I base my opinion about the health benefits on anecdotal evidence and this study. I have never heard of a study advising a diet high in non-lean red meat and would be interested to read one.
I’ve mentioned Good Calories, Bad Calories here before and it is a pretty comprehensive overview of the research. It’s also an interesting read as an example of how science and rationality can go wrong when politics and special interests get involved.
I’m not aware of any large scale studies that have done direct controlled studies of the kind of diet I’m describing. Dietary studies are notoriously difficult and expensive which is one of the problems with dietary research discussed in the book. The results from a variety of different studies and nutritional research are persuasive though. I’d suggest reading the book for far more detail than I can give here.
Dietary choices are generally trade offs—if you reduce calorie intake from one source you generally have to substitute calories from elsewhere. There is evidence that polyunsaturated fats from many vegetable oils can lead to higher incidences of cancer. Studies have failed to confirm the hypothesis that saturated fats cause heart disease. There is increasing evidence that sugar and refined carbohydrates are primary factors in obesity, heart disease, cancer and diabetes. Substituting refined carbohydrates for fats seems to be a bad idea from a health perspective and it is difficult to obtain adequate calories from unrefined carbohydrates alone. Given that some level of fat intake seems necessary to achieve adequate calories, I’m persuaded that increasing the relative proportion of animal fats to vegetable oils in my diet is beneficial. The fact that that balance better fits my personal taste preferences means that my evidence threshold to make that change is lower than it might be for others.
Polyunsaturated fats aren’t great, but monosaturated fats, like olive or canola oils, are healthful. Those two oils and animal-derived milkfat and fat from eggs constitute about 90% of the fat in my diet (the rest is incidental, like the fat in avocados, or shortening in some baked goods).
I primarily use olive and canola oil for cooking at home. I’m fairly confident that olive oil is a healthy choice, I’m a little less so for canola oil but it seems like the the best widely available option. I use butter for some recipes and I’ve been intending to experiment with lard but it’s not available where I usually do my grocery shopping.
Most vegetable derived oils are relatively recent additions to the human diet though and one of the principles of paleo type diets is to prefer foods closer to the hunter gatherer staples and to limit intake of foods that require agriculture, and especially of those that require industrial agriculture (a principle that would have led one to avoid trans-fats even before their negative health effects were studied). On that basis I’m inclined to favour animal derived fats until more conclusive evidence of the relative health implications is available.
Plus, I enjoy the flavour of fatty red meats so I will tend to err in that direction given inconclusive evidence on the nutritional science.
Yes, but the current consensus seems to be that the ratio of Omega-3 to Omega-6 fatty acids is an important measure. Most vegetable derived oils are much higher in Omega-6. Oily fish and grass-fed beef have a higher proportion of Omega-3 fatty acids which research suggests is healthier.
I believe that eating the right amount of essential fatty acids is almost orthogonal to the issue of eating animal products. (Again, for the record, I eat some)
Though grass fed beef has a much better Omega-6 to Omega-3 ratio (2:1) than grain fed beef (4:1), and it may have other benefits, there are many dietary switches that make a bigger difference in your diets overall ratio.
Flax seed and salmon oil have a far superior ratio, approximately 1:4.
There are very serious problems with causation in diet. There are robust correlations between, for example, eating meat, cholesterol, and heart disease, but they are definitely not causal. It is difficult to change cholesterol levels by changing diet and even harder to affect heart disease. It’s not even clear that cholesterol levels cause heart disease. It’s pretty clear that statins reduce cholesterol and reduce heart disease, but it’s not clear that these are related.
I base my opinion about the health benefits on anecdotal evidence and this study. I have never heard of a study advising a diet high in non-lean red meat and would be interested to read one.
I’ve mentioned Good Calories, Bad Calories here before and it is a pretty comprehensive overview of the research. It’s also an interesting read as an example of how science and rationality can go wrong when politics and special interests get involved.
I’m not aware of any large scale studies that have done direct controlled studies of the kind of diet I’m describing. Dietary studies are notoriously difficult and expensive which is one of the problems with dietary research discussed in the book. The results from a variety of different studies and nutritional research are persuasive though. I’d suggest reading the book for far more detail than I can give here.
Dietary choices are generally trade offs—if you reduce calorie intake from one source you generally have to substitute calories from elsewhere. There is evidence that polyunsaturated fats from many vegetable oils can lead to higher incidences of cancer. Studies have failed to confirm the hypothesis that saturated fats cause heart disease. There is increasing evidence that sugar and refined carbohydrates are primary factors in obesity, heart disease, cancer and diabetes. Substituting refined carbohydrates for fats seems to be a bad idea from a health perspective and it is difficult to obtain adequate calories from unrefined carbohydrates alone. Given that some level of fat intake seems necessary to achieve adequate calories, I’m persuaded that increasing the relative proportion of animal fats to vegetable oils in my diet is beneficial. The fact that that balance better fits my personal taste preferences means that my evidence threshold to make that change is lower than it might be for others.
Polyunsaturated fats aren’t great, but monosaturated fats, like olive or canola oils, are healthful. Those two oils and animal-derived milkfat and fat from eggs constitute about 90% of the fat in my diet (the rest is incidental, like the fat in avocados, or shortening in some baked goods).
I primarily use olive and canola oil for cooking at home. I’m fairly confident that olive oil is a healthy choice, I’m a little less so for canola oil but it seems like the the best widely available option. I use butter for some recipes and I’ve been intending to experiment with lard but it’s not available where I usually do my grocery shopping.
Most vegetable derived oils are relatively recent additions to the human diet though and one of the principles of paleo type diets is to prefer foods closer to the hunter gatherer staples and to limit intake of foods that require agriculture, and especially of those that require industrial agriculture (a principle that would have led one to avoid trans-fats even before their negative health effects were studied). On that basis I’m inclined to favour animal derived fats until more conclusive evidence of the relative health implications is available.
Plus, I enjoy the flavour of fatty red meats so I will tend to err in that direction given inconclusive evidence on the nutritional science.
Aren’t the highly touted Omega-3 fats polyunsaturated?
Yes, but the current consensus seems to be that the ratio of Omega-3 to Omega-6 fatty acids is an important measure. Most vegetable derived oils are much higher in Omega-6. Oily fish and grass-fed beef have a higher proportion of Omega-3 fatty acids which research suggests is healthier.
I believe that eating the right amount of essential fatty acids is almost orthogonal to the issue of eating animal products. (Again, for the record, I eat some)
Though grass fed beef has a much better Omega-6 to Omega-3 ratio (2:1) than grain fed beef (4:1), and it may have other benefits, there are many dietary switches that make a bigger difference in your diets overall ratio.
Flax seed and salmon oil have a far superior ratio, approximately 1:4.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega-3_fatty_acids#Meat http://www.pponline.co.uk/encyc/omega-3-omega-6.html
Quite possibly, but I don’t eat fish that often, and most of what I do eat is very low-fat tuna.
There are very serious problems with causation in diet. There are robust correlations between, for example, eating meat, cholesterol, and heart disease, but they are definitely not causal. It is difficult to change cholesterol levels by changing diet and even harder to affect heart disease. It’s not even clear that cholesterol levels cause heart disease. It’s pretty clear that statins reduce cholesterol and reduce heart disease, but it’s not clear that these are related.