Guts and Grease wild game fat chart

[Guest guest]

Hi all,

I read a few posts that mentioned this article and I have some questions.

Some time ago I was told (second hand) that a vet who researches and writes

about companion animal nutrition feels that the USDA database

(http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/cgi-bin/nut_search.pl) is not a reliable

source of information. I've been meaning to contact her about this to find

out why. I'll try to do that in the next few days. Just about everybody I

know who is interested in nutrition uses it, as do I. I see that Sally and

used the USDA database to enhance their arguments in the guts and

grease article that native americans who ate traditional diets were

consuming higher quantities of saturated fat than Eaton and other Paleo diet

authors would have us believe.

Has anyone gathered any data on wild game fatty acid profiles from a

different source than the USDA database?

Does anyone have nutrient profiles (not just FA profiles) of various wild

game? Of meat, fat and organ meats?

Does anyone know how large the sampling was, of the wild game that the USDA

used to establish their nutrient profiles? Any idea what region, say, the

deer came from, and what breed they were? When I type in 'venison' I get

nothing, but when I type in 'deer' I get " Game meat, deer, raw " with no

mention if it's white tailed deer, mule deer, etc. It also makes no mention

of what the animal's diet may have been, although, if it's truly wild game I

guess they wouldn't know. I wonder if the deer used in the USDA database had

similar diets to the deer consumed by native americans for centuries? And

thus, if their lipid profiles would be similar?

Also, the FA profile I get from the database on deer MEAT is 0.95:.067:0.47.

That makes it about 2:1 saturated to polyunsaturated. It seems like any

venison profile I've seen has a low ratio like this. I know meat may not

have as much SF as organs, but it should be factored in to total lipid

profile of the diet, no?

I see in the guts and grease article that Sally and focused primarily

on kidneys and " fatty tissue " of each species in the chart, which have a

high SF to PUFA ratio according to their USDA source. I understand that

'primitive' societies typically ate all or most of the organs, fat and

innards, but then wouldn't we get the most accurate picture of the lipid

profile of their diets if we added all the organs, fatty tissue AND muscle

tissue together (along with plant or other sources of lipids), basically

looking at the lipid profile of all foods consumed, as opposed to just some

of the parts of some of their prey? And, *how much of each of these foods*

would be consumed by an individual? I fully appreciate that the proponents

of 'low_fat as_our_ancestors_ate' are wrong. But I'd like to see a *total

diet* lipid analysis (including muscle tissue as well as plant oils) to get

an approximate idea of what the overall dietary lipid profile was (of

various regional groups).

Another thing I noticed is that the article stated that native americans

didn't do well on rabbit because they weren't as fatty as large game. For

some reason I've been under the impression that rabbit is fattier than wild

ruminants in general. In 's book " Know Your Fats " the rabbit *meat* is a

bit fattier than the venison, but perhaps when all consumable parts are

considered it has a lower fat content than wild ruminants...?

Any comments on my musings?

Suze Fisher

Web Design & Development

http://www.suscom-maine.net/~cfisher/

mailto:s.fisher22@...