Carbs vs. fats

Mick Fisch wrote:I'm stuck on the oil/fat production question. Carbs I can get, but historically the most prized item and the hardest thing to get a lot of was fat (ok, I can hear you guys already gearing up about olive oil in the mediteranean, pork fat in northern europe, coconut in polynesia). Every culture has come up with some solution, but we need fat. Our cell walls are made of fat, as is much of our brains (I can already hear the 'fathead' comments, I've spent too many years listening to kids and now have a perennial smart mouthed kid making jokes in my head).

Seriously though, if someone wants to be 'food independant', they really need to figure out how they are going to get their oils. Back home in Alaska we used to harvest hooligan (candle fish) and I know they were an incredible fat source for local native/homesteader populations.

I have a feeling that this is one of those areas where we might be being a little unrealistic. I buy my vegetable oil at the store, so someone somehow is making it in bulk and cheap. How hard is to transfer to a small scale? I looked up one of the sites listed on this string and it was talking about a liter or so of oil for an hours worth of grinding from sunflower seeds. Not sure that's efficient enough for me. My current leaning, in zone 4,5 or 6 is to look at lard production, but I am more than willing to be convinced that there is a better way.

Has anyone out there actually personally harvested a significant amount of oil from something other than olive or animal/fish?

Lucy Gabzdyl wrote:I would defintately go with the lard option if that's possible. Lard (especially from Iberico type piggies) is the healthiest fat of all. The Spanish take their pork very seriously, especially the salt seasoned hams which can go for 100 euros a kilo. I remember that tocino (belly fat) was the first thing they fed babies after they were weaned. Plus of course you get bacon, double whammy! Apart from olive oil, vegetable oils go rancid really quickly. Saturated fat is now back on the menu according to the experts (we never stopped).

Jan White wrote:I think the reason people feel better when cutting back on carbs is that fat and carbs don't mix well. Do high fat/low carb or high carb/low fat, but don't combine the two. I've chosen high carb/low fat as, according to the science I've found, it's healthier and easier on the body longterm. Occasionally I eat more fat than usual and invariably feel sluggish and fuzzy-brained afterwards. I also get bad morning breath, stronger body odor, and stinky bowel movements (which you all wanted to know about right ;P).

Kyrt Ryder wrote:This actually makes a lot of sense. Speaking in terms of Early Hunter Gatherers, when a motherlode of carbs or fat was acquired it would have been mostly all at once, with whatever herbs/greens they had to go with them.

This excludes the autumn of course, when game and ripe fruit/mast are likely to coexist [because the first seeks out the second.]

Though it doesn't quite jive with some of what we know of some later hunter-gatherer societies diets. Pemmican, for example, was frequently loaded with powdered fruit for flavor and sugar.

Maybe a better claim would be that fat and starch are better off separated?

Ben House wrote:I eat a pretty consistent diet that is mostly protein and fats, with the occasional baked good thrown in (my wife loves baking)

I am a Carpenter and work very heavily for about 8-12 hours a day. I feel very awake and active when I mostly eat meat, fat and vegetables; but if I eat lots of starches I tend to feel draggy and slow.

Ben House wrote:When I am on the high protein diet I can even skip a meal or two and feel no real loss of energy.

Jan White wrote:Because carbs are used so efficiently by the body, you need a steadier and/or larger supply than when using fat for fuel. I'm fine with eating 1500-1800 calories, 90% carbs, for breakfast. That gets me through to dinner just fine, even when I'm working hard. Some people don't like the large volume of a meal like that and prefer to snack more frequently.

Ben House wrote: I will say that since I hit 30 years old I noticed my boys eat more than me at the table. I rarely eat more than one helping.

Joseph Lofthouse wrote: If I eat very many carbohydrates I definitely feel the "draggy and slow" feeling that Ben mentioned.

Kyrt Ryder wrote:So are the melons and squash and corn you grow more for market [and occasional home treats] than staple foods Joseph?

Joseph Lofthouse wrote:

For my body, it seems like there is something going on with wheat besides the carbohydrates. I don't get bloated, or achy when I eat other types of carbs.

Jan White wrote:not to mention the fact that their life expectancy tended to be terrible anyway.

Tyler Ludens wrote:

Jan White wrote:not to mention the fact that their life expectancy tended to be terrible anyway.

Only compared to modern industrial humans; compared to agriculturists they were healthier and lived longer.

http://discovermagazine.com/1987/may/02-the-worst-mistake-in-the-history-of-the-human-race

Joseph Lofthouse wrote:Jan:

In the standard Amerian diet, high fat and high carbs pretty much go together: Bread and butter, cakes, pastries, muffins, burgers, french fries, deep-fried breaded vegetables, ice cream, funeral potatoes, etc, etc, etc... So when I eat with family, it is both high fat and high carbs.

If I have to eat a piece of bread or a gravy for a social occasion, I'll add more calories of fat to it than are contained in the high carb food itself...

Travis Schulert wrote:Carbs were rare until breeding of ancient grains took over as the staple crop.

Travis Schulert wrote:I hope this is relevant, but I always find the "human life expectancy" of a certain time period to be misconceiving. Its not like once you hit 26 you were considered old. Its just that in a time before hand washing and an understanding of infection and bacteria, many many many more children died at childbirth, along with their mothers in most cases. Add in malnutrition and many children that survived infancy died before adult hood because of disease and sickness.

Travis Schulert wrote:
I just look at how we evolved and what we ate, and you know what? The human is so well adapted to eat a huge array of different things, if they werent we would have never left Africa and colonized the world. But, one thing is for sure, grains were not a staple in most cultures diets until breeding of ancient grains and agriculture started to take form. Which when you look at the evolution rate of mitochondrial DNA, which is what is largely thought to control the metabolism, changes at a rate of 1%-2% every 100,000 years. So if you believe that, than a paleo type diet would fit most of us.

If you can imagine, you would wake up and start tracking animals as soon as the day began. As you tracked the animal you would be passing by mostly wild greens and fungi that you would consistently nibble on as you sought your kill. So towards the end of the day, if the hunt was successful, you would then feast on meat and fat at night, and hopefully plenty of greens that you brought back with you from your trek that day.

Some days you would not eat, some days you would only eat greens. Some days you might even find fruit (fruit is not ripe throughout the year or season, most fruits all ripen in a 1 or 2 week window of the year.

So a diet diverse with many greens, fungi, meat, fat, and fruit with occasional fasting seems to me at least as what would be the healthiest diet if you believe the whole thing about mitochondrial DNA. Also, another tid bit, is that one of the early Spanish explorers to the Americas had noted in his writings that the natives have over 900 different edible wild greens that they can eat throughout the day. So that should tell you right there that greens are the most important staple in our diets. And everything else is needed a little less sparingly. Feast and famine, like the ancestors for good health. Carbs were rare until breeding of ancient grains took over as the staple crop.

Thats my two cents anywway.

Jan White wrote:It's possible agriculture made it easier in some cases for these power structures to arise, but it seems to me to be an inherent human weakness.

Jan White wrote: So while humans can now function in a ketogenic state, have an ability to digest lactose (in certain populations anyway), etc., our basic physiology and anatomy are still those of a herbivore.

Jan White wrote:
Carbs in the form of grain were indeed rare until agriculture. Carbs in the form of fruit were plentiful year-round until humans moved north.

Jan White wrote:

Travis Schulert wrote:

I agree that humans are well adapted to be omnivores, but one thing I think people forget is how long evolution really takes. Homo sapiens, like other primates, evolved from herbivores. Evolution can only add to what's already there. So while humans can now function in a ketogenic state, have an ability to digest lactose (in certain populations anyway), etc., our basic physiology and anatomy are still those of a herbivore. For instance, herbivorous mammals will develop atherosclerosis when fed meat, a disease that doesn't occur in carnivores. Since herbivores generally only have access to large amounts of fat seasonally, I question whether high fat/low carb is healthy longterm for humans, even with our more recent adaptations.

I don't know which study you are referring to (atherosclerosis) but if it's the one in Nature Medicine by researchers from the Cleveland Clinic there are concerns about the conclusions. In particular subsequent studies have proved that fish can produce 100 times the TMAO of red meat and also vitamin B2, something that vegetarians are often deficient in, is a co-factor in TMAO production.

In defense of an ominivore diet I would point out that none of the longest lived peoples studied are vegetarians (Okinawans/Meditarranean/Hunzas etc). We have been eating meat for more than 2 million years. Many of our ancestors only surived as you say when they moved north because they ate meat. I think more importantly we need to focus on the quality of our food and our fat in particular, eating olive oil, coconut oil or lard is not the same as eating hydrogenated vegetable oil or even many of the seed oils high in Omego 6 that go rancid so quickly. This is particularly important when it comes to our meat consumption. Eating meat raised in cafos is not the same as eating grass fed meat. Quantity is also an issue.

As I mentioned in my previous post I don't think there is one size fits all and that the blood type diet or similar high/med/low carb from Dr Mercola could be useful. As I said it works brilliantly for me. I have met quite a few vegetarians who have had to go back to eating meat (against their moral principles) due to health reasons, the majority were O blood group types. Even the Dalai Lama eats meat on the recommendation of his doctors (I would imagine that coming from Tibet he would be probably B blood group nomad type and would be used to eating meat and dairy).

In defense of saturated fat (me and my partner eat a lot of Iberico pork leaf lard as well as olive oil in salads) there is a very successful treatment of epilepsy based on eating large quanitites of animal fat (the film First Do No Harm with Merryl Streep (based on a true life story of a friend of hers) they use a number of 'actors' who were cured using this method, definately a film worth watching.

All in all it's about quality, quantity and getting the right bacteria in our guts. And most importantly we need to connect to our body wisdom to work out what's right for us.

Joseph Lofthouse wrote:
When I started paying attention, I noticed that some people in my family would serve wheat as a main dish (pasta), wheat as a side-dish (garlic bread), and wheat as the desert (bread pudding). Eventually, I simply had to start saying "I don't eat wheat, it makes me sick.", or "I don't eat wheat, it makes my muscles ache.", or "I don't eat wheat, it makes me hold water and become bloated.", or "I don't eat wheat, it makes me fat, and I really enjoy being fit and trim." When I stopped eating wheat, I didn't substitute a different grain. So basically, I'm not eating grains any more. That drastically reduced the amount of carbs that I am eating. I replaced them with fats. Some from my own body, some from my food, mostly coconut, olive, and butter. I still enjoy popcorn from time to time, or tacos, or a bowl of rice. They were never a big part of my life, so they continue to be minor foods for me. I lost 55 pounds effortlessly. I suppose that potatoes are my biggest source of carbs these days. I stopped eating refined sugar decades ago.

For my body, it seems like there is something going on with wheat besides the carbohydrates. I don't get bloated, or achy when I eat other types of carbs.

Todd Parr wrote:Studies have long proven that carbs are not essential for life, as opposed to proteins and fats. Some of the studies were based on a group of Eskimos that lived only on meat and fat, with fat being the preferred of the two. I don't know anyone that has switched to a paleo-type diet that didn't feel much better than when they included grains in their diet.

I would be very interested to see any study or research that says our basic physiology and anatomy are still those of a herbivore.

Lucy Gabzdyl wrote:I don't know which study you are referring to (atherosclerosis) but if it's the one in Nature Medicine by researchers from the Cleveland Clinic there are concerns about the conclusions.

Travis Schulert wrote:On the 1st of Jan, my wife and I switched from high carb low fat to low carb high fat.

Jan White wrote:

The real question I'm curious about is has anyone other than Travis Schulert actually tried a high carb/LOW FAT diet and compared it to low carb/high fat?