Paleo Diet and Paleolithic Diet Questions & Answers

Question

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I looked at nutritiondata.com data on beef and mutton tallow, and each have virtually 0% of vitamins and minerals, and are pretty much pure fat. Now, this may be the way that all fats are supposed to be, or maybe it's because the tallow was boiled, but I recall reading that some vitamins like D or A are normally stored in fat, so I'm wondering why they don't show up in the data? And if fats don't contain any nutrients, are the nutrients in meat stored on the proteins, or somewhere else? And if fats are supposed to contain nutrients, would they be only found in fats that have not been rendered a-la tallow? Thanks.

flag	asked May 6 2011 at 19:53 survivalmachine 623●4●11

	Similar question :) paleohacks.com/questions/5196/… – Matt May 6 2011 at 20:10
	Ah, I see that this is an issue for others too! Thanks. – survivalmachine May 6 2011 at 20:24

Richard N · Answer 1 · 2011-05-06 22:10:15Z UTC

Why would you not consider saturated fat nutritious? Tallow is higher in saturated fat than lard. Saturated fat is important for the integrity and structure of cell membranes (the "brains" of the cell), it lowers C reactive protein and lipoprotein (a), protects the liver, important for the immune system, 50% of the fats you ingest should be saturated for proper incorporation of calcium into bone, proper utilization of omega 3 fatty acids, supplies palmitic acid for energy (heart runs on sat fat), supplies antimicrobial palmitoleic acid...and for vanity sake, saturated fat opposes skin wrinkling while polyunsaturated fat promotes it.

Katherine · Answer 2 · 2011-05-06 20:19:28Z UTC

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Fat is virtually all fat with just small amounts of various "vitamins" (ie K, E, D, A...depending on the fat).

The analysis in nutrition data, which is taken from the USDA database, simply doesn't test for most nutrients in most fats. It's not that they don't exist, it's that they aren't looking for them, which is unfortunate.

Also, tallow from grain-fed animals will contain little to no K or some of the other nutrients that fats may contain when they are sourced from pastured animals.

answered May 6 2011 at 20:19

Katherine
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What nutrients in fat does the USDA database not measure? This is pretty important to me since I use that database a lot. For what it's worth, I have found some biotin and choline numbers on there fishy. – survivalmachine May 7 2011 at 2:09

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The "~" indicates a nutrient they don't measure in a particular food so for tallow they don't measure D. WRT tallow, I was clearly wrong about them not measuring "most nutrients" as it appears that they do. Keep in mind that there is likely a significant difference between the nutrient composition of pastured tallow v. tallow from grain fed animals. – Katherine May 7 2011 at 12:15

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One particularly frustrating (fat) entry is bone marrow. They only have a few nutrients listed, don't test for D, K, lecithin (ie choline, phosphatidylserine which is definitely has in significant amounts), only lists total fat not amounts of monOh particularly frustrating (fat) entry is bone marrow. They only have a few nutrients listed, don't test for D, K, lecithin (ie choline, phosphatidylserine which is definitely has in significant amounts), only lists total fat not amounts of monounsaturated, polyunsaturated etc. – Katherine May 7 2011 at 12:17

Richard N · Answer 3 · 2011-05-07 00:26:04Z UTC

http://www.westonaprice.org/know-your-fats/526-skinny-on-fats?qh=YToxMjp7aTowO3M6OToic2F0dXJhdGVkIjtpOjE7czo4OiJzYXR1cmF0ZSI7aToyO3M6OToic2F0dXJhdGVzIjtpOjM7czoxMDoic2F0dXJhdGlvbiI7aTo0O3M6MTA6InNhdHVyYXRpbmciO2k6NTtzOjc6InNhdHVyZXMiO2k6NjtzOjQ6ImZhdHMiO2k6NztzOjM6ImZhdCI7aTo4O3M6NzoiZmF0bmVzcyI7aTo5O3M6NDoiJ2ZhdCI7aToxMDtzOjU6ImZhdCdzIjtpOjExO3M6MTQ6InNhdHVyYXRlZCBmYXRzIjt9

Aaron B. · Answer 4 · 2011-05-07 10:20:17Z UTC

Fats don't "contain" vitamins and minerals; fatty foods do. Tallow doesn't contain many because the fat has been rendered out of the other stuff. If you could render the protein or carbs out of a nutritious whole food, they wouldn't "contain" vitamins and minerals either.

Rendered fats like tallow and lard aren't for eating by themselves, so there's no problem. They're for cooking nutritious foods in.

Why is tallow so nutritionally poor?

4 Answers