To drain, or not to drain

(Consensus is Politics) #21

The true “BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS” :cowboy_hat_face:

I tried (and failed horribly) to make the Bacon wrapped Philly Meatloaf I heard on the 2 Keto Dudes podcast. I ended up making sort of a soup instead. DELICIOUS! So now I just layer like a lasagna, in a small pyrex baking dish. I serve it out just as if it was a lasagna, but its sitting in a lovely pool of fat. It got me to thinking, so I added some heavy cream, ghee, and coconut oil. :star_struck::star_struck::star_struck::star_struck::star_struck:
It ended up making a kind of thick sauce that went perfect with it. I serve it in a bowl now, and eat it with a spoon. So that recipe became a soup. :+1:t3:

#22

Hi, Richard - I appreciate and understand your clarification. I believe the phrase “empty calories” is most often used in the context of sugars and simple carbs, but your experience with that term may be different. I’ve never heard anyone say fat (as a macro nutrient) was an “empty calorie.” As for my comment above, I was responding to the poster who said fat was “full of nutrients.” That phrase in context implies she was talking about micro, not macro, nutrients. Hence, my post to point out that fat has no nutrients. Hope that makes sense?

#23

I’m sorry, Richard. This is somewhat confusing (at least to me). Fat has virtually no “nutrients” in the true sense of the word, assuming by nutrients we mean vitamins and minerals. The fact that it’s one of the three MACROnutrients doesnt change this. I think it’s important that people understand that fat does not contain MICROnutrients, and is therefore not “nutrient dense” or “full of nutrients.” That doesn’t mean it’s not valuable or worthy of eating a high fat diet, of course, but to say it’s nutrient “dense” is confusing to me because it, well, doesn’t contain (m)any nutrients (other than fat in its role as a macronutrient).

I hope I didn’t muddy the issue further!

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(Dave Corbett) #24

Perhaps he meant calorie dense?

#25

Ah, well, that would certainly clear it up and make sens to me. It’s the most calorie dense of the three macronutrients. The phrase “nutrient dense” by definition can’t possibly refer to or include the three macronutrients of fat, carbs, and protein because the phrase would lose its entire meaning as all foods (like politicians) would be “full of themselves.” :grin:

(Richard Hanson) #26

Energy, a calorie, is a nutrient, the most essential nutrient.

People can eat pounds of vitamins and minerals every day and die of malnutrition. They would starve to death.

We have, as a population, been so inculcated to the weight loss model of a calorie is a calorie, calories in calories out, the thermodynamic model of weight loss, that there is a basic bias against considering energy, calories, as a nutrient, but we can no more live without essential calories then essential amino acids or essential fatty asides.

Think about this, if animal fats, or even nasty sugars, are just empty calories because they lack micro nutrients, then cauliflower and broccoli are just empty vitamins because they have almost no energy content. We need energy more than anything else to survive. Energy from either our food or from energy consumed in the past that we stored in our body. I think it a mistake to continue to propagate the falsehood that there is anything at all wrong with eating calorie dense foods, energy is a nutrient. This way of thinking leads many people to think they should eat lower energy foods in preference to higher energy foods, carbohydrates and proteins over fats. It is a dietary bias that tends to erect a barrier against people moving toward a ketogenic diet. A bias constructed, at least in part, by the diet-heart hypothesis to encourage people to eat low fat.

There is nothing at all wrong with buying high fat ground beef, and consuming the fat. That fat is likely the best part of the meal, the most nutritious. If I could only eat one cup of food each day, I would happily select a cup of beef tallow, 1850 kcal, over a cup of broccoli, 30 kcal, because I would live a lot longer on the former, the former is far more nutritious.

Keto for Life!

Best Regards,
Richard

(Consensus is Politics) #27

I feel a little better now, for turning Carl’s Philly cheese bacon wrap meatloaf into a soup. Ohh… it’s so good.

(Doug) #28

:slightly_smiling_face: Minimum-effort “chili.” I add hot sauce.

(Chris) #29

It’s genius!

(Tyler) #30

I’d like to add my 2 cents.

I have been 100% carnivore for over 2 months. I usually buy 73%-80% lean ground beef. Eat pork chops, etc. I find that if I eat to much fat in one sitting I’ll feel kinda sick, hot, and lil stomach weirdness. So I drain off excess into a glass bowl, once it fills up and hardens i scrape it into the trash. Even by draining off the excess it’s still fairly fatty… If you were buying say 90% lean then you’d probably not want to drain as there wouldn’t be much excess.

(Tyler) #31

One more thing to add to my previous comment.

I rarely cut off the excess harder fats that don’t melt like on pork chops and meat that isn’t ground. That’s good stuff! Unless… it’s a super cheap fatty butt roast pork. Then i cut off before cooking.

(Chris) #32

Yup, this is common. Too much lean results in you stopping eating, sometimes without noticing it. Appetite just stops.

I do 70 to 85% based on what’s on sale but I dump it all in the container (I cook for the week on Sundays). I eat my meals out of a bowl with a spork, and the fat is at the bottom so I’m getting too much I’ll let more slip through the tines and toss the rest. If I drain it first it gets too damn dry when I microwave it, that’s why I keep the fat. I also cool it upside-down in order to get it all at the top so I can mix it later.

(Norma Laming) #33

I’ve changed over time. I make sure I drink the juices, but I don’t tend to eat all the fat. If I’m eating something like ribeye then I cook it only to rare, but I crisp the large fatty bits separately and don’t eat all the fat. Beef joints: the juices are essential but for me the fat is not. I don’t go out of my way to avoid it but I just can’t eat all the fat. That has, unintentionally, been the key to weight loss this year. I can’t stand the leaner cuts of meat because for me they are tasteless, but I also can’t eat a lot of fat.

I’ve got fat sitting in the fridge that I don’t think I’ll need to use. Nothing against fat but I’m 5’2”, middling active and 59 years old. I just don’t need those extra calories

#34

I try and kind of balance things, and after nearly a year of carnivore (gosh, where did the time go!?!?!) my body has shifted through a few different phases.

At the moment (could change tomorrow), I am aiming for keto macros alongside my carnivore eating, and in order to achieve this I need to limit my protein a bit otherwise I end up having to eat extra fat than I want to keep to the macros.

I feel better on keto carni macros than I do on all-you-can-eat fatty meat, which can have very variable fat content.

It is just simpler to make sure I eat the right proportions by having the right balance on the plate and eating it together, rather than stuffing the protein and leaving the fat til last.

A lot of my food is minced beef, soups and stews at this time of year, so it is relatively easy.

(Robert C) #35

For grass fed/grass finished beef I consider the fat to be important - either not draining or saving it for something else.

For non-grass fed/grass finished beef I would drain and likely replace the missing fat with grass fed butter.