An Answer to Saturated and Other Fats and Relation to Health

First of all, when I say that I want you to eat fat, the "you" is your cells. I want your cells to eat fat. If you have excess body fat, especially visceral fat, we want your cells to eat it. If they are allowed to eat your stored fat, you need not put so much fat in your mouth, but "you" are still eating a high-fat diet. Once again, whether or not you are allowed to eat your stored fat depends on significant metabolic hormones, mainly proper leptin function.  I want you to burn fat as fuel as opposed to glucose, whether it comes from immediate dietary intake or whether it comes from oxidation of stored fats.  Maintaining proper insulin and leptin activity will allow you to burn fat.  Thus it is imperative that non-fiber carbohydrates be kept to a minimum.  When you are burning stored fat you are eating and hunger will be minimized.

As far as what type of fats to eat (orally when hungry) especially pertaining to saturated fat and why, this is summarized on pages 21 and 64 of The Rosedale Diet © HarperCollins

p. 64  Saturated Fat. 

"This fat is primarily found in grain-fed animals, including meat, lamb, and dairy products from grain-fed animals (milk, cheese, lard, and butter) and to a lesser extent, poultry and fish. Although derived from plants, coconut oil is also high in saturated fat, but of a different kind, that may even have health benefits.

Why are grain-fed animals so high in saturated fat? Animals, like us, turn the grain that they eat into sugar, and then into saturated fat. The fat in grain-fed animals is really second generation carbohydrates. It has been known for hundreds of years that feeding grain to animals makes them fat. That is why cattle go to feed lots before they are sold— to make them fat as fast as possible. That is also what grain feeding does to us!

Unlike polyunsaturated fat, saturated fat tends to be hard at room temperature. Studies have suggested that a diet high in saturated fat may promote heart disease and insulin resistance. This is true, although some types of polyunsaturated fat can be just as bad—even worse. Saturated fat does have one advantage over polyunsaturated fats, even the good fats: It is not easily oxidized and therefore does not promote free radical production in the body. I still don’t advise people to eat a huge amount of saturated fat—not if you want to lose fat. Most of the fat stored in your body is saturated fat, and, in general, it is the toughest fat to burn. If you are looking to shed pounds, it is best to limit (not eliminate) your intake of saturated fat."

p. 21 

"Once you become a good fat burner, you can also eat a little more saturated fat. The kind of fat you eat becomes less important because you are able to burn it off more easily."

The evidence linking saturated fat to heart disease, however, is arguable and a caveat of all of these studies is that they are done almost universally on people eating a high carbohydrate diet that prevents the proper burning of fat. The editors at HarperCollins cut this section because they thought it would create too much confusion and would be too controversial. However, for many years I have only significantly limited saturated fats for the first several months for the reasons given above and below. Recognize please that when we are talking about the amount of saturated fat to eat we are fine tuning the much more important premise of limiting non-fiber carbs and avoiding excess protein.

Please note that I do say why I limit saturated fat, at least initially (and have for decades).  While I do respect his comments, Donat makes the same mistake that many before have made; that because much of what I have said (and why) has generally been original, contrary to both conventional and so-called alternative health, and thus a lone voice in the wind, people assume I must not know what I'm talking about.  I was told this all-to-often almost 20 years ago when I was first to extensively talk the world over about the metabolic effects of insulin.  One of these talks, “Insulin and its Metabolic Effects”, was recorded by a participant, transcribed, and put on the Internet and became widely read and was, and still is, paramount in popularizing such concepts as insulin resistance and its sequelae, glycation, AGE's, low carbohydrate dieting, etc. Many people read this, and based books on these concepts over the years. I was also the first to talk and teach about the connection between leptin, leptin resistance, and mTOR and their relationship supporting a high-fat, low carbohydrate, and notably not a high-protein but at most, moderate protein diet.  I believe that 15 years ago I was the first to use, very effectively I might add, a high-fat, very low carbohydrate diet to treat diabetes and cardiovascular disease, and opened the first “metabolic medicine” clinic in the country in Asheville, North Carolina and later in Boulder, Co with the Eades. I have long warned about the ill advised and detrimental health effects of fructose and the high intake of calcium that is recommended for osteoporosis that after 15 years is finally getting proper verification. 

I'm not as well-known as perhaps some of my peers as I did not seek the spotlight, but freely shared my information in talks and writings with academic associates, many of whom subsequently took the information as their own and popularized it with various degrees of accuracy or inaccuracy (with the notable exception of Joe Mercola who has been very generous with his references to me, and a few others) .  

Whatever I say is based on science generally much deeper than you could imagine. In this case, it's fairly straightforward and elementary, though not widely known and appreciated. Saturated fat is among the least readily oxidizable fat. That's good if one is referring to rancidity (in the body and out) but not so good if you want to oxidize it as fuel.  The longer the fatty acid chain, and the more saturated the fatty acid is, in general the harder it is to burn.  As one becomes more adept at burning fat, this become somewhat, but not entirely, less relevant.  I have listed a few of the early and seminal references with quotes at the end.

MCTs (high in coconut oil and ghee) are the best source of fuel. Even though they are saturated, they are mostly medium chain length and can get straight into mitochondria for oxidation without needing prior shortening in peroxisomes. The monounsaturated fats found in avocados, olive oil, and nuts are also readily burned and fairly stable. Though necessary in limited quantities and readily obtained, w6 oils, found in most vegetable oils, are virtually toxic in excess.  Omega 3 oils are generally deficient in people's diet and should normally be supplemented. Proper dose is fairly important as excess may be detrimental, 1-2 teaspoons/d for long-term use generally being sufficient.  

The evidence that non-fiber carbohydrates cause disease and increased mortality is extremely high. The minimum daily requirement is zero. The evidence that excess protein is equally harmful is also very robust. The only controversial point would be the definition of excess. One of the PowerPoints that I posted in my last answer pertains to this. Questions pertaining to oils and fats is, to me, where the vast majority of research in nutritional science should concentrate, though I believe even here the answers in general are becoming clear.

A few of many references:

Biochem. J. (1987) 247, 531-535 (printed in Great Britain) 531 Rolf HOVIK and Harald OSMUNDSEN Peroxisomal B-oxidation of long-chain fatty acids possessing different extents of unsaturation.

"From these results it is immediately apparent that rates of peroxisomal B-oxidation increase with increasing extent of unsaturation of the carbon chain."

British Journal of Nutrition (1987), 57, 383-393 J. L EYTON, P .J. DRURY AND M . A . CRAWFORD Differential oxidation of saturated and unsaturated fatty acids in vivo in the rat.

"In comparing the oxidation of saturated and unsaturated fatty acids, [P4C] linoleic acid [1-14C] a-linolenic acid and [P4C] 0Ieic acid were oxidized at a significantly faster rate than [1-14C] stearic acid and [1-14C] palmitic acid at 24 h (P < 0'01)."

J. Lipid Res. 1982: 23 243-256. Bremer,J., and K. R. Norum. Metabolism of very long-chain monounsaturated fatty acids (22:l) and the adaptation to their presence in the diet.

"Unadapted rats and other animal species have a limited capacity to metabolize monounsaturated fatty acids with 22 carbons (22:l). Excess amounts in the diet of fats containing these fatty acids cause a transient accumulation (lipidosis) of triacylglycerol in the heart and other tissues..." "Upon continued feeding of diets with 22:l fatty acids, an adaptation takes place and the lipidosis disappears."

British Journal of Nutrition (2000), 83, Suppl. 1, S85–S90 Len H. Storlien Diet composition and insulin action in animal models

"Intake of saturated fats is strongly linked to development of obesity and insulin resistance, while that of polyunsaturated fats (PUFAs) is not. This is consistent with observations that saturated fats are poorly oxidized for energy and thus readily stored, are poorly mobilized by lipolytic stimuli, impair membrane function, and increase the expression of genes associated with adipocyte profileration (making their own home)"

I have read a lot of your work and I commend you on your stance on leptin. I fully agree with your assertions based upon the data out there and I have followed leptin data since 1995 in my own field.

But I don't buy your stance on protein at all because most of the studies are flawed or done with built in biases. Moreover, I have to say the data on Sat fats is also very controversial because the science is always done badly. So making any definite statement on them is tough. I get enough flak here for my neutral response on them. I truly believe that with protein and Sat fats it depends who is their bed fellow. If you have a low insulin environment and a low cortisol environment and good leptin signaling there is "Zero" data out their vilifying protein or Sat fat. And this community eats to a fault to generate that exact environment. The only thing the newbies may not be is leptin sensitive when they begin but that can flip quick within 4-8 weeks if the follow strict paleo recs.

I have worked with Dr. Rosedale and eaten with Dr. Rosedale. He is Not anti SAT fat. He merely believes that when you are transitioning from a sugar burner to a fat burner it is better to be trained on Mono Fat. They are like Fat Training Wheels. He says they burn more easily than SAT fat. Once you are a fat burner (ketone)...enjoy SAT fat. We have had many a steak dinner in India with cheese on top. Ask him about the Rueben Sandwich (sans bread) that he loves. His diet is a high fat/moderate protein/low carb. He has been saying...high fat/moderate protein/low carb for over 25 years. Read

Insulin and Its Metabolic Effects....presented in 1999.

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2001/07/14/insulin-part-one.aspx

Read part 1, 2, 3 and 4.

He feels over 90% of nutrition is in the study of fat. He is open to all comments on Paleo Hacks. He was into fat when it wans't "where it's at".

I implore the Paleo community to read and weigh the exchange in the comment section between Dr. Rosedale and Dr. K...under Dr. K's initial response to Dr. Rosedale's answer. This is the most spirited debate in the community I have seen. I applaud it and love all the more, open debate on all topics Paleo. Thank you Patrik for the forum for the fireworks. It's a beautiful show. Please point this out Patrik.

"Donat makes the same mistake... people assume I must not know what I'm talking about"

Certainly not, I did not assume anything of the sort.

First of all I must be among the top 2% of your admirors. (Here's why: I have cystic kidneys, looking at the literature I discovered that most emerging treatments target the same cellular pathways that calorie restriction does, so I went and did CR for three years when reading the literature revealed that there is really no evidence that for humans CR will do more than protein and carb restriction. And then I discovered that you must have known that all along.)

So I just meant to comment on the fact that your website has statements like this:

"The fat we recommend you eat differs qualitatively from the usual fare of red meats, cheeses... Those foods usually contain damaged or saturated fats. We recommend only what we consider “good” fats." This clearly entails that saturated fats are not "good fats"

"Some examples of “good” fats include: raw nuts and seeds such as almonds, walnuts, macadamia, pumpkin and sunflower seeds, olives and olive oil, flax oil and cod liver oil." No saturated fats among the good ones.

Even after one is taken to have become an efficient fat burner you suggest

"Limit these foods to once or twice a week:

Beef or Lamb ― preferably free ranging,leaner cuts. Preparation: cook so that fat drips off."

In the context of paleohacks these sentences amply qualify as anti saturated fat.

I think my raising the question of why you think/thought that free ranging beef tallow should be discarded, was entirely legitimate. In particular the property of "harder to burn" does not appear to be equivalent to "unhealthy/bad". It seems to me that your quoted position ("for many years I have only significantly limited saturated fats for the first several months") does not appear to seamlessly match with what comes across in these quotes.

Agreed, these are minor points of fine tuning compared to your major contributions, but very important in their own right in various ways.

So the currently somewhat unclear issue is not the protein question, on which as far as can be known, you are I think clearly right, but the question of natural saturated fats and that of natural pufas. (Optimum intake curves, individual variation, interaction with other foods/food-components etc. ) In any case my analytic abilities are up to realizing that you very much know what you are talking about and I am certainly one who is always avidly interested in your most recent thinking on these issues.

Coconut oil is great! made some perfect Rosedale cookies the other day. Almond flour, coconut oil, almond butter, unsweetened coconut flakes, little xylotol, tad of salt and they were yummy!

Olive oil, MCT's, coconut oils are all great oils, or avocados and almonds have great oils too.

Dear Dr Rosedale

Given the potential importance of the saturated fat issue, let me try to approach it from another angle. I hope you will see my perseverance here for what it is, a sign of respect for your work.

Forgetting for now the question of the transition period, you say:

"it is best to derive most of the fat in one's diet from monounsaturated and medium chain saturated fats as the ideal, and the longer chain saturated fats are okay..."

Well if longer chain safas are "okay", ie not harmful, then in the context of carbs, protein, and pufas having fairly low healthy limits, a much stronger endorsement of safas appears to be warranted. Perhaps not a logical consequence but certainly as an empirical one, given the fact that in nature most monounsaturated fats (and MCTs) come packaged either with pufas or with longer chain saturated fats. So it is practically impossible to eat a natural food based genuinely high fat (non calorie restricted) diet that is low BOTH in pufas and in long chain safas. If one assumes that (long chain) safas are not harmful, then (secondarily to monos and MCTs if these are taken to have additional positive attributes) one should actively seek them otherwise there appears to be no non-artifical way to reduce the amount of harmful food, --particularly omega 6 on a high fat diet.

Even being somewhat uncertain about the evidence relating harmfulness of safas would not change this conclusion, since on the other side we have the near-certainty about the harm of more than a small amount of omega6 fats.

Three additional remarks:

(1)Of course a general recommendation would leave open individual variation, safas might (or might not, we don't seem to really know) still be harmful for some people.

(2) There is a lot of evidence for the beneficial health effects of monunsaturated fats, less but some on MCTs and very little on long chain safas. I wonder to what extent you think that this reflects their real properties as opposed to factors like SAD diet based research, or the diet-heart hypothesis and statin-interest biased nature of the research community.

(3) I think the 'paleo' community follows your footsteps in many major respects but has difficulties realizing this in part precisely because they have made the calculation (sometimes unconsciously, sometimes explicitely) that I outlined above, which is crucial in practice and that you easily come across as resisting.

And many thanks for your earlier reactions and kind words.

I find this all very fascinating but as a relative "newbie" here I also find it very confusing. I get the basic arguments here but for the life of me, I can't wrap my head around what a days food intake would look like on Rosedale's plan.

From what I'm reading, it looks like an extremely small portion of protein (but not from beef. lamb, pork) and a ton of fibrous veggies drowning in coconut oil or olive oil or ghee.

Can somebody clarify what a sample days worth of meals might look like if following Rosedale?

His diet does not appear to be appreciably higher in fat than many others around, in fact pretty much everything from paleo 2.O onwards is high fat. As Paul Jaminet among others points out, evidence is mounting that one can have a shift towards some extra protein for athletic achievement, pregnancy etc. or towards some extra fat for health(span). (Rosedale appears to be interested in health.)

The issue of saturated fats is very important but orthogonal to the above. I suspect he does not have a good evidence based reason to be vary of them, otherwise he would presumably say what it is.

If I say that drinking good quality virgin olive oil or eating good quality butter straight is delicious, many here will agree, but probably just sounds scary for someone not used to it.

So I just recall that fat is very calorie dense, so it is extremely easy to eat a large percentage of calories (not of food weight) from fat. Just eat vegetables and meat with a lot of fat and you are essentially there. Good places to check out in this connection http://perfecthealthdiet.com/ or http://high-fat-nutrition.blogspot.com/

Whether the transition is easy will depend of course also on the previous diet.

In a pinch, I have often drank olive oil. Like Dr. Rosedale says, it is a pretty clean fuel source.

I really appreciate Dr. Rosedale being so generous in sharing his thoughts. I am definitely going to consider his recommendation of lowering protein. From a practical standpoint I'm still struggling to see how I can consume 200-250gm of fat/day while lowering my protein intake. There is also the problem of cost for me...so I would most likely get the bulk of my fat from either butter or olive oil (and I struggle eating these large salads with oil). Currently I feel like I'm maxing out on fat while eating more protein than Dr. Rosedale recommends and I also consume a small amount of starch.

I don't follow Dr. Rosedale's plan. But I get about 250g of fat a day. Butter, cream, coconut fat, beef fat and cold EV olive oil are my main sources. Also, lately, nut butters.

I have low total cholesterol and LDL and high HDL - this was true before high-fat and after. There's a case to be made that people who see their LDL jump while eating a higher-fat paleo diet should minimize dairy fat/saturated fat.

Saute your veggies in a lots of butter or olive oil and use generous amounts of fat based dressings on your salads. Really dump it on there.

I have a few issues with the Rosedale protein recommendations. First of all, who knows with precision what their "lean body mass" is? I wish he would simply use ideal bodyweight. The purported self measuring with a tape measure and calculations from the Eades book can become highly innacurate if a woman has a short vertical torso length (more of a boyish shape -- up and down at the waist rather than nipped in as with a longer torso) or if she has an enlarged uterus from fibroids -- falsely making abdominal measurement larger than it is in reality.

Also, it seems a highly unnatural diet to have to adds gobs of fat to smallish amounts of protein in order to avoid starvation. I think his ratios work best for overweight people who can "feed" off their own body fat stores. But I am 5'3" tall and weigh 105 pounds. I eat very low carb because of rampant diabetes in my family. So I would have to add spoonfuls of coconut oil/olive oil etc to maintain decent calories. My current diet: Grass-fed meats/lots of eggs/non-starchy veggies/nuts. Treats : 1 tiny plum or a few berries and 99% dark chocolate or nibs. Bevvies: Tea and coffee -- unsweetened and with no lighteners. I only eat twice per day.

@ Dave: Couldn't add a comment above under Dave's comment for some reason.

I would like to understand this too Dave. With restricted protein (approx 1 gram per kg of bodyweight), very low carb -- the fats make up the majority of the diet. Olive oil and nuts/avocados are considered the A list fats on Dr. Rosedale's plan but all of them with the exception of macadamias contain appreciable amounts of omega 6 which quickly add up if one is on maintenance and/or very slender. I think overweights have an easier time because they are running partially off their own fat as they reduce. Are we certain the fear of omega-6 isn't overblown or perhaps something else besides the omega -6 in the so-called bad oils like corn, soybean, safflower is causing a problem? The fats in raw nuts are also not as bioavailable because of the fiber. But I would like to see Dave question answered.

I can only lose weight on relatively high protein 130-140g for my 5'7" mesomorphic female frame and little in the way of fat or carbs. I tried replacing some of the protein with "good" saturated fats when transitioning from this rather restrictive diet: so coconut oil and pastured fatty meats keeping carbs very low (sub 25g total) and promptly gained fat and felt worse. And yes, it was FAT not muscle despite being a life-long hard weight lifter and being in a very active job. My body genuinely seems to love good quality lean protein but not so much with the saturated fat: so while I can personally attest to not being able to utilize dietary saturated fat when you are metabolically compromised but I just can't get behind the lower protein stance when my body seems to be screaming otherwise. Is this simply a "everyone is different" phenomenon?

OK- what do Dr. Rosedale and The Quilt actual EAT? How do their theories look on their plates? How have they changed their eating habits based on their interpretations of data?