Eat pemmican and get atherosclerosis!

[TylerDurden]

A while back, I'd mentioned that there were very few studies done on the consumption of rendered fat such as pemmican. Fortunately, I just encountered a referrence to Cordain finding scientific data confirming that pemmican-eating Inuit had extensive atherosclerosis as a result of such dire food:-

"Here is part of a Cordain interview about finding extensive
atherosclerosis in an old Inuit woman from 1520 AD.
 
"…..I’m very farmiliar with pemmican. I’ve got all the pemmican stuff
forever. Stefanson tried to get a grant in World War II from the U-S
army to feed the troops pemmican.
I’m not saying that pemmican isn’t a healthy food. It’s probably an
expedient way to provide calories over a North American winter. It’s a
very great way to store these things. An all pemmican diet, I don’t
think is a healthy diet for a number of reasons. If you only eat
pemmican, I think you’ll become osteoporotic. You won’t get any
vitamin A. If you eat only pemmican, you will promote atherosclerosis.
So I just bring to you one paper that I’d like you to distribute. That
paper is published in an obscure journal, the Texas Heart Institute
Journal in 1993. So nobody’s read it, because you can’t get it on
Medline. What this guy did, he was a physician, an MD PhD by the name
of Zimmerman. Zimmerman was a pathologist, and he was lucky enough to
be in Alaska when a 400 AD, so we’re talking 1600 year old, frozen
Inuit mummy was recovered. He did an autopsy on this, and he sectioned
the coronary arteries. So this is 400 AD. These people had never seen
white people. They had only eaten what Steve Phinney had suggested
people eat–fat and protein–and significant atherosclerosis in a 53
year old Inuit woman, on pathology. That wasn’t just the only case. He
then was privy to another group of frozen Eskimo bodies that were
recovered in Barrow, Alaska, and these people date to about 1520 AD,
so just slightly after the time Columbus had discovered America. Once
again, no influence of Western civilization. So presumably, they were
living at Barrow, 60 degrees north, they were eating meat and fat
their entire life. They might get a little bit of berries sometime in
the summer. Extensive atherosclerosis was in the older woman, who was
30. All three of them were osteoporotic. They were severely
osteoporotic on that type of diet. So you can give this to people who
claim that all we need to eat is meat and fat...."
 
http://www.meandmydiabetes.com/2010/03/24/loren-cordain-caution-on-saturated-fats-disaster-with-grains-will-be-public-after-march-25th/comment-page-1/ "

*EDIT* It seems I was apparently wrong in not mentioning the original source after Cordain, so I should add that the above quote was by Kenneth Anderson, and featured on the PALEOFOOD list-group.*

There are other examples such as Mann's study of the Masai which confirmed that they had atherosclerotic tendencies. All this data is most useful as it counters the foolish notion of Weston-Price that hunter-gatherers in the Neolithic era all were super-healthy, and shows that even lightly-cooked, relatively unprocessed diets can cause a degree of ill-health.

[RawZi]

    Thank you.  I don't need atherosclerosis.

[majormark]

Well, at least some conditions can be expected from this cooked food, but I think it's far less than people on average diets.

[TylerDurden]

Well, at least some conditions can be expected from this cooked food, but I think it's far less than people on average diets.

  Well, there are some auto-immune diseases which seem primarily linked to non-palaeo foods as opposed to all cooked foods, and there are a number of diseases linked solely or mostly  to junk-food consumption(diabetes?), but there's increasingly more evidence linking the consumption of any cooked foods whatsoever, however lightly cooked, to higher incidences of certain issues such as depression and most aging-related conditions are heavily linked to the amounts of heat-created toxins consumed, all derived from eating from cooking.

[cliff]

He's basing his conclusion on a small group of Inuits.  Inuits also ate a lot of PUFA's how do we not know these are to blame? or maybe food scarcity? Its entirely possible these people had severe deficiencies.

He blames modern day heart attacks on the mix of starches/sugars and saturated fat but how does he explain the swiss, Mediterranean cultures, russians and other long lived cultures that traditionally consume high saturated fat/high starch diets? In defense of loren this may be due to the fact that all these cultures heavily ferment there grains before consumption, unlike modern societies that eat unfermented grains.  Still it seems he makes a lot of assumptions

[William]

More junk science from the pemmican-paranoid Cordain shill.

Not worth a reply.

[KD]

I'm not going to pretend to bring any expertise to this, but just from a simple read, I didn't take away the same conclusions.

"Yes. I think you can tend to eat a high saturated fat diet. A high animal food diet. You’re going to be at risk for osteoporosis, Vitamin A deficiency and some other factors, if you don’t eat some plants in your diet. Now if you eat liver, the Vitamin A is a non-issue.  But if you only ate muscle meat and fat, then it’s not going to work.

If you eat organ meats like traditional people consumed then you’re going to be in pretty good shape. The osteoporosis does not clear out, and you can see that in these papers here." (the second part of this is misleading to me, whether it means in good shape, but with rissk of osteoporosis, or what)

It seems he is talking about those that promote a diet restricted to muscle meats and fats as a deficiency, not an oversufficiciency of cooked related toxins from the pemmican or meat/fat diets, especially since he's known to promote cooked meat, and makes no use of the word raw as a factor at all in the article.

he goes on to say that unless there is some kind of proinflamatory, the plaque doesn't cause MI -heart attacks.

it seems his main point is to tone down the unilateral statements regarding sat fat (cooked or raw) on plaque build up as a reason to promote all high sat. fat diets as safe.
"to unequivocally say that saturated fats do not cause atherosclerosis, is sheer folly. being the irresponsible science that others are putting forward", but he's not even distinguishing here between raw and cooked or saying a diet of sat. fat will necessarily create such, but that it can, particularly if it is deficient.

[TylerDurden]

I agree that Cordain is wrongly targetting saturated fats in general but it has been shown by other scientists already that it's the heat-created glycotoxins present in cooked saturated fats which are the problem, not the saturated fats in themselves:-


"One confounding issue in studies may be the formation of exogenous (outside the body) advanced glycation endproducts (AGEs) and oxidation products generated during cooking, which it appears some of the studies have not controlled for. It has been suggested that, "given the prominence of this type of food in the human diet, the deleterious effects of high-(saturated)fat foods may be in part due to the high content in glycotoxins, above and beyond those due to oxidized fatty acid derivatives." The glycotoxins, as he called them, are more commonly called AGEs" taken from:-

http://www.pnas.org/content/94/12/6474.long

[TylerDurden]

He's basing his conclusion on a small group of Inuits.  Inuits also ate a lot of PUFA's how do we not know these are to blame? or maybe food scarcity? Its entirely possible these people had severe deficiencies.

There have been some desperate attempts by the cooked-saturated fat crowd, such as Ray Peat, to falsely claim that the Inuit were always near-to-death due to their high-PUFA diet, but no genuine evidence of such exists. Indeed, PUFAs are only really badly affected by heat; so Inuit who, as normal, ate c.half of everything  raw and the rest only in the form  of lightly boiled animal foods, would not have been affected much by just PUFAs. Cooking on the other hand....

As for food-scarcity, again, it's also been shown that intermittent fasting( a common activity among hunter-gatherers by necessity) leads to a longer lifespan and increased health.It also, to a limited extent, protects from the negative effects of cooked foods, as, if one isn't always  daily consuming large amounts of heat-created toxins via cooked foods, then one is more easily able to get rid of them from the body in natural ways. So, yes, the Inuit were better protected from ill-health than modern SAD-eaters, but, clearly, a partially lightly-cooked diet does not protect oneself against conditions like atherosclerosis.

He blames modern day heart attacks on the mix of starches/sugars and saturated fat but how does he explain the swiss, Mediterranean cultures, russians and other long lived cultures that traditionally consume high saturated fat/high starch diets? In defense of loren this may be due to the fact that all these cultures heavily ferment there grains before consumption, unlike modern societies that eat unfermented grains.  Still it seems he makes a lot of assumptions

The trouble with your above reference to mediterranean cultures is that they actually ate diets very high in PUFAs, rich in raw olive-oil etc. Even then, current studies show that people on Mediterranean diets do less well than those on cooked palaeo diets a la Cordain, with cooked lean meats etc.. The Swiss etc. all had diets rather more varied than the simple saturated-fat description, too.

[TylerDurden]

Tyler, might I ask you a question?  You've said you are omnivorous.  Can I ask you about the non-meat part of the equation?  What vegetables/fruits do you eat that are tasty raw?  I can't find many paleo-like ones.

There are so many different varieties that I can hardly list them all:- bananas, tangerines, apples,pears, nectarines, watermelons etc. etc. (no tropical fruits, I don't find them good for me), virtually all berries like blueberries/raspberries etc., medlars, samphire, seaweed. I eat little raw veg except the seaweed(from the mussels I buy), samphire, radishes( 4 times a year), carrots(perhaps once a year)and raw salad with raw apple-cider vinegar c.2-4 times a year etc. Oh, and very occasionally I eat some raw nuts but then I usually overindulge and have to stop due to the antinutrients in them.


I used to be very particular re getting only organic or semi-organic raw fruit/veg but now I seem not to have too much of a problem with nonorganic raw plant-matter. The main thing is that I stay away from cooked animal food at all costs and then I'm fine.

I tend to eat spinach, cabbage and brussels sprouts, but they are all undeniably a lot nicer cooked.  I can't help but think that the bitterness in their raw state is an indicator of some kind of toxin.  (Basically, the plant (unable to run away) is saying "don't eat me".)  The cooking makes them much tastier, which means it is damaging the toxins in some way (as well as damaging everything else, of course).

  I don't bother eating raw spinach or raw broccoli or raw brussels sprouts and the like.I only eat raw veg that I like the taste of, even if it's just a little. The way I see it, if one has to cook a food to make it tasty enough to eat, then that's a sign that this is not suitable as a rawpalaeo food at all.

[KD]

He blames modern day heart attacks on the mix of starches/sugars and saturated fat but how does he explain the swiss, Mediterranean cultures, russians and other long lived cultures that traditionally consume high saturated fat/high starch diets? In defense of loren this may be due to the fact that all these cultures heavily ferment there grains before consumption, unlike modern societies that eat unfermented grains.  Still it seems he makes a lot of assumptions

Plus isn't it sort of misleading to call these diets 'high' in saturated fat exept by modern distinction, if they are high in starch and assuming most included some protein. Even the modern French etc.. are known to have less incidence of heart disease, but this doesn't mean it's their diet is a model of health and free of disease including atherosclerosis, as there are plenty of factors involved in disease. Many people lived long lives eating traditional foods because their genetic inheritance wasn't as damaged, they lived in a clean environment, ate organic foods never laden with chemicals, and ate basic, and lightly prepared foods. You can find an ancestral diet to proves the merits of basically any type of eating, but that doesn't mean a modern appropriation of such will result in the same benefits, especially if consuming cooked foods which inhibit deep healing.

From what I understand about Cordain, he recommends a diet that is paleolithic, so of course includes sat fats, but emphasis is on wider sources of fats and plant foods, not altogether different than a restricted Mediterranean diet

[cliff]

The trouble with your above reference to mediterranean cultures is that they actually ate diets very high in PUFAs, rich in raw olive-oil etc. Even then, current studies show that people on Mediterranean diets do less well than those on cooked palaeo diets a la Cordain, with cooked lean meats etc.. The Swiss etc. all had diets rather more varied than the simple saturated-fat description, too.

Thanks for the reply tyler.  You bring up some interesting points.  Any chance you have a link to the study comparing Mediterranean type diet to a lean meat cooked paleo diet?  Interested to find out if its the typical politically correct grain based Mediterranean diet or the real thing, i.e. lots of raw dairy, meats and fermented type grains

[cliff]

From what I understand about Cordain, he recommends a diet that is paleolithic, so of course includes sat fats, but emphasis is on wider sources of fats and plant foods, not altogether different than a restricted Mediterranean diet

Its my understanding he advocates a high protien lean meat diet? with the assumption wild animals are low in saturated fat

[TylerDurden]

Thanks for the reply tyler.  You bring up some interesting points.  Any chance you have a link to the study comparing Mediterranean type diet to a lean meat cooked paleo diet?  Interested to find out if its the typical politically correct grain based Mediterranean diet or the real thing, i.e. lots of raw dairy, meats and fermented type grains

  Here's the study:-

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/06/070627225459.htm

[KD]

he recommends lean meat, these contain saturated fats, but many of the 'overt' fats come from plant sources rather than animal fats or dairy (in cooked or raw 'primals') with calories coming from plant carbs as well, so overall its low in sat.fat by paleo/primal reference.

[Stig of the Dump]

There are so many different varieties that I can hardly list them all:- bananas, tangerines, apples,pears, nectarines, watermelons etc. etc. (no tropical fruits, I don't find them good for me), virtually all berries like blueberries/raspberries etc., medlars, samphire, seaweed. I eat little raw veg except the seaweed(from the mussels I buy), samphire, radishes( 4 times a year), carrots(perhaps once a year)and raw salad with raw apple-cider vinegar c.2-4 times a year etc. Oh, and very occasionally I eat some raw nuts but then I usually overindulge and have to stop due to the antinutrients in them.


I used to be very particular re getting only organic or semi-organic raw fruit/veg but now I seem not to have too much of a problem with nonorganic raw plant-matter. The main thing is that I stay away from cooked animal food at all costs and then I'm fine.

  I don't bother eating raw spinach or raw broccoli or raw brussels sprouts and the like.I only eat raw veg that I like the taste of, even if it's just a little. The way I see it, if one has to cook a food to make it tasty enough to eat, then that's a sign that this is not suitable as a rawpalaeo food at all.

Thanks for the reply Tyler.  (I was going to post it in its own thread, as I suddenly realised it might take us OT, but you beat me to it.)  I very much agree with the last point - if I don't like the taste, I would never have even considered eating it before being bombarded with modern ideas about "what's good for you".

[Raw Kyle]

More junk science from the pemmican-paranoid Cordain shill.

Not worth a reply.

We're all glad you managed to fit a nice mean one into your schedule though.

[michaelwh]

I agree that Cordain is wrongly targetting saturated fats in general but it has been shown by other scientists already that it's the heat-created glycotoxins present in cooked saturated fats which are the problem, not the saturated fats in themselves:-


"One confounding issue in studies may be the formation of exogenous (outside the body) advanced glycation endproducts (AGEs) and oxidation products generated during cooking, which it appears some of the studies have not controlled for. It has been suggested that, "given the prominence of this type of food in the human diet, the deleterious effects of high-(saturated)fat foods may be in part due to the high content in glycotoxins, above and beyond those due to oxidized fatty acid derivatives." The glycotoxins, as he called them, are more commonly called AGEs" taken from:-

http://www.pnas.org/content/94/12/6474.long

The above quote makes it quite clear that this is just a hypothesis, and not something which has been "shown". (If you know of studies which have investigated this further, I'd be interested in reading them).

In the original article, Cordain has two lines of evidence against saturated fat: biochemical, and anthropological. From my understanding, the biochemical evidence applies equally well to raw and cooked Palmitic acid. And we don't really know how much raw vs cooked those Eskimos were eating.

I'm not saying that cooked saturated fat is healthy or that raw saturated fat is unhealthy, I just think that we shouldn't jump to conclusions so soon.

[William]

We're all glad you managed to fit a nice mean one into your schedule though.

I've thought about that, and maybe you are right in that it is unfair to poke fun at the dyslectic know-it-all.

However, he seems to have frightened some of the impressionable enough that they won't try a proven cure.

This was supposed to be a support group, too bad it has been so negative.

[TylerDurden]

Wrong, this is a support group specifically set up for rawpalaeos, not for pemmican-eaters. There are already dozens of forums and multiple websites elsewhere on the web which heavily endorse pemmican-consumption(among other cooked foods), so I suggest you keep your pro-pemmican posts in those forums where they belong.

[Hannibal]

Wrong, this is a support group specifically set up for rawpalaeos, not for pemmican-eaters.

That's very true!
When someone is an advocate of cooked foods then he/she should write on some other forum.
I don't write on vegan forum.
Some people have apparently forgotten about Netiquette.

[TylerDurden]

The above quote makes it quite clear that this is just a hypothesis, and not something which has been "shown". (If you know of studies which have investigated this further, I'd be interested in reading them).

Granted, the above is only a hypothesis but it's based on conclusions from past scientific data, so is pretty reliable. That is there are 1000s of studies now  done on the negative effects of heat-created toxins in cooked foods(particularly cooked animal foods), so there is no doubt that cooking causes some form of harm, and cooked animal foods have also been shown to produce higher amounts of heat-created toxins after cooking

http://www.newcastleyoga.com.au/links/Food%20AGEs%20text.pdf

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/118714592/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0 (just high cooked fat mentioned)

, and it's the cooked animal foods which are most commonly associated with high amounts of saturated fats). Now, while there is plenty of evidence damning foods high in cooked saturated fats, there hasn't really been a satisfactory conclusion provided yet  as to why such foods are so harmful or how cooking saturated fat makes it somehow more harmful than anything else - well, other than the glycotoxin one.

In the original article, Cordain has two lines of evidence against saturated fat: biochemical, and anthropological. From my understanding, the biochemical evidence applies equally well to raw and cooked Palmitic acid. And we don't really know how much raw vs cooked those Eskimos were eating.

The  info re the exact portion of raw among Eskimoes is pretty nonexistent, unfortunately. However, judging from the frequent mention of raw meats in their diets re reports of raw whalemeat etc.,, the (traditional-diet)Eskimo's particular love of "high-fish" etc., one can reasonably make a tentative assumption of at least 30%(?) raw, most likely something like 50%(?) raw.

As for Cordain,  while I don't find his science as being 100% convincing all the time(the bit about not distinguishing raw from cooked saturated fats for example), there is other non-Cordain-related evidence re atherosclerosis in other areas such as the Masai study by Mann, implying that a lightly-cooked HG diet is by no means 100% healthy.

[William]

That is there are 1000s of studies now  done on the negative effects of heat-created toxins in cooked foods(particularly cooked animal foods), so there is no doubt that cooking causes some form of harm, and cooked animal foods have also been shown to produce higher amounts of heat-created toxins after cooking

There are no  heat-created toxins in my pemmican.

The  info re the exact portion of raw among Eskimoes is pretty nonexistent, unfortunately. However, judging from the frequent mention of raw meats in their diets re reports of raw whalemeat etc.,, the (traditional-diet)Eskimo's particular love of "high-fish" etc., one can reasonably make a tentative assumption of at least 30%(?) raw, most likely something like 50%(?) raw.

So how did pre-contact Inuit cook, when all they had for fuel was seal oil, and no containers?

[TylerDurden]

There are no  heat-created toxins in my pemmican.

A wrongheaded assertion. Besides, I find it interesting that AV mentioned that lipids start getting nastily oxidised through cooking from a mere 70 degrees celsius and upwards, quite aside from the 4 or 5 other types of heat-created toxins produced via cooking.

So how did pre-contact Inuit cook, when all they had for fuel was seal oil, and no containers?

 Simple, really. Any basic online search shows that the Inuit  traditionally  used hides for making containers for their foods:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caribou_Inuit

Given your recent desperate attempts to shove pemmican down our throats, so to speak, it would be wiser for you to just shut up for now.  Once a month in the hot topics forum re mentioning pemmican is just about acceptable, but these constant daily trollish posts are definitely not, and necessarily  invite future standard message-deletion and other methods.

[wodgina]

So what happens to the PUFA's when they are rendered? 
 
William promotes neolithic pemmican, TD neolithic fruit.

So the Masai are born, have children, then grandchilden get arthoscelerosis and then die of old age.