Peat Wrong About EFA Deficiency, Omega 3s

[schultz]

In 2017 I was on extremely low PUFA for over a year ~1 gram per day ( skim milk, hydrogenated coconut or mct oil, orange juice, and small amounts of liver ) then for the tail end of it for multiple months I switched from orange juice to honey and was getting no more than about 300mg of total pufa per day. I never had skin issues.

Also William R. Brown did a similar low PUFA diet for 6 months and improved multiple health markers. They never mentioned him having any adverse effects from the diet that I can remember.

Couple more days on that diet and you'd have broken out in eczema I'm sure.........


A thread like this pops up once every 6 months or so. We've discussed this dozens of times.

 

[DANIEL]

I 100% believe he's right that all the PUFA vegetable oils are absolute ***t for the human body.
Fresh fish(Not the rancid oils sold) seems to make me feel good and I don't try to avoid it these days.

Yes, I avoid vegetable oils like the devil. I think fresh fish is beneficial, which is why I have reintroduced it to my diet.

He never said that PUFAs don't seem to help for skin issues like eczema. He said that even though they might seem to help, the real cause of the skin issue is something else, and the PUFA is working by just shutting off the immune system. Eczema is caused by inflammation, and shutting off the immune system lowers inflammation, but obviously that cannot be the long-term solution.

This has been a tricky issue for me to solve. What is a good long-term solution for the eczema when I already eat a clean diet and the eczema was only present on my elbows and behind my knees? My face, chest, etc. have always had smooth, healthy skin.

I’m not convinced eating PUFAs is the solution to high serotonin issues.

It would be reductionist to limit seafood benefits to just omega 3s. That’s car salesmen tactics applied to fancy softgels.

Yeah, there are likely a bunch of beneficial compounds in fish that haven't been discovered yet.

Eczema = high serotonin? What else are signs of high serotonin? I would search it up but Google's gonna tell me how good it is.

In 2017 I was on extremely low PUFA for over a year ~1 gram per day ( skim milk, hydrogenated coconut or mct oil, orange juice, and small amounts of liver ) then for the tail end of it for multiple months I switched from orange juice to honey and was getting no more than about 300mg of total pufa per day. I never had skin issues.

Also William R. Brown did a similar low PUFA diet for 6 months and improved multiple health markers. They never mentioned him having any adverse effects from the diet that I can remember.

OK so what do you think causes skin issues like eczema?

Well, at the very least, this is a YMMV thing. I don't eat any fish (though I usually do oysters every week or two), and I never take fish oil (at least since my paleo days, something like 7 years ago).

My skin is looking the best it has in my adult life, and the formerly rough skin on my elbows is the smoothest it's ever been, especially over the past 6 months. Inclined bed therapy improved it quite a bit. Doing the no starch diet also helped quite a bit.

I am also taking other things that should improve skin (including lots of glycine and gelatin, progesterone, cyproheptadine), but notice the improvement in elbows before that.

When I did take fish oil back in the day, I didn't notice any improvement in skin.

Also, I don't think you should go around creating threads calling "Peat Wrong" without citing what he says, and simply using the anecdotal evidence of yourself as the only evidence.

The Great Fish Oil Experiment

"In experiments that last just a few weeks or months, there may not be time for cancers to develop, and on that time scale, the immunosuppressive and antiinflammatory effects of oxidized fish oil might seem beneficial. "

Hmmm, you said "a week ago," so that certainly falls within the time frame Peat was speaking about.

Before I discovered Peat I was eating a practically identical diet, just taking fish oil and eating fish once or twice a week.

And the title was clickbait just to get some input on this issue.

Peat's article, The Great Fish Oil Experiment, cites studies that were apparently done in vitro..?

Plus there are tons of studies that also show benefits to Omega 3. And the fact that it improved my annoying skin issues makes me wonder who I should believe.

This doctor, Rhonda Patrick, says the following:

What do you think?

This is not a good look, you're basically taking a dump on everyone here from your pedestal. There is a mountain of evidence backing Ray's position on polyunsaturated fats. Anything anti-inflammatory will improve your skin, and as @Andman mentioned, these omega-3 fatty acids do have an initial anti-inflammatory effect.

Nah, I'm not taking a dump on everyone here from a pedestal. I actually have health issues on a diet fully applying Peat's principles, so admitting that would not be a smart way to put myself on a pedestal. There is also a mountain of evidence saying that EFA are necessary for proper skin function. It just depends on what lens you view all of the studies through, you could dispute both sides with studies. Although there are many people saying that the 'evidence' Peat supplied is irrelevant because the studies were done in vitro & on rats. Apparently, there are no human studies that Peat cited..?

I got exactly the same symptoms as yours after disposing of pufa ... but I was able to change it without going back to consuming pufa. I no longer remember how because I have been making changes in diet and supplements for two years every day. Anyway, there is something vital in Pufa that needs to be completed in another way probably. That's my feeling. But there is no doubt that I have identified many health problems that have arisen following Pufa and disappeared as they were after Pufa was removed

Interesting. If you eventually remember what fixed it, I'd love to know!

Up until very recently almost nobody in continental europe was eating oily cold water fish on a regular basis.
Where did they get their precious omega 3 fish oils from?
We had this topic dozens of times during the years, but you will not convince anybody who made their own positive experiences by drastically reducing PUFAs (to pre 1950s levels) in their diets.

But if you are personally doing better on high PUFA, you can consider yourself lucky.
You can now shop at the grocery store again without discarding 90%+ of processed foods.

I wouldn't even consider my diet high PUFA. Eating fish a few times per week and taking fish oil every day is high PUFA? I haven't used vegetable oils for 2 years (I'm 17 so if the PUFAs accumulate this would probably make a huge difference) everything I eat is cooked with coconut oil, I eat whole foods, primarily organic, lots of OJ and milk.

The only reason I'm posting on here because I'd like to discover what the root cause is, but actually I'm starting to think Peat is wrong about EFA deficiency. He says b6 needs are upped by PUFA depletion and lead to skin issues like eczema. But many people oppose this view, and from my own experience, b6 did nothing, like I said.

I also eat fish occasionlly.

Other good supps to maybe control eczema are policosanol, frankincense extracts (boswellia acids and triterpenes), iodine and taurine. All 4 are also useful in keeping PUFAs effect in check. Taurine and iodin are already present in fish in relatively hgh amounts as you might know

Thanks. I also tried a selenium and iodine supplement, which I didn't mention in the post, it did nothing for my skin. I'll look into the other supps, but I've been leaning towards minimizing my supplement use lately so I'm probably gonna stick to whole foods for the most part.

I've avoided PUFA for years and have never developed eczema. I would bet most people on this forum also don't have eczema.

It's probably something specific to you. Hope you can figure it out so you can start avoiding PUFA again.

Interesting. Maybe it's something genetic, idk. But there are other anecdotes on Reddit and other platforms of people curing their eczema with fish or n-3 supplementation.

I'll keep looking into it.

glad youre feeling better, but pufa being beneficial/anti-inflammatory in the short term is nothing new really

have you tried aspirin, lidocaine, preg, prog, red light etc. for your issue?

Yes, I've tried 325 mg aspirin but it did nothing for my skin. I have a bulb from red light man in my room that also didn't help.

The rest I haven't tried but I'm not really interested in going down the hormonal route.

This return to PUFA was like a last hope, everything else did nothing really.

 

[DANIEL]

Couple more days on that diet and you'd have broken out in eczema I'm sure.........


A thread like this pops up once every 6 months or so. We've discussed this dozens of times.

Yes you guys have, I saw them before posting this. All of the recommendations in those threads did not help except adding fish back in my diet and taking a n-3 supplement.

The increased metabolism from PUFA depletion/decrease increasing nutrient requirement for B vitamins and others is unfounded in my experience. But if you have some advice, lmk.

Skin problems are directly linked to endotoxin. The things Andman listed should be helpful but the priority should be reducing endotoxin formation in the first place. Plenty of options available to improve transit time and bowel clearance. The forum member Hans recently wrote an article which may be of interest.

What's a good way to reduce endotoxin, then? I have tried most of the supplements recommended for this skin issue

It's interesting because no other skin on my body has the same issue of dry, scaly texture (apparently a clear-cut sign of efa deficiency) and itchiness besides my knees/elbows/side of quads

Whats your regular diet?

breakfast: eggs, hashbrowns/sliced potatoes, orange juice, tomatoes, cucumbers, ground turkey or bacon. sourdough bread toast with butter

snacks: blueberries, bananas, grapes

lunch: sandwich, salad, or protein shake

dinner: white rice or pasta with tomato sauce, broccoli, carrots, grass-fed whole milk, steak/chicken

That's pretty much what I eat, although I most likely missed a few vegetables or fruits

 

[DANIEL]

If it's being caused by endotoxin do you guys think that a spore-based probiotic could help?

If so, any recommendations for a good brand?

I'd much rather use that and drop the fish oil if it helps

 

[tankasnowgod]

Before I discovered Peat I was eating a practically identical diet, just taking fish oil and eating fish once or twice a week.

And the title was clickbait just to get some input on this issue.

Peat's article, The Great Fish Oil Experiment, cites studies that were apparently done in vitro..?

Plus there are tons of studies that also show benefits to Omega 3. And the fact that it improved my annoying skin issues makes me wonder who I should believe.

This doctor, Rhonda Patrick, says the following: View attachment 20367

What do you think?

Well, first, I think you should stop writing clickbait titles.

Practically identical diet? So you didn't put any of this other suggestions into practice?

Second, I will probably never take fish oil again. Even in capsules, it's pretty disgusting. The only real benefits seem to be the anti-inflammatory ones, when I've gone back and perused the old paleo sources that convinced me to take it in the first place. These days, I would go for aspirin, geltain, glycine, and proline for substances that anti-inflammatory. And I would use saturated fats, especially stearic acid, to try and displace all PUFA. Omega 3s don't seem to have any benefit that you can't get from safer substances, like the ones I mentioned.

As for the "tons of studies" you mentioned.......... how many lasted longer than a few months? Did you see the quote from Peat I referenced? Also, how many of those studies used Cod Liver Oil, where the benefits could have been coming from Vitamin A and/or D? And Rhonda Patrick's tweet does nothing to address either of those issues.

And yeah, Peat does cite some in vitro experiments. And some Animal Ones. And some Human ones. He lists them at the bottom of the article, you can check them and read them yourself.

I think "Fish Oil" is another great example of an industrial waste product that was re-branded as a health food to feed to humans. Soy, of course, holding down the top spot on that list. If you want to take it, no one is stopping you.

 

[DANIEL]

Well, first, I think you should stop writing clickbait titles.

Practically identical diet? So you didn't put any of this other suggestions into practice?

Second, I will probably never take fish oil again. Even in capsules, it's pretty disgusting. The only real benefits seem to be the anti-inflammatory ones, when I've gone back and perused the old paleo sources that convinced me to take it in the first place. These days, I would go for aspirin, geltain, glycine, and proline for substances that anti-inflammatory. And I would use saturated fats, especially stearic acid, to try and displace all PUFA. Omega 3s don't seem to have any benefit that you can't get from safer substances, like the ones I mentioned.

As for the "tons of studies" you mentioned.......... how many lasted longer than a few months? Did you see the quote from Peat I referenced? Also, how many of those studies used Cod Liver Oil, where the benefits could have been coming from Vitamin A and/or D? And Rhonda Patrick's tweet does nothing to address either of those issues.

And yeah, Peat does cite some in vitro experiments. And some Animal Ones. And some Human ones. He lists them at the bottom of the article, you can check them and read them yourself.

I think "Fish Oil" is another great example of an industrial waste product that was re-branded as a health food to feed to humans. Soy, of course, holding down the top spot on that list. If you want to take it, no one is stopping you.

Lmao. The title did its job. I'm not here to debate whether fish oil is good or not, I'm just interested in what can cure my skin issues. The hostility is unnecessary, I know that it's a waste product and I'm not anti-peat like I said in the OP.

"practically identical diet" was said because I was eating a peat-approved diet prior to discovering his work, except for eating salmon a few times per week

If you have some thoughts on what could be causing the skin issues, do tell.

The "EFA deficiency symptoms are a sign of b6 deficiency" never held up for myself or a few others on this forum, I went through a ton of threads before posting this.

 

[tankasnowgod]

Lmao. The title did its job. I'm not here to debate whether fish oil is good or not, I'm just interested in what can cure my skin issues. The hostility is unnecessary, I know that it's a waste product and I'm not anti-peat like I said in the OP.

"practically identical diet" was said because I was eating a peat-approved diet prior to discovering his work, except for eating salmon a few times per week

If you have some thoughts on what could be causing the skin issues, do tell.

The "EFA deficiency symptoms are a sign of b6 deficiency" never held up for myself or a few others on this forum, I went through a ton of threads before posting this.

What hostility? I re-read what I wrote, and I don't think anything I said was hostile. You asked "What do I think?" and what I wrote is pretty much what I think.

I highly doubt you have so called "EFA deficiency." You said you are eating eggs, bacon, whole milk, steak and chicken. I'm sure you are at least averaging a few grams a day with that. If you look at the Burr studies, they used a fat free diet to induce that state. To induce it in a human (William Brown), he ate basically fat free diet for six months to achieve that state (mostly skim milk and sugar flavored water). If you ate a fair amount of the high PUFA oils when growing up (like most of us probably did), it would take some effort to get fully depleted.

I don't necessarily know what's causing your eczema, but I would look into things like red light, topical niacinamide, topical urea, and Vitamin E as ways to improve it, along with some of the other things I mentioned above. If fish oil works, I would try more gelatin or glycine especially.

 

[CLASH]

@DANIΣL
In my experience eczema is usually caused by some food irritating the intestine. For some reason dried pineapple gives me eczema whereas fresh pineapple and pineapple juice dont. A girl I dated in past got eczema from beans and brown rice. My baby sister gets it from cows milk but not goats milk.

As far as fish oil goes, eating whole seafood is likely helpful. I personally avoid the fattiest types, so I stick to skipjack Tuna, shellfish, crab, shrimp, lobster, squid, cod, sole, and very rarely some sardines when my pops makes them. I eat seafood almost everyday. Personally I avoid fish oil supplements. At the minimum I think quality can be an issue, and as far as direct benefits of Omega 3 fatty acids, the benefits of them are still murky in the research, so I tend to err on the side of caution. I think the most sound strategy is to avoid omega 6 like the plague, use mostly saturated and monounsaturated fat sources like butter, tallow, coconut oil, cocoa butter, macadamia nut oil etc. and eat whole seafood products which come with a whole host of benefits beyond the controversial Omega 3s (to be clear I'm not a fan of Omega 3's so I have my bias, but I am a fan of seafood despite the Omega 3's)

 

[tankasnowgod]

breakfast: eggs, hashbrowns/sliced potatoes, orange juice, tomatoes, cucumbers, ground turkey or bacon. sourdough bread toast with butter

snacks: blueberries, bananas, grapes

lunch: sandwich, salad, or protein shake

dinner: white rice or pasta with tomato sauce, broccoli, carrots, grass-fed whole milk, steak/chicken

That's pretty much what I eat, although I most likely missed a few vegetables or fruits

That's actually quite a bit of starch, and a fair amount of wheat to boot. Not exactly a Peat inspired diet.

As CLASH suggested, a lot of those foods could be irritating your intestine. With the bread and pasta, not just from the gluten, but from fortified iron. Dropping all starches for few weeks would probably be a worthy experiment, or at least dropping the wheat products.

 

[Ritchie]

And yeah, Peat does cite some in vitro experiments. And some Animal Ones. And some Human ones. He lists them at the bottom of the article, you can check them and read them yourself.

I have to say this is one of the biggest issues with Peat's body of work and you are playing it down here. I've read him extensively and followed up looking at his cited studies. Scientifically speaking he bases way more than one should on in-vitro studies and/or animal (such as rat) studies. There are examples where he has pre-emptively made massive sweeping confident conclusions in human health and dietary recommendations based on said studies without looking into how they translate to humans in a controlled scientific manner. This is a dangerous approach for it can lead down rabbit holes of false paths based on unfounded conclusions. Not true for all his positions but certainly for some. The weight of evidence must be considered, and of course well conducted human randomised control trials are always going to be at the top of that scale, in-vitro at the very bottom and animal studies very low to the bottom as well - they do however inspire further exploration in the human context and can lead to great scientific conclusions.

Peat has many jewels of wisdom, much of which is grounded in solid science conducted on humans. However I think the above mentioned criticisms have created issues with certain aspects of his body of work, leading to some holes and flaws. Simply due to the fact that some of his conclusions haven't been fully justified scientifically. In other words they may or may not be correct, still more work to do and it becomes more of an issue for his theories when there is a lot of solid science pointing in the opposite direction. And of course we've seen that play out in real time on this forum for years, for people who follow Peat to a tee and run into many many health issues. People have dropped off like flies from "Peating" over the years.

 

[ursidae]

You could eat roe instead of taking fish oil. It’s tasty on a slice of sourdough bread and lower in heavy metals than mature fish. If there’s any merit to the omega 6: omega 3 ratio, then your fish consumption is evening out the daily bacon and egg breakfast

 

[DANIEL]

@DANIΣL
In my experience eczema is usually caused by some food irritating the intestine. For some reason dried pineapple gives me eczema whereas fresh pineapple and pineapple juice dont. A girl I dated in past got eczema from beans and brown rice. My baby sister gets it from cows milk but not goats milk.

As far as fish oil goes, eating whole seafood is likely helpful. I personally avoid the fattiest types, so I stick to skipjack Tuna, shellfish, crab, shrimp, lobster, squid, cod, sole, and very rarely some sardines when my pops makes them. I eat seafood almost everyday. Personally I avoid fish oil supplements. At the minimum I think quality can be an issue, and as far as direct benefits of Omega 3 fatty acids, the benefits of them are still murky in the research, so I tend to err on the side of caution. I think the most sound strategy is to avoid omega 6 like the plague, use mostly saturated and monounsaturated fat sources like butter, tallow, coconut oil, cocoa butter, macadamia nut oil etc. and eat whole seafood products which come with a whole host of benefits beyond the controversial Omega 3s (to be clear I'm not a fan of Omega 3's so I have my bias, but I am a fan of seafood despite the Omega 3's)

Thank you, great advice. I'm gonna drop the fish oil and just continue to eat fish.

Seems like the general consensus is that it's being caused by poor gut health, which is interesting.

Do you think spore-based probiotics could help in this regard for endotoxin (not sure about the stance on them in this community)

I researched the best one and found this one called Just Thrive, maybe I should try it?

What hostility? I re-read what I wrote, and I don't think anything I said was hostile. You asked "What do I think?" and what I wrote is pretty much what I think.

I highly doubt you have so called "EFA deficiency." You said you are eating eggs, bacon, whole milk, steak and chicken. I'm sure you are at least averaging a few grams a day with that. If you look at the Burr studies, they used a fat free diet to induce that state. To induce it in a human (William Brown), he ate basically fat free diet for six months to achieve that state (mostly skim milk and sugar flavored water). If you ate a fair amount of the high PUFA oils when growing up (like most of us probably did), it would take some effort to get fully depleted.

I don't necessarily know what's causing your eczema, but I would look into things like red light, topical niacinamide, topical urea, and Vitamin E as ways to improve it, along with some of the other things I mentioned above. If fish oil works, I would try more gelatin or glycine especially.

Yeah it's probably not EFA deficiency, the fish oil probably improved it temporarily from its immunosuppressive effect. Fixing my gut will probably be the long-term solution, just don't know the best approach to take.

I have to say this is one of the biggest issues with Peat's body of work and you are playing it down here. I've read him extensively and followed up looking at his cited studies. Scientifically speaking he bases way more than one should on in-vitro studies and/or animal (such as rat) studies. There are examples where he has pre-emptively made massive sweeping confident conclusions in human health and dietary recommendations based on said studies without looking into how they translate to humans in a controlled scientific manner. This is a dangerous approach for it can lead down rabbit holes of false paths based on unfounded conclusions. Not true for all his positions but certainly for some. The weight of evidence must be considered, and of course well conducted human randomised control trials are always going to be at the top of that scale, in-vitro at the very bottom and animal studies very low to the bottom as well - they do however inspire further exploration in the human context and can lead to great scientific conclusions.

Peat has many jewels of wisdom, much of which is grounded in solid science conducted on humans. However I think the above mentioned criticisms have created issues with certain aspects of his body of work, leading to some holes and flaws. Simply due to the fact that some of his conclusions haven't been fully justified scientifically. In other words they may or may not be correct, still more work to do and it becomes more of an issue for his theories when there is a lot of solid science pointing in the opposite direction. And of course we've seen that play out in real time on this forum for years, for people who follow Peat to a tee and run into many many health issues. People have dropped off like flies from "Peating" over the years.

Exactly, that's the main argument I heard against Peat's recommendations whenever I brought up his name on other platforms. Lack of congruent, supporting evidence from human studies.

There are gems in his articles and interviews, absolutely, but it's hard to determine what to apply.

And no offense to anyone on here, but I'm not certain if following this way of eating to a T leads to good health based on what I've read. All of the popular advocates of this RP diet, I won't name names, don't exactly seem to be pinnacles of health. I'd be happy to be proven wrong.

I've seen healthier people who shill omega 3s and say things that completely oppose Peat's philosophy, although you could argue that you can't entirely judge health based on appearance and they'll be getting cancer/disease eventually from their way of living.

What's your personal perspective on his work, what do you implement? @Ritchie

 

[DANIEL]

You could eat roe instead of taking fish oil. It’s tasty on a slice of sourdough bread and lower in heavy metals than mature fish. If there’s any merit to the omega 6: omega 3 ratio, then your fish consumption is evening out the daily bacon and egg breakfast

Sounds good, thank you for the input. Yeah I plan on dropping the fish oil soon, it's just providing temporary relief. At one point my skin got so red and inflamed that even taking a shower was painful, so using it to get away from that, at least in the short term, has been useful

 

[Ritchie]

What's your personal perspective on his work, what do you implement? @Ritchie

Complex question which I don't think I can do justice to in a reply here but i'll share some brief thoughts..
I love Peat's work. He definitely has encouraged me to challenge the status quo and do my own experimentation. And on that, I enjoy trying out different things to see how they work. Get rid of the things that don't, keep the things that do.
My belief is that Peat massively over states the importance of dairy (milk and cheese), while (strangely and sometimes bafflingly) ignoring the ton of very good scientific evidence illustrating its detrimental effects. Even within his own paradigm dairy creates issues with consistency (the user Travis highlighted many of these issues in a very detailed, considered and precise way). I don't touch dairy anymore and do way better for it, I was consuming it for years in line with Peat's principles and it definitely subtracted from my health. I also think Peat over rates saturated fat. Again, I do way better when lowering the amount of saturated fat I consume, and do way better with monounsaturated sources like olive oil, raw macadamias, avocado. I also think that unprocessed, un-cooked/unoxidised polyunsaturated fats in the form of whole foods aren't the demon that Peat makes them out to be and there is mountains of very good scientific evidence to support this (having said that I wouldn't eat heaps of it).
I do, however, agree that cooked, fried, oxidised pufa's are terrible and should be avoided as much as possible.
I think sugar is great in moderation, and I also think it is way better consumed in the form of fresh whole or freshly juiced fruit. Coffee - amazing.
Some of the supplements he recommends are great too. I love Haidut's work. Again on this, one needs to experiment to see what works best as there is no clear path imo and as always (particularly with supplements) context matters.

 

[schultz]

The increased metabolism from PUFA depletion/decrease increasing nutrient requirement for B vitamins and others is unfounded in my experience. But if you have some advice, lmk.

The "EFA deficiency symptoms are a sign of b6 deficiency" never held up for myself or a few others on this forum, I went through a ton of threads before posting this.

I doubt your skin condition is in any way related to EFAD. For one thing, fish oil is not an efficient way to get out of EFAD. A small amount of n-6 is enough to get out of EFAD but you need 5-10 times more n-3 to do the same thing. The fish oil you're taking is merely reducing inflammation by competing with n-6 in your body and lowering COX. It's dangerous for other reasons though as it is incredibly unstable (especially inside a warm body). In an extremely cold environment it is a lot more stable (like in the arctic ocean or something).

You have to consume like 1g of PUFA total for years to get into EFAD, like in the Burr studies. The metabolism of the vermin increased tremendously. They would definitely have needed an increased amount of vitamins and minerals, just like how a hyperthyroid person needs a lot more of these nutrients (this is well known). As @tca300 mentioned, the Burrs did a study (the John Brown study) where the gentleman went on a zero fat diet for 6 months. This is a very controlled, extremely low PUFA diet (probably 0.1g or something per day). His only symptoms were that his health improved significantly and the Burrs abandoned the study after 6 months.

Scientifically speaking he bases way more than one should on in-vitro studies and/or animal (such as rat) studies. There are examples where he has pre-emptively made massive sweeping confident conclusions in human health and dietary recommendations based on said studies without looking into how they translate to humans in a controlled scientific manner.

Ray bases his views on his broad understanding of the physiology and biochemistry of the body. He would never base his opinion on one study in isolation. The more studies I read the more I start seeing all of the connections myself. Ray has spent a lot more time than me reading studies, and is significantly smarter and better at understanding said studies. He has built his view of things over massive amounts of time and thousands of papers, not just a couple of studies. I'm sure I'm not convincing you, but am I at least making sense here?

 

[shan.alexander_]

I live in Asia (Vietnam) and canola/sunflower cooking oils are used virtually everywhere. I've never seen such heavy usage of the oil in western countries. They pour it on everything, even steamed vegetables and mixed into soups, etc. There is also a huge prevalence of acne/eczema, and a tremendously noticeable amount of female hair loss / thinning. Interestingly, many of the men (and some women) in Vietnam appear healthy (strong nice teeth, wide jaws / healthy bone structure, strong hair, etc). Virtually every asian man I've seen who has advanced hair loss/thinning is a cigarette smoker, but I do see a lot of non-smokers with hair thinning at a mild level. All these people are consuming huge amounts of starch (white rice) and I do know many people with endotoxin/sibo issues. So my point is... PUFA oils are in high consumption here, and pro-inflammatory things like smoking seem to "set on fire" those stored PUFAs, and women are noticeably affected also (female hair thinning, and acne). Also, of the healthy men and women I see, they all tend to have 1 thing in common -- they are storing fat. They have more fat in their face, subcutaneous healthy fat, and the men typically have rice bellies. So the common factor of not being negatively affected by PUFAs seems to be that they don't activate lipolysis easily (burn fat) and instead store all that PUFA. Last anecdote I'll mention -- sometimes i wonder if the huge amounts of rice are countering the PUFA oils --- by the starchy fibers absorbing the oils and reducing intestinal absorption. Asians are constantly eating glucose (rice, bread, sugary things, lots of dairy, lots of fruit) from morning to night, to this seems to have protective effects also.

 

[MitchMitchell]

Here’s how you write a decent clickbait title:

“is peat wrong about omega 3s? EFAs?”

Ask questions, don’t make statements. Note that it would be great if everyone followed this rule.

 

[tankasnowgod]

I have to say this is one of the biggest issues with Peat's body of work and you are playing it down here. I've read him extensively and followed up looking at his cited studies. Scientifically speaking he bases way more than one should on in-vitro studies and/or animal (such as rat) studies. There are examples where he has pre-emptively made massive sweeping confident conclusions in human health and dietary recommendations based on said studies without looking into how they translate to humans in a controlled scientific manner. This is a dangerous approach for it can lead down rabbit holes of false paths based on unfounded conclusions. Not true for all his positions but certainly for some. The weight of evidence must be considered, and of course well conducted human randomised control trials are always going to be at the top of that scale, in-vitro at the very bottom and animal studies very low to the bottom as well - they do however inspire further exploration in the human context and can lead to great scientific conclusions.

Peat has many jewels of wisdom, much of which is grounded in solid science conducted on humans. However I think the above mentioned criticisms have created issues with certain aspects of his body of work, leading to some holes and flaws. Simply due to the fact that some of his conclusions haven't been fully justified scientifically. In other words they may or may not be correct, still more work to do and it becomes more of an issue for his theories when there is a lot of solid science pointing in the opposite direction. And of course we've seen that play out in real time on this forum for years, for people who follow Peat to a tee and run into many many health issues. People have dropped off like flies from "Peating" over the years.

Can you cite an example of what you are thinking of?

I haven't really seen what you are talking about, people "following Peat to a tee," and then having health issues. Most don't put many of his suggestions into place (like OP, who apparently still eats bread and pasta everyday). I have, however, seen plenty of examples of that with all major diets (including SAD, low carb, vegan, vegetarian, Paleo, Keto, and such). I certainly haven't seen people dropping off like flies, that's such a silly statement. This is an open forum where people are free to come and go as they please.

 

[tankasnowgod]

I've never seen such heavy usage of the oil in western countries.

Have you ever been to the US? It's pretty much everywhere here, too. Salad dressings, mayo, deep fried foods at major restaurants, French fries, processed foods, potato chips, tortilla chips, and so on.

 

[YourUniverse]

I think Peat is extremely sensitive, and extremely creative (a true high-IQ individual), and bases his experiences and subtle reactions to food on his education, and finds ties with existing science to support his reaction. Through talking with people and their experience, over many years (and I guess using some of his students as "guinea pigs") he has pieced together his picture of health.