state, so that there is no question that some toxins are created along with viamin-losses, then there's the well-known fact that PUFAs are easily destroyed by heat etc.. The best claim pro-pemmican advocates can make, therefore, and a lame one at best, is that pemmican "isn't all that bad".

Oh, that reminds me there is an exception to the above rule. Apparently one of the major causes of BSE was the feeding of rendered (grainfed?) meat products to cattle:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rendering_(food_processing)#Advantages_and_disadvantages_of_rendering

The interesting thing is that domestic pets, such as cats and dogs are routinely fed on rendered fats too, with the rendered fats/grease being used routinely as a way to flavour the kibble and make it seem tasty to the animal - :-

http://www.rense.com/general70/dead.htm

[Christopher]

yes Tyler your wikipedia studies are great and all but I can't help looking at the videos of Delfuego's kids and seeing how healthy and happy they are on a diet of nothing more than pemmican their whole lives (well besides the obvious breast milk)

[alphagruis]

First off, I know virtually nothing and am just a curious bystander with questions. Even if the enzymes in muscle meat could digest the meat, how does this imply that digestion would take place in the muscle. Don't you need several other biological components, like contents of the stomach, for digestion to take place? If you injected my buttocks with digestive enzymes and only the enzymes right now what would anything happen?

My point was actually to strongly underline that there cannot be "digestive" or lytic enzymes in quantities that could potentially under appropriate conditions really seriously help to digest the cell content.

An enzyme is not a mysterious entity with magic properties. It's just a macromolecule (protein) that speeds up biochemical reactions upon binding temporarily to the reactants in way that favors the formation of the reaction products. There are lytic enzymes but in tiny quantities and only in a special organelle of the cells named lysosome, for instance proteases that help to hydrolyse (split into the amino acids) those proteins to be destroyed or recycled by the cell. They work in this "recycling factory"  where appropriate conditions are maintained only and thus "digest" this waste and only this waste as soon as they exist. And the cell normally synthesizes them in very limited and controled quantities to do this job and nothing more such as digesting possibly the whole cell. The remainder and by far largest part of the cell cannot contain this type of enzymes. Even if the whole cell content were really mixed up their lytic effect could only be marginal. In fact chunks of meat are swallowed upon ingestion containing a huge number of intact cells and the whole thing is essentially attacked by stomacal enzymes and acid at its surface.

You're probably right. Injecting your buttock with lytic enzymes would probably do little harm because the pH is buffered and not low enough (4-5) making the enzymes essentially inactive. Your immune system would also destroy them.    

I like what you've said but you didn't mention anything about the role of the undamaged enzymes in raw meat. What role do they play in digestion? Could they be quickly transformed to ease digestion? If you could somehow remove all the  enzymes in the muscle meat before digestion, would there be any effect?

As I said above the role of intrinsic lytic enzymes must essentially be negligible as compared to our own enzymes. Note also that the very large majority of enzymes in raw food are not lytic and hence cannot digest anything. They are just protein and thus food as protein from muscle fibers. If it were possible to remove them there would be less protein in the food but I can't see an effect on digestion.

 

I would guess they play some role for the betterment of digestion. Are you suggesting this role is nothing? Perhaps they don't directly digest the meat but did we evolve to not use these enzymes at all? Could they be useful elsewhere in the body?

We use them as food anyway, namely as protein which is what enzymes are. They are digested by our own enzymes and converted into amino acids.

Isn't all protein denatured in the stomach upon digestion? You are saying that cooking denatures protein in a way differently than than the way stomach acids denature protein. Because of the differences in denaturation the lock and key method of the enzymes naturally produced by the body is distorted enough that different enzymes must be produced by the body to break down the protein. Because of the difficulty to produce these enzymes for cooked proteins our bodies work harder and eventually succumb to disease faster. ? That sounds good to me.

 You got the idea I wanted to convey. More precisely denaturation (of protein in stomach) is a technical term used in biochemistry that makes unfortunately things ambiguous in present context because it suggests that is not a normal entirely natural phenomenon in stomach with intact raw proteins.  A protein in a cell is a long chain of amino acids that folds in a very specific 3-dimensional structure in its active form (as an enzyme or an hormone receptor for instance). In stomacal acid environment (pH as low as 1.5) this chain usually unfolds so that it can bind to the digestive enzymes and be cut into its amino acid pieces.
This kind of denaturation is just unfolding. It's used by biochemists because the protein loses its "nature" i.e. its 3-dimensional structure that makes it active (as an enzyme for instance)
This must be carefully distinguished from what heat does to the same protein which is much much more. Heat unfolds the protein , sure but it also damages heavily the protein by binding it to other biomolecules such as sugars, damaging the various amino acids by cutting off or pasting to other things, racemizing and isomerizing them (same formula but different atomic arrangement)  etc. The result no longer fits well to the enzymes designed for intact protein chain handling on the one hand (impaired digestion) and once more or less digested the free amino acids are damaged (impaired  future utilization in protein synthesis or neoglucogenesis).

I hope this helps.

[alphagruis]

  I provided you  at the bottom of that article with  a  bibilography of numerous scientific papers showing the benefit of enzymes in raw foods re digestion. You conveniently chose to ignore it.

As to this part of your reply (the rest of it doesn't deserve any comment, just sterile polemic)

I didn't "ignore conveniently" this bibliography, of course, but none of those papers demonstrates that the intrinsic lytic enzyms in a given food play a substantial role in the digestion of that same food . None.

 They are just papers where enzymes are added deliberately which is, once more, out of topic here but of course of great interest for those who sell enzyme supplements.  

[William]

There are no official studies focusing on the supposed positive or negative effects of pemmican. Which basically leaves us with common-sense, namely that pemmican is a food harshly altered from its previous state, so that there is no question that some toxins are created along with viamin-losses, then there's the well-known fact that PUFAs are easily destroyed by heat etc..

Neither common nor sense.
While most of us are here to learn, and is possible help others, you have the unique ability to learn nothing from the best explanation of what happens when pemmican is created.
I refer to alphagruis' posts, including what he calls "phase separation by melting".

Oh, that reminds me there is an exception to the above rule. Apparently one of the major causes of BSE was the feeding of rendered (grainfed?) meat products to cattle:-

That product was dried cooked beef, of course it makes sick. That's why I discard it when I make pemmican.

[Paleo Donk]

Alpha, thanks a bunch. That explanation was great. Clarifying the ambigiouity of protein denaturation is something I  hadn't seen before.

William, theres no point in continuing the argument. There is no evidence whatsoever that pemmican has significant toxins. At the same time nobody has consumed it for more than months at a time except a handful of people  with only Delfuego leading the pack at 6 years.

As for Delfuego, he seems pretty genuine and I would not classify him as a guru, at least hes no where near the level that 'the bear' seems to be. There have been a few things he's said that struck me rather odd, but hes never really encouraged  anyone to try his diet hes mainly reported his experience. Hes very positive and dont think Ive ever seen him put anyone down. Whether I believe him completely is another matter. Like anyone's extraordinary claims, they require extraordinary evidence and I can't get myself to trust everything he says. At least not now.

[William]

There's a lie

List the paleolithic fruits and vegetables available to you.

[William]

William, theres no point in continuing the argument. There is no evidence whatsoever that pemmican has significant toxins. At the same time nobody has consumed it for more than months at a time except a handful of people  with only Delfuego leading the pack at 6 years.

Yes, it's futile to squabble with TD.
However, Tyler Durden/Geoffry Purcell  posts so often and in other forums that he has probably frightened people away from an acceptable way of doing raw zero carb that might have been the answer to their very serious problems, as it was to me. Result could be years of sickness, maybe death.

I wrote days ago that this is wicked, and meant it.

My replies to his nuttiness is intended as damage control.

[Ioanna]

william's recovery is entirely remarkable, much attributed to pemmican, i think?

my intestines are apparently extremely sensitive, there are very few foods i can eat and not have horrible pains that leave me afraid to eat.  i've tried pemmican after reading that it is among the easiest to digest/absorb, supposedly even a baby can eat as a beginning food.  it is a horribly deleterious food for me... idk, i wish it weren't, it's so convenient and i think it tastes good too. pemmican tears my insides horribly.

[TylerDurden]

my intestines are apparently extremely sensitive, there are very few foods i can eat and not have horrible pains that leave me afraid to eat.  i've tried pemmican after reading that it is among the easiest to digest/absorb, supposedly even a baby can eat as a beginning food.  it is a horribly deleterious food for me... idk, i wish it weren't, it's so convenient and i think it tastes good too. pemmican tears my insides horribly.

This is precisely why I'm so concerned re the issue of pemmican. Despite protestations from 1 or 2 individuals like  William, most rawpalaeos find pemmican to damage their health to a slight or serious extent, in the long term, indicating strongly that it is not a healthy food, in any way.

[carnivore]

william's recovery is entirely remarkable, much attributed to pemmican, i think?

my intestines are apparently extremely sensitive, there are very few foods i can eat and not have horrible pains that leave me afraid to eat.  i've tried pemmican after reading that it is among the easiest to digest/absorb, supposedly even a baby can eat as a beginning food.  it is a horribly deleterious food for me... idk, i wish it weren't, it's so convenient and i think it tastes good too. pemmican tears my insides horribly.

It seems that very sensitive people can't tolerate any processing at all. For me, I can't eat pemmican or ground beef for a prolonged time without having troubles. I need to vary my food (different animal, different cut, organ, fish, seafood), and the way it is preserved (fresh, aged, matured, half dried, etc.). I have not yet tried high meat but will do ASAP.

[William]

william's recovery is entirely remarkable, much attributed to pemmican, i think?

my intestines are apparently extremely sensitive, there are very few foods i can eat and not have horrible pains that leave me afraid to eat.  i've tried pemmican after reading that it is among the easiest to digest/absorb, supposedly even a baby can eat as a beginning food.  it is a horribly deleterious food for me... idk, i wish it weren't, it's so convenient and i think it tastes good too. pemmican tears my insides horribly.

Very strange that the most easily digested and safest food I have tried could cause any distress.

Guesses why:             Meat - I get grass-fed organic grass-finished beef from a farmer who tells me that unlike his so-called organic neighbours, he controls weeds in the pasture by plowing and seeding. They spray herbicides. Normally, you must ask, because they won't volunteer this kind of info.
                                        The oxen look healthy and lean. I don't know what breed they are.
                                            The meat comes wrapped in 5 to 8 lb. muscle sections. I ate lots of pemmican made of ground beef, but I'd rather not. Taste.
                                             the grind - presently I grind jerky with a Tasin 108 grinder and a small-hole plate, which makes jerky into a fluffy powder. It was gritty when I first made it in a Green Life juicer. I recently read on ZIOH that traditional pounding with rocks is easy and quick, and makes a mostly fluffy powder. This might be the best way.
                                 The drying conditions - traditionally slices of meat were flung over tree branches, or sticks, (peeled or not I don't know - it might make a difference) in the warm dry outside air of the area of Rocky Mountain House, presently Alberta. I don't think that temperatures there ever go over 100°F. Other parameters such as air pressure, electrical field density or character etc. will have an effect on what kind of microbes and fungi/yeast grow on the jerky. I sometimes see a white "bloom" on some of the jerky, looks the same as on grapes or wild blueberries. Emotional/mental/spiritual attitudes while drying might have an influence - Amerindians had ceremonial ritual for lots of things - and they didn't do them because they were stupid.
                                  Rate of air flow.
                                  Most people don't dry the meat enough in the beginning.
                                  Is all the fat gone from the meat? When I grind it, I eat the rare fatty ends, never grind them. Tasty!
                                   Tools - I use a plain high-carbon knife for cutting partly frozen solid muscle sections. I have stainless steel knives, but do not use them for this because I've read that they leave molecules of the alloy in the cut surface of the meat. The component metals include chromium, a poison, and nickel, a very serious poison. (this from a blurb by a seller of stone (flint or obsidian) surgical scalpels. It also claimed that incisions made with stone scalpels heal significantly quicker than those made with metal scalpels).
                                    Air quality - Duh! (meaning I don't know what's in it) - I live downwind of thousands of miles of the vast boreal forest of Canada, which stretches all the way to the Beaufort Sea. Must be cleaner even than high Arctic air, because the snow water does not taste of cat piss, as it always did there.
                                    
                                    Fat - I get grass-finished fat (yellow) maybe once/year, otherwise it's back fat from cattle fed who-knows-what that the butcher near a small town in the Ottawa valley gets. I don't know what he does to it, but it gave me the shits when I ate it raw.
                                               Cut into ~1" chunks with the same plain steel high-carbon knife,
                                                put in big enamel pot
                                                electric oven  at ~200°F
                                                ignore for ~24 hours
                                                pour off tallow through a sieve lined with a double layer of paper towel
                                                (squeeze,squash poke and abuse to get the last of the precious tallow out of the solids)
                                                pour into another big enamel pot.
                                                Burn the solids in my wood furnace. I tried eating some after someone at ZIOH said they tasted good - I put a squeeze of lemon juice and and little salt on and it tasted OK and make me seriously sick.
                                                 Store in glass jars, covered with evil plastic lids, re-heat to liquid <104°F
                                                  Mix in enamel bowl with a wooden spoon.

Tried this on a family cat (no fool I!   ); he loves it and bugs me for it every time I visit; I feed him a little and he then eats all his crappy commercial cat-food breakfast. He has diabetes.

So when pemmican bothers someone, I wonder what was done to it. Pity that there isn't any standardized that we could all try.
It is not simple stuff.
                                  
                                  
                                
                                

[djr_81]

William; As you know no two people are alike. While pemmican has worked wonders for you it's been a disservice to me each time I've attempted it. Frankly, I'd love it if my body could tolerate it as I'd have a very handy survival food to store. I also surprisingly liked both the flavor and texture so it'd be a nice change of pace when I had to eat it.
The pemmican I've made has given me a bloat in my stomach as well as gas. Then I am constipated for a day or two, then get diarrhea. This has happened each and every time I've had it. All I can ascertain from this is that my body cannot tolerate pemmican, at least how I have prepared it.
All of the jerky I make for the pemmican is from grassfed meat which I tolerate fine. I've also eaten jerky from the same batch and did fine with this as well.
All of the fat rendered for my pemmican was done so with pure grassfed fat. I did render more quickly than you (higher heat so I can render in ~2-3 hours) which I will concede may exacerbate my symptoms. At some point I will make a small batch rendering like you have (I'll use a crockpot) and will post my personal experiences in my journal at the time.

[William]

So it looks like the tallow is doing the dirty.
The bloat makes me think that some of the solids are still there in your tallow; when I tried them they made me feel like I'd eaten well-done beef, except worse.

[van]

  Seriously,  William how about sending some of your pemican to DJR.  YOu might have a customs problem.  But I would love to see  what happens when he eats yours.  Thanks for the details about how you make it.

[djr_81]

  Seriously,  William how about sending some of your pemican to DJR.  YOu might have a customs problem.  But I would love to see  what happens when he eats yours.  Thanks for the details about how you make it.

No. The grainfed fat will definitely elicit a reaction from my immune system. I need to make it with grassfed fat.

[PaleoPhil]

Wow, quite a few posts since I last checked this thread. Heh, heh, I guess Tyler's semi-shock-jock style is at least good for generating tons of posts.

...It may be true that Delfuego has provided more detailed information in recent months, I can’t say.  I can say that while I was active on the thread, little of the above information was disclosed and I was disappointed in the level of information offered, however, this is only my opinion.

I can confirm that Delfuego went into deeper detail after you became inactive on the thread, Lex. If anything, the level of detail became probably more than many average people would care for. Admittedly, Delfuego's enthusiasm for pemmican may go overboard, but that's understandable given the benefits he and his family have experienced (his sons look particularly healthy), and he seems quite honest and forthcoming.

Maybe you'll be flattered to know that the Zero carbers still refer to you and your pemmican cooker often. You seem to have left quite an impression. Even Charles still mentions you now and then, such as when someone makes a false claim about how deadly raw meats are and such.

My point in making the statement in the first place was to suggest that we shouldn’t rely too heavily on one person’s claims – the Bear’s, Delfuego’s, or mine.

Yes, I agree.

Yes, several people that have tried a pemmican-only diet have reported long term problems, especially pemmican made only with muscle meat and fat.  I certainly wouldn’t say that pemmican is “harmful”, only that pemmican made with just muscle meat and fat might be nutritionally incomplete.

I think vitamin D is one of those key missing nutrients. Many of the photos that Delfuego posts of him and his family show them outdoors in the sun. This is just speculation, but I wonder if he and his family get more sunlight than some of the failed pemmican eaters? He may also not have been as deficient in vitamin D to start with as some folks. Plus, as he said, he had done ZC for 5 years before pemmican, so he probably had adapted to eating lots of fat already. Switching from SAD to high-fat can be tough. I'm still not fully adapted to digesting saturated fat myself, but I'm improving.

I, and others, have had problems with raw fresh ground beef. I think that this might be idiosyncratic, but if one were to use the reasoning (?) of the anti-pemmican complainers, then it logically follows that raw fresh ground beef must be harmful. It's not paleo either.

Hmmm, good point, William. On the other hand, grinding beef seems like a less dramatic way of processing than drying and standard rendering.

yes Tyler your wikipedia studies are great and all but I can't help looking at the videos of Delfuego's kids and seeing how healthy and happy they are on a diet of nothing more than pemmican their whole lives (well besides the obvious breast milk)

Bingo! They are some of the healthiest and happiest looking kids I've ever seen. My Paleo-nephews are also very happy and smiley since they went Paleo, and much healthier than they were. I predict there will be many more happy and healthy Paleo kids to come as more people try Paleo and RPD. I predict they will also have intelligence and athletic ability well above the average. Pemmican is not a "perfect" food, as some claim, but it's certainly a damn good bit better than the SAD diet--especially with plenty of sunlight (and vitamin D3 foodlements, if necessary).

Quote from: van on Today at 12:37:03 PM
  Seriously,  William how about sending some of your pemican to DJR.  YOu might have a customs problem.  But I would love to see  what happens when he eats yours.  Thanks for the details about how you make it.

No. The grainfed fat will definitely elicit a reaction from my immune system. I need to make it with grassfed fat.

It's a constructive idea, however. You could try using grassfed fat and William's recipe, to see if it makes any difference. Maybe that would satisfy William and advance science. But not if you feel it would do serious harm to you, of course.

[djr_81]

It's a constructive idea, however. You could try using grassfed fat and William's recipe, to see if it makes any difference. Maybe that would satisfy William and advance science. But not if you feel it would do serious harm to you, of course.

I will be doing two separate experiments on myself.
Lex has graciously offered to ship me a pound of his pemmican to try so I have accepted and will be eating this one day.
I will also be making a batch myself following William's recommended "low and slow" method of rendering.

I've been thinking; I had read someone's suggestion to filter the fat with multiple layers of paper towel as it traps much of the protein debris. Upon reflection of this I wonder if something in the towel has tainted my experiences as well (I am allergic to so many thing that something is bound to be in the towels). Has anyone had good luck with cheesecloth or does anyone have an alternative suggestion?

Lastly; I have no qualms experimenting within acceptable mediums for my body. I've already exhibited increasingly negative responses to fruits and vegetables prior to RAF so will not be testing those waters any time soon but I'm perfectly game for this test.

[PaleoPhil]

I render my suet at even lower temps than William (I use the "warm" setting on my crock pot). The most difficult thing for me to digest in pemmican and tallow is the suet, though raw tallow seems to be easier for me to digest than unaltered suet (maybe because connective tissue is pretty tough). Still, small bits of the suet pass through me undigested and if I eat lots of it I get increasing levels of burping, and Danny of the carnivore blog reported getting reflux if he eats too much suet. I think saturated fats are a bit difficult for SAD dieters to digest at first. Coconut oil is even more difficult for me to digest. I think I have problems digesting fat because of my history of stomach and GI issues.

[djr_81]

I render my suet at even lower temps than William (I use the "warm" setting on my crock pot). The most difficult thing for me to digest in pemmican and tallow is the suet, though raw tallow seems to be easier for me to digest than unaltered suet (maybe because connective tissue is pretty tough). Still, small bits of the suet pass through me undigested and if I eat lots of it I get increasing levels of burping, and Danny of the carnivore blog reported getting reflux if he eats too much suet. I think saturated fats are a bit difficult for SAD dieters to digest at first. Coconut oil is even more difficult for me to digest. I think I have problems digesting fat because of my history of stomach and GI issues.

And there's another wrench in the works regarding my ass-backwards body.
I seem to do best on suet fat. I love the stuff and have eaten up to 1/3 pound of the stuff with a pound of fatty meat. It doesn't give me any distress unless I really overdo it and then I just get diarrhea without any other issues.
It seems the less saturated the fat I eat the more stomach distress it causes. The ground up fat in the Slanker's high-fat grind I've been eating since yesterday elicited a foul and sudden BM last night as well (it also gives me a lot more sudden energy but isn't as sustaining as the suet). I'm really tempted to chalk this all up to an internal issue, maybe the Candida, that is compounded with more available fat in my GI tract. Maybe this explains a lot of my problems with pemmican.

[William]

I've been thinking; I had read someone's suggestion to filter the fat with multiple layers of paper towel as it traps much of the protein debris. Upon reflection of this I wonder if something in the towel has tainted my experiences as well (I am allergic to so many thing that something is bound to be in the towels). Has anyone had good luck with cheesecloth or does anyone have an alternative suggestion?

While there is no longer supposed to be any dioxin in my coffee filters, I don't know if they use the same oxygen process to bleach paper towels. You might ask the manufacturer about possible allergens - I've had good luck with some such questions.
I don't know about cheesecloth, just no experience.
Is there a paper air filter called HEPA or something like that? IIRC they are sold at hardware stores for vacuum cleaners, but I don't know if they are food safe.
In the movie "The Snow Walker" she just very carefully tipped the container, and poured off the top liquid.
Might check if coffee filters could filters could be OK.

[djr_81]

I'll have to look into coffee filters then. I'm not as concerned about the bleaching agents as I am with the possibility of soy, corn, etc. in the pulp used to make the filter.

[PaleoPhil]

Ionna and Frederic, have you tried eating the separate components of your pemmican (the dried meat vs. the rendered fat) to see which is the source of your problems with it?

...Now if you dont have access to anything except mabye a fire... like.. how did the indians boil down their tallow?  ... I will be needing to make pemmican for the winters but i am not going to have access to pots and pans or anything that you cant find in the middle of the woods so how do i go about doing the fat part?

I believe the Indians used bags made of hide to cook and store pemmican, tallow and meat in.

[raw-al]

Hey hey I think I'll jump into the fray
Lots of topics here in the longest thread in the forum. The one I was interested in was the mercury discussion. Very interesting indeed!
I used to work a a large hydroelectric power development. Long story but I found out that when land is flooded by a dam for instance, the mercury in the trees that are drowned, comes out into the water and the fish eat the decaying matter so mercury levels in the larger fish in the food chain are very high.
My lady and I have had mercury fillings removed and we both noticed an improved feeling after it was done. Not sure exactly how to quantify it but I always heard that dentists had the highest rate of suicide and indeed I knew a dentist who committed suicide. This has been traced back to use of mercury in making amalgam fillings. I know dentists who have said that they noticed infertility in female dentists who worked with mercury until they decided to give up working with it.

However I think that mercury that is has been processed by a living thing has changed into a biologically effective item, either neutralized or maybe even useful. (bit of an educated guess which is pretty much what "scientific" studies are).

The reason that I say this is that in Ayurveda, mercury is represented by Shiva. It is supposedly related to having progeny or to strength of procreative power. Ayurveda went through a stage in the 15th or so century where methods of processing various minerals and heavy metals was perfected and used (successfully for some very serious illnesses. These refining processes are very involved, detailed and include some very curious processes involving such things as cooking with cow dung 1000 times. Now this seems quaint to modern ears but when you examine this closely you find out that cow dung is very energy intensive and the heat of the fire produced by it is extremely high. The bad effects of the mercury (or depending on the medicinal metals etc being used and the recipe) are mitigated and the good effects of the material are utilized. In India these heavy metals are understood and used in highly effective medicinals. The heavy metals are not understood in first world countries so they are dismissed.

[PaleoPhil]

"This has been traced back to use of mercury in making amalgam fillings."

Interesting, where and how was this traced?