Cordain's New Cookbook

Wild animals don't have the intra-muscular fat -- the so-called "marbling" effect -- that you see in grain-fed, factory-farmed animals. Their muscles are lean, and thus the recommendation to eat lean meat. Yes, wild arctic animals like seal, polar bear and caribou have extra fat stores, but it's presence in those cases doesn't mean that it's good for you. Also note that grain-fed animal fat is different from wild animal fat and likely has a different effect on your body.

As for coconut oil, despite all of the anecdotes, researchers routinely use it to induce atherosclerosis in mice.

http://www.google.com/search?q=LDL+mice+coconut+oil

One can argue that building up arterial plaques in itself does not cause heart attacks, but you're taking a big gamble if you ignore the vast body of research that associates saturated fat consumption to heart disease. Moderation, as with all things, is prudent.

Cordain did not pull the recommendation to eat only lean meats out of his arse. He measured the actual fat content in the carcasses of African animals. He even took into account that hunter gatherers preferred to kill the fattest animals. It's all in his latest published article. The Innuit lived in the Arctic, our Palaeolithic ancestors did not. In the new edition of the Paleo Diet, he also says that the Innuit had atherosclerotic plaques, even though they were asymptomatic. He doesn't think saturated fat is going to kill you, but neither should you eat large amounts of it. People used to be paranoid about eating any amount of saturated fat, but now it's just the opposite, the more you get, the better. Why does it always have to be so extreme?

It seems that, if someone were eating Cordain's style of paleo, their carbohydrate intake would have to be fairly substantial to provide a fuel source to make up for lack of fat. We don't run on protein.
I don't do "low" carb either (at least not most of the time) but, due to a lower carb intake (like, well below 150 gms/day, which is still plenty!) I'm fairly keto-adapted. If I were to eat Cordain's way, I'd be hungry all the time!

speaking of cookbooks (a stretch, i know) - have you looked at Krasner's "Good Meat"? Thoughts?

http://amzn.to/igE0Z0

The standard western diet is the cause of many woes. Lowcarb diets are a common response to the problems caused. But eating truly paleo should be more than eating entire cows. Like wild animals the human animal never ate enough to become heavy. Saturated fats may have been prized because there was so little of it found in prey. Plus the human animal had to work hard to catch, kill and cook the animal.

A better model for living paleo might be to never eat enough to be full, occasionally go without food entirely and spend as much time as possible engaged in physical endeavors.

Fat-phobia is especially ludicrous when you understand that most of the vitamins and nutrients are stored in the animals fat...and some of those vitamins are necessary for the human body to utilize to digest and metabolize protein.

Eating a strict, low-fat diet high in protein will actually deplete your stores of vitamins. An article at the WAPF refers to the case of N. American Indians who suffered "rabbit-starvation."

What about saturated fat?

In fact, the one warning we could give you about meat is not to eat it lean. In spite of claims to the contrary, the diet of the cave man was not one of lean meat. Paleolithic man always ate his meat with fat.

Vilhjalmur Stefansson, who spent many years living with the Eskimos and Indians of Northern Canada, reports that wild male ruminants like elk and caribou carry a large slab of back fat, weighing as much as 40 to 50 pounds. The Indians and Eskimo hunted older male animals preferentially because they wanted this backslab fat, as well as the highly saturated fat found around the kidneys. Other groups used blubber from sea mammals like seal and walrus.

"The groups that depend on the blubber animals are the most fortunate in the hunting way of life," wrote Stefansson, "for they never suffer from fat-hunger. This trouble is worst, so far as North America is concerned, among those forest Indians who depend at times on rabbits, the leanest animal in the North, and who develop the extreme fat-hunger known as rabbit-starvation. Rabbit eaters, if they have no fat from another source—beaver, moose, fish—will develop diarrhea in about a week, with headache, lassitude, a vague discomfort. If there are enough rabbits, the people eat till their stomachs are distended; but no matter how much they eat they feel unsatisfied. Some think a man will die sooner if he eats continually of fat-free meat than if he eats nothing, but this is a belief on which sufficient evidence for a decision has not been gathered in the north. Deaths from rabbit-starvation, or from the eating of other skinny meat, are rare; for everyone understands the principle, and any possible preventive steps are naturally taken."29

Normally, according to Stefansson, the diet consisted of dried or cured meat "eaten with fat," namely the highly saturated cavity and back slab fat that could be easily separated from the animal. Another Arctic explorer, Hugh Brody, reports that Eskimos ate raw liver mixed with small pieces of fat and that strips of dried or smoked meat were "spread with fat or lard."30 Pemmican, a highly concentrated travel food, was a mixture of lean dried buffalo meat and highly saturated buffalo fat. (Buffalo fat, by the way, is more saturated than beef fat.) Less than two pounds of pemmican per day could sustain a man doing hard physical labor. The ratio of fat to protein in pemmican was 80% to 20%. As lean meat from game animals was often given to the dogs, there is no reason to suppose that everyday fare did not have the same proportions: 80% fat (mostly highly saturated fat) to 20% protein—in a population in which heart disease and cancer were nonexistent.

The beef industry has been forced to be apologetic about its product because it's very difficult to get the fat out of beef. You can reduce the fat content by using hormones, but you end up with a product that is tough and tastes terrible, not to mention full of hormones. Beef producers need to recognize that the fat is the most important part of the beef, rich in components that promote good health and that help you utilize the nutrients in all the other parts of the beef. In addition to vitamins A and D, fat contributes many important fatty acids, including palmitoleic acid, an antimicrobial fat that protects us against pathogens in the gut. If you want to be sure that you don't get foodborne illness from your hamburger, use full fat ground beef.

Fat also provides a substance called conjugated linoleic acid or CLA, at least it does if the animals have been on green grass.31 CLA is a substance that protects us against cancer and that promotes weight loss—that's right, fat can make you thin, if it's the right kind of fat.

And the right kind of fat is also saturated fat which, in spite of what we've been told, plays many important roles in the body chemistry. The scientific literature delineates a number of vital roles for dietary saturated fats—they enhance the immune system,32 are necessary for healthy bones,33 provide energy and structural integrity to the cells,34 protect the liver35 and enhance the body's use of essential fatty acids.36 Stearic acid and palmitic acid, found in beef tallow and butter, are the preferred foods for the heart.37 As saturated fats are stable, they do not become rancid easily, do not call upon the body's reserves of antioxidants, do not initiate cancer, do not irritate the artery walls.

In fact saturated beef fat is one of the most useful fats in the culinary repertoire. As it is very stable and doesn't go rancid when heated to high temperatures, it's perfect for frying. While we don't recommend a lot of fried foods, we know that our children and grandchildren are going to eat them. Fast food outlets used to fry their potatoes in healthy stable beef tallow. They were crisp, tasted delicious and provided many important nutrients. But the phony cholesterol issue has forced these outlets to switch to partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, which is known to cause a host of chronic diseases including cancer, heart disease, bone problems, infertility and autoimmune disease.38

Thank you for addressing this. I noticed this 'fear of fat' trend when reading over Nell Stephenson's website. When I saw that she was coauthoring the book, I suspected that there would be more of this chicken breast in olive oil nonsense.

I adore Robb Wolf, but recommending his podcasts and book to people has been a bit tricky. I have had a handful of people come back to me questioning his "eat lean meats and good fats" line. Why "lean meats"? Why not say that people should consume good fats from healthy meat? I can understand eating lean meat if someone is eating the crap from the grocery store, but then why not just tell people to eat all the good stuff, including organs and fat, from healthy, pastured animals instead of assuming that people won't go to the effort of sourcing good food? Or am I missing something altogether?

There's this nagging little worry in the minds of some people in this paleo land about consuming fat. It's absurd. I was hoping Dr. Cordain would have updated his previous books with a more generous stance on the consumption of the whole animal. I second your sigh.

I agree with you sentiments on olive oil. A good virgin should not be wasted by cooking it.

BTW, I love the new CAPTCHA - LOLz

Blasphemy!

And don't feel guilty about eating lean meat??? Have the dietary poles flipped again while I wasn't looking?

Wild animals in times of plenty have plenty of fat, and hunter-gatherers have the sense to cherish it when they can get it. As do I.

Whatever we don't keep on the meat we bring home, we render down and save for cooking later. I'm pretty sure our ancestors would approve.