Substituting animal fats for olive oil

[Arthas_]

  The point is that coconut oil is a rather allergenic substance as many RPDers have found out.So, the issue of PUFAs is rather unimportant by comparison. More to the point, the eskimoes did reasonably well on a diet higher in PUFAs than most other diets, so there can't be much truth in the anti-PUFA claims. There is a case in that PUFAs are more easily damaged by heat than other types of fatty acids, but that is, of course, irrelevant to a rawpalaeodieter.

I guess you are comparing two different things. If you are allergic to coconut oil, then I'll be a poison to you. In that case, of course the PUFA issue won't matter much, since the coconut oil will spread havoc in the short term. The point is that it won't make the PUFA problem disappear which is a big problem in the long term. So in the absence of an allergy to olive oil, it won't make it good, just least worse. Of course you are right to be carefull when it comes to potential allergenic food. All I'm saying is that you can't hide one problem behind a bigger one. It's still there. Your main problem against olive oil is the potentially allergenic effect? So would you recomend him olive oil as his main source of fat, given he wasn't allergic to the slightest?

Re the Eskimos, I'm afraid it's not a fair comparison. They ate whole wild foods, differently from the pressed(even the cold pressed, are processed to some extent) oils found on the supermarket shelves. It may had been high in total PUFAs, but a lot of it was omega 3, keeping a good balance, besides the fact the it wasn't peroxidized PUFAs. Also they consumed a fair amount of saturated fats, which also helps counterbalance high PUFA consumption. Their diet was high in antioxidants as well. So to me it seems to be a good diet, no wonder they did well on it.

[MrBBQ]

@KD: n-3 and n-6 PUFAs oxidise very quickly, particularly at our body temperatures...

[TylerDurden]

Re the Eskimos, I'm afraid it's not a fair comparison. They ate whole wild foods, differently from the pressed(even the cold pressed, are processed to some extent) oils found on the supermarket shelves. It may had been high in total PUFAs, but a lot of it was omega 3, keeping a good balance, besides the fact the it wasn't peroxidized PUFAs. Also they consumed a fair amount of saturated fats, which also helps counterbalance high PUFA consumption. Their diet was high in antioxidants as well. So to me it seems to be a good diet, no wonder they did well on it.

  The trouble is that most of the anti-PUFA hysteria centres around the fact that PUFAs are more easily damaged by heat so that their use in vegetable-oils for cooking is seen as a bad idea. On the other hand, it's been pointed out that advanced glycation end products and other heat-created toxins are formed in much greater numbers in cooked animal foods, particularly those high in cooked saturated fats such as butter. In short,the issue of PUFAs/SFAs is completely irrelevant, what matters is that the food is not cooked or processed in any way. And as we've seen with the Eskimos, when they eat diets that are far less processed than others, they still are better off health-wise "despite"/( or because of?) having such high levels of PUFAs in their diets.

As for the anti-PUFA people, some of the more extreme fanatical gurus in that group have actually recommended unhealthy grainfed meats to people so as to avoid all PUFAs, even the omega-3s which they claim are deadly too. This flies in the face of abundant evidence from palaeo researchers that wild animals have far higher levels of PUFAs and far lower levels of SFAs than the anti-PUFA theorists would like to admit.

[cliff]

PUFA = free radicals, advanced lipid peroxidation end products, greater potential for glycation, anti-mitochondria etc.

You must be referring to oxidized pufa's.  Wheres the literature to back this up?

Why would humans need these liquid fats like cold water marine life or animals entering hibernation? Humans do not require these liquid fats in more than trace amounts...

Omega6/3 make up important parts of our body, you say we need them only in trace amounts what i want to know is how do you come to this conclusion?

n-3 fats are even more prone to lipid peroxidation than n-6 fats...Some people propose that "so-called EFA" deficiency is a very good thing...

These people have no idea what there talking about, if you deprive you body of efa's it will just use inferior oleic acid in place and this is not what you want.

[cliff]

@KD: n-3 and n-6 PUFAs oxidise very quickly, particularly at our body temperatures...

So all the essential fats running through your body are rancid? lol

How do you come up with this stuff?

[MrBBQ]

Essential and to what extent, that's my question...How does one know to what extent, given the proposal by others that they're not essential at all?

I'm following a raw paleo diet without fish oils and oily fish, which means trace amounts of the n-3s/n-6s from ruminant fats only.

Also, one cannot dispute that there would be lipid peroxidation products in aged meats, given their long exposure to oxygen.

http://raypeat.com/articles/nutrition/oils-in-context.shtml

I'm not saying that Peat is not extreme, but some of the points are worth consideration, even if it's from an endocrinological perspective.

Peskin cites Warburg, yet Peat says that Peskin massively undermines Warburg's original work - particularly in regard to mitochondrial function.

[TylerDurden]

Essential and to what extent, that's my question...How does one know to what extent, given the proposal by others that they're not essential at all?

I'm following a raw paleo diet without fish oils and oily fish, which means trace amounts of the n-3s/n-6s from ruminant fats only.

Also, one cannot dispute that there would be lipid peroxidation products in aged meats, given their long exposure to oxygen.

http://raypeat.com/articles/nutrition/oils-in-context.shtml

I'm not saying that Peat is not extreme, but some of the points are worth consideration, even if it's from an endocrinological perspective.

Peskin cites Warburg, yet Peat says that Peskin massively undermines Warburg's original work - particularly in regard to mitochondrial function.

Ray Peat is ridiculously extremist re being against PUFAs. More to the point, aging raw meats has only led to better health for RVAFers not worse health, so there must be something wrong with the above notions. I think Alphagruis pointed out that any oxidation of fats could easily be more than offset by the increase in amounts of bacteria acting on the aged raw foods in various ways; plus oxidation of fats via cooking is a far harsher process than just leaving raw meats to age.

All in all, though, the issue has nothing to do with PUFAs or SFAs. It's all to do with how much the food is processed. For example, while a large number of RVAFers can easily tolerate raw coconuts, a number among those  cannot tolerate coconut oil at all, however raw or full of saturated fat it might be.

What I find telling, for my own part, is that the higher my levels of PUFAs(omega-3s) the better my state of mind is re clarity/perception etc. This suggests to me that lowering PUFA-intake could only cause harm. More to the point, micromanaging one's diet hardly ever works for most people. Better to just copy wild animals re diets and not artificially select out pufas or minerals or vitamins or whatever.

[alphagruis]

I'm following a raw paleo diet without fish oils and oily fish, which means trace amounts of the n-3s/n-6s from ruminant fats only.

May I add to TD's comments that the above statement is also actually a very silly one. It is simply not true that terrestrial ruminant fat contains only "trace amounts" of PUFAs. It contains typically about 5% or so as opposed to 10% (or sometimes a bit more in artic waters) in fish or marine mammals. Fat in all animals must contain PUFAs in more than "trace amounts" simply because it's used to build cell membranes and cell membranes that would contain essentially only SFAs cannot work and would simply be much too stiff .

[MrBBQ]

A truism - the trace amounts I'm referring to is the amount in ruminant fats, plus we're talking ultimately about a complexification of fats that is a solid at room temperature (as opposed to olive oil or cod liver oil), hence the implication of a higher SFA content than MUFAs/PUFAs.

Terminologically, "trace" was probably not appropriate, although the implication was that the concentration of PUFAs in these ruminant tissues is more appropriate (as the yard stick) than cold water fish or poultry/pork fed high n-6 diets. Unlike humans, given variations in dietary PUFA, ruminants don't concentrate higher quantities of PUFAs, irrespective of grain finishing - that's an advantage if you can't afford grass-fed, altough grass-fed has the CLA etc.

On the matter of high meats, it reminds me of a specific conversation that I'd had with Dave Wetzel @ Green Pasture regarding peroxide values for their F-CLO product, whereby they noted that as a traditional "sacred food", the lactic acid from the native ferments preserved the PUFAs so comprehensively that the substrate could be left in open air at room temperature without ALE formation. Maybe this phenomena offers an explanation as to the ultimate value of high meats, I don't know. That said, the F-CLO stings the throat (from the acid)much more than 4-week-old wet aged meat...

Chris Masterjohn @ WAPF is also an advocate of lowest manageable PUFA, including n-3 and the longer chain derivatives.

[TylerDurden]

What I find telling is that wild animals, which are much healthier even than grassfed or grain-finished domesticated animals, all have higher pufa-content by comparison.

[MrBBQ]

Touche - a rather compelling assertion...

The only problem I have is that I can never get any sizeable bulk of fat from those same game animals because as youngsters, they're too lean to provide a nice source of fat for fuel - hence the reliance on grass-fed ruminant fat. So the point is, what reliance did we have on these higher PUFA animals for their fats as primary fuel (given the idea of lower carbs and higher fat)? I know that my game suppliers can't get me any cuts of fat like suet, except from much older animals...

It reminds me of that WAPF "guts and grease" article that damned Cordain particularly, asserting that the native Americans would selectively hunt the older animals for their much bulkier accumulation of saturated back fat etc. Wisdom like that often transpires...

Please, I need more information...;-))

[alphagruis]

A truism - the trace amounts I'm referring to is the amount in ruminant fats, plus we're talking ultimately about a complexification of fats that is a solid at room temperature (as opposed to olive oil or cod liver oil), hence the implication of a higher SFA content than MUFAs/PUFAs.

Utterly wrong again. The ratio of unsaturated (MUFAs+PUFAs) / saturated (SFAs) is typically rather about 1 in tallow for instance !

In other words beef fat is typically only about 50% SFAs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tallow
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olive_oil

What changes in olive oil with respect to beef fat is not so much the PUFA's but mainly the MUFAs which increase and the SFA's that decrease correspondingly. Actually olive oil solidification takes place only a few degree below room temperature.  

By the way, experience amply shows that virgin olive oil is a very healthy fat, whatever obscure unsupported theories might tell us.

  

Terminologically, "trace" was probably not appropriate, although the implication was that the concentration of PUFAs in these ruminant tissues is more appropriate (as the yard stick) than cold water fish or poultry/pork fed high n-6 diets. Unlike humans, given variations in dietary PUFA, ruminants don't concentrate higher quantities of PUFAs, irrespective of grain finishing - that's an advantage if you can't afford grass-fed, altough grass-fed has the CLA etc.

Completely unsupported statements. Ruminant as other animals fat composition can be readily manipulated with diet and there is stricly no evidence that terrestrial mammals fat would be "more appropriate" than marine mammals fat.

[TylerDurden]

It reminds me of that WAPF "guts and grease" article that damned Cordain particularly, asserting that the native Americans would selectively hunt the older animals for their much bulkier accumulation of saturated back fat etc. Wisdom like that often transpires...

Cordain has already shown scientific evidence that wild animal meats are, on an overall basis,  low in fat, so he has already debunked the WAPF notions - and much of the fat is shown to be PUFAs. So, even if they selected older animals for their fat(not always possible anyway due to famines/not always being able to target only the older members of a herd due to circumstances like weather etc.), they still faced a scarcity of fat. Indeed, Cordain suggested, ages back, that it is the very scarcity of animal fat that gets  hunter-gatherers to prize the fat above everything else.

Plus, wild animals are not known to live too long in the wild due to predation by other species, and much of them die well before they reach old age.

[MrBBQ]

Hmmm, I was asking for more information as a means for some wisdom/education, not damning enunciations upon my little head, hehe.

Maybe you misunderstood me regarding my appeal for further explanation but my point was that ruminant fat is higher in SFAs than these more liquid oils, with the exception of coconut oil, palm (kernel) oil, cocoa butter etc.

Furthermore, I'm sure you'll note along with me that as opposed to ghee (oxysterols hehe!), the tropical (warmer climate) oils, macadamia oil and rendered ruminant fat (more oxysterols hehe!), it's certainly not recommended to expose olive oil to excess thermodynamics, as well as photons (aside from the bundled tocopherols).

Olive oil (with a SFA:MUFA ratio massively in favour of MUFA) is 10% PUFA with a very funky n-6:n3 ratio. I much prefer the n-6:n-3 ratio of tallow (or better not cooked/damaged, raw ruminant fat) to olive oil. Also, the game meats will have a much more optimal n-6:n-3 ratio.

I suppose the question would be, should we lean into very different ecosystems like cold waters to secure the optimal balance of fats in the diet?

So on the matter of game meats having so little total fat and the general avoidance of excess carbohydrates except for remaining out of ketonuria, what's the plan - fasting or caloric restriction?

Returning to the theme of the thread, one may prudently avoid olive oil and its funky n-6:n-3 ratio, preferring instead to simply accept the trace levels from ruminant/game fats with a much more optimal n-6:n-3. Given the half life of n-6 converted into the form of arachidonic acid (years of half goodbyes - almost like getting out of a co-dependent relationship), maybe it's ideal (especially recovering from silent/hyperinflammation) to wave goodbye to olive oil and avocados for some time.

What says you, because I'm even more int'rested/curious now?! Elucidation baby - feed me...

[luis]

Just realized I was having a bad reaction to Olive Oil. I was consuming a lot of Olive Oil mixed with my raw meat and vegetables, maybe more than 1oo ml every day. Two weeks ago, I started feeling tired, nauseous and sometimes dizzy, especially after exercise. My body was also somewhat swollen. I thought it could be some detox, but after having no olive oil for one day,I began to feel much better. I have stopped consuming olive oil, but I still have the problem of which fats I should use.

The beef ground meat that I usually eat has plenty of fat, but I am not sure if it is enough. Maybe pig lard might be the best of the worst.

[MrBBQ]

Pig lard is very sub-optimal - tasty though!

Ruminant fat trimmed off especially for you instead of the trash is optimal...The butcher may have you take it away for them each week, out of reverence for the death of a beautiful animal (using all parts). Welfare for everyone in nature - a very paleo ideal...

I hope the olive oil was from a known good source in a dark bottle with a virgin pressing date.

[TylerDurden]

Again, the point is not the omega-3:6 ratio of olive-oil, it is that it is a highly processed source. After all, there are plant-oils with a very favourable omega-3:6 ratio(walnut oil comes to mind but it is highly processed). Similiarly, rendered rubbish like tallow may well have great omega3:6 ratio if grassfed, but still be effectively harmful due to its processing.

I don't understand why there would be any need for fasting/caloric restriction when eating raw wild game. Raw wild game is healthier than grassfed etc.

[MrBBQ]

Another thread usurped with hand wringing and chest beating over tallow, hehe - I love it. Let's hope that William is never banned because these conflicts always predictably bring a smile to my face (everyone ignores the trolling aspect anyway). I say William is an elder and we all know to have respect for our elders!

I will say that in spite of the heat-sensitive components of animal fats (particularly resulting in fat-soluble toxins and oxysterols), tallow does seem to have very optimal digestibility, which is probably why it has some medicinal value in spite of its mild-moderate toxicity.

I took a leaf out of tallow's book and I've started mincing my fat and then melting it down in a bain marie to separate the still raw liquid from all that connective stuff that's in the fat. I find that this separated (still raw) liquid is more digestible without all the connective rubbish in a cut of fat. So this truly low-temp raw tallow for me is something akin to having one's cake and eating it. I highly recommend this approach if you want the optimal digestibility of tallow, yet without some toxic payload. Of course, tallow is sans lipase, so the enzymatic synergy is excluded - the exogenous enzyme synergy that is however, actually still debatable/speculative.

Also, maybe drinking an espresso just after your meat meal (only one per day) or a little bit of diluted dandelion root tincture will eject more bile, meaning better uptake of fats/fat-solutes.

@Tyler: Now, to the point/conundrum, to which I alluded and djr_81 correctly interpreted (thanks djr_81)...Fat starvation on a wild game diet - akin to rabbit starvation? How is it possible to only just keep out of ketosis/ketonuria on a strictly lean (low total fat) wild game meats diet? Are you alluding to the possibility that we were actually opportunistic scavengers (instead of or as well as hunters) who spent much of our time looking for piles of bones left by carnivores, who couldn't be bothered (or didn't have the apparatus) to procure the brain/marrow? I know you have a better kinaesthetic for the anthropological literature, so once again, this is a probe for education. Maybe there were some wiggle factors between the early and late paleolithic...So are we talking dependency on game marrow/brains? There seems to be a paleo dichotomy here...Definitely one for the paleorati...

That said, I love exotic (although farmed) game like kangaroo and ostrich - much tastier than our local stuff.

Tallow = Suet - Scratchings + Thermodynamics + Oxygen (simple maths/chemistry!)

This brings me to my next point - has anyone (of a tallow inclination e.g. William) taken the truly evolved step to add some kind of anti-oxidants to the melted fat while rendering (e.g. rooibos tea, curry leaves, spices etc.)? Apparently, this greatly minimises ROS (reactive oxygen species) and probably heat-originated fat-soluble toxins. The Indians traditionally added curry leaves (a so-called wise tradition, but not mentioned by WAPF etc.) while rendering ghee and always boiled in earthenware rather than a pro-oxidant metal. Personally, if one is refining their fats with unnatural heat (that is, that nature does everything enzymatically at ~40 degrees C), maybe they should at least bring this kind of wise science when forming a staple out of a substance outside of nature. This kind of thing reminds me of William's observation that the EM coming from an Excalibur dehydrator could impact the quality of the jerky meat in comparison to Lex's homebrew spec. I mean, isn't this the true neopaleolithic way - to combine science with lost ancient instinct?

Another thing I seem to remember from WAPF readings is that oxysterols (oxidised cholesterol) are higher and more dangerous with prolonged exposure to O2, like in the case of dried egg yolks, dried milk and dried whey powder. There is the other debate that trace oxysterols are synergistic with our metabolism, although I'm not concurring with that.

@alphagruis: You seem somewhat reticent now - I'm interested in your retort, given your academic science credentials (I'm a mere pseudoscientist resynthesising others' findings/interpretations).

In my opinion, truly raw tallow (not tallow) rendered by mincing and low temperature melting and filtering (e.g. with a fine tea strainer) is the very best for the palate, digestion and simplicity. Stick to using hot tallow for making soaps and the occasional seared steak/stir-fry for guests (tallow is amazing in preference to ghee for frying mushrooms and onions in cheat scenarios).

[William]

I took a leaf out of tallow's book and I've started mincing my fat and then melting it down in a bain marie to separate the still raw liquid from all that connective stuff that's in the fat. I find that this separated (still raw) liquid is more digestible without all the connective rubbish in a cut of fat. So this truly low-temp raw tallow for me is something akin to having one's cake and eating it. I highly recommend this approach if you want the optimal digestibility of tallow, yet without some toxic payload. Of course, tallow is sans lipase, so the enzymatic synergy is excluded - the exogenous enzyme synergy that is however, actually still debatable/speculative.

I will try this. At what temperature was the bain marie?
Thanks for a helpful post. Like a breath of fresh air.

This brings me to my next point - has anyone (of a tallow inclination e.g. William) taken the truly evolved step to add some kind of anti-oxidants to the melted fat while rendering (e.g. rooibos tea, curry leaves, spices etc.)? Apparently, this greatly minimises ROS (reactive oxygen species) and probably heat-originated fat-soluble toxins. The Indians traditionally added curry leaves (a so-called wise tradition, but not mentioned by WAPF etc.) while rendering ghee and always boiled in earthenware rather than a pro-oxidant metal. Personally, if one is refining their fats with unnatural heat (that is, that nature does everything enzymatically at ~40 degrees C), maybe they should at least bring this kind of wise science when forming a staple out of a substance outside of nature. This kind of thing reminds me of William's observation that the EM coming from an Excalibur dehydrator could impact the quality of the jerky meat in comparison to Lex's homebrew spec. I mean, isn't this the true neopaleolithic way - to combine science with lost ancient instinct?

Never thought of it, maybe for the same reason historians never mentioned it: I learn from modern Amerindians that their expert herbalists were all female, and apparently were not interviewed by those who wrote the records in the 1800s.
Who might know what anti-oxidants to use in rendering beef fat?
 I heed the warning in the ghee instruction to never make it in metal - mine is a glass pot.    

In my opinion, truly raw tallow (not tallow) rendered by mincing and low temperature melting and filtering (e.g. with a fine tea strainer) is the very best for the palate, digestion and simplicity. Stick to using hot tallow for making soaps and the occasional seared steak/stir-fry for guests (tallow is amazing in preference to ghee for frying mushrooms and onions in cheat scenarios).

Agreed. Rendering at low temperature has been tried (PaleoPhil, delfuego, me), and AFAIK nobody has succeeded

[MrBBQ]

I don't know to what extent the mincing frees the fats up for melting, but there certainly seems like a reasonable puddle to go with the meat. The fat substrate in the bain marie can reach up to ~45 degrees C, although I try to get the fat up to just melting point and keep the substrate in constant motion (stirring) to ensure minimal contact time with the bain marie. Eventually, there is a complete separation of the liquid and the solid stuff, which was originally just minced fat. I'm experimenting to see if this separated liquid is easier to digest for me than more bound up fat, which may also account for the medicinal import of tallow in pemmican versus digesting the whole fat cut.

I'm not sure if this method is more wasteful of the actual fat content than rendering tallow with the scratchings left behind, but I could waste a little fat if it means it preserves more of the essence of the fat in a raw paleo stylee...I definitely get a nice big pool of raw fat to complement my raw meat cuts, which is ample for my intake.

I agree that there's little on the Internet regarding complementary anti-oxidants for rendering animal fats at high temps, yet the information I've cobbled together was simply influenced/compelled by what I'd read about traditional ghee preparation versus biochemical metrics in the food industry - particularly when it comes to long-term storage of ghee at room temperatures and the resultant oxysterol (oxidised cholesterol) accumulation as time passes in the presence of a generally oxidative environment. That's originally why I made the critical point about long-term storage of pemmican and the potential for accumulation of high levels of oxysterols. On the matter of oxysterols and general damning of tallow by RPDers, it makes me wonder what the accumulation of oxysterols would be in high meat, as well as AGEs and ALEs.

I suppose it underscores the point that nasties exist in all foods (including trans fats) in a generally oxidative environment, regardless of whether the oxidation products are mediated by unnaturally high heat. Maybe there's more tolerance in some biological profiles or hormone calibrations than others...Maybe I'm just using this thread development as a means for hypercriticism of high meats or their absolute relevance in nature (maybe in that vain, tallow is also relevant). I still wonder why after eating exclusively raw meat/fat for many months, I still have an appreciation for the taste of seared meat - maybe that's the charm of pemmican.

[TylerDurden]

Another thread usurped with hand wringing and chest beating over tallow, hehe - I love it. Let's hope that William is never banned because these conflicts always predictably bring a smile to my face (everyone ignores the trolling aspect anyway). I say William is an elder and we all know to have respect for our elders!

No, William is clearly prematurely senile even for a troll, and we all know where one should put people who are senile/have dementia etc.. I don't think banning is necessary, anyway. For one thing, William is so amusingly retarded that he gives cooked zero-carb diets/pemmican-eaters etc. a really bad name by association, so that helps, along with all the usual b*ll*cks of his  about creationism etc. Besides, there are other quite effective ways to police him.

@Tyler: Now, to the point/conundrum, to which I alluded and djr_81 correctly interpreted (thanks djr_81)...Fat starvation on a wild game diet - akin to rabbit starvation? How is it possible to only just keep out of ketosis/ketonuria on a strictly lean (low total fat) wild game meats diet? Are you alluding to the possibility that we were actually opportunistic scavengers (instead of or as well as hunters) who spent much of our time looking for piles of bones left by carnivores, who couldn't be bothered (or didn't have the apparatus) to procure the brain/marrow? I know you have a better kinaesthetic for the anthropological literature, so once again, this is a probe for education. Maybe there were some wiggle factors between the early and late paleolithic...So are we talking dependency on game marrow/brains? There seems to be a paleo dichotomy here...Definitely one for the paleorati...

  There is enough fat, IMO, in lean raw wild game to easily avoid rabbit-starvation. HGs in palaeo times regularly ate parts from the whole animal carcass, anyway(ie fatty organs as well), and in almost all cases ate a few carbs as well(even the traditional Inuit appear to have eaten kelp , ground nuts, stored frozen berries for the winter so their diet was never 100% animal foods but more like 96-99% animal foods depending on the tribe). I doubt HGs in palaeo times only ate marrow and brains, they just had those as well as everything else.

[MrBBQ]

Hmmm, I really wonder about this insufficiency of bulky fats business. I also wonder what the fatty acid profiles/accumulation were of game nearer the tropics - I've seen some tables and most of the muscle meats are < 6% PUFA for game in my region, so it must be even less in warmer climes. One would presume that it's appropriate to eat local game and that's sufficient regards excess PUFA but without a lot of help from hunters and the willingness to eat eyeballs and brains raw (hmmm!), I really wonder...

It still makes me wonder whether eating a lot of fish is compatible with health though (without eating the head and organs), in spite of WAP's documentation of the Outer Hebrides (actually, they ate fish heads stuffed with oats). Ray Peat points out that the hypermetabolism of the eskimos (from eating whole fish including thyroids) protected them from the anti-thyroid effects of excess PUFA (plus it's also very cold at that latitude). Maybe the eskimos crafted for themselves a very complex nutritional web over many generations to survive in such a harsh environment with some kind of longevity/strength.

By the way, I've documented the cold-rendering procedure in my journal (http://www.rawpaleoforum.com/journals/anthropomorphistic-intent/20/), if anyone is interested. I'm yet to hot-render the raw scratchings to see how efficient the mincing/melting procedure is...That said, I get all my fat/marrow free, so a little waste could go to my parents for safer cooking in tallow (they are not raw paleo, but at least I can help them avoid the worst cooking practices).

btw, lol @ Tyler...

[TylerDurden]

Ray Peat's excuse doesn't work. For one thing, it's been pointed out that the longest-living populations are precisely the ones which consume large amounts of seafood(I'm thinking of Japan and Iceland as particular examples, being no1 and no2 in the world re longevity, but there are others). Indeed, omega3-s/PUFAs are particularly useful re combatting things like heart-disease etc. so the above is unsurprising.

[MrBBQ]

Oh, so we're talking about epidemiology now...

I think the point is not to generalise about excess PUFA out of the context of the whole food, particularly in a non-whole form like F-CLO, although maybe as long as these are complemented with vitamins A and D in that "sacred" manner, it's whole enough. But that's the ultimate point, what is whole enough? Did these other seafood consuming cultures eat their animals whole (either together as a complex or divided separately) or only certain parts?

To say generally that PUFAs are safe out of the context of whole foods is like saying that isolated plant extracts are safe. Nature's secret is the complexification of unrefinement and maybe that applies to eating whole animals just as it does to plants.

Ironically and conversely(!), I'm finding that refining the fat content out of the fat cuts is improving my uptake of fats and I seem to have much less stool, which is also the experience of the pemmican makers. Quite interesting...

[TylerDurden]

It all depends. Someone who has only access to raw grainfed meats would be best advised to take extra PUFAs to make up for the PUFA-deficiencies in grainfed meats etc.