From all that I have read, it is ideal to eat grassfed but industrial meat is much better than the SAD diet. Even if one cannot afford grassfed beef, beef with no hormones or antibiotics (whole foods, trader joes) is still pretty good. If I remember right, Kurt Harris of PaNu stated that industrial beef doesn't have more Omega-6's just fewer Omega-3's. You can get the 3's thruogh fish or supplementation. Don't discourage people by saying it's grassfed or nothing. That is very defeatist. Get them off the SAD diet and then we can talk absolute quality.

People would be better off if they ate Paleo regardless of the source if they currently eat the SAD. I'm not sure if it's necessary to get into details unless the person you are talking to is really going to be deeply committed.

As a hunter, having seen the difference in terms of fat content between venison and beef, snowshoe hares versus domestic rabbit, and real (wild) turkeys versus Butterballs, I think Cordain is absolutely correct when he states that Grok's meat intake was a lot leaner even than modern grass-fed beef. Wild meat is lean, period; this isn't saying that fat is bad, just that if you're trying to really replicate a Pleistocene hunter-gatherer diet as opposed to a high-protein high-fat diet styling itself "Paleo", lean meat is more prehistorically authentic.

First off, I think it is really lame of some of the Paleo crowd to pile on Cordain wrt saturated fat, when I think even the most ardent sat fatters (like me) agree with 98.99% of what Cordain advocates for.

My "problem" was that I understood Cordain's position to be, at least partially, based on the average sat fat content of a wild ruminant. That is to say, underpinning his assumption was that H-Gs ate bison as if they were non-discriminate lawn-mowers -- which I don't think is the case. Traditional cultures, generally, but not always, tended to favor the fattier cuts -- if not the fat itself!

Does grain-fed sat fat meat complicate matters?! Maybe. I am not sure.

It's actually much harder than that. Joel Salatin was BRAGGING about how his pastured chicken has a high PUFA content because he is apparently still under the idea that PUFA=good and saturated fat=bad.

In general from low o6 to high: wild salmon , grass fed lamb/bison , grass fed beef , beef and lamb , farmed salmon , pastured chicken , chicken, duck, pastured pork , pork

BUT even that varies...with breed, with local forage, with age of animal at slaughter...it's enough to make you crazy!

But in general, it seems the best choices are seafood and ruminants. Sadly chicken and pork might not be the most optimal meats.

This is confusing two issues. Omega 3/6 are polyunsaturated fats. I can't speak to the quality of the saturated fats in grain vs. grass fed beef, but the saturated fat is good for you regardless of the 3/6 ratio of the polyunsaturated fat that comes with it.

Please take a look at Cordain's more recent papers and blog post. He has started to change his position on the role of saturated fat in a healthy diet. As the line goes, "I reserve the right to change my mind."

I was sooooooo disapointed in his book. He has a huge fear of FAT and is wrong. I wrote to him about it. He can't write the word 'meat' without the modifier "Lean" before it. He waited to the end of the book to correctly explain that exotic meats, like Buffalo are leaner because of their diet (grass fed) not because of some tract they have in their genes. Grass fed meat and diary products are the ONLY way to go. You should never eat meat that is tooo lean, it is UN-healthy. Grok MAY have had leaner meats than even our grass feds but he was driven to eat the whole animal, organ meat (very fatty) and the marrow. So Grok got plenty of fat from his kill.

I don't see any dilemma on the diet at all. Paleos ate the whole macronutrient range to survive, and more often than not (ie 9 months out of a year) any meat they ate would have been lean. Insisting on a high fat diet isn't paleo in the ancestral sense. We're not evolved to eat a ton of fat, though we CAN do that if we have to. We're evolved to eat whatever's available to digest.

If there is any dilemma it is the insistence that we EAT like hunter-gatherers without BEHAVING like hunter gatherers. The paleo diet is not the optimal diet for sedentary modern people.

I think Cordain's point is very simple:

A good quality meat (hunt, organic, grass-fed,etc..) the animal meat/fat 'per se' has better quality and improved o3-o6 fatty acids ratio therefore you can (should) eat more.

In fact I really think the background discussion should advance in terms of fat quality. More Q then more fat you can eat. Less Q? Avoid fat. Simple and easy. You like fat and stay healthy? Buy/produce high quality meat.

Trying to explain basic Paleo principles to someone is simple. Explain to them what to eat, what not to eat and the reasoning behind both.

When you then start to delve deeper into things like food quality, people tend to get confused. Like others have said, this should not change the basic idea of what the diet consists of.