It Seems Logical To Me About Peat's Emphasis On Not Eating PUFA's Because

[amethyst]

.....back in the day, say before the industrial age was going full steam ahead, people did not make oils for everyday use to put in their food such as soybean, canola, sunflower etc etc. They didn't have the mass capability to do so.(not living in the industrial age) Maybe some folks would grind up sesame seeds,or something in their backyard, but these oils were not used on a wide scale basis. In the west, they basically used butter, lard, animal fats. Saturated fats. And in the east, they used coconut oil ( I assume)..ghee in India......and in the middle east, I guess they used olive oil for cooking- or just cooked animals in their own fat...at least that's what you read about from biblical times. And the olive oil is not as PUFA as all the other PUFA oils so they were healthier in that sense.

So, with that said, it just makes logical sense to me that we are supposed to eat, by and large, saturated fats and leave the other fats alone. Or, if you are going to eat, again, say sesame seeds, then you would eat the seeds whole, and not grind them up and use them as an oil, or fat for example. And people would just eat the nuts they picked from their trees-eating the nuts in their whole state, not as an oil, perhaps by passing the more detrimental effects of the oils. Back in the day.......now our systems are so screwed up from offering us frankenfood, no wonder even nuts and seeds are not optimal fat sources....Anyhoo..

I'm sure others have stated similar thoughts on this forum, but eating saturated fats and oil is eating the way we are supposed to eat, aiding and nourishing our natural biology instead of hindering it, rather than seeing our bodies decline from it's original healthy state.

And the fruit issue....(that could be a whole other topic) but we are supposed to eat fruit like Peat says. Fruit is good. Fruit is tasty. Fruit is nutritious (or is supposed to be before (big pharma, TPTB) thought they could improve upon it with geoengineering -not gonna visit that topic here) Anyway, for what it's worth, Peat's knowledge about biology and nutrition just makes logical sense to me and seems like a good way to eat........that's my two cents.........
Not getting the drinking the coke thing on a regular basis tho....

 

[Makrosky]

Oh yeah sure.

Like nobody in the past used to eat nuts, fish, pollen, chicken, eggs, avocados and a myriad of other PUFA foods...

 

[amethyst]

Oh yeah sure.

Like nobody in the past used to eat nuts, fish, pollen, chicken, eggs, avocados and a myriad of other PUFA foods...

That's not what I was implying with my thread comments Obviously the old timers (before the industrial age) did eat those things as well..... I was of the understanding that Peat endorses, or rather, does not poo poo eggs.....just says eat them in moderation

 

[James_001]

Oh yeah sure.

Like nobody in the past used to eat nuts, fish, pollen, chicken, eggs, avocados and a myriad of other PUFA foods...

In the tropics where humans evolved all of these foods would be low pufa, but I am sure you are already aware of this...

 

[dbh25]

Avoid the canola, cottonseed, corn oils, etc. (The PUFA oils)

 

[damngoodcoffee]

Avoid the canola, cottonseed, corn oils, etc. (The PUFA oils)

Thanks

 

[amethyst]

Thanks

 

[DaveFoster]

Raw nuts and seeds are mostly toxic and inedible, much like grains.

 

[ilovethesea]

Yes if you ever look at old cookbooks this is very true.
In our grandmothers and great grandmothers day there wasn't access to liquid (PUFA) oils. So the salad dressings and mayonnaise that everybody buys from the store now weren't even part of the diet. Everybody made their own version of "boiled dressing":
https://raypeatforum.com/community/...-cooked-salad-dressing-mayo-alternative.2351/ This type of recipe was VERY common across the US and Canada.

I think it was only in the 1960s that bottled commercial salad dressing became a thing, and now the marketers have convinced people to use those oils for everything. Our grandmothers would have thought the taste was disgusting!

 

[Travis]

I am sure when we all tropical monkeys we were eating extremely low PUFA foods. The first primate to break that rule was probably the one that decided to eat a fish!

Fire allowed us to migrate above the tropics where PUFA foods grow. There are studies on this, and there appears to be a trend! [Tables 4-6]: Effects of phylogeny and climate on seed oil fatty acid composition across 747 plant species in China

Data on seed oil fatty acid composition (FAC) were compiled from the literature... The total dataset represented 207 sites from a wide range of ecosystems across China (Fig. 1) and contained 1183 species-at-site combinations consisting of 747 species or varieties from 95 families...

There is a trend of increasing seed unsaturation with latitude [Tables 4-6]. They only have data on 20⁰N to 45⁰N, but one might reasonably expect this trend to continue all the way down to the equator.

At high latitudes, seeds with higher proportions of unsaturated fatty acids in their oils have a competitive advantage because they can germinate earlier and grow more rapidly at low temperatures even though they store less total energy than seeds with a higher proportion of saturated fatty acids. Seeds that germinate earlier and grow more rapidly should have a competitive advantage. At higher germination temperatures, seeds with higher proportions of saturated fatty acids will be selectively favored because their oils will provide more energy, without a penalty in the rate of energy acquisition.

Coconut is the premier tropical saturated-fat seed. Macadamias come in second I think.

 

[Atalanta]

So where does milk fit in?
Did our tropical African ancestors drink the amount of milk that Peat recommends?
With the exception of the Masai, most African cultures do not drink milk. The Masai get their milk from domesticated animals.
So shouldn't we avoid milk since our tropical ancestors did not drink it(before domesticating animals, they would have to get milk from wild animals).

Why do we have salivary and pancreatic amylase if starch is so bad for us?
What about the people whose ancestors left the tropics thousands of years ago and adapted to colder climates?

How far back are we supposed to go with regard to using ancestry to decide what is best to eat?
If we go back far enough, our ancestors were simple bacteria.

We have evolved beyond fruit eating. We learned to cook starches. That is what makes us different from our simian cousins.
If fruit is such great food, why aren't our chimp and gorilla cousins discussing diet on the internet?
Why are they still living naked in the trees and making weird noises while we live in shelters that protect us from the elements, wear nice clothing and speak hundreds of languages?

 

[schultz]

So where does milk fit in?
Did our tropical African ancestors drink the amount of milk that Peat recommends?
With the exception of the Masai, most African cultures do not drink milk. The Masai get their milk from domesticated animals.
So shouldn't we avoid milk since our tropical ancestors did not drink it(before domesticating animals, they would have to get milk from wild animals).

Every human who ever lived drinks milk, at least part of their life. As far as differences between all foods goes, human milk and cows or goats milk are very similar.

 

[amethyst]

Thanks for

Yes if you ever look at old cookbooks this is very true.
In our grandmothers and great grandmothers day there wasn't access to liquid (PUFA) oils. So the salad dressings and mayonnaise that everybody buys from the store now weren't even part of the diet. Everybody made their own version of "boiled dressing":
https://raypeatforum.com/community/...-cooked-salad-dressing-mayo-alternative.2351/ This type of recipe was VERY common across the US and Canada.

I think it was only in the 1960s that bottled commercial salad dressing became a thing, and now the marketers have convinced people to use those oils for everything. Our grandmothers would have thought the taste was disgusting!

Thanks for that! I'm bookmarking that recipe :)

 

[amethyst]

Every human who ever lived drinks milk, at least part of their life. As far as differences between all foods goes, human milk and cows or goats milk are very similar.

Aside from human milk, it would be interesting to see how long humans have been drinking milk from other animals...I'm guessing a long long time. Although humans haven't been pasteurizing milk until recently.

 

[johnwester130]

Coconut is technically a nut/seed though.

So is the coffee seed.

 

[tobieagle]

You can eat raw coconuts without problems.

If you eat raw, undried walnuts or hazelnuts, you get sick.

 

[Jennifer]

Coconut is technically a nut/seed though.

So is the coffee seed.

Actually, coconut is a drupe (a fruit).

Is a coconut a fruit, nut or seed? (Everyday Mysteries: Fun Science Facts from the Library of Congress)

 

[chrismeyers]

This is obviously true to anyone with a whit of common sense. Indeed even upto the start of the 20th century annual consumption of seed and nut oils was minimal. It wasnt just 'from when we were hanging on trees' suddenly to now. It is a direct result of the all of the garbage that came from the industrial revolution. Mass production of low quality non traditional foods that were able to be replicated, mass pollution on a large scale with the advent of fossil fuel based energy and transportation, innumerable chemicals and toxic substances sent into the air and water. That is quite the score for a little under 100 years. It has been quite the disaster which we are just now attempting to clean up in all aspects. On the food front, that means, yes, exploring what traditional diets used to be for thousands upon thousands of years until 1900. Oh and by the way, my ancestors have been drinking cows milk for at least a thousand years.

 

[amethyst]

This is obviously true to anyone with a whit of common sense. Indeed even upto the start of the 20th century annual consumption of seed and nut oils was minimal. It wasnt just 'from when we were hanging on trees' suddenly to now. It is a direct result of the all of the garbage that came from the industrial revolution. Mass production of low quality non traditional foods that were able to be replicated, mass pollution on a large scale with the advent of fossil fuel based energy and transportation, innumerable chemicals and toxic substances sent into the air and water. That is quite the score for a little under 100 years. It has been quite the disaster which we are just now attempting to clean up in all aspects. On the food front, that means, yes, exploring what traditional diets used to be for thousands upon thousands of years until 1900. Oh and by the way, my ancestors have been drinking cows milk for at least a thousand years.

I quite agree Would be interesting to research what the ancestors of different cultures ate. I know Weston Price did that but I would be interested in other cultures as well.

 

[ecstatichamster]

also most of those high PUFA foods such as nuts and avocado are highly seasonal...and not available most of the year. Plus, they do have some anti oxidants in them.

We know that vegetables all have PUFAs in them to some extent. I doubt whether if we are born and grow up with unprocessed non purified oils, we would have any trouble wih the occasional PUFA found in a few nuts etc.

But we didn't grow up that way.

Also, it is possible that PUFA deprivation is a strategy for a longer healthier life, just as methionine depletion seems to be.