FAQs

I think we can all agree that trans fats are not good for us. Even the FDA prohibits food manufacturers from adding trans fats to foods and beverages due to their link to heart disease. But if you don’t already know, trans fats are formed through an industrial process that adds hydrogen to vegetable oils. This process also causes the oil to become solid at room temperature which makes for a longer shelf life, and therefore, less expensive to manufacture.

However, trans fats still make it into our diets through a sneaky process called deodorization. Most grain, seed, and vegetable oils undergo this process to make them practically tasteless, odorless, [have a] higher smoke point, and therefore a cheaper and longer shelf life. The oxidation of these polyunsaturated fats creates a very similar profile to those of trans fats which we know are extremely harmful to our cardiovascular and brain health. 

Mark Sisson, author of The Primal Blueprint and former Ironman competitor states how “in recent decades, we have unwisely transitioned from saturated animal fats to refined vegetables/seed oils. Unlike more temperature-stable saturated fats, high polyunsaturated vegetable/seed oils undergo oxidative damage during their processing and are vulnerable to further oxidative damage when heated during cooking. Oxidized, pro-inflammatory vegetable/seed oils directly disturb healthy cellular, immune, endocrine, and hormone function. Dr. Cate Shanahan says “they are no different than eating radiation”. Strict avoidance of canola oil and other vegetable/seed oils, margarine and vegetable shortening is critical to health.”

In order to understand why saturated fat is not bad for our hearts, we need to understand lipid metabolism. I think of no better person to break this down then Dr. Paul Saladino: 

“The word “cholesterol” is often used colloquially to refer to all of the lipoproteins in our blood, but technically, cholesterol is a steroid backbone type of molecule that is used to make all sorts of vital compounds in human physiology. Our body makes around 1200 mg of cholesterol every day for many important purposes, including the proper formation of all our cell membranes. Without cholesterol, these would fall apart instantly, and we’d melt into a pile of mush on the floor. The cholesterol molecule is also used as a precursor for all of the steroid hormones in our body. These include estrogen, testosterone, cortisol, progesterone, and aldosterone - hormones that are kind of a big deal when it comes to kicking lots of butt. The bio acids used to help digest fats are made from cholesterol as well; without them, we would quickly become malnourished and deficient in fat soluble vitamins like A, K2, and E. When our skin is exposed to sunlight, cholesterol is also a precursor for the formation of vitamin D and cholesterol sulfite, a molecule hypothesized to play a role in preventing atherosclerosis. Most of the cells in our bodies can make a bit of cholesterol from scratch, but they also rely heavily on the delivered supply of this molecule to build membranes and hormones. In the ovaries and testicles, for instance, cholesterol delivered by LDL is necessary to make the lovely sex hormones estrogen, and testosterone, which are crucial for libido and reproductive function. Without LDL, these and many other steroid hormones wouldn’t be made effectively. Wait, haven’t we been told that LDL is “bad cholesterol” and that the lower it is, the better? I am sad to say that we’ve been led astray with regard to the true character of LDL, which is much more of a superhero than a supervillain. In addition to the vital role transporting building blocks and nutrients, LDL also serves important roles within the immune system. Yes, you read that correctly, LDL plays a valuable part in our response to assault by infectious invaders, as do many of the lipoproteins, including HDL. When gram-negative bacteria seek to invade our body, they release a cell wall component known as endotoxin, which is quite inflammatory and can strongly trigger the immune system. But don’t worry, friendly neighborhood LDL is around to bind up this toxin and prevent things from getting out of hand. LDL also binds to the alpha toxins produced by the gram-positive organism Staph aureus, which has antibiotic-resistance strains known as MRSA. Let’s take a moment to let all of that sink in. In both humans and animals, lipoproteins and LDL are known to serve invaluable roles in immune function. Increasing the amount of LDL in the bloodstream, something that 99% of physicians now fear in humans, resulted in profoundly increased survival when animals were challenged with virulent bacteria. Having a low LDL resulted in mice dropping like flies when exposed to bacteria, but the problem was immediately fixed by giving these poor critters some LDL back.”

So why the bad rap?

“Clearly, LDL is a valuable particle in our blood and serves many indispensable roles. Doesn’t it seem a bit incongruous that nature would have designed something that is so valuable, but also damages our arteries and causes atherosclerosis? How can LDL be both protective and harmful? This doesn’t seem to make any sense! The answer is that LDL itself is not harmful, but in certain situations that can be involved in the process of responding to injury and inflammation, making it look like it’s a bad actor when it’s merely present at the scene of the crime. The currently accepted paradigm of plaque formation is known as the response-to-retention hypothesis. According to this theory, LDL in our bloodstream passes through the endothelium of the artery wall, and can become retained (“stuck”) in the intimal cell layer below. When LDL gets stuck in the artery wall, it may become oxidized, altering the structure of the APOB100 molecules in its membrane and triggering in immune response in which macrophages within the intima ingest LDL and become lipid-laden “foam cells”. This is thought to be the beginning of an atherosclerotic plaque. In those with insulin resistance, HDL levels fall and triglyceride levels rise, a change in blood parameters known as dyslipidemia. [HDL levels correlate] directly with insulin sensitivity. Thus, those with the lowest levels of HDL are much more likely to have insulin resistance than those with higher levels of this lipid protein. Atherosclerosis is about much more than just total cholesterol or LDL. In those who are insulin sensitive, rising LDL levels do not correlate with increased rates of heart disease. When it comes to total cholesterol and LDL, context is everything! If we are insulin resistant, higher levels of LDL may very well contribute to plaque formation and progression, but if we are insulin sensitive, higher levels of LDL are not associated with increased atherosclerosis and are likely protective. 

There are more than a quintillion particles of LDL floating around in our bloodstream. That’s 1,000 times more LDL particles than there are cells in our whole body. If every LDL particle that entered the subendothelial space in our arteries led to the formation of plaque, we’d be deader than a doornail long before our first birthday. Every second of every day, lipoproteins like LDL are moving in and out of the walls of both veins and arteries, delivering nutrients to the cells there for energy and the construction of membranes. Clearly, there must be another part of this equation that leads to retention of some of these LDL particles within the arterial wall. LDL is not enough to initiate atherosclerosis on its own, it has to get stuck in the arterial wall to participate in this process. What determines how sticky the LDL particle and the intimal wall space are? There’s very good evidence that during the states of insulin resistance and inflammation, both the LDL particle and the intimal space get coated in “molecular velcro” and become more sticky. A whopping 88% of the American population has some degree of metabolic dysfunction [so] if the vast majority of people around us have insulin resistance, is it any wonder that some studies have shown a correlation between LDL levels and cardiovascular disease?” -Dr. Paul Saladino, M.D, Author of The Carnivore Code

Remember, context is everything and correlation is not causation. Epidemiological studies (observational studies) on the correlation between heart disease and red meat consumption is not scientific proof red meat causes heart disease. Now that interventional studies are finally being conducted on saturated fat and red meat consumption, the findings unanimously show no link! Checkout these articles by Healthline and the National Library of Medicine that provide more evidence as to why we’ve been told saturated fat is bad for us, who’s to gain from it, and how the narrative is changing to support prioritizing more saturated fats in your diet over polyunsaturated fats and sugar.

More and more studies have been released disproving this narrative that we’ve been told for so long. But if it’s not saturated fat, then what is it? Well, have you heard of metabolic syndrome? In order to understand the real culprit, we must first understand insulin and the role it plays in metabolic syndrome.

“Insulin, in common parlance, is known as the diabetes hormone. Diabetics inject insulin to lower their blood glucose. But where does the glucose go? To the fat. Insulin’s actual job is to be your energy storage hormone. When you eat something (usually containing some form of carbohydrate), your blood glucose rises, signaling the pancreas to release insulin commensurate with the rise in blood glucose. Insulin then tops off the liver’s energy reserve by making liver starch  (called glycogen), and shunts any amino acids from the blood into the muscle cells. Excess fatty acids, or blood lipids, are cleared into fat cells for storage for a “rainy day,” where they get turned into greasy triglycerides. There is no energy storage without insulin - it is the key that unlocks the door to the fat cell to let energy enter and subsequently be stored as fat. Insulin makes fat - the more insulin, the more fat. And there it sits…and sits…as long as there is insulin around. When the insulin levels drop, the process goes in reverse: the triglycerides get broken down, causing the fat cells to shrink - when this happens, that’s weight loss! - and the fatty acids reenter the bloodstream and travel back to the liver, where they are burned by the liver or other organs. In this way, by cycling our insulin up and down, we burn what we need, and store the rest.” -Dr. Robert Lustig, Endocrinologist, Author of Fat Chance

So how does insulin resistance become metabolic syndrome?

“1- Metabolic syndrome starts as your body accumulates energy, storing it in the liver and in visceral fat tissue. This makes the liver insulin resistant, which starts metabolic dysfunction - a detrimental cascade of effects that damages every organ in the body. 

2- Liver insulin resistance causes the liver to transport energy improperly. The pancreas responds by increasing insulin release to make the liver do its job. This drives insulin levels even higher (hyperinsulinemia), which causes further energy deposition into the subcutaneous fat tissue and causes the persistent weight gain that drives obesity. 

3- The liver tries to export the excess fat as triglycerides, to be stored in the subcutaneous fat tissue. The blood lipids rise to drive dyslipidemia, one of the risk factors for heart disease. 

4- The high insulin acts on blood vessels, causing the smooth muscle cells that surround each blood vessel to grow more rapidly than normal. This process tightens the artery walls and promotes high blood pressure. 

5- The combination of insulin resistance, lipid problems, and high blood pressure wreaks havoc throughout the body. This promotes cardiovascular disease, which can result in heart attack or stroke. 

6- The fat in the liver causes inflammation, which drives further insulin resistance. Eventually the liver can scar, which results in nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. This can later progress to cirrhosis. 

7- Insulin resistance and hyperinsulinemia in women can drive the ovary to make extra testosterone and reduce estrogen, resulting in polycystic ovarian syndrome, hirsutism (excess body hair), and infertility. 

8- As the liver insulin resistance gets worse and teh body fat grows, the pancreas has to make more insulin. Eventually the pancreatic beta-cells can’t keep up with the body’s requirements, which leads to a relative insulin deficiency. Eventually the beta-cells fail, precipitating type 2 diabetes. 

9- Insulin is one of the hormones that cause cells to divide. Hyperinsulinemia is associated with the development and growth of various forms of cancer. 

10- There is early evidence, although by no means proven, that insulin resistance in the brain leads to dementia.” -Dr. Robert Lustig, Endocrinologist, Author of Fat Chance

A calorie is not just a calorie because calories come from food, and food is made up of both macronutrients and micronutrients. Calories from whole foods will always contain a higher nutrient density than processed foods that have been altered/modified from its natural state. That is why most processed foods are cheaper than whole foods, and thanks to the Farm Bill, why our food pyramid is backwards. 

I really love the way Dr. Robert Lusting breaks it down for us as to why a calorie is not a calorie in this discussion with Dr. Andrew Huberman: “A calorie burned is a calorie burned. That’s the first law of thermodynamics. But that doesn’t mean that a calorie eaten is a calorie eaten. That’s not the same and that’s where people get it wrong…So even though you count the calories at your lips. That doesn't matter. What really matters is counting the calories at your intestinal brush border. And they are not the same. If you feed your gut, that’s a good thing because then your gut will take those calories and turn it into things like short chain fatty acids which end up being protective against chronic metabolic syndrome…they are anti inflammatory, anti Alzheimer's. 

Here we have Omega 3’s, heart healthy, anti inflammatory, anti Alzheimer's, save your life, and over here we have trans fats. The devil incarnate. Consumable poison because you can’t break the trans double bond. You don’t have the desaturates to break that trans double bond so it basically accumulates, lines your arteries, lines your liver, causes chronic metabolic disease, causes insulin resistance. Omega 3’s don’t even get broken down for energy because they are so important, they stay intact because your brain needs them, your heart needs them. One saves your life, [the] other one kills you. They’re both 9 calories per gram.

So you have a choice: you can eat good fats in your diet or you can make bad ones in your liver. Wouldn’t you rather opt for the good ones?”

With a new market for fake meat and vegan friendly products also comes the narrative sold to us by these manufacturers that plant-based diets harms less animals and are better for our environment than animal-based diets. So let’s take a deeper dive and really understand how these claims have come to be.

“Eating animals isn’t cruel. It is something that we must do in order to live healthy lives. Furthermore, notions that vegan or vegetarian diets result in less death are woefully myopic and misinformed. The large number of animals killed in the process of harvesting plants (with large machines that kill small animals like rabbits, mice, and other rodents) far outweighs the loss of life when we consume animals directly. The disruption of ecosystems with mono-crop agriculture also disrupts an even greater number of organisms on a long-term basis. Not only do plant-based diets that require mono-crop farming result in greater loss of life and ecosystem disruption, they also rob us of our vitality and prevent us from living as abundantly as possible.

Take a look at the list of businesses who supported the absurd EAT-Lancet guidelines, which recommended that we consume only 14g of meat per day under the guise of helping the environment. Included are the likes of Bayer, Monsanto, Kellogg’s, Pepsi, Cargill, Nestlé, and Syngenta. See a pattern here? Much like businesses benefited enormously from fostering the general public’s belief that animal fats were bad and vegetable oils were healthy, these agribusiness enterprises stand to make billions of dollars convincing us that plant-based foods are the healthier option and the responsible environmental choice. In the United States, these companies produce over ten times the amount of greenhouse gasses as cows, and regenerative ruminant agriculture can actually reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere! Beef as a whole represented only 1.9% of the total greenhouse gas emissions in 2016. That’s half as much as plant agriculture; ten times less than industry or transportation; and more than fifteen times less than electricity generation, the largest producer of greenhouse gasses. Why is it then that all we ever hear from politicians and those who claim to campaign for the environment is talk about methane from ruminants? When soil is healthy, plants are able to draw greater amounts of carbon dioxide from the environment into the soil in their root systems. Conversely, traditional farming and mono-crop agriculture deplete the soil of nutrients, decreasing its ability to sequester carbon dioxide and destroying delicate ecosystems. Proper grazing of ruminant animals serves to enrich the soil with organic matter and, therefore, increases carbon carrying capacity. Regenerative agriculture practices promote these evolutionarily appropriate grazing styles, and placing cattle farmed in this manner on depleted grasslands has been shown to revitalize these ecosystems.” -Dr. Paul Saladino, M.D, Author of The Carnivore Code

The keyword here is regenerative farming, not commercial farming who’s practices are often inhumane and disrupt the local ecosystems.

Sugar, or rather glucose and fructose in the form of sucrose, play a vital role in our health, but the timing of this nutrient and its source is key!

If you are starving, energy depleted, or planning a long, intense activity that will deplete your glycogen stores, sugar will replete your liver’s glycogen stores the most efficiently and be quite beneficial. Just as Dr. Paul Saladino suggests, “During very long aerobic exertion efforts, like a marathon or beyond, we will need to refuel during races and in training in order to avoid complete depletion of glycogen stores. This is probably best done with “clean” sources of carbohydrates, like dextrose or honey, rather than highly processed gels and other supplements. For efforts that aren’t long and intense enough to deplete glycogen, carbohydrates are not necessary during workouts and consumption of a carnivore diet after exertion will allow for full replenishment of glycogen stores.”

However, most people are not starving or energy depleted. Dr. Robert Lustig warns that “there are now 30% more obese individuals than undernourished ones on the planet. Our bodies have not adapted to our current environmental sugar glut, and it’s killing us…slowly.” 

On a somewhat different note, “artificial sweeteners appear to change the host microbiome, lead to decreased satiety, and alter glucose homeostasis, and are associated with increased caloric consumption and weight gain. Artificial sweeteners are marked as a healthy alternative to sugar and as a tool for weight loss. Data however suggests that the intended effects do not correlate with what is seen in clinical practice. The take-home message here is that artificial sweeteners of both plant and synthetic origin have no place in a healthy diet and are probably going to sabotage our efforts at weight loss, satiety, and overall improved health. If you absolutely need a sweet taste in your food or beverages, I’d recommend the amino acid glycine, but ultimately, any molecule that is sweet can cause release of incretin, hormones which negatively affect satiety. If weight loss is our focus, breaking up with sweet flavors – at least temporarily – can significantly help us reach that goal.” -Dr. Paul Saladino, M.D, Author of The Carnivore Code

In summary, eliminate artificial sweeteners from your diet, limit your sugar consumption or time it appropriately with your activity level, and make sure you are choosing options from whole food sources.

Not all vitamins and minerals are equal, as mentioned in the “A calorie is a calorie” myth, you have to consider the source. There are two types of vitamins you will find on this earth, bioavailable vitamins in food or extracted from food, and synthetic vitamins, made in a lab. “The simple act of food processing removes the food’s native micronutrients, just as the fiber is stripped…Flavonoids, folate, and many other micronutrients are decimated by food processing. While it’s enticing to think that we can put them back in with a pill, the data support that once a food is “biologically” dead, it’s unlikely that you can revive it with a sprinkling of a nutraceutical.” -Dr. Robert Lustig, Endocrinologist, Author of Fat Chance

Simply put, fortified foods are not the same as the food in its whole form. Think about a sourdough bread that’s just water, flour, salt, and sourdough starter (mix of wild yeast and lactic acid bacteria) that goes through a natural process of fermentation to maintain all its vitamins and minerals, as well as destroying any troublesome lectins (toxic plant sugar starches). Unlike sourdough, a conventional sandwich bread uses yeast and other additives to ferment for only a few minutes or often not at all, making it harder on our digestive tracts when consumed. Not to mention the additional oils, preservatives, refined sugar, and synthetic vitamins added in to give it flavor again. 

When looking for vitamin supplements, look for companies that extract their vitamins and minerals from whole foods, not from a lab. A few brands I recommend are Thorne, Heart and Soil Supplements, Mercola Market, and Pure Encapsulations.

Have you ever wondered why you’re so bloated and gassy after downing a fresh salad for lunch or a bowl of brussel sprouts? Well, there’s a reason why and it’s due to fiber! Now I’m not saying fiber is necessarily bad for you, as it plays a vital role in slowing down the digestion of sugar and starches when eating, say, an apple or bread. But is it necessary to focus so much attention on fiber when we can get the same benefits, plus a much happier digestive tract, with healthy fats?

“At a molecular level, plant fibers are chains of sugar molecules (polysaccharides) that can’t be broken down by our digestion and don’t have any nutritional value to humans directly. They pass through our stomach and end up in our small intestines intact. Then they are either broken down by bacteria or pass through us and out in the stool unchanged. Technically, plant fiber is composed of both soluble and insoluble molecules. Both can be used by the bacteria living in our gastrointestinal tract to produce short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs), which are used as an energy source by colonic epithelial cells. [However], the best known short-chain fatty acid is butyrate, [but] butyrate isn’t the only game in town when it comes to short-chain fatty acids, and eating an animal-based diet provides fuel for colonic epithelial cells in the form of other short-chain fatty acids and ketones within the blood. It appears that animals and humans can ferment collagenous tissues from animal meat into short-chain fatty acids. Collagen is the protein that composes most of the connective tissue in our body, including bones, ligaments, tendons, and cartilage. A nose-to-tail carnivore diet provides ample amounts of collagen for the production of short-chain fatty acids.” -Dr. Paul Saladino, M.D, Author of The Carnivore Code

So make those morning bowels happy! Skip your morning bowl of oatmeal and opt for a bowl of scrambled eggs and a scoop of collagen powder with some grass-fed butter in your morning coffee!