Re: PUFA in animal foods

[Guest guest]

Your list says that raw fish eggs are high in PUFA. Fish eggs

were/are prized by many traditional groups, including the

Eskimo/Inuit, as very healthy.

Mike

[Guest guest]

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> It would be interesting to know how much the PUFA content of pork,

> chicken, and eggs is influenced by the diet of the animals. I suspect

> that a more natural diet would lower the PUFA considerably.

Well, pigs, anyway, reflect the makeup of their diets in the PUFA

content of their fat quite significantly, so yes, it'd be quite

possible to raise pigs that deposit largely saturated and

monounsaturated fat by feeding them very low-fat carbs (perhaps

potatoes) and fat sources low in PUFA, such as coconut products.

Unfortunately, I'm afraid the resulting pork would be very expensive.

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[Guest guest]

--- michael g <tropical@...> wrote:

> Your list says that raw fish eggs are high in PUFA. Fish eggs

> were/are prized by many traditional groups, including the

> Eskimo/Inuit, as very healthy.

Mike, yes, they appear to otherwise be an excellent food, certainly a

good supplement to the diet. But I doubt that they were traditionally

the primary source of dietary fat. It shouldn't be a problem to

include some animal foods that are relatively high in PUFA. I eat 3

or 4 egg yolks a day and they are fairly high in PUFA too, but they

aren't a major source of fat in my diet. Most of my dietary fat comes

from meat and dairy and I've been managing to get dietary PUFA down to

around 4-6% of calories on long-term average, even though I typically

get about 50-60% of my calories from fat.

Eating conventional pork, chicken, and turkey, which are relatively

high in PUFA, shouldn't be a problem either as long as you don't make

them the primary source of fat in your diet. Although if you do eat

some of the high PUFA animal foods, you need to eat more of the

low-PUFA animal foods or more carbs to lower the percent of total

calories as PUFA.

[Guest guest]

--- Idol <paul.idol@...> wrote:

> Well, pigs, anyway, reflect the makeup of their diets in the PUFA

> content of their fat quite significantly, so yes, it'd be quite

> possible to raise pigs that deposit largely saturated and

> monounsaturated fat by feeding them very low-fat carbs (perhaps

> potatoes) and fat sources low in PUFA, such as coconut products.

> Unfortunately, I'm afraid the resulting pork would be very expensive.

, I'm guessing that native pig diets probably did include tubers,

small animals, insects, and plants, and were low in PUFA. Since pigs

are omnivores, like humans, maybe humans eating high PUFA diets also

end up with a lot more PUFA as percentage of body weight. That

doesn't appear to be the case with cows, since grain finished beef is

still low in PUFA.

[Guest guest]

On 11/2/08, michael g <tropical@...> wrote:

> Your list says that raw fish eggs are high in PUFA. Fish eggs

> were/are prized by many traditional groups, including the

> Eskimo/Inuit, as very healthy.

According to Price, the women prized fish eggs as a

pregnancy/lactation food. According to my working hypothesis, as

expressed in my PUFA report, DHA and AA are conditionally essential,

becoming essential dietarily during periods of growth, pregnancy,

lactation, recovery from injury, and oxidative stress. I think this

hypothesis is in line with Price's observations about fish eggs. I

think access to fish eggs would be pretty limited, and I think that's

party of why they are so expensive even now.

Chris

[Guest guest]

and ,

> Well, pigs, anyway, reflect the makeup of their diets in the PUFA

> content of their fat quite significantly, so yes, it'd be quite

> possible to raise pigs that deposit largely saturated and

> monounsaturated fat by feeding them very low-fat carbs (perhaps

> potatoes) and fat sources low in PUFA, such as coconut products.

> Unfortunately, I'm afraid the resulting pork would be very expensive.

We also need to allow the possibility that an " optimal " diet might be

lower in animal foods than what some of us are eating. In general,

traditional diets were higher in animal products as they became

distant from the equator, from about 37% (!Kung San) to near 100%

(Arctic Inuit). Coconut is very low in PUFA, which is tropical. I

suspect the tropical diets are probably a little closer to our

" origins, " and they tend to be lower (though still substantial) in

animal products and also to utilize coconut. It might not be

expensive either to raise a pig on coconut products in the tropics.

Chris

[Guest guest]

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> Since pigs

> are omnivores, like humans, maybe humans eating high PUFA diets also

> end up with a lot more PUFA as percentage of body weight. That

> doesn't appear to be the case with cows, since grain finished beef is

> still low in PUFA.

Well, yes -- pigs, like people, aren't ruminants and lack the gut

bacteria which partially to fully saturate polyunsaturated fatty acids

eaten by ruminants.

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[Guest guest]

Chris-

> We also need to allow the possibility that an " optimal " diet might be

> lower in animal foods than what some of us are eating. In general,

> traditional diets were higher in animal products as they became

> distant from the equator, from about 37% (!Kung San) to near 100%

> (Arctic Inuit). Coconut is very low in PUFA, which is tropical. I

> suspect the tropical diets are probably a little closer to our

> " origins, " and they tend to be lower (though still substantial) in

> animal products and also to utilize coconut. It might not be

> expensive either to raise a pig on coconut products in the tropics.

This is an interesting theory, but it seems implausible, at least in

its broad outlines, given all the physiological harm done by dietary

carbohydrate. Though certainly many coconut products give a pretty

good bang for the buck in terms of the SF:carb ratio.

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[Guest guest]

Physiological harm?!?

So, the groups in NAPD eating Rye or Oats regularly were harmed by their

actions??

How about the vast amounts of lactose the dairy herders consumed?

Sure, fructose is a problem. But glucose and galactose are absolutely

necessary for the construction of the gut mucosa. Far be that from " harm " .

-Lana

" There is nothing more useful than sun and salt. " - Latin proverb

On Sun, Nov 2, 2008 at 5:00 PM, Idol <paul.idol@...> wrote:

> This is an interesting theory, but it seems implausible, at least in

> its broad outlines, given all the physiological harm done by dietary

> carbohydrate. Though certainly many coconut products give a pretty

> good bang for the buck in terms of the SF:carb ratio.

>

> -

>

[Guest guest]

,

> This is an interesting theory, but it seems implausible, at least in

> its broad outlines, given all the physiological harm done by dietary

> carbohydrate. Though certainly many coconut products give a pretty

> good bang for the buck in terms of the SF:carb ratio.

I didn't say anything about carbohydrate -- one could subsist on fish,

mongongo nuts and coconuts and have a pretty low-carb diet.

I think the harm done by dietary carbohydrate mostly starts when you

eat more than needed to replete glycogen stores. That could be due to

excess total carbohydrate (either because of the proportion of

calories or the total caloric intake), deficient fasting between

meals, and deficient physical activity.

Chris

[Guest guest]

Chris-

> I didn't say anything about carbohydrate -- one could subsist on fish,

> mongongo nuts and coconuts and have a pretty low-carb diet.

>

> I think the harm done by dietary carbohydrate mostly starts when you

> eat more than needed to replete glycogen stores. That could be due to

> excess total carbohydrate (either because of the proportion of

> calories or the total caloric intake), deficient fasting between

> meals, and deficient physical activity.

Well, much of the glycation harm begins pretty much immediately upon

absorption, but certainly, anything beyond that required to replete

glycogen is going to be much more harmful. You're correct, though,

that it's technically possible to consume a moderately low-carb diet

without relying overwhelmingly on animal foods. I don't think you can

attain anything really low-carb, though, without refining plant foods

to yield stuff like coconut oil, unless maybe you subsisted on

macadamias as a staple or something. I couldn't find mongongo nuts on

nutritiondata.com, though... but aren't they extremely rich in PUFA,

meaning they're kind of irrelevant to the hypothetical goal of eating

a low-carb low-animal food low-PUFA diet?

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[Guest guest]

Lana-

> Physiological harm?!?

>

> So, the groups in NAPD eating Rye or Oats regularly were harmed by

> their

> actions??

>

> How about the vast amounts of lactose the dairy herders consumed?

>

> Sure, fructose is a problem. But glucose and galactose are absolutely

> necessary for the construction of the gut mucosa. Far be that from

> " harm " .

Well, inasmuch as I suppose you could construe my post to mean that

ANY dietary carbohydrate whatsoever is harmful, clearly I should've

worded my post better. But yes, in general, I'd say that any

significant consumption of carbohydrate will tend to do harm, starting

with glycation as it's absorbed. Once you reach a level of

consumption past that required for repletion of glycogen after

physical activity, the level of harm steps up fairly significantly.

So were Price's rye and oats groups healthier than people eating SAD

and the like? Of course. They had generations of healthy people

behind them, so their epigenetics were very well adjusted, they were

members of populations which were very well adapted to their diets,

which were fairly stable over fairly long periods of time, and they

were living off land which hadn't been so brutally stripped of its

fertility that even relatively nutrient-dense types of foods were

profoundly lacking in nutrition compared to the ideal. But would

people be healthier, all else being equal, on a lower-carb diet?

Would they live longer, with slower aging and degeneration? Yes, I

believe so.

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