Coconut fat good or bad?


(Harriet) #22

Check out the book The Big Fat Surprise by Nina Teicholz. I think you will find the information well researched and enlightening.

Seed oils, other than the ones that can be easily and naturally extracted, like avocado oil or coconut oil, are extremely recent introductions to the human diet. Heating them, like for frying, creates some nasty chemical reactions and turns them into something like plastic.

That’s just one of the facts in this book. It’s worth reading.


#23

Like everything there is a duality. Too much may not be good and too little also may not be good. There is a balance. Do you have a family history of ACVD, obesity or smoking?


(Geoffrey) #24

Interesting, I thought I’d read somewhere that the Blue Zone study was debunked a long time ago as cherry picked pseudo science.


(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #25

Forgive me, but I am not going to be eating cotton seeds, soybeans, rape seeds, or safflower seeds anytime soon. Maize kernels, peanuts, and sunflower seeds, sure–if I weren’t carnivore, and if it weren’t so hard to eat enough of those items to get an appreciable amount of oil. But I much prefer lard, tallow, butter, and bacon grease, in any case, so . . . .

While it is true that the body needs small amounts of certain specific ω-3 and ω-6 fatty acids, many of the polyunsaturated fatty acids in seed oils are evolutionarily new to the human body and cause problems when the body tries to assimilate them. They tend to interfere with the tight junctions between intestinal lining cells, for example. Then there is the issue that ω-6 fatty acids cause systemic inflation when consumed in quantity. As Stephen Phinney observes, the main problem with the standard Western diet is not to get enough ω-6 fats, it is to avoid getting too much.

For me, the ω-3’s and ω-6’s in the meat fats I cook with and that are contained in my meat are quite adequate for health. Your mileage (kilometrage?) is sure to vary.


(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #26

Actually, they only make enzymes for digesting certain carbohydrates. Cellulose and the other indigestible carbs, also known as fibre, are indigestible precisely because we lack cellulase and the other necessary enzymes.

But the problem with a high-glucose diet is that (1) that glucose goes straight into the blood stream, where it is very dangerous (quit apart from glycative damage, hyperglycaemia can kill, if it is not dealt with); (2) the amount of insulin required to deal with that flood of glucose also causes damage; (3) as cells react to the flood of insulin by down-regulating their insulin receptors in self-defence, the pancreas must pump out ever-increasing amounts of insulin, and hyperinsulinaemia is itself damaging; and (4) too much glucose damages mitochondria in cells throughout the body, which causes all sorts of bad effects, from neurological and mental-health problems, to diabetes, PCOS, impotence, many forms of cancer, and so forth. Not to mention the damage fructose does, by itself being a mitochondrial toxin.

Given that we evolved by eating meat, and given that the skeletons of agricultural societies are noticeably shorter and show more signs of various chronic diseases than do the skeletons of hunter-gatherer societies, it is pretty clear that excessive carbohydrate consumption is not optimal for human health.

Obviously, our bodies can metabolise glucose; this is an evolutionarily ancient trait. But modern human beings evolved from eating meat, first as scavengers, later as hunters, and any carb intake was minimal and seasonal. The ability to metabolise fatty acids and ketones is an ability conferred by the bacterium we now call the mitochondrion, which entered into symbiosis with an ancient unicellular ancestor. Any diet that damages our mitochondria, therefore, is going to have negative health consequences.


#27

It’s easy to get a lot of fat from them if the one in question likes them. But we often only need a little (or not at all) beyond what we get from our protein sources… Many aren’t like this, not even on keto, sure… I definitely am. There is a reason my goal is minimal or preferably no added fat (but no is a tad too limiting for me. easy to do but I would miss things. like butter but not only that). If I want fat, I eat fattier meat and more dairy, way better than eating seeds though I do love my seeds too. Even my bread for my high-carber has a lot of sesame seeds but I can use it as the primarily flour too when baking. (I haven’t done it since ages but I could.)

On this forum you are so not alone with preferring animal fat :smiley: It’s tasty, after all though it depends on the fat and the person. I strongly dislike tallow and wouldn’t eat it without the meat.
But I dislike sunflower seeds too. Peanuts? I could eat more than what my body likes (that’s not much. peanut is my only not very carby edible item my body has problems with according to my knowledge) and that wouldn’t be good. My SO had peanut meals with ~120 g fat, it’s only 60 now as he needs to be careful to keep his figure and he has 3 meals.

Some people seem to handle high-carb (with the right rules, at least) pretty well but for some, it’s glaringly obvious it’s not ideal even for short term. I showed my body low-carb and then keto and carnivore and it liked it VERY much and usually immediately (keto felt bad first and okay but just like low-carb later so not there but in the other two cases? it was ELATED. it’s never my body that wants to go off).

So in some cases, we needn’t to wonder about ourselves, at least as it’s pretty clear even without waiting for some decades. Though not everyone agrees with me on this (that I won’t get sick later if I just do what my body likes and what seems okay for a human from a more scientific viewpoint as well for a while).


(Bob M) #28

And I’ve never understood why you can’t get what you need solely from meat, which has them in it. You don’t need to drink oil.


(B Creighton) #29

I never said or recommended to get all your omega 3s and 6s from plants. In fact I expressly mentioned that it is easier to get the omega 3s we need from animal foods, and in fact I recommend that. But to claim that all plant fats are bad, is simply not correct. Out of your list above, I regularly enjoy peanuts and sunflower seeds. I do eat some organic maize/corn occasionally. I believe the fats I get from them are perfectly healthy. If you don’t want to eat those foods, and want to get your omega 6s and 3s from animals, that is fine with me, but they are essential fats we need.

Interesting. Would you elucidate your comments for me? What PUFAs are you talking about specifically? I’ve never heard of PUFAs damaging the gut lining.


(B Creighton) #30

Not really. They have been discounted by some members of the carnivore community for reasons like virtually non-existant birth records in Okinawa. Nicoya, Costa Rica, and Loma Linda, Ca, do not have either lack of birth records or potential fraud to get retirement benefits. Both are omnivorous communities which eat lots of cheese - esp goat cheese and yogurt. The Loma Lindans eat a plant based diet, but a high percentage also eat fish, which is going to give them the omega 3s they need, and consider themselves pescatarians.


(Mark Rhodes) #31

I always enjoyed this talk : https://youtu.be/bY2v6AnEyuU?si=XxgJkD9ce5CzAZLr


(Harriet) #32

Sunflower oil.


(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #33

I’ve been on a YouTube binge looking for this reference. I was pretty sure that it was in a lecture by Nina Teicholz, but it wasn’t in the talks I watched. And then I got distracted by new talks by various people.

So anyway, you should probably disregard this statement I made, since I can’t support it. There might be some discussion about this in Teicholz’s book, The Big Fat Surprise, but if so, I don’t recall it. On the other hand, I know that Paul Mason does discuss how polyunsaturates new to the human body can get incorporated into cell walls and behave in unhealthy ways, and the same goes for plant sterols. However, that’s a broader point and doesn’t specifically deal with tight junctions between intestinal cells.


(B Creighton) #34

That’s OK Paul. I think you are probably thinking of carbs… especially sugar… which has been shown to be able to damage/break the zonulin bonds in the epithelium. As far as I know there are no other natural foods which have been shown to damage the gut… maybe poisons, etc, but not the usual foods anyway. IIRC sugar causes glycation of the bond, and then it gets oxidized, and can break. The process of sugar glycating proteins is actually a common problem in the body, and is what I believe happens to the apoB protein of LDL

Anyway for this to occur, the gut has to already have become compromised - the immune layer has to be gone, and the microbiome layer and mucin has to be gone… which I believe happens to a more common degree due to glyphosate which is now sprayed on many legumes, corn, grains, such as oats, and virtually all the seed oils. Eating these foods is like getting a constant micro dose of antibiotic. I think it’s the main reason we are seeing so many people with gut issues on forums. Obviously, I don’t eat these refined oils and now have chosen to eat only organic legumes, corn, oats, and the little bread I eat.