Why Diet , Nutrition and Masculinity Issues are Intrinsically Connected

The fairness of Men's role in society, men's behavior and characteristics that women find attractive, and diet and nutrition -- all three of these topics have been the subject of a considerable amount of propaganda, memes, lies, and shibboleths designed and promulgated by our mass media and educational institutions...all designed to mislead we the sheeple into behaving in ways that lead to tremendous profits for a wide variety of industries.

Our dysfunctional relationships, our nutrient poor diets and the ill mental, spiritual and physical health that results from them are literal niche markets that have proven to be very profitable indeed.


Many a men's right's blogger and commenter has made note of the efforts of Western society to emasculate and feminize society as a whole...to promote feminine behavior in men.

It just so happens that following the conventional dietary wisdom plays so perfectly into this agenda.

See, on a basic, physiological level, what is the primary difference in male and female biology? When you get right down to it, it's testosterone.

And the standard low-fat, no-red meat, low cholesterol, plant-based diet that we are all supposedly should be eating to have good health? It's a diet that is primarily instrumental in reducing the bodies production of testosterone.

Saturated fat, and cholesterol are primary building blocks for the bodies production of testosterone.

To put it simply, a low-fat diet, is a low-T diet.

Speaking for myself, It's been 4 years now since I've adopted a high-protein, high-fat diet - I like to call it a Nutrient Dense, Real Food diet, after nearly a decade of low-fat, non-fat, semi-vegetarian, whole grain diet, all through my 20's and early 30's. That diet saw me increasingly getting fatter (at my worst, I was 40 lbs. overweight), and in hindsight, I now realize I had a gradually decreasing libido.

Eating too many plant foods and not enough animal foods was turning me into an Herb.

After a few years of eating paleo, I've discovered that I now have a constant, raging libido of a caveman ready to club the nearest fertile female and drag her away for some carnal savagery. I haven't felt like this since I was 15 years old and first starting dating, and could think of nothing else but sex, drugs, sex, rock-n-roll, and sex. One thing about being older though, while my libido has been rejuvenated by my diet, you don't get the bothersome, can't-control effects like involuntary erections, like you do when you first pass through puberty.

But it turns out that testosterone is linked to far more than just your libido.

From the FuturePundit: Low Testosterone Increases Heart Death Risk?

Low testosterone levels seem to be linked to a heightened risk of premature death from heart disease and all causes, suggests research published online in Heart.

The finding refutes received wisdom that the hormone is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease.

Some researchers have already noted that obese men have low levels of testosterone and higher levels of estrogen.

That's becasue obese men eat too many carbs and not enough protein and fat...the high-T food.

After reading that Futurepundit post and the commentary, I googled "testosterone and saturated fat."

Here are some of the resulting articles I came up with...

From The Testosterone Diet

Quality fat will increase your low testosterone levels. When I say quality fat, I'm not talking about soy, corn, or cotton seed oils in a clear plastic bottles sitting on the grocery store shelf. As a matter of fact, I'm not talking about polyunsaturated oils at all.

Poly fats will reduce your testosterone levels!

I'm talking about mono fats from olives and avocados, and saturated fat from beef and egg yolks.

Yup, I'm talking old school bodybuilder food!

In his younger days, Jack Lalanne almost choked to death drinking cows blood. It coagulated in his throat on the way down, and just about sent him down the river.
Now, you don't need to take it that far, not even close. All I ask is that you start eating REAL food.

Need some examples?

Not real food..
Macaroni and cheese out of a box, pop tarts, frozen pizza.

Real food..
Eggs, steak, broccoli, avocados, almonds, salmon, olives, the list goes on and on...

That sounds positively paleo...

From How to Increase Testosterone

Tips to naturally increase testosterone levels

The following are tips for how to increase testosterone naturally.

• Testosterone levels decrease with restricted diets but are restored within 48 hours after eating normal again.
• Diets high in protein, cholesterol, fat, and saturated fat will increase testosterone levels.
• Increasing polyunsaturated fat and decreasing saturated fat will decrease testosterone levels.
• Consistent and heavy weight training with compound exercises and short rest intervals is a huge contributor to stimulating higher than normal testosterone levels.
• Sex, masturbation, or an erotic stimulus will cause an increase in testosterone levels.
• Compounded medications such as BHRT testosterone can help increase testosterone levels.
• Painkillers such as aspirin, marijuana, and codeine will decrease levels of testosterone.
• Higher protein typically equals more animal fats therefore you'll likely be getting more saturated fat and cholesterol by consuming more protein.
• Alcohol decreases testosterone levels. Even just one night out on the town can cause testosterone levels to drop significantly.
• Runners and power lifters show lower levels of testosterone than bodybuilders do.
• Stress also significantly affects your testosterone. The higher your stress level the lower your testosterone levels.

Note that the entire low-fat/non-fat, avoid saturated fat conventional wisdom also makes people use more polyunsaturated fats like canola, corn, and soy oils, and eat a lot less saturated fats like butter, lard and tallow.

Be a man...eat FAT!

From Old School BodyBuilders: Testosterone and Saturated Fat:

Men like Armand Tanny, John Grimek, and Vince Gironda.

These pioneers of the muscle game didn't keep a bottle of testosterone cypionate in the medicine cabinet.
They didn't rely on fractioned, low-fat, over-processed foods either.

Vince shunned the primitive soy-based protein powders of the day, and got his aminos the way mother nature intended....From food!

He believed a large percentage of your daily food intake should be consumed in a raw, natural state.

His go-to guys were steak tartar, whole eggs, and raw milk.

Yup, Vince, John, Armand, and most of the other muscle men of that era ate what I like to call "man food."

Food that real men consumed, before fat phobia took over our collective conscious in the late 70s and early 80s.

As a matter of fact, these men embraced fat, from clean, animal-based sources, and for good reason.

For one, fat is good for you!

Surprised?  More on that later…
Second, fat, especially saturated fat, is vital for optimal Testosterone Production.
Studies have shown conclusively, that male vegetarians, who typically consume very little saturated fat, have considerably lower levels of testosterone compared to non vegetarians.

In 2005 JS Volek conducted a study titled, The case for not restricting saturated fat on a low carbohydrate diet.

This research compared the dietary records of several men involved in weight training.

The authors found significant correlations between testosterone levels and total and saturated fat intake among men with a history of at least one year of weight training.

Testosterone is the key hormone that defines your masculinity. The fats and proteins that you eat (or don't eat) will determine the levels of testosterone your body produces.

No wonder the same corporate mass media that constantly seeks to emasculate the Western Male by degrading masculinity, and constantly portraying male role models as weak, effeminate, pussy whipped and dominated by women is the same entities promoting a low-fat, plant based (i.e. polyunsaturated fat) diet as optimal!

Time to cue up the shaming language...

Now do you want to eat like an herb, or eat like a MAN?

The Fat of the Land

The evidence that conventional wisdom regarding the deceptive and misleading mainstream dietary advice is slowly gaining momentum and recognition. A slew of articles have been published recently, all addressing the notion that the emphasis on avoiding saturated fats to promote "heart health" has been wrong all along.

I still remember the first time I saw a low-carb/high-protein diet website that stated emphatically that I could eat as much bacon, eggs, cheese, steak and butter as I wanted, and that I would lose weight while doing so. I thought I was reading a website version equivalent to a tabloid media's cover story regarding Elvis spotted flying in a UFO over the White House.

Our mainstream, anti-saturated fat zeitgeist had been that deeply ingrained into my consciousness. Not only did it take me reading a whole host of websites over a period of about a year to overcome my initial disbelief...but it also took a trip to Europe to see the way they ate bacon, eggs and sausage every single day for breakfast, and I didn't see a society that looks like the people of walmart. Yet, I still expected to step on the scale when I returned home and see some sort of weight gain, since I was eating those high protein/high fat breakfast meals daily for two weeks at the various bed and breakfasts I stayed at.

I actually lost 5 pounds. And this was a trip for which I spent mostly sitting on my ass and driving or riding on tour busses, and drinking beer and whisky at pubs and B&B's like there was no tomorrow.

Only then did the realization truly dawn on me that those websites I had read were right...and that anti-fat, anti-animal protein programming I had been so thoroughly inculcated with was all based on lies and propaganda.

In retrospect, I think the programming about food and diet were even stronger than the cultural programming regarding misandry and feminism.

So now I'm in my 3rd year of eating a nutrient dense diet, and I have never felt or looked better. It is some what gratifying to see the truth is slowly gaining momentum towards mass acceptance.

The problem of course, is the fact that dietary misinformation is absolutely under the control of the Government, non-profit organizations beholden to grant funding, and the giant food processing, agricultural and pharmaceutical corporations who supply that grant funding and campaign contributions who all profit immensely from keeping the public ill informed and malnourished.

For example, lets look at the American Heart Associations dietary recommendations page, from their Using Healthier Food Preparation guidelines:

*Stock up on heart-healthy cookbooks and recipes for cooking ideas.

* Use “choice” or “select” grades of beef rather than “prime,” and be sure to trim the fat off the edges before cooking.

* Use cuts of red meat and pork labeled “loin” and “round,” as they usually have the least fat.

* With poultry, use the leaner light meat (breasts) instead of the fattier dark meat (legs and thighs), and be sure to remove the skin.

* Make recipes or egg dishes with egg whites, instead of egg yolks. Substitute two egg whites for each egg yolk.

* For recipes that require dairy products, try low-fat or fat-free versions of milk, yogurt and cheese.

* Use reduced-fat, low-fat, light or no-fat salad dressings (if you need to limit your calories) on salads, for dips or as marinades.

* Use and prepare foods that contain little or no salt.

I get angry when I read these LIES. This is exactly how I used to cook and eat for years. And I over a good 7 years of eating like this, I watched as I slowly but surely got more and more overweight.

Now the Scientific American just published an article entitled: Carbs against Cardio: More Evidence that Refined Carbohydrates, not Fats, Threaten the Heart

Eat less saturated fat: that has been the take-home message from the U.S. government for the past 30 years. But while Americans have dutifully reduced the percentage of daily calories from saturated fat since 1970, the obesity rate during that time has more than doubled, diabetes has tripled, and heart disease is still the country’s biggest killer. Now a spate of new research, including a meta-analysis of nearly two dozen studies, suggests a reason why: investigators may have picked the wrong culprit. Processed carbohydrates, which many Americans eat today in place of fat, may increase the risk of obesity, diabetes and heart disease more than fat does—a finding that has serious implications for new dietary guidelines expected this year.

I'm not holding my breath waiting for any new dietary guidelines put out by the Government-NonProf-Media-Corporate conglomerate. Even if they finally admit that they may have been wrong about saturated fats, they will still find some way to align their recommendations to benefit the bottom line of the food processing and agricultural corporation's bottom line.

Don't believe me?

From Why the State Hates Cholesterol:

Additionally, the State-created cartel of subsidy receivers is heavily biased in favor of grain products. According to this breakdown, between 1995 and 2003, $8.5 billion in U.S. subsidies went to growers of plant-based food crops, while only $5.5 million went to animal products, which means that over 99% of agricultural food subsidies go to plant products. The largest 10% of subsidized farms received 72% of subsidies, but a full 60% were not subsidized at all. As Brian Riedl points out, the $360,000 per year cap on farm subsidies is easy for large farms to pull loopholes through: Tyler Farms of Arkansas collected almost $32 million in farm subsidies between 1996 and 2001 by dividing its farm into 66 individual "corporations."

Not only has the cholesterol hypothesis helped consolidate the government’s ties to the agricultural industry through a shift in the diet away from animal foods and towards plant foods, but doubtlessly the massive level of soy subsidies – soy is the fifth most subsidized crop – has contributed to a surplus to be disposed of, whose result has been the manufacturing of a massive myth that this odd-tasting, highly estrogenic bean is a "health food."

This is why soy is in everything nowadays.

Another common aspect of dietary misinformation is the catch-all phrase "high-fat diet," making no distinction between the type of fat...namely the distinction between Omega 6 and Omega 3 fatty acids.

Note the American Heart Association's recommendations:

* Use liquid vegetable oils or nonfat cooking sprays whenever possible.

* Whether cooking or making dressings, use the oils that are lowest in saturated fats, trans fats and cholesterol – such as canola oil, corn oil, olive oil, safflower oil, sesame oil, soybean oil and sunflower oil – but use them sparingly, because they contain 120 calories per tablespoon.

* Stay away from coconut oil, palm oil and palm kernel oil. Even though they are vegetable oils and have no cholesterol, they are high in saturated fats.

In other words, only use Omega 6 rich vegetable oils.

No wonder I was getting fat following the AHA recommendations.

While it's good to note that more and more people are finally starting to recognize the role that sugar and high fructose corn syrup has played in creating our obesity and heart disease epidemics - I believe the true cause of the obesity epidemic has been BOTH the prominence of both sugar and polyunsaturated fatty acid, Omega 6 rich vegetable oils in all of the processed and convenience, take out and restaurant foods that now make up the majority of the Western diet.

Red Pill Reality Dispelling Blue Pill Delusions: Press Releases on Diet & Nutrition

An installment in a series: Red Pill Reality Dispelling Blue Pill Delusions


I've written several posts in the past regarding the primary means for which we often see press releases in the mainstream media regarding claims that meat, red meat and/or saturated fats are the cause of a host of illnesses and deaths like heart disease, diabetes, obesity and cancer.

The most common tactic employed is to use statistical analysis of observational studies to make a specious claim to demonize a certain food. In other words, most such claims conflate correlation with causation to mislead the average mass media consumer.

The primary M.O. for making such claims believable is largely based upon comparing the overall health between kinds of people: those that are health conscious and do all they can to try and attain good health by following conventional wisdom promulgated by the corporate agriculture, healthcare and pharmaceutical industries in the mainstream media -- vs. those people who don't care a whit and simply live lifestyles without regard to any and all healthcare advice.

In other words, using observational studies based on self-reporting questionnaires, press releases that breathlessly declare meat and saturated fats as agents of death and diseases are based on nothing more than comparing people who avoid or minimize the meat and fat consumption -- but who also commit to lifestyles that the mainstream media regularly touts as necessary for good health; things like regular exercise, avoiding smoking and excessive alcohol and drugs, and avoiding fast foods, sweets, pastries and processed snack foods vs. people who eat meat and fat with abandon because they're also smoking like chimneys, avoiding exercise, drinking like sailors and eating fast foods, sweets, desserts and snack foods on a regular basis without a second thought.

Such studies are basically comparing two different lifestyles - one of people who think health is important and are willing to sacrifice momentary satisfaction to their taste buds and comfort to achieve the desired state of health, and those who could care less and will eat whatever they want regardless of the conventional wisdom. The results of such a comparison are fairly intuitive to figure out...but the press releases of the mainstream mass media will usually point the finger at the meat and/or fat and claim that the difference in the results is due to those who focus on a "plant based diet" versus the filthy meat and saturated fat gluttons.

It's a complete misdirection designed to get the masses to embrace the plant-based processed food products of Big Agriculture. Of course, as the links thus far show, I've covered all this before...so why yet another post on the topic?

Because I'd also like to highlight other tactics employed by the sources behind such deceptive press releases: those based on studies that are deliberately "fixed" to reach a pre-determined outcome to support the overall narrative.

Exposing these tactics in his latest blog post: You Can't Debunk Everything: How To Avoid Being Baffled By Baloney, is author and blogger J. Stanton over at gnolls.org.

Stanton exposed on the sources of such dietary disinformation, and you really should read his entire post...but the following is a quick summary of 3 tactics used by researchers to prove the up is down, black is white and we should all be vegetarians...

Quit While You're Ahead

Stanton highlights a particular study that sought to show that "Foods high in fat are less satiating than foods high in carbohydrates."

Anyone who has tried the paleo diet for even a short period of time, knows this is simply rubbish. So how do researchers make their case? They measure satiety of various foods FOR ONLY 120 MINUTES...2 Hours.

In 2 hours, a full belly of any kind of food will still leave most people without any severe disorders satiated. Try it for yourself...on an empty stomach, eat a couple of eggs and bacon until you are full, than time how long it takes before you feel hungry again.

Than, on the following day, try eating oatmeal and a bagel with jam and some fruit. See how long it takes before you feel hungry again.

In either case, most normal people will find that 2 hours will not reveal the difference in satiation between the high carb vs. the low carb breakfast. But that doesn't stop the press release from claiming that the high carb diet is "more satiating" than the low carb one...

The next example of misleading research tactics is:

Construct an Artificial Scenario

The press release conclusion:

“Fat, not carbohydrate, is the macronutrient associated with overeating and obesity…Although more data are required, currently the best dietary advice for weight maintenance and for controlling hunger is to consume a low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet with a high fiber content.”

How do they "prove" this?

Thus, to examine in more detail the mechanisms involved in the effects of carbohydrate and fat on food intake, we infused pure nutrients either through intravenous or intragastric routes.”

The only people who actually get their nutrients via IV are those in a coma or on life support. Another worthless study that means nothing to the 99% of us who actually masticate and swallow our food.

Than we have the next means of creating misleading studies:

Confound Your Variables

In a study from 1987, the researchers sought to prove that a "high fat diet" was the cause of obesity by feeding a group of women an alternate diet between low and high fat and measured the results.

They confounded their variables in three different ways.

First, in the high fat diet, the fats used were primarily Omega-6 imbalanced vegetable oils with a bit of milk and/or butterfat mixed in. Not all "high fat diets" are equal. Even mainstream media has been forced to admit the difference between trans-fats and regular saturated fats...which is why there is a few margarine brands nowadays that tout "TRANS FAT FREE." But back in 1987? Margarine was considered the superior health food to saturated fat rich butter.

The next means of confounding the variables was to mix up the serving sizes by "units" whether it was "high fat" or "low fat."

“All foods, including those served as units (eg, muffins, sandwiches), could be consumed entirely or in part. … Sandwiches were available in whole or half units.”

The final way in which this disingenuous study confounded their variables was to mix up the various meals on the test subjects. Stanton notes:

A typical subject would consume a low-fat meal one day, a high-fat meal the next, a medium-fat meal the third day, and the sequence would repeat.

Can you imagine a drug trial where patients took one drug on odd days, and another drug on even days? How could you possibly disentangle the effects?

All of us have eaten a huge dinner and not been hungry the next morning…or gone to bed hungry and been ravenous when we awakened. In this insane design, each high-fat meal was guaranteed to be surrounded by two days of lower-fat meals. Yet in Figure 2, they graph energy intake for each day as if it were the same people eating each diet for two weeks!

In conclusion, this study is triply useless: first, due to using known industrial toxins for the “high-fat” diet, second, due to unequal portion size, and third, due to an intentionally broken design that commingles the effects of the three diets.

So there you have it...4 ways in which Press Releases claim scientific evidence for misinformation regarding diet and nutrition: Conflating correlation with causation in statistical analysis of observational studies, and 3 techniques for running studies to reach predetermined conclusions.

Next time you read, hear or see another breathless claim in the corporate mass media denouncing meat and/or fat and urging everyone to eat a plant based diet of "fresh fruits, vegetables and whole grains," it's almost a virtual certainty that they're either reporting on studies comparing health conscious people versus those who don't care...or they are reporting on studies that were fixed to support the claims rather than an unbiased study designed to discover the truth.

Heart Check

Me: "Mmmmm, those look tasty...."

Her: "The burgers or the waitresses?"

Me: "Yes!"

This past summer, I did quite a bit of traveling, visiting friends and family and couch surfing in several States on the West Coast of USA Inc. What I observed in various places troubled me. But it wasn't all visions of apocalypse.

On one of those trips, I finally paid a visit to an establishment I saw featured on the Tell-A-Vision a couple of years ago - The Heart Attack Grill. Love that place. It is the only burger joint for which I've eaten at in the past 4 years or so. It was quite the entertaining dining experience, and one for which I enjoyed completely.

As I'm the guy well known for doling out the dietary advice (when asked), and for being strict in abstaining from so many foods (FEED), the group I was with was shocked at my enthusiasm for the whole experience.

"Wait, isn't this the guy telling all of us we should quit eating at McDonalds, Burger King and Jack in the Box?"

Yup, that would be me. But this place? I love the entire theme. It essentially sticks the middle finger at the conventional wisdom of the modern health and medial fields entire set of dietary guidelines THEY would have us all follow.

PRAISE THE LARD!

Freedom fries, deep fried in lard, like they typically used to be before the federally subsidized, Big Ag's round up ready vegetable and grain oils became ubiquitous? YESSSS!

A quadruple bypass burger stacked with 4 1/4 lbs. patties of beef, tomatoes, onions, bacon, and cheddar cheese? Oh yeeeeaaaah baby!!

Heart Attack? Not from the food...

I broke the whole mound apart and ate everything except for the bun, Atkins-diet style (not because I wanted to eat low carb, but rather because I know that most commercially baked hamburger bun products are made with white flour and hydrogenated vegetable oils -- aka margarine).

Unless the lard used to make the french fries was hydrogenated, I am almost certain that the hamburger bun was probably the only truly unhealthy component of the whole meal.

I even finished it all off with a WHOLE FAT chocolate milkshake with a chunk of butter thrown on top for good measure. Hey, if I'm going to "cheat" on my normally strict diet standards, I'm going all in!

It was the most memorable restaurant meal of my summer, that's for sure.

At this point, you may be asking yourself, "So what is the point of this blog post?"

A dining review for The Heart Attack Grill?

Or is it simply an opportunity to gratuitously post pictures of the hawt H.A.G. waitresses (Look! An antonym-acronym!)  serving up the goods?

Yes.

Of course, those are not the only reasons.

Ever since that meal in that fine, MAndrosphere-appropriate themed restaurant several months ago, the idea for this blog post has been resting in the back of my mind, waiting for the right inspiration to bring it forth.

Sadly, the impetus for that one was the recent news I received of an acquaintance who passed away of a heart attack at the age of 31. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?!?!?

This person I met several times (a friend of a friend) was a victim. A victim of lies, propaganda and misinformation, that resulted in literally eating to death. As Author Michael Crichton once lamented, "We believe what were told. My father suffered a life filled with margarine, before he died of a heart attack anyway."

Go ask Googliath about the Heart Attack Grill. Big Brother G will show you a list of links reporting on instances where obese, malnourished Wal-Martians died of heart attacks while eating there. Which is it? Correlation? Causation? Take your pick.

Fact is, a very sick, obese person with clogged arteries and struggling with hypertension and diabetes is susceptible to suffering a heart attack within an hour or two of overeating a heavy meal.

Of course, the mainstream media reporting on the Heart Attack Grill stories, all take the slant that the meal itself killed 'em right on the spot! It really IS a HEART ATTACK causing restaurant!

Correlation or Causation?

Yes.

Ok, the joke is getting old. All apologies. When I first said it while we were waiting to be seated at the H.A.G., it made my entire group laugh uproariously. Such moments of social triumph are too good to let go so easily....


What I tried to explain to them all after we were seated was that I believed if the H.A.G. made some slight modifications to their menu, such as gluten-free hamburger buns made with butter or some other healthy source of fat, used 100% grass-fed/free range beef for their burgers, and got the lard for their fries from free range pigs, it would actually be a Paleo-styled Health food restaurant!

Of course, this didn't really register with them. They had a hard time comprehending my previous announcement that lard fries are actually good for you. At that point, I think I triggered the cognitive dissonance effect in their minds, interrupting their regularly scheduled programming, causing a processor shut down. Ah well. The meal was still enjoyed by all. They just all thought they were eating really unhealthy, while I was relishing every last gloriously greasy, healthy bite!

Anyways, back to the oh so serious topic at hand.

The entire raison d'etre of the H.A.G. is to flaunt the dietary health and nutrition recommendations of the establishment. It's the literal manifestation of some of the more intense Western allopathic medicine detractors: Go to the Doctor's, listen to their recommendations, than go home and do the exact opposite.

That's not to far off from the truth.



So what's supposedly so bad about the Heart Attack Grill? All the cholesterol and saturated fats can lead to heart disease, right? Lets see what the establishment's foremost authority on heart health, the American Heart Association has to say about fats and how they relate to your heart health:

The "bad” fats are saturated and trans fats.

Saturated:  Saturated fats occur naturally in many foods.  The majority we eat come mainly from animal sources, meat and dairy (milk fat) such as fatty beef, lamb, pork, poultry with skin, beef fat (tallow), lard and cream, butter, cheese, and other dairy products made from whole or reduced-fat (2%) milk.  These foods also contain cholesterol.  Many baked goods and fried foods can also contain high levels of saturated fats. Some plant foods, such as palm oil, palm kernel oil, and coconut oil, also contain primarily saturated fats, but do not contain cholesterol.

Trans:  Trans fats are found in many foods.  About 20–25 percent come from animal fat and 75–80 percent come from partially hydrogenated fat – especially in commercial baked goods (pastries, biscuits, muffins, cakes, pie crusts, doughnuts and cookies) and fried foods (French fries, fried chicken, breaded chicken nuggets and breaded fish), snack foods (popcorn, crackers), and other foods made with partially hydrogenated vegetable oils, traditional vegetable shortening or stick margarine.  (Soft margarines typically contain very low levels of trans fats.)

Saturated Fats and Trans Fats...the BAD fats. So should we eliminate both from our diets to ensure heart health?

Very small amounts of trans fats occur naturally in some meat and dairy products, so eliminating trans fats to zero is impractical.

Yes, impractical....and unprofitable for Big Ag Feed Products! See, the Big Ag Sheeple Feed Industry (aka Processed Food Industry), needs to have trans fats because they extend shelf life of their products, allowing them to be made in a central processing facility, packaged, shipped and stored all across the globe, with minimal spoilage and loss of unit sales.

So what's to be done? Oh, here we go, since a very small amount of Trans Fats occurs naturally, than we'll allow small amounts of it in the feed supply - whether it's natural or not. After all, Trans fats are trans fats, right? Not so fast.

Most of the trans fats we eat -- by far -- come from partially hydrogenated vegetable oils, produced from liquid oils by industrial processing to create a firmer fat. Others occur naturally in milk products, formed in the rumen (or first stomach) of ruminant animals such as cows, goats, sheep and yaks when they're fed a grass-rich diet.

Several studies of large populations have looked at the link between trans fatty acid intake and risk of developing atherosclerosis, and all have shown that the risk goes up only with the intake of "industrial" trans fatty acids, not the natural ones.

Aha! But since natural trans fats occur in some meat and dairy products, the AHA considers it "impractical" to eliminate Trans fats entirely. Why not just ban artificial trans fats completely? That would lead to too much good health.

Follow the money.

The following 0 grams trans fat products are listed by percentage of saturated fat, from lowest to highest.  Choose the product with lowest saturated fat that works for your menu item.  The American Heart Association recommends limiting saturated fat to less than 7 percent and trans fat to less than 1 percent of total daily calories.

Note the names of the producers of the approved products that are considered "Heart Healthy."

Unilever Food Solutions, ConAgra, Mid-Atlantic Vegetable Company, Ventura Foods, ADM. All produce variations of butter substitutes, recommended by the AHA as "heart healthy, because they're low in saturated fat.

Thanks AHA. Glad you're looking out for the health of all those people who's bottom line depends on selling these poisons to we the sheeple. GFY, I'll stick to my highly saturated fat-rich butter and coconut oil.

Oh, but wait....those are the recommendations for restaurants. What about the average consumer? Why, the AHA gives us a recommended shopping list! Go read it! Look at all those heart healthy whole grains, lean meat products and butter and dairy substitute products! Why, this list contains all the right foods to make sure you adhere to the USDA food pyramid recommendations!

The answer is quite clear. The AHA is nothing more than the snake Big Ag oil and Processed Food Industry marketing department, and steady supplier of heart disease case work for the cardiology industry. Those AHA web pages show the connection between Big Ag food corporations and the establishment health care industry. They are just two arms of the same beast.

The medical and nutritional establishments, agribusinesses and industrial food processors, mainstream media and the Government - all have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo in the current nutritional disaster and state of obesity and ill health. They are all part and parcel to the system of Concentrated Sheeple Feedlot Management. And the last thing THEY want, is for any of us to escape the feedlot.


As J. Stanton over at Gnolls.org concluded a while ago:

Simply by eating a paleo diet, we have made ourselves enemies of the establishment, and will be treated henceforth as dangerous radicals.

This is not a conspiracy theory. By eschewing commodity crops and advocating the consumption of grass-fed meat, pastured eggs, and local produce, we are making several very, very powerful enemies.

The medical and nutritional establishments hate paleo, because we’re exposing the fact that they’ve been wrong for decades and have killed millions of people with their bad advice.

The agribusinesses and industrial food processors hate paleo, because we’re hurting their business by not buying their highly profitable grain- and soy-based products.

The mainstream media hates paleo, because they profit handsomely from advertising those grain- and soy-based products.

The government hates paleo, because they’re the enforcement arm of big agribusinesses, industrial food processors, and mainstream media—and because their subsidy programs create mountains of surplus grain that must be consumed somehow.

Is anyone surprised that a government which spends billions of dollars subsidizing the production of corn, soy, and wheat, would issue nutritional recommendations emphasizing the consumption of corn, soy, and wheat?

So remember sheeple, when you go shopping for your feed, look for the Heart Check Marker on your processed feed packaging! The processed food manufacturers pay donate good money to the AHA for their stamp of approval on their feed products!

And for Heaven's sake, don't eat at a place like the Heart Attack Grill, they use LARD... stick to an establishment that uses a Big Ag produced, AHA approved soybean or canola oil for frying, since those oils have 0 grams trans fat per serving! 

Seriously. Your choice of fats is the most important decision you can make when it comes to your food choices. Your heart health depends on it.

Soluble Synergy

Mmmm...delicious globules of fatty FAT!

I've been studying, experimenting and evolving my attitudes and beliefs about diet for a long, long time now. Low carb this, paleo that, caloric restrictions or going vegan... focusing on the diet and lifestyle proscriptions in total, I believe they all miss the most important aspect of any diet: KNOW YOUR FATS.

Eating as much healthy fats in your diet as you can is the key to your health and well being. Fats lead to satiety, nutrient absorption and most importantly of all, protection.

The healthy fats will make you thrive. They will protect you from the worst effects of other junk food, alcohol consumption and other poisons you may ingest. The healthy fats protect your liver and give your body the best material to work with when it has to manufacture the hormones, neuro-transmitters, and other substances vital for healthy living. More specifically, the healthy fats give you the most overlooked class of nutrients: Fat Soluble Vitamins. Vitamins A, D, and K. And these vitamins work in synergy - in other words the combination of those vitamins are vital for your body to digest protein, absorb minerals and nutrients, build your bones and teeth, and support the good gut flora that is the foundation of your immune system. More specifically these are the fats you should be eating on a regular basis - especially if you're pregnant. 

Bone Marrow and Rendered Ruminant Fat - best if sourced from free range, pastured animals that have access to their natural diet and plenty of sunshine. The best way to get this is to make Bone Broth. There's a reason the old wives tales suggest chicken noodle soup for a cold. That's because before the days of canned soup full of additives and having all the fat removed, chicken noodle soup was made with the boiled carcass of roast chicken. All of the marrow, tendons, skin and cartilage would be rendered into the broth's liquid. The fat globules you see floating on the surface of the broth? That's the MAGIC.

Next time your sick, go buy some soup bones, or a whole chicken (from grass fed/free range animals would be optimal). Boil it with some sea salt and a bit of raw apple cider vinegar. That deliciously fatty broth is a rich source of vitamins and minerals rendered from the boiling of bones. If $$ or availability is really an issue, than forget it, it's better to make it with typical grocery store meat even if they were from a feedlot animal.

The fat, tendons, cartilage and marrow are still great medicine for whatever ails you. I recently caught a mild flu from some friends. They missed work for a whole week, and barley left their house, coughing, running noses, soar throats and fevers for five days straight.

As soon as I felt the symptoms, I went to a local Pho restaurant and ordered up a bowl of Vietnamese bone broth soup, in which they boil the shin bones of cow for over 24 hours to make the soup base. I ate the entire bowl, then ordered one for takeout to eat first thing the next day. My throat was mildly irritated, I had a slight cough, and a very low grade fever. It was completely gone in 24 hours. I truly believe a large part of my immune systems strength and why I was able to shake off the flu so quickly and with minimal effects was the immunity boosting effect of the bone broth's Fat soluble vitamins. 

Your gut bacteria is the engine of your immune system. Bone broth us rich in vitamins, minerals, collagen, can heal damaged guts and boost your immune system.


Butter and Dairy Foods from Grass Fed Ruminants - In most places in the USA, you can find KerryGold Irish butter from Ireland. It cost double what butter from US factory style dairy. It's worth every penny. Use this butter as one of your base cooking oils. It makes everything taste better. Better yet, put that butter on any and all your steamed veggies like broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, asparagus, brussel sprouts, squash, etc. Or sautee your veggies in it. That butter is rich in the fat soluble vitamins AND it also helps your digestive system absorb the nutrients from the foods your eating with it.

Extra Virgin Olive Oil - Speaking of fats helping you absorb vitamins, minerals and nutrients, this is where the idea of salad dressing came from. Except now most salad dressing people eat are commercially made, "low fat" and made with vegetable oil crap and have sweeteners and other garbage in the ingredients. Use Extra Virgin Olive Oil and some good quality vinegar and you're also good to go. Everyone knows EVOO is good for  you....but most don't know that it's very susceptible to heat and you should never really cook with it. At best, add it to your stir fry or dish right at the end of your cooking so it's not heated up too much and for too long.

 Extra Virgin Coconut Oil - Other than rendered bone broth and grass fed cow butter...EVCO is the holy grail of cooking fats. From Coconut Oil for Optimum Health:

Coconut oil is the most saturated of all fats. Saturated fat has three subcategories: short chain, medium chain and long chain. Coconut oil contains approximately 65% medium chain fatty acids (MCFA). Although recognized for its health benefits many centuries ago, it wasn’t until 40 years ago that modern medicine found the source to be MCFA. Remarkably, mother’s milk contains the same healing powers of coconut oil. [5]

The saturated medium chain lipid lauric acid, which comprises more than 50 percent of coconut oil, is the anti-bacterial, anti-viral fatty acid found in mother’s milk. [6] The body converts lauric acid into the fatty acid derivative monolaurin, which is the substance that protects adults as well as infants from viral, bacterial or protozoal infections. This was recognized and reported as early as 1966. [7]

Since the first half of the 19th century, infection has been implicated as a cause of cardiovascular disease (CVD). [8] Researchers have been studying what causes the changes in the arterial wall. Professors Russell Ross and John Glomset formulated a hypothesis in 1973 about what causes CVD, concluding that CVD occurs in response to localized injury to the lining of the artery wall, which has been brought about by a number of things including viruses. [9, 10] The injury, in turn causes inflammation/infection. The plaque that develops is a result of the body trying to heal itself. It has been very well established that pathogens play an integral role in cardiovascular disease.

What is interesting about the role of viruses that have been found to initiate cardiovascular disease is they can be inhibited by the medium chain fatty acids in coconut oil. One could say that consuming coconut oil decreases one’s risk of cardiovascular disease.

And it's not just good for your heart...it's great for your liver, too.



Like Frost over at Freedom Twenty Five, I'm basically become a "paleolithic alcoholic." By eating nutrient dense foods and a lot of healthy saturated fats, I've found that my tolerance for alcohol has skyrocketed.

I HAVE to drink on an empty stomach to experience an alcoholic buzz. Which is precisely why I like to have a couple of high alcohol content, micro-brewed IPA's after a day of fasted exertion (aka my routine of blue collar work without a lunch break).

But increased tolerance is only one aspect of it. The other is this: I cannot remember the last time I had a hangover. Well, I can.....but that was a long time ago. I'm talking over 2 years. No lie. I can easily put down 9 drinks (typically 4-5 beers, 4 drams of whiskey or tequila) in an evening, and then wake up at the crack of dawn and immediately start doing something physically strenuous. No headache. No nausea or queasiness. Zero. As in I feel like I never even had a drink the night before.

I'm a veteran imbiber. I was a binge drinker throughout my entire youth. I've now settled into a routine of 3-4 drinks a night, 4-5 nights a week, with the sole purpose to attain a pleasant, moderate buzz. I never drink for the purpose of getting drunk anymore, but if I'm at a social event and I'm not bothering to keep track of how much I'm drinking, I find it scary at the amount I can drink now without getting absolutely trashed, and even more surprised at the lack of consequences I experience the following day.

Now, don't get me wrong. I've had more than my share of hangovers. I've had hangovers that lasted 3 days. I've said many a prayer at the altar of the porcelain god. But ever since "going paleo" going on 6 years now, I've noticed a great diminishing in the frequency and intensity of my hangovers. Part of that is also probably attributed to the fact that I only drink high quality alcohol - micro-brewed "living" beers, non-blended whiskey, 100% agave tequila's, etc., and I never imbibe sugary mixed drinks...but still, I've gotten hungover from the over consumption of even high quality alcoholic beverages.

But when I began cooking nearly every meal with coconut oil, it seems like I've developed a steel liver.

Thanks to this product, I now cook with coconut oil at almost every single meal.

With the disappearance of my hangovers, I began to suspect that the increase in coconut oil consumption was most likely the factor. So I googled and found some PubMed abstracts that confirmed my suspiscions.

Check out these excerpts from this PubMed abstract:

OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study was to determine the effects of saturated fatty acid (SFA) and unsaturated fatty acid (UFA) diets on ethanol pharmacokinetics.

METHODS: Sprague-Dawley male rats were fed modified AIN76 diets containing 10% coconut oil (SFA) or corn oil (UFA) for 120 days. A single dose (3 g/kg bw) of ethanol (13% solution) was orally administered using a gastric canula on day 30, 90, 105 and 120. Tail vein blood samples were collected at various intervals following ethanol dose and were analyzed for blood-ethanol concentration (BEC).

RESULTS: Compared to the UFA group (corn oil fed), the SFA group (coconut oil fed) exhibited significantly higher BEC, larger area under the curve, longer half-life of ethanol, and lower rates of ethanol elimination.

CONCLUSION: Dietary SFA protects liver from alcohol injury by retarding ethanol metabolism, and carnitine may be involved.

So my increased coconut oil consumption appears to be my alcoholism enabler.

Check out this PubMed Abstract too:

CONCLUSION: A diet enriched in saturated but not unsaturated fatty acids reversed alcoholic liver injury. 

 Coconut oil is the ultimate cooking oil, heart and liver protector and also a great natural skin protector and restorer from potential sun damage to your skin. Do you need anymore reasons to eat more saturated fat?



Here's the summaries of 10 more reasons you should eat plenty of saturated fats from the article I found while googling about coconut oil protecting the liver:

1. They lower Lp(a), a substance in the blood that is said to indicate proneness to heart disease.

2. They protect the liver from alcohol and other toxins like Tylenol (acetaminophen).

3. They ideally constitute at least 50 percent of our cell membranes, which gives our cells integrity.

4. They play a vital role in the health of our bones.

5. They enhance the immune system.

6. They are needed for proper utilization of essential fatty acids, like omega-3.

7. Stearic acid and palmitic acid, both saturated fats, are the preferred energy source of the heart.

8. They help protect us from harmful microorganisms.

9. They will help you lose body fat.

10. They are the best fats to cook with, including repeat frying.

In summation, I'll add an 11th reason: they simply taste better than regular fats that are a part of the industrialized, Standard American Diet. Butter tastes better than margarine. Boiled bone broth tastes better than "low-fat/low-sodium canned broth," and frying in coconut oil tastes a hell of a lot better than the typical rancid crap of most restaurant food fried in soybean, corn, canola or any other "vegetable" oil. 

Another aspect of understanding the benefits of healthy saturated fats is eating as best you can under a limited budget. I've seen many folks complain about the cost of eating pastured, grass fed meats as prohibitive and a reason why they just can't stick with the paleo/primal diet. Don't let perfect be the enemy of the good. If all you can afford is factory farmed meat, you can at least trim the fat and than cook it in some healthy fats to compensate for the nutritional inferiority of the feedlot meat! When my budget gets tight, that's exactly what I do...I buy the discount meat at the grocery store, trim the excess fat off it and then cook it in a combination of butter and coconut oil.

I buy grass fed meat and bones as much as possible. It's just not always possible. But when it comes to food choices at restaurants and eateries and cooking food for my family, the one thing I always pay most attention to is the kind of fats used in preparation. I may occasionally eat something not "paleo," following the 80/20 principle, but even then, when it comes to bad fats, it's more like 99/1 I avoid things like hydrogenated oils.


Once you accept the concept of how important saturated fats are to your diet and health (and how bad most of the unsaturated fats are), you also come to another important realization: yes, you CAN eat food that tastes great and is still good for you.
 

Our Brave New World Order's Dietary Wisdom

It's no coincidence that the vast influence of the multi-national corporations that produce and manufacture food products in this country have exercised their wealth and influence to pay for scientific studies, research, lobbying and extensive marketing to influence We the Sheeple into adopting dietary advice that is just as toxic to our bodies as is their propaganda regarding gender relations is to our families.

Blogger "agnostic" from Dusk in Autumn, has blogged as of late on the topics I've referenced before here regarding the low-fat/high-carb paradigm vs. the high fat, high protein/low carb diet that I believe is the optimal one for our human physiology. He recently started a new blog that dedicated solely to the topic of diet and nutrition, called Low Carb Art & Science.

His first posting "Did following the experts' diet advice make us any healthier?," offers a great timeline in seeing how the traditional American diet has been deliberately changed in the last half century, via the influence of the Agri-business, or BIG FOOD, industry and it's pernicious influence.

It all starts with shaping We the Sheeple's "Conventional Wisdom" about diet and nutrition...which makes us fooled into buying their products, mistakenly thinking their processed, manufactured junk is "healthy." This "conventional wisdom" gets propagated by "scientific studies" that get reported as proven facts...but when one reads the study itself, rather than the journalistic piece reporting on the study, one can see how the reporters conclusions don't really add up to the actual study...yet it's the reporters reported conclusions that in reality become the conventional wisdom.

First, the "News Report"

Animal fats linked to pancreatic cancer: Study

Researchers have linked high intake of fat from red meat and dairy products with increased risk of pancreatic cancer, in a study published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

Sounds like the conventional wisdom we hear all the time in our media, and based on the advertising of all the various food products in all of our stores, eh?

But re-read that opening statement a little more carefully...that word "linked."

What does that really mean?

Is it not the scientists first mission to determine whether or not we have correlation by coincidence, or directly attributable causation? Either it's proven, or it's not. "Linked" is just a way of making you THINK it's been proven.

However, if one reads the rest of the article with a critical, skeptical eye...

Pancreatic cancer is fatal in 95 per cent of cases, and smoking and obesity are among the known risk factors, but scientists at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland said that previous studies into the impact of fat intake on pancreatic cancer had proved inconclusive.

The authors used data collected by the National Institutes of Health-AARP Health Study to analyze the diets of 500,000 people who had completed food frequency questionnaires in 1995 and 1996.

Participants were then followed for an average of six years to track a number of health issues, including pancreatic cancer. Of those sampled, 1,337 were diagnosed with the cancer – 865 men and 472 women.

The authors wrote: “We observed positive associations between pancreatic cancer and intakes of total, saturated, and monounsaturated fat overall, particularly from red meat and dairy food sources.”

Food frequency questionnaires? That's IT?!?!? A research company tries to determine whether or not a widely consumed food (animal fat) causes cancer by using computer models to calculate probabilities based on people's self-reported questionnaires?

This is what we call "science?" I call it statistical manipulation to reach a pre-determined conclusion!

What happened to double-blind studies, using a control group and carefully observing the results to come to a reasonable scientific conclusion?

This is utter garbage! You're average person doesn't actually understand the difference between natural animal fats, hydrogenated animal fats, monosaturated, polyunsaturated and fully saturated fats.

Furthermore, many manufactured foods and fast food products will contain a variety of animal fats and vegetable fats. How the hell can they differentiate between them when the source of info is a QUESTIONNAIRE?!?!

Go look at typical brands of bread products in your grocery store...a good percentage of them will have paritally-hydrogenated (soybean) vegetable oil as an ingredient in your hamburger bun/hot dog bun/bread.

So if someone fills out their questionnaire that they ate hamburgers every single day for years...and they develop pancreatic cancer...how is the "scientists" supposed to ascertain whether or not the "animal fat" or the hydrogenated fats in the bread are the cause of the cancer?

Furthermore, studies on pubmed find that pancreatic problems associated with Diabetes are implicating daily refined sugar consumption as the primary culprit (Which is my belief probably the much more common denominator of pancreatic cancer than animal fats). Everytime you eat fast food, restaurant food, or convenience food, you are not just simply getting "animal fats." You are also eating polyunsaturated vegetable oils (usually rancid to boot), partially hydrogenated oils, as well as a host of laboratory created additives, preservatives and sweeteners.

Take your typical value meal at a hamburger fast food joint. It will contain saturated fats from the hamburger, partially-hydrogenated soy bean vegetable oil in the bun, rancid, poly-unsaturated vegetable oil for the deep fried french fries, not to mention copious quantities of corn syrup sweeteners and additives in the soda and condiments. If you are eating fast food, restaurant's meals, convenience food, etc., your meal will contain a variety of both animal and vegetable fats in it.

How the hell is a self-answer supplied questionnaire supposed to be able to adequately account for that?

It can't. Which is why the rest of the article is loaded with caveats and weasel-ly language.

They added: “We did not observe any consistent association with polyunsaturated or fat from plant food sources. Altogether, these results suggest a role for animal fat in pancreatic carcinogenesis.”

The reason for this could be connected to the role the pancreas plays in excreting enzymes that digest fat, they suggested. The authors also noted that studies have linked saturated fat consumption with insulin resistance, and that diabetes and insulin resistance are risk factors for pancreatic cancer.

However, an accompanying editorial questioned whether the increased incidence of the cancer could be reliably attributed to higher meat consumption, saying that “other dietary or lifestyle preferences associated with meat consumption” could also have a role.

No shit, Sherlock.

The editorial added that the study was “well-performed and a good addition to the understanding of pancreatic cancer.”

Source: Journal of the National Cancer Institute

This is how " dietary conventional wisdom" starts.

After bilge like this gets reported on the news, people everywhere get all concerned about that evil demon, ANIMAL FAT.

This infects We the Sheeple's subconscious, so that we walk through the grocery store and load up our carts with all of those highly manufactured and processed food products (not food, FOOD PRODUCTS...big difference!), all with the prominent marketing labels of NON-FAT...LOW-FAT...LITE...FAT FREE... and you think you're eating healthy!

After all, these manufactured products contain GRAINS, and grains are FIBER...and:

...everybody knows "A diets high in fruit, vegetables and fiber that also limit red meat consumption, such as the Mediterranean diet, have been linked with longer life and lower rates of heart disease."

This, folks, is the exact phrasing used by public service announcements on the radio and TV, by groups such as the AHA, ADA, USDA etc...and it's no accident that such a phrase was used almost verbatim in this "news report."

Who was it that said, "Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth..."

Fact of the matter is, if one looks at the source of this article, FOOD Navigator-USA.com, you will see an abundance of manufactured food product advertising and large, corporate agri-business companies logos and prominent products all over it.

It takes no stretch of the imagination to make the connection here:

The more BIG FOOD can make people think animal fats are bad for you, the more people will associate their NON FAT/LOW FAT/FAT FREE/LITE processed garbage as healthy food alternatives.

Red Pill Reality Dispelling Blue Pill Delusions: Red Meat

Another installment in a series: Red Pill Reality Dispelling Blue Pill Delusions

Everybody knows red meat is bad for you....right?!?!

Right?

Are you sure?

Doesn't everyone know that too much red meat in the Standard American Diet is the reason why Americans are at record levels of obesity, diabetes, heart disease and cancer?

Right?!?!?

Do you feel guilty every time you take exceptional satisfaction in an artery clogging T-bone, or bite into a thick juicy burger or slurp up the fatty liquid from real-bone beef broth stew? Do you ever make concessions with yourself, in which you make a mental note to exercise a little harder later on to "make up" for your red meat indulgence?

Set your mind at ease...the idea that red meat is bad for you is nothing more than a big, fat lie.


Red meat is actually good for you.

Yes, not only is it not bad for you...it's downright good for you.

If that idea sounds crazy, you need to understand the source for this mistaken belief that red meat is the boogeyman causing so many health problems in the American diet....and. as I've pointed out before, the genesis of this mistaken belief starts with the favorite tool of diet propagandists: observational studies.

You know..the one where they hand out questionnaires to a bunch of senior citizens asking them what they ate in the last 12 months...and then they check back in 10 years and see which senior citizens kicked the bucket, and than blame their rate of red meat consumption as the cause of mortality.

Dr. Michael Eades, author of Protein Power, drives home the point that refutes all of the media reports about the health hazards of red meat:  

Correlation does not equal causation!

The news is abuzz with reports of the latest study to come out showing that eating meat, especially red meat, kills us off before our time.  (You can read some of the reporting here, here, here and here.)  Google shows 547 new articles about this study.

Although this study is totally worthless from a causality perspective because it is an observational study, it does serve to confirm the biases of those non-critical thinkers who have already bought into the idea that meat is bad. 

And the majority of the journalists, editors and publishers of today's corporate mass media, most certainly buy into this notion that meat is bad. And the entire media is saturated with articles with such catchword phrases like "the latest studies reveal: red meat shortens your life span!"

But if you look at the actual science on the topic, the evidence paints quite a different picture. Read Dr. Eades entire post on how the studies being touted by the media don't actually indicate what the media says it does.

The point of this post is that you shouldn’t get wound up about a study that gets reported throughout the media because there are more than likely other studies that are just as well done and just as important showing exactly the opposite findings that the press chooses to ignore.  You’re not seeing the science as it is, you’re seeing the science as the press wants you to see it, which, typically, is the way that confirms the bias of members of the press.

So this demonstrates how red meat has been unfairly demonized....but where does this idea that red meat is actually GOOD for you, come from? Here's one good source:

It's the Beef!

What a shame we have demonized red meat because this is one modern food, enjoyed by almost everybody, that is rich in nutrients. Red meat provides complete protein, including sulphur-containing proteins like cysteine. Beef is a wonderful source of taurine and carnitine, needed for healthy eyes and a healthy heart. Beef also provides another key nutrient for the cardiovascular system—coenzyme Q10.

Beef is an excellent source of minerals like magnesium and zinc—you need zinc for clear thinking and a healthy sex life. The fuzzy-headedness that vegetarians mistake for heightened consciousness is really the fog of zinc deficiency. Vitamin B₆ is abundant in meat, especially rare meat. Red meat is one of the best sources of vitamin B₁₂, which is vital to a healthy nervous system and healthy blood. Vegetarians are especially prone to vitamin B₁₂ deficiency. One of the first signs of vitamin B₁₂ deficiency is a tendency to irrational anger-—so much for vegetarian claims that we will have a more peaceful, harmonious world if we all just stop eating meat.

Despite all those nutrients...what about the fat?

Beef producers need to recognize that the fat is the most important part of the beef, rich in components that promote good health and that help you utilize the nutrients in all the other parts of the beef. In addition to vitamins A and D, fat contributes many important fatty acids, including palmitoleic acid, an antimicrobial fat that protects us against pathogens in the gut. If you want to be sure that you don't get foodborne illness from your hamburger, use full fat ground beef.

Fat also provides a substance called conjugated linoleic acid or CLA, at least it does if the animals have been on green grass.³¹ CLA is a substance that protects us against cancer and that promotes weight loss—that's right, fat can make you thin, if it's the right kind of fat.

And the right kind of fat is also saturated fat which, in spite of what we've been told, plays many important roles in the body chemistry. The scientific literature delineates a number of vital roles for dietary saturated fats—they enhance the immune system,³² are necessary for healthy bones,³³ provide energy and structural integrity to the cells,³⁴ protect the liver³⁵ and enhance the body's use of essential fatty acids.³⁶ Stearic acid and palmitic acid, found in beef tallow and butter, are the preferred foods for the heart.³⁷ As saturated fats are stable, they do not become rancid easily, do not call upon the body's reserves of antioxidants, do not initiate cancer, do not irritate the artery walls.

In fact saturated beef fat is one of the most useful fats in the culinary repertoire. As it is very stable and doesn't go rancid when heated to high temperatures, it's perfect for frying. While we don't recommend a lot of fried foods, we know that our children and grandchildren are going to eat them. Fast food outlets used to fry their potatoes in healthy stable beef tallow. They were crisp, tasted delicious and provided many important nutrients. But the phony cholesterol issue has forced these outlets to switch to partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, which is known to cause a host of chronic diseases including cancer, heart disease, bone problems, infertility and autoimmune disease.³⁸

So...if you can find yourself a good source of grass-fed beef...or buffalo, or kangaroo...or any other ruminant animal eating it's natural diet of grass...eat up to your hearts content. Literally.

And even if grass fed meat is too expensive or too hard to find in your area...even grain fed beef is nowhere near as bad for your health as the corporate-owned, mainstream media would have you think.

I personally think the demonization of red meat is a diversionary tactic promoted by BIG AGRICULTURE.

By getting people to focus on the red meat, they will ignore all of the products of Big Ag that are actual health detriments.

It's not the red meat that's making you sick...it's all of the Big Ag byproducts that are mass produced and sold at a high profit margin because of it's extensive shelf life that is included with your serving of red meat that's ruining your health! Things like the white flour with high fructose corn syrup and soybean oil to bake the bun, the MSG additives, the High Fructose Corn Syrup soda and the potatoes fried in rancid, hydrogenated vegetable oil that's making you fat and your arteries clogged.

Discerning Between Food Produce & Feed Products

Continuing from my last post:

Delusion Damage revealed his strategy for finding food to eat at odd hours while on the road:

I have a few guidelines when I travel:

- when it's 2am and fast food is the only option, choose Subway above any other fast food place

- when I have to carry food with me and survive on it (ex. overnight flight where food isn't served for 8 hours but I'm awake and hungry because I'm coming from a different time zone)
choice #1 is hard rye bread
if that's not available,
choice #2 is trail mix
if that's not available,
choice #3 is granola/protein bars

I think this sort of strategy is commonplace amongst the normal person who at least understands that vending machine snack food like chips, crackers and candy bars are junk, so you have to try and make the best of the situation when hungry and faced with limited options.

Unfortunately, while these options DD lists are marginally better than say potato chips or chocolate bars...they're not much better, and will in the long run have the same effect as the kind of stuff most people readily recognize as junk food: short term satiation that leads to stronger hunger later (which could also lead to binging on even more junk food), and essentially the same bad effects on your health.

And it all gets back to the theme of DD's blog & book - nearly everything you've been told about food and diet is a lie. The most common lies that are used to misdirect people into making choices favoring feed products over food produce are: Saturated fat are cholesterol raising and bad for your heart, that too much meat (especially red meat) will cause cancer, that plant based foods are healthiest, and that fiber is absolutely vital to having a healthy digestive system. As I quoted yesterday:

The State’s primary tactic in mind control is FEAR...

...FEAR of saturated fat. FEAR of red meat. FEAR of salt. FEAR of the sun. FEAR of not getting enough “fiber” in your diet.

Some of these things I've just mentioned are based on half-truths - some plant based foods are certainly healthy for you, and some kinds of fiber are also good for your digestion...but other plant-based foods are literal poison and some forms of 'fiber' can downright destroy your digestive system. Your biggest concerns in eating a healthy diet should be to eat plenty of animal based fats and proteins, eating plenty of vegetables, some fruits (treat fruit as a dessert after having eaten a full meal of protein and fat...don't eat fruit as a meal unto itself,) and avoiding grain and flour products as much as possible.

So let's start off with what I believe is the most important factor one should realize is the biggest delusion promoted by today's feed product industry - I've come to the belief that the single most important thing anyone should do when trying to discern whether any kind of food you eat is a real food produce item or an industrially manufactured feed product, is to determine the type of fat.

The most important thing to understand here is this: the oils/fats that as healthy (especially "Heart Healthy") are not, and the oils/fats that we are all warned to avoid or minimize are the fats that are best for your health and well-being.

The most common fat found in feed products is Polyunsaturated vegetable/grain/seed oils high in linoleic acid, are typically rancid from the production process which involves very high heat and the use of industrial solvents like hexane to extract as much oil from the plant matter as possible.

Canola. Cottonseed. Sunflower. Safflower. Soybean. Corn. Peanut.

These industrially produced oils are the primary culprits for why the Standard American Diet is dramatically imbalanced in terms of Omega fatty acids. From a cellular level, your body needs a 1:1 ratio of Omega 3 and Omega 6 fatty acids to function properly. The problem is that all of these "vegetable" oils have a very high Omega 6 (n6) fatty acid content and no Omega 3 (n3) fatty acids.

In their natural state, most plant material has both n6 and n3 fatty acids in varying ratios...but n3 are fragile, and the heat and solvent extraction methods destroys the n3 fatty acids, while the n6 is not affected.

So if you look at a bag of potato chips or your bag of trail mix (or even your granola bar), you will typically find one or more of these aforementioned oils in the ingredients. This is the primary problem with most processed snack foods (but the establishment would have you believe it's the salt. It's not.)

But even worse than these n6 unbalanced, rancid oils, are the partially hydrogenated oils, aka "trans fats." The most common place you will find this literal poison is in baked goods (in which the bakers/manufacturer's substitute margarine for butter in the recipes) and deep fried foods; from fast food, to deli's to, high-end restaurants. This is because the cheapest deep frying oil that lasts the longest in the deep fat fryers without needing to be changed often is partially hydrogenated soybean ("vegetable") oil.






Most people already have the idea that "deep fried" foods are bad for you, so I don't have to go much further on that topic, other than to say that deep frying can be a perfectly tasty and healthy food choice - if you use a healthy oil to deep fry with (coconut oil, lard or tallow).

But the real subversion is the use of margarine (partially hydrogenated soybean oil) in all baked products. Hamburger buns, hot dog buns, sandwich bread, crackers, cookies, pie crusts, pizza crusts, flour tortillas...the vast majority of these products you'll find at restaurants, food stands, convenience stores and delis. Why? Because it's cheaper, and it resists spoilage far better than real food made with natural fats. A large bag of partially-hydrogenated buns at a fast food restaurant or a hot dog stand that is vacuum sealed, can last for months without spoilage.

The truly healthy fats/oils, are the ones most demonized by the establishment - the saturated fats. Butter. Lard. Tallow. Coconut oil. I could go on and on about this, but let me just put two reference links here if any reader is interested in digging into the details - Know Your Fats and The Queen of Fats (pdf).

So why are fats the most important consideration with regards to having strategies for trying to eat healthy while traveling? Short answer: fat is the key to satiety.

Healthy fats contain vital, nourishing fat soluble vitamins such as D, A and K. These are substances your body needs to survive and thrive. This is why your body's digestive signalling system is cued to the FAT in your food. Natural fats slows down your digestion, leaves you feeling full longer, and supplies your body with needed nutrition for proper function. This is why you can eat a meal of bacon and eggs, and you can eat as much as you'd like until you feel full. At that point, you can easily stop and feel pleasantly satiated.

Industrial oils in most feed products? They don't contain any of the vital fat soluble vitamins or fatty acids, so they don't trigger your satiation signaling or that "feeling full" response properly. This is why one can sit down with a bag or box of "fat free" or "low cholesterol" chips, cookies or crackers, and eat the whole thing in a single sitting and still feel hungry - or worse, temporarily "stuffed" almost to the point of nausea...but hungry again within an hour or so. This is because your stomach is full, but your body is still starving for the nutrients that are missing from the feed products.

So, to come up with a strategy for dealing with hunger while traveling, a complete understanding of fats and how they play a role in digestion and satiation is the primary consideration in choosing your food. While composing this post, I considered just writing this next section...but I believe understanding fats is too vital to skip over.

So, given the differences in fat content and quality, what are the strategies to use when traveling?

I think we have 3 strategies here, best simplified into these concepts: the 80/20 principle, Intermittent Fasting, and Making Do.

The 80/20 Principle

This comes from Mark Sisson over at Mark's Daily Apple. The idea is that a person who eats wholesome, healthy foods 80% of the time will be able to eat the occasional splurge on junk foods without suffering much (if at all) from bad health effects. For the person who eats a healthy diet in day to day life, the occasional feast of junk food while on a short travel trip won't really hurt. This is also a good principle to follow when you have social/familial obligations that supersede being a militant diet nazi - aka screw dietary perfection when your at your sister's wedding. Just shut up and eat the cake. Or...if you're a dinner guest of someone you care about, just eat what you're served to be polite. Obviously, for someone with DD's situation of constant traveling, this approach could quickly lead to a 60/40 or 50/50 ratio of junk food, so it's not really relevant to his concerns as a long term strategy here.

Intermittent Fasting

This is my favored solution here, and it is the reason why I focused the first part of this piece so much on Fat. Because natural, healthy sources of saturated fats are so satiating over the long term, a diet rich in these fats will make fasting relatively easy. The best explanation I've found is at blogger J. Stanton at gnolls.org. His advice can be summed up in a single phrase: Eat Like A Predator, Not Like Prey:

Predators gorge and fast; prey grazes.

Rephrased for modern humans: predators eat meals, prey grazes on snacks. This means you need to eat meals which will carry you through to your next meal, but that won’t make you tired or sleepy.

Think about predators like Lions and Tigers. They catch some grazing ruminant, gorge themselves, than lie around, mate, sunbathe, and play...until they get hungry again - many hours later. Than it's time to go hunting again - and they are hunting hungry.

When you observe someone (or yourself) who is dependent on carbohydrates and plant foods (and most likely believe the lies regarding meat, saturated fats, fiber, etc.), and they often have to eat every two to three hours to keep their energy levels up, because their blood sugars are unstable. People who experience this, are on a roller coaster ride of dramatically fluctuating energy levels. These are the folks who couldn't conceive of taking a 6 hour plane ride without eating. The idea of fasting is terrifying. That's because they eat like grazers.

What I would do if faced with the impending 8-10 hour long plane ride? I would eat a massive meal just prior to going to the airport, full of fats and proteins. Bacon, eggs, sausage, all fried in butter. Or Steak and eggs with a baked potato smothered in butter, bacon bits and sour cream. Eating a massive meal focused primarily on proteins and fats can leave you satiated for quite a long time.

And this is not just some theoretical suggestion I'm making here. I've done it. I flew from Dublin, Ireland to Los Angeles. I did not eat the crap-in-a-box meal they served, nor did I eat the snack foods they provided on the in-flight service. I didn't go to the vending machines or food stands at the L.A. airport while waiting to connect to my Honolulu flight either. I just ate a large steak dinner in Dublin prior to going to the airport.

That was roughly an 18 hour fast for me. Of course, when I got home I was ravenous and I ate like a beast...but the point is, I didn't HAVE to break down and buy some crap from a vending machine or airport fast food joint. And as hungry as I got, I never got that "shaky" sick feeling, grazers stuck on the blood sugar roller coaster get. I didn't even start to feel hungry until about an hour into the flight back to Hawaii, and I'll admit that the food service on the L.A. to Honolulu flight was tempting...but it was not an uncontrollable hunger at that point.

I do need to state a caveat here: intermittent fasting will only be a viable option if you already eat a nutrient-dense diet of real food and are used to deriving your energy from animal meat and fat. If you are a person who starts to feel sick and "shaky" after only a couple of hours of having eaten, fasting is obviously not an option for you.


Making Do

If you must eat at a restaurant, convenience store or food stand, but you want to avoid the worst of industrially manufactured feed products than try to pick your poison.

- Order pizza and eat the toppings and not the crust.

- Order hot dogs or hamburgers and eat everything but the buns.

- Taco salads with those deep fried tortilla shells? Just don't eat the shell. Order extra meat and sour cream to help fill you up.

- When ordering meals at fast food joints, skip the value meals (you don't want to eat the fries made with hydrogenated soybean or canola oil, and you don't want to drink the high fructose corn syrup laden soda either). Better to order two bacon cheese burgers and eat them without the buns. Beef, bacon, cheese, onions, tomatoes and lettuce. Think of it as a cheeseburger salad.

- If you're eating at sit down restaurants that are a little more upscale, most offer the option to substitute steamed vegetables in the place of fries. Ask for a side of butter and smother your vegetables with it. Far more satiating, and the fat will help you absorb the nutrients from the vegetables as well. Avoid anything deep fried at a restaurant. Also, if you're not overweight or dealing with other digestive issues, don't worry about carbohydrates like rice or potatoes. Most starchy vegetable carbs are fine in combination with plenty of fat and protein.

- Nuts can be a good, satiating source of fat and protein, but most trail mix or nuts sold in packages and vending machines are fried in crap oil. Stick to roasted nuts. And definitely get the salted varieties...they taste better, and salt is not the health hazard it's been demonized to be.

- Avoid low fat and fat free dairy...most of those substitute sugar to make them palatable. Embrace full-fat cheeses, yogurts etc., with the knowledge that full fat foods are not only not bad for you, but downright good.

As for portable foods that you can pack for yourself - again, focus on the proteins and fats. Beef jerky, string cheese, roasted nuts (make your own trail mix), hard boiled eggs. Another option is preserved meats like pepperoni and salami. Now meats preserved with nitrates/nitrites are somewhat controversial...I've seen arguments going both ways. I used to try and avoid any meats with nitrates or nitrites listed on the ingredients. But I was referred to the following pubmed abstract from Dr. Michael Eades blog: Food sources of nitrates and nitrites: the physiologic context for potential health benefits.

Apparently many vegetables and some fruits are rich in nitrates and nitrites, so I'm not longer concerned about this preservative. I buy sausages, bacon and other processed meats - as long as they don't contain other additives like MSG, corn syrups (dextrose, maltodextrin, etc.) and other such garbage.

In summary, the important thing to take away from all this, is to understand which foods provide long term satiation and nourishment, and which feed products actually don't do, and leave your body still starving for nutrition.