Quote (RewtheBrave @ Nov 15 2017 10:19am)
It's difficult to live long without access to modern medicine when you're fighting cave bears, mammoths, and giant elk.
I think excess consumption of saturated fat is bad, but so is overconsumption of refined simple sugars. Both are essentially empty calories. Eating too much of either will mess with your blood, clog your arteries, and ultimately kill you. The motivation for getting people to consume saturated fat and refined simple sugars is the same--it's cheap to produce and ship out to the world. Corn, soy, excess animal fat ... they're good money-makers and they're terrible for the environment.
No, actually, saturated fat =/= clogged arteries / plaque build up. That is general consensus now, even the outdated AHA is slowly coming around to that realization, it's just hard to implement/distribute information in a society structured as ours. I'm not saying eating 500g of saturated fat ed isn't bad for you; obviously everything needs to be taken in moderation. But what you're getting at is a very common misconception and I don't want to come off as rude here, but it's simply not correct.
Saturated fat + refined carbs/sugar is very bad, as seen with lots of fast food.
Increased fat consumption is much like the dietary cholesterol craze we saw with eggs when that was thought to be extremely unhealthy. Also sheds a little light on the misconceptions surrounding cholesterol. HDL/LDL isn't simply good/bad cholesterol, LDL technically isn't even cholesterol. Keto diets do show increases in HDL/LDL, but again, does not have a linear correlation so to speak with heart disease or plaque buildup etc.
I was listening to a guy named Chris Kesser iirc speaking, and he brought up the case of a hunter/gather population (chemani? spelling definitely off) in south america I believe, where they follow a predominantly keto based diet - high fats, mod protein, very low carb a.k.a what is naturally available - and one of the things shown in their population was a crazy difference in vascular health in comparison to those in western civilizations. Something like 80-90 year olds having the vascular health of 40-50 year olds, no plaque buildup at all, plus some other stuff I don't remember off the top of my head.
Again I just want to say, I am not trying to push keto diets onto anyone, as it may not be the optimal diet for everyone. But what I would like anyone reading this to pull from this is:
1) Do your own research before forming your opinion. (Read studies, listen/read Dr's/Scientists interpretations etc)
2) Give it an honest try if you think it could benefit you (Not 2 days, or even 2 weeks. It is different for everyone. It can take weeks to months for someone to become fat adaptive)
3) Most importantly, put some serious thought into what you consume. We need to approach health problems at the root rather than using a prescription to cover up symptoms
/rant
Sorry I just like this stuff, and I'd like to not have 100% of GDP go towards U.S. healthcare in 30 years.
/e that hunter/gather population studied was NOT in keto indefinitely, they still ate carbs, but not the extent to which it has become the main food source as in agricultural based societies
This post was edited by BigDaddyGurk on Nov 15 2017 11:56am