I enjoy an occasional steak but if the goal is to improve diet of masses, it’s not the food I’d put at the center.
No. The scientific evidence of a carnivore diet reducing inflammation is pretty weak. The scientific evidence of a vegan diet reducing inflammation is way stronger.
As to the calories, yes calories count, but the fact that it is calorie dense doesn't necessarily mean you should avoid it so much as be aware if you are mixing sources and having excessive meals. I know a lot of people on carnivore diets for inflammatory and diabetic control and the total calorie intake is less of an issue in those cases. Even with a pound of steak and a dozen eggs a day, weight loss is still happening for overweight diabetics on carnivore diets.
Just meat is very sating and impossible for most people to overeat in practice... at least from my own experience and exposure. The relative mono diet also helps with this.
Yeah I mean if you're going to maximize your impact just go all out right. Eating beef, particularly in the US, is one of the worst actions you can take environmentally speaking.
More people need to understand how incredibly destructive cattle ranching has been around the world. In the US in particular pretty much all BLM and Forest Service land that isn't protected as wilderness or permitted for extraction (oil/forestry/etc) is used for ranching. That is an enormous area that has literally been turned to cow shit. Even where the cattle don't eat all vegetation in sight they trample habitat and entirely change the ecology of the area.
Source: I spent three years traveling around the western US from 2019-2022 and camped almost exclusively on public lands during that time. The number of beautiful places I've seen completely covered in cow shit is utterly appalling. Why should we let agribusiness use OUR land this way? It is truly such a waste.
In case you're not familiar with this allergy, it doesn't behave like other food allergies: instead of getting instant symptoms, it hits you hours later, making it hard to figure out why you suddenly have hives---unless you already know about alpha gal.
Or he should just lobby to make high quality, lean, grass-fed steaks cheaper so everyone who wants to consume them can consume them. It's not currently cheap.
(there is an argument for why this shouldn't apply to grass-fed meat but that is an extremely small minority of meat sold)
We know saturated fat increases LDL, we know LDL contributes to CVD. This is still an area of active research and there are small populations of people that don't accept the consensus but it is still very much best-practice keep your LDL low.
Saturated fats are good because they're more stable than poly-unsaturated fats for instance.
If you do consume a seed oil (which you really shouldn't -- there's no benefit), you should get a cold-pressed one. But that would be more expensive, so if you're paying more you might as well just get something good like avacado oil or coconut oil.
In fact, from the very same site, here's another article saying it's not: https://health.clevelandclinic.org/saturated-fats-finding-a-...
Saturated fat is OK in moderate amounts, but if you eat too much, it drives up your cholesterol because your body converts saturated fat into cholesterol[1][2].
The issue I have with this new food pyramid is the guidance ignores the danger of saturated fat. It lists "meats" and "full-fat dairy" among sources of "healthy fats", and that's just not true. In the picture that shows sources of protein/fat, 11 out of 13 of the items are animal-based fats. With a giant ribeye steak, cheese, butter, and whole milk specifically (not just milk), they're simply not giving an accurate picture of healthy fat sources.
I personally don't think seed oils are bad, but even if they were, it does not follow that saturated fat is good. The evidence shows otherwise, for one thing, plus it's not like seed oils and saturated fat are the only two kinds of fat. There are plenty of unsaturated fats which aren't seed oils.
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[1] https://medlineplus.gov/ency/patientinstructions/000838.htm
[2] https://www.heart.org/en/healthy-living/healthy-eating/eat-s...
The point the Cleveland Clinic page makes is that seed oils tend to be what's used in ultra-processed foods, and those are bad for you. So if you avoid seed oils, you wind up avoiding the bad things as a second order effect.
Aside from that it's just hand-wavey "they use chemicals to make it! It doesn't have nutrients beyond the fat!". There's nothing to indicate that using sunflower or peanut oil is any worse for you than using walnut oil.
The connection between omega-6 fats and inflammation is a whole lot more tenuous than the link between ultra-processed foods and inflammation.
Jury is still out on this one.
And I think lumping all seed oils into one category isn't helping. Maybe canola oil is OK and sesame oil is not. Or vice versa.
What is the top thing shown on the plate here?
