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Raw Paleo Diet Forums => Hot Topics => Topic started by: a87.pal on January 04, 2011, 06:04:47 am

Title: tallow v. butter
Post by: a87.pal on January 04, 2011, 06:04:47 am
I prefer to eat raw marrow or raw grass fed pork fat, but due to storage-price-availability issues, they are not dependable for me. Instead, I have much better access to raw grass fed butter and grass fed tallow (self made because I cannot currently digest raw suet nor do I think it tastes good, like pork fat does). Which do you think would be better, eat the tallow and try to transition to raw, or eat butter, or some combination?
Title: Re: tallow v. butter
Post by: TylerDurden on January 04, 2011, 06:34:23 am
If you are not raw zero-carb, you can just buy lean raw wild game(usually cheaper than raw grassfed meats) and eat some raw carbs as well, no need for extra raw fats.
Title: Re: tallow v. butter
Post by: a87.pal on January 04, 2011, 09:19:45 am
Yeah, I'm not zero carb.

I am low carb though and my current grass fed meat isn't really fatty enough: I would have to eat like 3 pounds a day (plus some carbs) to get enough calories (~2000).

Wild game is a good idea though. I just have no idea how to source any. Do any of you guys know of someone who has bought wild game in NYC before?
Title: Re: tallow v. butter
Post by: TylerDurden on January 04, 2011, 09:24:14 am
There are ways to get hold of dirt-cheap grassfed meats meant for pets. These are dirt-cheap, and, according to reports, fine for human consumption.Check the info for newbies section for the relevant thread re buying cheap meats.
Title: Re: tallow v. butter
Post by: a87.pal on January 04, 2011, 02:28:50 pm
yeah I've sourced grass fed pet food (beef from slankers, and chicken from a farmer) however, these are actually even leaner < 10% fat. I was trying to get a hold of some whole small game animals. That way I could eat everything, which probably ends up having the correct fat to protein ratios. Otherwise, it seems like you have to add an outside source of fat like marrow, back fat, butter, or tallow.
Title: Re: tallow v. butter
Post by: TylerDurden on January 04, 2011, 03:29:38 pm
yeah I've sourced grass fed pet food (beef from slankers, and chicken from a farmer) however, these are actually even leaner < 10% fat. I was trying to get a hold of some whole small game animals. That way I could eat everything, which probably ends up having the correct fat to protein ratios. Otherwise, it seems like you have to add an outside source of fat like marrow, back fat, butter, or tallow.
Well, Lex pays a very small amount for his 2/3 pet food plus some raw grassfed(human-grade)suet.  In your position, I would either use raw marrow( along with Intermittent Fasting so as to cut slightly down on food-intake). If you are dairy-tolerant, then raw butter would be far better than tallow.
Title: Re: tallow v. butter
Post by: kurite on January 04, 2011, 06:55:52 pm
Well, Lex pays a very small amount for his 2/3 pet food plus some raw grassfed(human-grade)suet.  In your position, I would either use raw marrow( along with Intermittent Fasting so as to cut slightly down on food-intake). If you are dairy-tolerant, then raw butter would be far better than tallow.
Are you saying that raw butter is better than tallow or just butter is better than tallow if dairy-tolerant?
Title: Re: tallow v. butter
Post by: TylerDurden on January 04, 2011, 07:18:18 pm
Are you saying that raw butter is better than tallow or just butter is better than tallow if dairy-tolerant?
The latter. Those few who thrive on raw dairy without side-effects will do fine on raw butter, but not  tallow with its added heat-created toxins.
Title: Re: tallow v. butter
Post by: a87.pal on January 04, 2011, 11:48:47 pm
yeah, I would eat marrow, but there are just feasibility and storage issues.

For example, last time I ordered about 60 lbs of marrow (with bones) from slankers. Since I have no place to store it, I spent like 8 hours extracting the marrow into gallon glass jars. I ended up with a bit over 6 lbs. Given the time involved, it doesn't make sense if you already spend most of your days working.

The best alternative I have found for a "soft" fat (high in mono-sat fat / easier to digest) is exterior pork fat. I'm willing to bet fowl fat is "soft" as well, but I have never been able to source it raw.

Also, regarding suet: while I am positive that raw is better than rendered  (if you can digest it), how do you explain Lex Rooker's success and people on cooked paleo diet's success? While I know some end up with gut cancer, this is very different from heart disease and can probably be mitigated if cooked fats are consumed with antioxidants (salad/kimchi/spices).
Title: Re: tallow v. butter
Post by: TylerDurden on January 05, 2011, 12:42:53 am

Also, regarding suet: while I am positive that raw is better than rendered  (if you can digest it), how do you explain Lex Rooker's success and people on cooked paleo diet's success? While I know some end up with gut cancer, this is very different from heart disease and can probably be mitigated if cooked fats are consumed with antioxidants (salad/kimchi/spices).
  Actually, I've been on a number of cooked-palaeodiet forums in the past(and am a member of one right now), and , while they do report some limited successes, these are never as good as what RVAFers report and only apply to a few specific conditions. Heat-created toxins  lead to  a huge range of conditions, not just heart-disease - while a very few of these, such as diabetes, are also not a problem on a cooked-palaeodiet, most others very much are, such as arthritis and other old-age-related conditions . As for Lex, he seems to be eating at least some raw fats along with the rendered fats. As for combining cooked fats with antioxidants, that would be useless:- for one thing, many cooked-palaeodieters are cooked, zero-carbers so frown on the consumption of any plant foods; but also, there is increasing scientific evidence against the notion that antioxidants are healthy. Besides, one would have to eat a huge amount of antioxidants to counter the effects of the cooked foods, thus introducing other negative factors(salad hardly being a truly nutritious food, by itself etc.)
Title: Re: tallow v. butter
Post by: a87.pal on January 05, 2011, 02:50:35 am
Overall I agree with you that plant foods are hardly nutritious compared to grass fed animal foods and that antioxidants may be treated like toxins within the body (in that we just urinate them out).

However, if the main concern of cooked fats is oxidation (there may be others that I am unaware of?) then spices like tumeric (with thier high ORAC values) may be able to counter act some of this oxidation. (also can you point me to the studies of cooked paleo dieters suffering from heart disease)

Further, just like most studies of meat are never on raw meat, most studies of metabolism are never on ketosis. The old age conditions you describe from cooked fats may not apply as significantly when the body is fully utilizing fats. (for example, it is not that crazy to think that if the body is in ketosis then it has promoted systems to better handle oxidized fats)

Don't get me wrong, I totally believe that fully raw grass fed animal foods are the way to go. Instead, I am suggesting that when raw grass fed fats are unavailable (or indigestible) perhaps it is better to eat cooked grass fed fats than it is to reduce fat consumption.
Title: Re: tallow v. butter
Post by: lex_rooker on January 05, 2011, 03:36:41 am
yeah I've sourced grass fed pet food (beef from slankers, and chicken from a farmer) however, these are actually even leaner < 10% fat

Not exactly a true statement, at least for Slankers pet food.  Slankers will tell you that it is 10% fat because that is what they add to the mix when they make it.  The organ meats and other bits and pieces also have fat in them so the total fat content is around 16% to 17% which is what I actually measure with my FA73.

The difference between butter and animal fat (rendered or not) is that the animal fat has a far different fatty acid profile than butter.  Slankers has an analysis on their website that shows the fat in their meats is almost 50% from the Omega3 family of fatty acids.  Butter doesn’t even come close to this.  For this reason I stick with animal fat as my primary fat source and only eat butter when animal fat is unavailable like when eating out.

Many become hysterical over cooking and rendering.  Though I believe that raw is probably best, I do render fat for storage, making pemmican, and often use it as part of my food mix.  The American Plain’s Indians rendered fat for centuries and did quite nicely.  For me, it’s all about what will make this way of eating convenient enough that I’ll stick with it.  It doesn’t matter that raw suet is better than rendered fat if I either can’t or won’t use it.  For me the fatty acid profile of rendered fat is better than butter, it is just as convenient to use as butter, I can render and store enough fat in one weekend to last a couple of years, and it doesn’t require refrigeration or any special handling to store for long periods.  Just keep it in a cool dry place out of direct light.  I store mine in 2 gallon containers which I keep inside large chest coolers (the kind you take camping) in the garage.  The cooler insulates the rendered fat from the heat of the garage on summer days so even though the garage may get to 100 deg, the inside of the cooler seldom rises above 70.  It is also dark.  I keep one container in a kitchen cupboard and use fat from that until it is gone and then fetch a new container from the stash in the garage when needed.

Understand that I’m not eating just rendered fat.  My normal mix is all raw (slankers pet food and high fat ground beef) and contains about 18% fat by weight which is around 68% calories from fat.  I add additional rendered fat to this to bring the total fat content up to about 25% by weight which is about 77% of calories from fat.  It is fast, easy, and convenient, and best of all, I’ll do it, which is far better than aiming for some ideal of perfection which doesn’t exist and which I won’t stick with.

Of course you are free to wring your hands and worry over the real or perceived damage caused by rendering the fat, but I’m way to busy doing other things that I enjoy and am passionate about.  Eating is all about giving me the health and energy to do the things I love to do, not to spend every waking moment of my life focused exclusively on diet.  If things are going well, my body is totally transparent – I don’t even notice it as I’m totally absorbed in the miracles of daily living all around me.  Remember when you were a child.  You never gave your diet, your health, or your body a second thought, and that is as it should be.

Lex


Title: Re: tallow v. butter
Post by: a87.pal on January 05, 2011, 04:53:38 am
I called up http://www.pastureland.coop/contact

and he sad their grass fed butter is anywhere between 1.5:1 to 3:1 (w3-w6 ratio)

compare this to grass fed beef:

http://www.texasgrassfedbeef.com/id73.htm

Total        99.99
  *Sat      51.45
  *Mono      44.66
  *Poly      3.88
    -CLA      1.46
    -w3      1.22
    -w6      1.09


In general, I think grass fed butter and animal fat will have favorable w3-w6 ratios (but butter might be overboard once you are healthy). In general, the risk with grass-fed butter is lactose, cow hormones, and some other milk proteins like casein, not w3-w6 ratio. Even if butter is mainly fat, and is cultured, there will still be trace amounts that can cause problems. Although, I personally don't get any noticeable symptoms (other than finding its taste "weird").

Also, butter has more mono-sat and less waxy esters than suet, which makes it easier to digest raw for people still transitioning on the diet.
Title: Re: tallow v. butter
Post by: turkish on January 05, 2011, 05:06:17 am
too much butter makes my stomach rumble(even if it is raw grassfed), have not tried suet yet. Just wondering if digesting suet will be harder than digesting raw butter.

If this is true then how will increase my fat intake.
Title: Re: tallow v. butter
Post by: lex_rooker on January 05, 2011, 06:38:15 am
Did Pastureland share the actual analysis of their products with you or just give you verbal statements.  I noticed that you had actual published numbers for Slankers fat but didn't provid this detail for Pastureland butter.  One of the reasons that I'm loyal to Slankers is that they are able to back up every claim they make with actual published data.  I've found many vendors willing to tell me what I want to hear in an effort to get/keep my business.  Unfortunately, few have any documentation to support their claims and a couple have been down right dishonest.  I'm sure that Pastureland is probably a fine concern, but you might want to put their actual analysis next to Slankers analysis to remove any doubt.  This would also go a long way in confirming that raw butter is a viable alternative to animal fat from the perspective of fatty acid profile. 

Lex
Title: Re: tallow v. butter
Post by: a87.pal on January 05, 2011, 06:56:10 am
yeah I had the same concern, so I contacted green pastures http://www.greenpasture.org/retail/?t=contact, which sells the butter oil and fermented cod liver oil and he also verbally confirmed the ratio saying 2.5:1-3:1 (w3:w6) for the grass fed butter oil. He also said one of the best ways to see if they were partially grain fed was to look at CLA levels in the milk during that time. He wouldn't email me the full fatty acid profile though. So there is no way to verify.
Title: Re: tallow v. butter
Post by: TylerDurden on January 05, 2011, 06:58:03 am
Overall I agree with you that plant foods are hardly nutritious compared to grass fed animal foods and that antioxidants may be treated like toxins within the body (in that we just urinate them out).

However, if the main concern of cooked fats is oxidation (there may be others that I am unaware of?) then spices like tumeric (with thier high ORAC values) may be able to counter act some of this oxidation. (also can you point me to the studies of cooked paleo dieters suffering from heart disease)

Further, just like most studies of meat are never on raw meat, most studies of metabolism are never on ketosis. The old age conditions you describe from cooked fats may not apply as significantly when the body is fully utilizing fats. (for example, it is not that crazy to think that if the body is in ketosis then it has promoted systems to better handle oxidized fats)

Don't get me wrong, I totally believe that fully raw grass fed animal foods are the way to go. Instead, I am suggesting that when raw grass fed fats are unavailable (or indigestible) perhaps it is better to eat cooked grass fed fats than it is to reduce fat consumption.
So far, I have never once come across a study by the pro-cooked crowd to suggest that antioxidants can somehow magically counter the effect of cooked, oxidised fats. Sure some antioxidants, such as vitamin E, have been used to prevent gradual slow oxidation over long-term storage of some products, but the harsh sudden oxidation of fats caused by cooking can't be prevented, even if you pour turmeric by the ton on the meats to be cooked.

There are actually very few studies done on cooked-palaeos, whether in terms of showing benefits or ill-health as a result of such a diet. What are in plentiful evidence are the many, many thousands of studies on the ill-effects of heat-created toxins in cooked foods(such as advanced glycation end products, heterocyclic amines, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons etc.). Such toxins have been scientifically proven  to lead to conditions like heart-disease, arthritis etc. etc.:-  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raw_foodism#Potential_harmful_effects_of_cooked_foods_and_cooking

The argument re ketosis somehow being a magical superhuman process that can deal with oxidised cooked fats, of course, makes no sense. Not only are there no studies done to show such an effect for ketosis(and there are more studies done on ketosis than raw foods, to my knowledge), but also cooked zero-carbers and cooked, VLCers have had cases of nasty side-effects suggesting the opposite of your claim. "The Bear" cooked zero)carb guru is a classic case with his throat-cancer.
Title: Re: tallow v. butter
Post by: TylerDurden on January 05, 2011, 07:10:20 am
Lex is being a little disingenuous re his rather glib  mention of hand-wringing over cooking:- what he really means is that the bit of rendered fat works for him specifically, given his life-goals, not necessarily for anybody else. So, for example, Lex has no interest in heavy daily exercise and unlike many other RVAFers, he finds cooked meats to be less toxic to his system than raw carbs, etc. so this not necessarily  100 percent perfect combination of diet is absolutely fine for him, as long as his own personal health-expectations are met. (I note he still eats a lot of raw meat/fat, though, despite the above remarks re cooking).

However, plenty of others, like me for example, have few or no issues at all with raw plant foods but quickly get health-problems if they eat any cooked animal fats, rendered or otherwise. So, for such people, it is a hell of a lot healthier, to eat raw lean wild game and some raw carbs, say, than to eat lots of rendered tallow or other cooked animal fat. My own experimentation with raw, zero-carb and even a cooked zero-carb mini trial at one point) , however, showed that my health swiftly deteriorated and that there was no magic to the ketosis effect. Everyone is different, I guess.
Title: Re: tallow v. butter
Post by: lex_rooker on January 05, 2011, 10:30:07 am
Lex is being a little disingenuous re his rather glib  mention of hand-wringing over cooking:- what he really means is that the bit of rendered fat works for him specifically, given his life-goals, not necessarily for anybody else. So, for example, Lex has no interest in heavy daily exercise and unlike many other RVAFers, he finds cooked meats to be less toxic to his system than raw carbs, etc.

Actually, what I meant was what I said, no more, no less.  All the rest is your opinion.

so this not necessarily  100 percent perfect combination of diet is absolutely fine for him, as long as his own personal health-expectations are met. (I note he still eats a lot of raw meat/fat, though, despite the above remarks re cooking).

There is no 100% perfect combination of diet.  However, there are trends that are clearly identifiable in the larger population base.  Things like the 30 fold increase in diabetes and other degenerative diseases since the implementation of the food pyramid in the 1950s promoting grains and carbs as the foundation of our diet.  That said, there is no identifiable trend that I’ve been able to find related to cooked vs raw food.  People eating cooked food live just as long and often as healthy as those that profess that raw is the holy grail.  In fact, I could probably make the case, based on the lifespan of the popular Natural Hygenist’s of the past 100 years, many of whom preached a raw food lifestyle, that they didn’t even live the average lifespan for their generation.  My research seems to point to WHAT you eat is far more important than HOW it is prepared.  My choice to eat raw is one of ideology, (no other animal cooks its food), not one based on any evidence that cooking is seriously harmful.  ZC has been an adventure to see if it would work.  Before starting ZC I ate a lightly cooked paleo diet that included carbs and did very well.  I also have no evidence that had I continued with the lightly cooked protocol, my health wouldn’t have continued to improve to my current level.  Of course we’ll never know as I went raw ZC and you can’t put the genie back in the bottle.

However, plenty of others, like me for example, have few or no issues at all with raw plant foods but quickly get health-problems if they eat any cooked animal fats, rendered or otherwise. So, for such people, it is a hell of a lot healthier, to eat raw lean wild game and some raw carbs, say, than to eat lots of rendered tallow or other cooked animal fat.

Nowhere have I never stated that all carbs are bad.  Only that what I’m currently doing is working well for me and I will continue until something causes me to change.

My own experimentation with raw, zero-carb and even a cooked zero-carb mini trial at one point) , however, showed that my health swiftly deteriorated and that there was no magic to the ketosis effect. Everyone is different, I guess.

From my experience, almost everyone, including me, finds an apparent swift deterioration of health when they make a massive change in lifestyle.  Full adaptation to ZC took me many months.  I can tell you that today, if I eat a meal with any significant carbs, I suffer terribly.  Lots of gas and bloating.  If I continued to eat a significant number of carbs, over time my body would again adapt to them.  Stephen Phinney showed that the studies on the deterioration of physical performance of athletes converting to a ZC or VLC lifestyle was due to the fact that the studies were stopped long before the subjects adapted to the new dietary protocol.  Phinney’s research proved that adaptation took far longer than believed, but if allowed to continue, performance returned to previous levels.  In this we are all the same.  I suspect that your problems with ZC/VLC are more due to the “mini trial” nature of your experiments rather than any real difference in your body’s ability to adapt.

I totally agree with you that there is no magic in ZC.  It’s just another dietary protocol with its own set of benefits and trade-offs.  There is no “perfect” diet, but health trends in the general population clearly show that some dietary choices are better than others.  And our lives are not static.  A baby’s needs are different than a teenager’s, which is different than a 30 year old, and different again than someone in the latter years of their lives, so at various times in our lives each of us may find that one set of trade-offs meets our immediate needs better than another.  This is why I’ll change what I’m doing in a heartbeat when there is concrete evidence that it is no longer meeting my needs.

Lex
Title: Re: tallow v. butter
Post by: TylerDurden on January 05, 2011, 09:27:55 pm
Actually, I hadn't done any short "mini-trials" as regards VLC, as I did VLC(less than 2? percent carbs, sort of 1 piece of fruit a week or similiar) for very long periods much earlier in my rawpalaeodiet, only eating any sizeable raw fruit in 1 summer month for a year or two - (I did it partly because  I had erroneously believed in Stefansson's fat-theories and partly because my appetite was always much less when I consumed hardly any carbs, and I had been solely interested in food as fuel at the time - no actual experiment or trial as with RZC, as such). Come to think of it, I seem to recall that my 1st experiment with RZC was around the time when I was long-term VLC. I will admit that my RZC experiments were rather short(though not by Stefansson's estimates, I think), but I would have expected my VLC habits of the time to have made me better adapted to RZC, to some extent.

As for the cooked vs raw debate, there is plenty of scientific data on the negative effects of heat-created toxins, including in vitro experiments, where the specific heat-created toxins were shown to affect human cells negatively, irrespective of which food they came from. I realise, though, that a large proportion of our views on diet are necessarily based on our own experiences, for natural, obvious reasons.
Title: Re: tallow v. butter
Post by: miles on January 05, 2011, 09:35:44 pm
1 fruit a week is far from ZC, it makes a big difference in my experience.
Title: Re: tallow v. butter
Post by: a87.pal on January 06, 2011, 03:20:52 am
I'll admit that I don't know as much about this stuff as others on the boards, but shouldn't the oxidized fats in tallow be different from the "heat created toxins" created when cooking proteins and fats together?

Also, I think there have been studies showing spices can reduce "heat created toxins" (though I'm not sure if these are the same toxins you are referring to):
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2854897/
Title: Re: tallow v. butter
Post by: turkish on January 06, 2011, 03:25:33 am
I know i m pulling stuff out of thin air.

Just like we need some bacteria to keep our immune system tuned-up, what if we also need some toxins to keep it fit.

Title: Re: tallow v. butter
Post by: KD on January 06, 2011, 03:41:44 am
I know i m pulling stuff out of thin air.

Just like we need some bacteria to keep our immune system tuned-up, what if we also need some toxins to keep it fit.



heh heh, yeah i'm back hanging out at bars for that reason. yeah... :)

---

to me the fatty acid profile of truly raw pastured butter is in a healthful enough range for my needs. It is the type of thing that depends heavily on how it is produced and the conditions of the animals and not all stuff is the same or is healthful just because it is raw. Its also the only fat I can get fresh. While I consume alot of frozen fats and some meats, I can't rant against these entirely but I do think there is something very healthful about fresh unfrozen fats. To me this can be a factor teetering fresh raw butter in the direction towards 'optimal'(for me). The only comparison I have is the meat on muscle cuts which I far prefer over frozen concentrated fat sources, and the fact that I have had frozen raw butter that basically gave me all kinds of dehydration and other issues.

While I don't think its wise to ignore animal fat sources like marrow or back fat or possibly suet in favor of all raw butter, I feel that sticking with 1 'paleo' fat source will have its drawbacks as well, particulary based on whatever else you are eating and for more reasons that just nutrition or diversity. Butter does have nutrients that suet will not, but even if one can argue against this for issues with the food itself there are other things to consider, even basic stuff. If you are eating essentially all red meats, sure it makes sense to just add suet or whatever already rendered tallow, but things like butter combine well with seafood, fruits etc...tallow/suet just doesn't function that way for me, so I don't really stir too much in the short term about which one I am most adapted to.
Title: Re: tallow v. butter
Post by: TylerDurden on January 06, 2011, 03:55:59 am
I'll admit that I don't know as much about this stuff as others on the boards, but shouldn't the oxidized fats in tallow be different from the "heat created toxins" created when cooking proteins and fats together?

Also, I think there have been studies showing spices can reduce "heat created toxins" (though I'm not sure if these are the same toxins you are referring to):
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2854897/
No, they are not. I was referring to the main ones, namely advanced glycation end products/alpha-lipoxidation end products, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, nitrosamines and heterocyclic amines. So far, there have been a few gimmicks which have been described as lowering such toxins(nothing to do with antioxidants but things like marinating meats completely in certain sauces during cooking), but the reduction is always only slight and affects only 1 or 2 subtypes(example was that study I showed a while back which indicated a reduction in only 2 of the 17 types of heterocyclic amines produced by cooking if the meat was marinated in a beer- or wine-sauce before cooking).
Title: Re: tallow v. butter
Post by: a87.pal on January 06, 2011, 04:30:07 am
Tyler, just for clarification, are the "major heat created toxins" from cooked meats also all formed during the heating of fats?

I was always under the impression that cooking fat and protein together produced nasty carcinogenic compounds, but I don't think I've ever come across things that show "low heating"(without burning/smoking) and "wet heating" of fats alone or starches alone produce these carcinogens (and if they do, it is at a much lower rate).

Also (as you pointed out) the study I cited does not show spices counteract the major cooked meat toxins, but it does lend evidence to spices counteracting oxidized fats.

Not to be repetitive, but, again, I do believe raw is best. This thread is supposed to be more about comparing the risks of cooking grass fed animal fats (not cooking meat, though I am aware there are bits of meat even in suet) v. the risks of raw butter.

The reason I think making this comparison is useful is because I have noticed many people on the boards have difficulty digesting raw suet and accessing very fatty fresh grass fed meat cuts. The alternatives as I have mentioned before are raw marrow (best), raw grass fed boar/fowl fat, tallow and raw butter. ( I should also add egg yolks to the list, which I previously forgot about) Given availability and storage issues with marrow and pork/fowl fat, this leaves tallow and raw butter (and now also raw egg yolks).
Title: Re: tallow v. butter
Post by: TylerDurden on January 06, 2011, 06:02:31 am
Tyler, just for clarification, are the "major heat created toxins" from cooked meats also all formed during the heating of fats?

I was always under the impression that cooking fat and protein together produced nasty carcinogenic compounds, but I don't think I've ever come across things that show "low heating"(without burning/smoking) and "wet heating" of fats alone or starches alone produce these carcinogens (and if they do, it is at a much lower rate).
  Incorrect. While there are heat-created toxins formed as a result of combinations of protein and fats or protein and carbohydrates, there are also oxidised fats and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons are also able to be formed solely from fats:- 

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6TG8-40F1PGM-V&_user=10&_coverDate=06%2F16%2F2000&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_origin=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1597623238&_rerunOrigin=google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=bfe90452dbb8e7f7901b810bc8ecade9&searchtype=a

also:- "PAHs are one of the most widespread organic pollutants. In addition to their presence in fossil fuels they are also formed by incomplete combustion of carbon-containing fuels such as wood, coal, diesel, fat, tobacco, and incense.[" taken from:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polycyclic_aromatic_hydrocarbon

Heterocyclic amines, another kind of heat-created toxin, also seem to be present in tallow:-

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9631494


As for scientific studies in general, they commonly mention that the greatest amounts of heat-created toxins are found in cooked animal foods, especially those with high levels of cooked animal fat in them(such as pasteurised butter etc.). Heat-created toxins form in cooked plant foods, of course, just not in as high amounts.

As for the suitability of raw high-quality fats, I can see that this is far more of a RZC dieters problem. A raw omnivore like me just needs to go in for raw, grassfed fatty marrow or  a few raw eggs or  fatty grassfed meats like raw lamb/mutton, along with a bit of raw fruit.
Title: Re: tallow v. butter
Post by: a87.pal on January 06, 2011, 06:40:57 am
Again, I'm not so well versed in all this biochem. But I am becoming more convinced by your argument Tyler, though I think i still need more evidence.

I don't have access to the science direct article, and the abstract only mentions plant oils, but I'll take your word for it until my friend sends me a copy of the article. This is, however, your most convincing piece of evidence (though I would like to see if it delineates between wet v. dry heat and low v. high temps: as these do make a significant difference in the reactions that are even possible, not just rates).

The wikipedia entry is unverifiable. If you look at the reference for the quote you mention http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/1467409.stm, it doesn't even mention fats.

and I don't see how the ncbi article is relevant: they examine two groups, one eating cooked beef with low fat and one with high fat. Both groups have high HCA's in their food, yet the high fat group ends up with less cancer. This article, again, doesn't delineate between cooking fat alone and cooking fat with protein.

Also just out of curiosity (because I dont really eat cooked starches) could you point me to some info on how low cooked or wet heated starches produce these compounds? I was always under the impression that lightly processing most vegetables increased their nutritional value. I'm guessing it has something to do with the small amounts of fat and protein they also contain?


Title: Re: tallow v. butter
Post by: lex_rooker on January 07, 2011, 09:09:57 am
 Incorrect. While there are heat-created toxins formed as a result of combinations of protein and fats or protein and carbohydrates, there are also oxidised fats and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons are also able to be formed solely from fats:-  

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6TG8-40F1PGM-V&_user=10&_coverDate=06%2F16%2F2000&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_origin=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1597623238&_rerunOrigin=google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=bfe90452dbb8e7f7901b810bc8ecade9&searchtype=a

also:- "PAHs are one of the most widespread organic pollutants. In addition to their presence in fossil fuels they are also formed by incomplete combustion of carbon-containing fuels such as wood, coal, diesel, fat, tobacco, and incense.[" taken from:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polycyclic_aromatic_hydrocarbon

Heterocyclic amines, another kind of heat-created toxin, also seem to be present in tallow:-

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9631494


As for scientific studies in general, they commonly mention that the greatest amounts of heat-created toxins are found in cooked animal foods, especially those with high levels of cooked animal fat in them(such as pasteurised butter etc.). Heat-created toxins form in cooked plant foods, of course, just not in as high amounts.

As for the suitability of raw high-quality fats, I can see that this is far more of a RZC dieters problem. A raw omnivore like me just needs to go in for raw, grassfed fatty marrow or  a few raw eggs or  fatty grassfed meats like raw lamb/mutton, along with a bit of raw fruit.

I find this whole response rather fascinating.  The first link takes us to an article that tells us that aromatic hydrocarbons (Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons) exist in edible fats and then tells us how they extracted and measured them.   They specifically referenced vegetable oils and agonized over the fact that there currently was no standarized method of measuring and reporting on them which the authors of the study were trying to correct.  No mention was made in the abstract as to whether the oils were cooked or raw so I expect that these nasty little buggers are in raw fats as well as cooked, but this is just my speculation.  Probably best to read the whole study to figure out if there is anything useful here.  If it is only about vegetable oils, no problem for me, I don’t eat them as they are far from paleo.

The second link takes us to a Wikipedia entry telling us that the nasty Polycyclic aromatic Hydrocarbons (PHAs) exists in food “cooked at high temperature” ,(grilled, smoked, and BBQed were specifically mentioned) as well as crude oil, coal and other major food groups.  So now at least we know that these nasty little buggers occur in burned meat and wood smoke used to smoke meats as well.  When it comes to health hazards, however, they admit that it all depends.  Some PAH’s are very toxic and some have no known health effects at all.  No idea which ones are present on those BBQed ribs, but since I don’t know of anyone that has gotten sick, much less died eating smoked fish, grilled steak, or BBQed ribs, where the culprit was singled out to be PAH’s, I tend to think that compared to all the other hazards around us (being struck by lightning or hit by a bus, etc), these are probably rather inconsequential.  Especially since no health risks could be demonstrated when eating grilled or smoked foods, only risks associated with gross environmental pollutants.  Might I suggest that based on this article you might not want to live on top of a toxic waste dump.

The third PubMed link is the most interesting of all.  It tells us well cooked beef has a high heterocyclic amine (HCA) content which appears to be different from PAHs though a PAH by any other name may be as aromatic (to butcher Shakespeare).  Anyway, the abstract says some interesting things.  First, they were looking to prove that eating cooked beef high in HCAs would cause tumors over the long term – long term being 12 weeks.  The abstract says the beef was prepared using a ‘variety of methods’, and of course we have no idea what those methods were, or which method produced which result, but I think we can safely state that not all cooking methods created the same amount of HCA’s or they wouldn’t have needed said variety.  They then stated that the cooked beef was “followed by various dietary regimens as a promotional stimuli”.  Hmmmmm, you mean they tried to create an environment that was known to be conducive to the formation of tumors so that they could blame it on the HCAs?  How could I possibly accuse them of that?  In the very next sentence of the abstract they talk about the fact that “high HCA diets produced tumors in all DMH-treated rats”.  What a surprise, especially since DMH is the well known and very potent carcinogen, dimethylhydrazine.  I guess they couldn’t get the rats to cooperate and produce tumors on HCA’s alone so they had to add some of that “promotional stimuli” to assure a positive outcome.  Finally, the researchers were totally befuddled by the fact that they were thwarted in their attempts to produce tumors, no matter how high the HCA levels, and how much “promotional stimuli” was added when the diet was high in fat.  Now they don’t specifically state which fats were tested, but you can bet that if they had gotten a positive outcome on any fat it would have been shouted to the rafters – especially if it was animal fat.  Now isn’t one of the tenets of a paleo diet to be high in animal fat?

Bottom line, don’t eat burned meat, don’t eat coal, don’t eat crude oil, don’t live on a toxic waste dump, (all containing PAHs), and don’t drink benzene or it’s derivatives (HCA’s).  

Do eat a paleo friendly diet high in animal fat, and go ahead and grill your steaks, BBQ your ribs, and smoke your fish, unless of course, you insist on treating yourself with large doses of DMH or other "tumor promotional stimuli".

Lex
Title: Re: tallow v. butter
Post by: miles on January 07, 2011, 09:47:15 am
Ha. I never even clicked Tyler's links(only re: heat created toxins) before let alone read them.
(http://captionsearch.com/pix/ukjax5qf2m.jpg)
Title: Re: tallow v. butter
Post by: TylerDurden on January 08, 2011, 12:37:36 am
Ha. I never even clicked Tyler's links(only re: heat created toxins) before let alone read them.

A clear example of mental blindness.

Quote
"Can you explain how this link shows that calories are pointless? It's massive, I tried to skim and find the relevant section but was unable to. " 
taken from:-

http://www.rawpaleoforum.com/general-discussion/how-many-calories-you-eat-per-day/?topicseen
an inevitable comment from Miles to another member's recent rawpaleoforum posting of a link to a certain study, showing a more obvious explanation of why he doesn't like to read any studies I show(just like with any other studies that others show ,they're too complicated/ too difficult for him to understand!)

Now, eventually, onto Lex's prolixity, in the next post:-


Title: Re: tallow v. butter
Post by: TylerDurden on January 08, 2011, 02:17:35 am
I find this whole response rather fascinating.  The first link takes us to an article that tells us that aromatic hydrocarbons (Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons) exist in edible fats and then tells us how they extracted and measured them.   They specifically referenced vegetable oils and agonized over the fact that there currently was no standarized method of measuring and reporting on them which the authors of the study were trying to correct.  No mention was made in the abstract as to whether the oils were cooked or raw so I expect that these nasty little buggers are in raw fats as well as cooked, but this is just my speculation.  Probably best to read the whole study to figure out if there is anything useful here.  If it is only about vegetable oils, no problem for me, I don’t eat them as they are far from paleo.

That's just childish. Anybody who had even the slightest clue about polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons(or heat-created toxins in general) would know that they are produced by heat - I suspect a pretense of ignorance here. Now, granted, it is very remotely possible to get raw meats contaminated by infinitely microscopic traces of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons(PAHs) via air-pollution as PAHs are produced  in cigarette-smoke and wildfires, but such incredibly rare contamination via air-pollution is insignificant compared to the large amounts of toxic PAHs generated by cooking/heating.

Also, I  referenced that study re edible vegetable oils simply to illustrate that PAHs are even produced in isolated fats by heat. Case proven. Since animal fats are not known to be  magically protected against the formation of toxins, it is rather dishonest to suggest that tallow or other animal fats are  somehow  uniquely immune.

Indeed, this link shows that polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons can indeed be produced from fat:-

http://books.google.at/books?id=FFg88IaReBwC&pg=PA144&lpg=PA144&dq=Polycyclic+aromatic+hydrocarbons+are+also+produced+from+animal+fat&source=bl&ots=niNgn3uJrk&sig=Ldcz5LqaDpen58M1IwI5YoFsmWI&hl=de&ei=Ez0nTZ7WOYas8gPkj8yOAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6&ved=0CD4Q6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=Polycyclic%20aromatic%20hydrocarbons%20are%20also%20produced%20from%20animal%20fat&f=false

So, Lex's 1st point is debunked.
Quote
The second link takes us to a Wikipedia entry telling us that the nasty Polycyclic aromatic  Hydrocarbons (PHAs) exists in food “cooked at high temperature” ,(grilled, smoked, and BBQed were specifically mentioned) as well as crude oil, coal and other major food groups.  So now at least we know that these nasty little buggers occur in burned meat and wood smoke used to smoke meats as well.  When it comes to health hazards, however, they admit that it all depends.  Some PAH’s are very toxic and some have no known health effects at all.  No idea which ones are present on those BBQed ribs, but since I don’t know of anyone that has gotten sick, much less died eating smoked fish, grilled steak, or BBQed ribs, where the culprit was singled out to be PAH’s, I tend to think that compared to all the other hazards around us (being struck by lightning or hit by a bus, etc), these are probably rather inconsequential.  Especially since no health risks could be demonstrated when eating grilled or smoked foods, only risks associated with gross environmental pollutants.  Might I suggest that based on this article you might not want to live on top of a toxic waste dump.

Very foolish remark, of course, the above quoted claims. First of all, people do not die immediately after eating specific foods, no one ever suggested otherwise, that's just your absurd invention/exaggeration. The whole point re those studies on polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons is that they contribute heavily to diseases like cancer etc. Also, it is moronic to suggest that something that is a well-known harmful industrial pollutant (like PAHs are) cannot be also harmful when produced by cooking foods, given the plentiful scientific evidence showing the harm done by PAHs in cooked foods/cooked meats:-

To give some idea of PAH exposure via food and negative health-effects:-

"4. The main source of exposure to PAHs for the adult is food, which contributed to more than 90% of total exposure.1,2 However for smokers, significant contribution of PAHs exposure may be attributed to cigarette smoking. The additional intake of one of the PAHs, benzo[a]pyrene, for a person smoking 20 cigarettes per day was estimated to be 210 ng, which is in the same order of magnitude of the mean intake from food (the mean benzo[a]pyrene intake from food was about 110 ng per day).2,3 Other minor routes of exposure to PAHs are inhalation of polluted ambient and indoor air, ingestion of house dust, and dermal absorption from contaminated soil and water.1 " so, PAH intake comes 90 percent from (cooked) foods, not via air-pollution. Now, granted, microscopic amounts of PAHS even contaminate raw foods via air-pollution, but the primary intake of high amounts of PAHs comes only from cooking, according to the article further down.

http://www.cfs.gov.hk/english/programme/programme_rafs/programme_rafs_fc_01_06_pah.html

There are enough studies demonstrating that PAHS are harmful to human health, for it to be rather foolish to pretend that the PAHs in foods are somehow all of the nontoxic variety:-

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20388572

(the 1st link mentions benzopyrene, a PAH known to be of the toxic variety).

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8224319

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19440493

http://herkules.oulu.fi/isbn9514270398/html/x203.html

(The above link does not admit that one can reduce one's PAH intake in a number of ways by simply eating foods raw, not smoking either actively or passively, and by avoiding areas of urban air-pollution). And since PAH intake mostly comes into the body via (cooked)food, eating one's food raw makes a hell of a lot more sense.

Oh, and on a side-note,  here's an obvious study:-

http://carcin.oxfordjournals.org/content/13/4/519.short

 which shows that caloric restriction allows PAHs to be detoxed out of the body faster:-

http://carcin.oxfordjournals.org/content/13/4/519.short

Makes sense, since reducing the intake of cooked/processed foods would naturally give the body fewer toxins per day so that it could deal with them more effectively.





Quote
[edit] " taken from:- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polycyclic_aromatic_hydrocarbon

The third PubMed link is the most interesting of all.  It tells us well cooked beef has a high heterocyclic amine (HCA) content which appears to be different from PAHs though a PAH by any other name may be as aromatic (to butcher Shakespeare).
Irelevant comment, pure obfuscation.
Quote
Anyway, the abstract says some interesting things.  First, they were looking to prove that eating cooked beef high in HCAs would cause tumors over the long term – long term being 12 weeks.  The abstract says the beef was prepared using a ‘variety of methods’, and of course we have no idea what those methods were, or which method produced which result, but I think we can safely state that not all cooking methods created the same amount of HCA’s or they wouldn’t have needed said variety.
Correct(!). HCAs are formed in fewer amounts if the meat is marinated, for example. But to suggest by implication, that "fewer HCAs" in a particular food means that the food is healthy would, of course, be wholly misleading and dishonest. All one could state, with any honesty, is that some forms of cooking produce fewer HCAs, and are therefore "less worse/less unhealthy" than other forms of cooking.

 
Quote
They then stated that the cooked beef was “followed by various dietary regimens as a promotional stimuli”.  Hmmmmm, you mean they tried to create an environment that was known to be conducive to the formation of tumors so that they could blame it on the HCAs?  How could I possibly accuse them of that?



Quote
In the very next sentence of the abstract they talk about the fact that “high HCA diets produced tumors in all DMH-treated rats”.  What a surprise, especially since DMH is the well known and very potent carcinogen, dimethylhydrazine.

Quote
I guess they couldn’t get the rats to cooperate and produce tumors on HCA’s alone so they had to add some of that “promotional stimuli” to assure a positive outcome. Why? Rats and mice have almost no spontaneous colon cancer. To test diets and agents which could prevent cancer, one needs animals with tumors. This is why rodents are given a carcinogen. Finally, the researchers were totally befuddled by the fact that they were thwarted in their attempts to produce tumors, no matter how high the HCA levels, and how much “promotional stimuli” was added when the diet was high in fat.  Now they don’t specifically state which fats were tested, but you can bet that if they had gotten a positive outcome on any fat it would have been shouted to the rafters – especially if it was animal fat.  Now isn’t one of the tenets of a paleo diet to be high in animal fat?

So, since rats have negligible, spontaneous colon cancer on any diet, the only way to determine a viable comparison with humans(who do get colon cancer) is to give them a cancer-causing chemical, and then practice various methods such as caloric restriction or adding in or removing toxic HCAs so as to see if these various methods increase or decrease the frequency or severity of the cancer. Rather logical, actually, in view of the current difficulty of getting humans to undergo long-term dietary experiments - I do rather wish the authorities would allow humans to be experimented on rather than animals so that science could advance at a faster rate. Perhaps we could introduce some sort of law allowing prisoners to cut their sentences  by a number of years if they are willing to undergo such dietary etc. experiments. At any rate, that study was a poor one, I'll admit, but the rest  online re AGEs/PAHs etc.  are rather damning in total, I'm afraid.

Quote
Bottom line, don’t eat burned meat, don’t eat coal, don’t eat crude oil, don’t live on a toxic waste dump, (all containing PAHs), and don’t drink benzene or it’s derivatives (HCA’s).
Wrong, as I pointed out  in previous segments re studies, most of the intake of such nasty chemicals comes NOT from toxic waste-dumps and the like, but mostly from eating cooked foods(and to smoking cigarettes, to a lesser extent, if one is a smoker). So, best to avoid all cooked foods, and eat plenty of raw meat, high in raw fat, but avoid those barbecues, Mcdonald's etc. etc.


[/quote]
Title: Re: tallow v. butter
Post by: ys on January 08, 2011, 02:47:21 am
Quote
The whole point re those studies on polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons is that they contribute heavily to diseases like cancer etc.

That's just your personal assumption that is hugely exaggerated.  And you have no proof, only hypothesis.  There are millions of people who eat cooked food all their lives and live up to 90-100 years without such degenerative diseases.

The contribution of some level is probably there, but not to "heavily" degree.

And another thing, there are no records what-so-ever that show life expectancy of raw paleo eaters is superior.
Unless we see such records everything you say is pure speculation.
Title: Re: tallow v. butter
Post by: TylerDurden on January 08, 2011, 04:08:54 am
That's just your personal assumption that is hugely exaggerated.  And you have no proof, only hypothesis.  There are millions of people who eat cooked food all their lives and live up to 90-100 years without such degenerative diseases.

The contribution of some level is probably there, but not to "heavily" degree.

And another thing, there are no records what-so-ever that show life expectancy of raw paleo eaters is superior.
Unless we see such records everything you say is pure speculation.
Not at all. Like I said, the info on the negative effect of heat-created toxins on human cells is already well established. One doesn't need decades-long studies to confirm that, as in vitro studies of the effect of  heat-created toxins on human tissue-cells already confirm this. Now, granted, not everybody who eats cooked foods gets cancer, so, obviously, there are other factors as well(such as caloric restriction, excercise-levels, stress etc. to name several I have mentioned already in the past). But that isn't quite what those studies said; what they actually stated was that conditions like cancer, or heart-disease or arthritis or diabetes are more likely to occur if one takes in a lot of heat-created toxins(slightly greater or much greater depending on things like dosage/processing etc.). Nothing wrong with stating that as enough studies confirm that. Now, while Lex is partially right in stating that it is what one eats that is important(though, of course, that will vary from person to person re their needs as plenty of us can't tolerate zero-carb , for example), Lex conveniently ignores the point that people tend to suffer more healthwise as foods get ever more processed - an idea started by Weston-Price and which scientists are continuing to demonstrate via numerous studies.

As for life-expectancy of rawpalaeodieters, that's meaningless as a comment as life-expectancy  involves numerous other  factors that are wholly unrelated to diet, such as exposure to stress levels, IQ etc.- richer people live longer than poorer people, regardless of diet , genetics etc.


To give a vague example of what I mean, take Weston-Price's hunter-gatherers.  The healthiest among them ate at least some raw foods along with the cooked foods they ate. They also practised caloric restriction and Intermittent Fasting due to feast-and-famine cycles dependent on things like weather, seasonal migrations etc. etc., and CR is known to reduce levels of heat-created toxins like AGEs in the human body. They also exercised a great deal because they had to(exercise is also known to reduce levels of AGEs in the body). They also ate foods which were minimally processed by comparison to modern times. Now, a number of pro-cooked-advocates  have used such examples to state flatly, that since these HGs ate cooked foods and were a bit healthier than modern settled humans, that therefore cooked foods were all harmless. But that, of course, is based on a false premise as there are many other factors which made the diets of Hunter-Gatherers " less worse" than they actually were. Plus, the diets of HGs, while incorporating some cooked foods, were nothing like the highly processed cooked  diet of modern times re frying/microwaving etc.

On a side-note , I have just recently met 2 very old relatives of mine with the usual old-age-related conditions which are hastened by intake of heat-created toxins via cooked foods - 1 is left with only 1 leg. They are still alive, many decades after they would otherwise have died, only because one of them is a former nurse and because they get round-the-clock care, take endless pills every day, and have artificial knees etc. Not exactly an endorsement of cooked food diets leading to a long life, really.


Title: Re: tallow v. butter
Post by: a87.pal on January 08, 2011, 04:47:20 am
Tyler, I hate that this thread has emerged into an attack on your evidence and explanations, because we (the attackers) are not supplying as much evidence as you are to back up our claims.

I wanted to use this post to summarize a few points from each side of the argument, but I quickly realized that I couldn't even verbalize what you were arguing.

Are you arguing that: cooking of any type will ALWAYS speed up the "aging"/"deterioration" process (i.e. rate of cancer, heart disease, neurological and muscle disorders)?

In either case, please specify in your next post to prevent this conversation from becoming pointless. Are there particular types of cooking that are safer than others? which are the worst? when might it be beneficial? Have all these deterioration processes been documented (I am only aware of digestive and GI track cancer from cooked paleo diet)?

And just to be specific, I am arguing that lightly cooking fats high in waxy esters and sat fat, with moderate mono fat, and very low poly fat (in the presence of antioxidants) will cause negligible toxins (though still a few, which the body can easily handle through fasting and high fat diets). And also that the beta oxidation metabolic pathway (promoted in ketosis) is prepared to handle the oxidized fats (not the PAHs) from cooking.

Your first article about PAHs only mentions plant oils, which are unstable even at low temperatures (probably, why plants are also high in antioxidants). I mean flax seed oil has been known to spontaneously catch on fire: http://www.naturalhandyman.com/iip/infpai/inflinspontaneouscombust.html. Just because we as humans combine fats from plants and animals into one category does not mean they behave the same way.

I "think" others here are arguing that lightly cooking (searing, steaming, boiling/poaching, slow cooking) meat in the presence of spices/antioxidants and eating with fiber/salad [a paleo-diet] will not speed up the deterioration process (except perhaps GI and digestive cancers, which were probably because of those people did not do cooked paleo with enough fiber and spices, or just not enough excersize/water) (note that in the long run i think fiber is bad, but can be useful to heal a cancerous gut by promoting certain regulatory microorganisms)

Again, this whole spices thing is my own CRAZY idea. Never really proven.

But I have seen a few studies confirming it, and a lot of human accounts. The spices cannot deal with PAHs once they have been formed. But they can lower the rate of oxidation, which in turn lowers the rate of PAH creation (I think?). Also, all the studies indicate that you really have to pour on the spices to see considerable effect, which could lead to buildup of other plant nasties. However, turmeric and ginger are one of the few spices with almost no reported symptoms (i think?), compared to things like pepper, curry, or other seed/leaf based spices.
Title: Re: tallow v. butter
Post by: turkish on January 08, 2011, 04:52:20 am
a87.pal,
 why do you say "pour on spice to see considerable effect"?

Basically what i understand you are saying "spices are need them in huge quantities". where did this come from?
Title: Re: tallow v. butter
Post by: a87.pal on January 08, 2011, 05:04:57 am
If you look in this article: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2854897/ at table 1 where they show the composition of the cooked burgers: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2854897/table/tbl1/

you see they added 11.25 g of spices (composed of http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2854897/table/tbl2/) per 250 g raw burger (a bit over 1/2 a pound).

This achieved a 71% decrease in the malondialdehyde content.

11.25 g of spices is a lot for me, but it may not be that much for you.
Title: Re: tallow v. butter
Post by: turkish on January 08, 2011, 05:20:59 am
We do a lot of indian cooking and we have come to realize that Quality of spices matters!

Of course we have not done any quantitative analysis in our kitchen, i am not sure if the researchers are aware of that.

Crappy spices dont work medicinally at all, my wife uses spices as medcine, she can easily tell them apart.
Title: Re: tallow v. butter
Post by: ys on January 08, 2011, 05:28:12 am
Quote
As for life-expectancy of rawpalaeodieters, that's meaningless as a comment as life-expectancy  involves numerous other  factors that are wholly unrelated to diet, such as exposure to stress levels, IQ etc.- richer people live longer than poorer people, regardless of diet , genetics etc.

i thought long life expectancy without disease is the meaning of this diet.  at least that what it means to me and why i am here.  if it meaningless, then the whole diet thing is meaningless too.
Title: Re: tallow v. butter
Post by: turkish on January 08, 2011, 05:35:24 am
i thought long life expectancy without disease is the meaning of this diet.  at least that what it means to me and why i am here.  if it meaningless, then the whole diet thing is meaningless too.

i am not sure if these life expectancy numbers take quality of life into account, which again can be subjective.
Title: Re: tallow v. butter
Post by: a87.pal on January 08, 2011, 05:37:38 am
We do a lot of indian cooking and we have come to realize that Quality of spices matters!

Of course we have not done any quantitative analysis in our kitchen, i am not sure if the researchers are aware of that.

Crappy spices dont work medicinally at all, my wife uses spices as medcine, she can easily tell them apart.

fresh, organic spices may be good for very specific medicinal purposes due to other chemicals in them.

these chemicals probably have very little antioxidant properties though. As far as ORAC capacity goes, I have only seen that dried always has a significant amount more per gram (water weight). However, in the future we will probably find out this is a flawed metric.

In any case, if you look at the composition of the spice mix, you see the two most potent antioxidants, cinnamon and oregano make up about 30% of the 11.3 g mix. I bet they could have just used a 4 gram mix of only oregano and gotten the same result. This is much more reasonable and closer to what I ask my parents to add to my cooked food when I'm at home.
Title: Re: tallow v. butter
Post by: CHK91 on January 08, 2011, 05:37:47 am
i am not sure if these life expectancy numbers take quality of life into account, which again can be subjective.

Not saying that raw paleo will shorten lifespan at all, but I would much rather prefer a short, happy, disease-free life compared to a long one with chronic conditions which would be absolute torture.
Title: Re: tallow v. butter
Post by: turkish on January 08, 2011, 05:40:21 am
Not saying that raw paleo will shorten lifespan at all, but I would much rather prefer a short, happy, disease-free life compared to a long one with chronic conditions which would be absolute torture.

completely agree with you there.
Title: Re: tallow v. butter
Post by: miles on January 08, 2011, 06:13:38 am
Quote
Insert Quote
Quote from: miles on Yesterday at 03:47:15 PM
"Ha. I never even clicked Tyler's links(only re: heat created toxins) before let alone read them."

A clear example of mental blindness.

Quote
"Can you explain how this link shows that calories are pointless? It's massive, I tried to skim and find the relevant section but was unable to. "
taken from:-

http://www.rawpaleoforum.com/general-discussion/how-many-calories-you-eat-per-day/?topicseen
an inevitable comment from Miles to another member's recent rawpaleoforum posting of a link to a certain study, showing a more obvious explanation of why he doesn't like to read any studies I show(just like with any other studies that others show ,they're too complicated/ too difficult for him to understand!)

I didn't find your links complicated/difficult, I just wasn't interested enough to open them. I've read stuff about heat-created toxins before, and none of the things you've been saying have disagreed with what I've already heard, so I've been happy enough just reading what you've had to say and felt no need to check your links... I've never engaged in any discussions on heat-created toxins or felt the need to brush up on the facts, and there's only so much I can do in a day.

And that thing about calories... Did you really read that entire link yourself? I was only interested to see what it was suggesting made calories pointless. I skimmed and read sections but couldn't find anything relevant to the statement that 'calories are pointless', and instead of me reading through the whole thing to find a small relevant section(or not) I decided to ask the person who posted it..

Edit: I've read lots of the studies to which you and others have linked, including those relating to heat-created toxins from you as I'm now remembering. It's just that you have to post the same response to so many different people asking about heat-created toxins, and I've been here for over a year and seen the same response to the same questions, from you, so many times that I just don't bother opening the links contained in that specific response any more. After reading Lex's post I still didn't open them, his comments on your links were just amusing.
Title: Re: tallow v. butter
Post by: TylerDurden on January 08, 2011, 06:28:11 am


I wanted to use this post to summarize a few points from each side of the argument, but I quickly realized that I couldn't even verbalize what you were arguing.

Are you arguing that: cooking of any type will ALWAYS speed up the "aging"/"deterioration" process (i.e. rate of cancer, heart disease, neurological and muscle disorders)?
Yes. But, of course, the rate of deterioration will depend on amounts/percentages of cooked foods in the diet, and if consumption of cooked foods was very slight indeed or only involved very slightly cooked foods, and other things were practised such as caloric restriction then, deterioration might well be zero, in the end.

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In either case, please specify in your next post to prevent this conversation from becoming pointless. Are there particular types of cooking that are safer than others? which are the worst? when might it be beneficial? Have all these deterioration processes been documented (I am only aware of digestive and GI track cancer from cooked paleo diet)?
  Yes, they have been variously documented, although food-science has a long way to go before things like the destruction of enzymes via cooking and the like are fully explored. Basically, boiling in water and steaming are the least worst types of cooking, with frying/grilling the worst. Microwaving seems to have mixed effects, some much worse, some much less worse than other kinds of cooking.

Cooking is beneficial in terms of removing antinutrient levels in things like grains and vegetables/legumes.  However, this benefit is cancelled out by the fact that cooking also leads to the destruction of nutrients  in most foods via heat plus the addition of heat-created toxins. Cooking also destroys the enzymes in raw foods and all the bacteria as well.

Cooking could also be said to reduce the risk of parasites, but RVAFers(even Lex at one point, in the past!) have stated that parasites on a RVAF diet are very rare, and pretty much harmless.

Here is a short resume of the negative effects of cooked foods, with references within:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raw_foodism#Potential_harmful_effects_of_cooked_foods_and_cooking
 Obviously, there is a huge amount of data on the subject, and only careful perusal of pubmed can reveal all the various 1,000s of  studies done on heat-created toxins. I am eventually planning to do a more careful essay on the subject within the next 3 months.


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And just to be specific, I am arguing that lightly cooking fats high in waxy esters and sat fat, with moderate mono fat, and very low poly fat (in the presence of antioxidants) will cause negligible toxins (though still a few, which the body can easily handle through fasting and high fat diets). And also that the beta oxidation metabolic pathway (promoted in ketosis) is prepared to handle the oxidized fats (not the PAHs) from cooking.

There is, currrently, no scientific evidence whatsoever to suggest that being in ketosis protects one from oxidised fats or any other type of toxin. Granted, one can argue that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence as ketosis is so little understood within food-science as yet, but there is no anecdotal evidence either - I mean, the Inuit lived on diets consisting partially of raw meats, so one could easily argue that any better health on their part was due to raw-meat consumption rather than ketosis as such. Plus, people on cooked ketogenic diets appear to have a high risk of suffering  from a large number of unpleasant side-effects(eg:- kidney stones)(although 1 or 2 effects are beneficial, such as with regard to epileptics), so this ketosis-preventing-oxidisation-of-fats theory is very unlikely.

As for the notion that PUFAs are harmful, these are,IMO, highly dubious notions championed by the likes of Ray Peat etc. Ray Peat did really dodgy stuff, such as pretending that PUFAs were harmful by linking to a study which showed that dogs fed wholly or mostly on PUFA-rich fish-oils suffered healthwise. Not only are fish-oils virtually always highly processed, but dogs do not consume fish-oils in nature, they consume raw fish at best.Similiarly, anti-PUFA campaigners routinely point to studies on vegetable-oils which are mostly heavily refined and processed a lot from the original solid, raw product and then compare them to only lightly-cooked meats, which is not a fair comparison.

Some of the anti-PUFA extremists have even gone as far as claiming that PUFAs(in this case it was omega-3s) are so bad for you that one must eat grainfed meats instead of grassfed meats, at all times(or in Ray Peat's case, I believe he recommended coconut oil). This is clearly ridiculous as studies have shown that (richer in PUFA)grassfed meats are much healthier for one, having more nutrients etc.

Interesting point re the antioxidants. Past pro-cooked-food-advocates in the past just used rather tired, old arguments I'd seen countless times before - this is entirely new. The only trouble is that for all the various types of toxins to be reduced(not just oxidised fats), one would have to do all sorts of complicated things(such as boiling lightly  in water as that reduces AGEs) etc. It would take hours to prepare such cooked foods! Plus, I am extremely sceptical about the notion of pouring large, sufficient amounts of turmeric onto raw meat/fat before it was cooked. I  doubt that such an extra load of spices can be good for the body, in the long-term. In other words, you'd be exchanging one kind of problem(oxidised fats) for another kind.

Oh, and increasing the fat-content of a diet would make things worse as cooked animal fat has more heat-created toxins formed within it via cooking than, say, cooked lean meats.



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Your first article about PAHs only mentions plant oils, which are unstable even at low temperatures (probably, why plants are also high in antioxidants). I mean flax seed oil has been known to spontaneously catch on fire: http://www.naturalhandyman.com/iip/infpai/inflinspontaneouscombust.html. Just because we as humans combine fats from plants and animals into one category does not mean they behave the same way.

Well, I previously provided a link to show that PAHs can be formed directly from burning/cooking fat:-

http://books.google.at/books?id=FFg88IaReBwC&pg=PA144&lpg=PA144&dq=Polycyclic+aromatic+hydrocarbons+are+also+produced+from+animal+fat&source=bl&ots=niNgn3uJrk&sig=Ldcz5LqaDpen58M1IwI5YoFsmWI&hl=de&ei=Ez0nTZ7WOYas8gPkj8yOAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6&ved=0CD4Q6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=Polycyclic%20aromatic%20hydrocarbons%20are%20also%20produced%20from%20animal%20fat&f=false

The basic point is that not even isolated fats like tallow are immune to the formation of a number of different heat-created toxins. Indeed the fact that the foods highest in cooked animal fats(eg:- pasteurised butter) are also the ones with the highest levels of AGEs/advanced glycation end products in them, is rather indicative of the point I made before.

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I "think" others here are arguing that lightly cooking (searing, steaming, boiling/poaching, slow cooking) meat in the presence of spices/antioxidants and eating with fiber/salad [a paleo-diet] will not speed up the deterioration process (except perhaps GI and digestive cancers, which were probably because of those people did not do cooked paleo with enough fiber and spices, or just not enough excersize/water) (note that in the long run i think fiber is bad, but can be useful to heal a cancerous gut by promoting certain regulatory microorganisms)
  Actually, Lex is totally against the notion of salad consumption in the amounts presumably needed to build up antioxidant levels; he views an all-meat diet or, at best, VLC, to be a (supposedly) "better" option, even if cooked.


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Again, this whole spices thing is my own CRAZY idea. Never really proven.

But I have seen a few studies confirming it, and a lot of human accounts. The spices cannot deal with PAHs once they have been formed. But they can lower the rate of oxidation, which in turn lowers the rate of PAH creation (I think?). Also, all the studies indicate that you really have to pour on the spices to see considerable effect, which could lead to buildup of other plant nasties. However, turmeric and ginger are one of the few spices with almost no reported symptoms (i think?), compared to things like pepper, curry, or other seed/leaf based spices.
I was puzzled as to your notion that PAHs were prevented/lowered by a lowering in the rate of oxidation, since the formation of the  PAHs seemed far more complex. Here is a study which had focused on the formation of PAHs in oxygen-deficient conditions, and found they mostly actually increased in amounts in such conditions:-

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6TC7-44NKXT1-1&_user=10&_coverDate=05%2F31%2F2002&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_origin=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1599880529&_rerunOrigin=google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=62e3e9ce8f0a9efd8e6bad40800a2561&searchtype=a

Title: Re: tallow v. butter
Post by: TylerDurden on January 08, 2011, 06:41:43 am
i thought long life expectancy without disease is the meaning of this diet.  at least that what it means to me and why i am here.  if it meaningless, then the whole diet thing is meaningless too.
Rawpaleoforum has never suggested that diet was the sole path to a long life, or even the sole answer to health. That would be physically impossible as some things are better(eg:- immediate surgery for people who've had life-threatening car-crashes as that prolongs life more in such  cases). A rawpalaeodiet can guarantee a high-quality life - of course, one can say "what if one lives in an area of excessive pollution such as what happened in Minamata Bay re heavy-mercury-poisoning) but those are outliers, that hardly ever happen. Oh, and there are always non-dietary methods which can also improve health to some extent indirectly - massage, for example or chiropractic or exercise or similiar.

Given that cooked foods are so often associated with  increases in the symptoms of age-related conditions in particular, it is a reasonable assumption that people on rawpalaeodiets will have a lower biological age than their similiarly-chronologically-aged cooked-food-eating contemporaries. (On an anecdotal level, some American RVAFers have told me that RVAFers at raw food gatherings commonly look c. 10 years younger than SAD-eating people of the same chronological age).

Of course, as the RVAF diet movement grows older, it will be interesting to see how our lifespans correspond to SAD-dieters. Scientists seem adamant that 125 years is an upper limit, but who knows?
Title: Re: tallow v. butter
Post by: TylerDurden on January 08, 2011, 06:47:07 am
I didn't find your links complicated/difficult, I just wasn't interested enough to open them. I've read stuff about heat-created toxins before, and none of the things you've been saying have disagreed with what I've already heard, so I've been happy enough just reading what you've had to say and felt no need to check your links... I've never engaged in any discussions on heat-created toxins or felt the need to brush up on the facts, and there's only so much I can do in a day.

And that thing about calories... Did you really read that entire link yourself? I was only interested to see what it was suggesting made calories pointless. I skimmed and read sections but couldn't find anything relevant to the statement that 'calories are pointless', and instead of me reading through the whole thing to find a small relevant section(or not) I decided to ask the person who posted it..


Granted, we are all time-poor these days. Such links waste a lot of my time, too.

As for the calories study, I thought it was fairly straightforward. But then, I previously had read some exchanges on another forum(fasting yahoo group?) where the subject of calories was discussed, with several people pointing out some criticisms of using calories as a viable system of measurement, and how it was biased in favour of vegetarians/vegans.
Title: Re: tallow v. butter
Post by: ys on January 08, 2011, 08:16:46 am
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Given that cooked foods are so often associated with  increases in the symptoms of age-related conditions in particular

Tyler, you are hilarious.  age-related conditions?? like what?  wrinkles? grey hair? can't jump up and down anymore? it's called aging or getting old. it's normal. it's what people do.

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Of course, as the RVAF diet movement grows older, it will be interesting to see how our lifespans correspond to SAD-dieters. Scientists seem adamant that 125 years is an upper limit, but who knows?

125 as average or maximum?  currently 122 is the limit for human following cooked diet.
Title: Re: tallow v. butter
Post by: TylerDurden on January 08, 2011, 08:29:06 am
Tyler, you are hilarious.  age-related conditions?? like what?  wrinkles? grey hair? can't jump up and down anymore? it's called aging or getting old. it's normal. it's what people do.
  I was specifically referring to age-related conditions like atherosclerosis, arthritis etc.  I was, of course, despite your absurd implication above,  not remotely suggesting that a rawpalaeodiet could give us immortality or eternal youth, I merely meant that NOT eating cooked foods would mean we would deteriorate at a slower rate than on a cooked food diet. How slow one deteriorates depends on the quality of diet(how much raw etc.) plus things like exercise and the like.
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125 as average or maximum?  currently 122 is the limit for human following cooked diet.
  The 125 figure was  quoted by scientists who were suggesting that human telomeres in cells prevented anyone becoming older than 125, under any circumstances. That 122 figure is presumably just quoting Jeanne Calment's age when she died as the oldest woman on Earth at the time, but it is quite possible that others might  have lived a bit longer than her - after all, it was only recently that records could be accurate enough to verify her claim beyond doubt.
Title: Re: tallow v. butter
Post by: lex_rooker on January 08, 2011, 09:42:33 am
Tyler, I never said most of the things you implied that I said and then say you’ve debunked.  I only said:  The first study says only that PAH’s exist and they can be measured.  The Wikipedea entry told us what PAH’s are and where they can be found.  Both of these are what is so.  But they are also, so what?  We know they exist, we know what and where they are, and we can accurately measure them.  We just can’t show they cause any significant problem in the diet – unless you cheat and add other known carcinogens to give them a boost, or raise the level to hundreds or thousands of times what would be found in real food.  This was clearly demonstrated in the PubMed article where they didn’t even mention PAH’s but rather HCA’s and was a study expressly made to link these HCAs to tumor formation.  Even the abstract admits that the only way they could get tumors to form was with a “regimen of promotional stimuli” in both humans and rats.  Sort of like running a study to prove that water will kill you and then preparing it as tea containing a variety of ‘promotional stimuli’, like hemlock, to make sure you get a positive outcome. 

I’ve read countless studies of this type and not one shows a definitive link between any illness and cooking of food.  Most are right up there with the cholesterol hysteria where the official reports are misleading or where they artificially manipulated the environment to create the desired outcome just as they did in the PubMed study you referenced.  The only surprise for me was that the manipulation was made so obvious in the PubMed abstract.  Usually it is buried deep in study data and requires that you pay to receive the full report to find it.

I eat most of my food raw because no other animal cooks its food so it makes sense to me that we are probably better off if we don’t either.  It is from an ideological point of view, not because there is any hard evidence that it causes major health problems.  I do enjoy grilled steaks and BBQ’d ribs several times a month when eating out, and I always eat the cooked turkey, ham, or whatever meat is served at family functions and holidays and thoroughly enjoy it.

My point was to show that many studies referenced as proving how bad something is, do nothing more than demonstrate that it exists, can be measured, and in some forms can be dangerous, yet are not relevant to the context of the issue for which it is offered as proof.  Such is the case with your first two links.

Other studies are more egregious in that they set out to prove a specific cause and effect relationship, and then purposely manipulate the environment to create the desired outcome just as they did in the PubMed example.

I never accept stuff like this at face value.  I always dig deep to find the real story and usually find that the truth is far different than the title, headlines, and summary would lead you to believe.  I suggest everyone take the same approach and do their own research and critical analysis rather than just accepting evidence provided by others (including me) without question.

We now return you to your original program “Tallow vs Butter”, brought to you by a87.pal…
Lex   
Title: Re: tallow v. butter
Post by: rawcarni on January 08, 2011, 05:10:01 pm

We now return you to your original program “Tallow vs Butter”, brought to you by a87.pal…
Lex   


Thanks-I have a question  on that one. Is butter regarded as "bad" as cheese? I am asking b/c a frined of mine has epilepsi and he has been thinking about starting a ketogenic diet in order to try to cut back on meds. Howeve, rhe would need to up the calories of the fattiest beef he can get (about 68% fat) but he hasn't found out yet where to get any tallow or suet and has been thinking of using butter for that. Any thoughts?
Thanks
Nicole
Title: Re: tallow v. butter
Post by: TylerDurden on January 08, 2011, 07:57:10 pm
Tyler, I never said most of the things you implied that I said and then say you’ve debunked.  I only said:  The first study says only that PAH’s exist and they can be measured.  The Wikipedea entry told us what PAH’s are and where they can be found.  Both of these are what is so.  But they are also, so what?  We know they exist, we know what and where they are, and we can accurately measure them.  We just can’t show they cause any significant problem in the diet – unless you cheat and add other known carcinogens to give them a boost, or raise the level to hundreds or thousands of times what would be found in real food.  This was clearly demonstrated in the PubMed article where they didn’t even mention PAH’s but rather HCA’s and was a study expressly made to link these HCAs to tumor formation.  Even the abstract admits that the only way they could get tumors to form was with a “regimen of promotional stimuli” in both humans and rats.  Sort of like running a study to prove that water will kill you and then preparing it as tea containing a variety of ‘promotional stimuli’, like hemlock, to make sure you get a positive outcome. 

I’ve read countless studies of this type and not one shows a definitive link between any illness and cooking of food.  Most are right up there with the cholesterol hysteria where the official reports are misleading or where they artificially manipulated the environment to create the desired outcome just as they did in the PubMed study you referenced.  The only surprise for me was that the manipulation was made so obvious in the PubMed abstract.  Usually it is buried deep in study data and requires that you pay to receive the full report to find it.

  First of all, the above claim of yours is invalid for a specific reason:- The rats were only fed with a tumour-inducing carcinogen because rats don't get spontaneous colon cancer on any diet(I am sure that long-term human studies would be better but they are simply not practical, only short-term ones are). That way re carcinogen-use, scientists can determine if adding a new type of dietary regime, on top of the carcinogen, then dramatically increased or decreased the chances of getting cancer(or increased/decreased its severity) away from the standard rate/severity of cancer that those rats would have gotten with just being given the carcinogen and no specific diet. So your assertion does not debunk those results per se.


Plus, while you are right in stating(by implication) that animal studies are nowhere near as good as human studies, there are plenty of other studies which you cannot refute convincingly. I  previously pointed out earlier on in the thread that HCAs and PAHs are known toxins in cigarette-smoke and contribute to various illnesses caused by smoking according to endless studies. Kind of difficult to suggest that HCAs and PAHs are harmless in foods but somehow suddenly only magically dangerous if within cigarette-smoke - well, unless, like  william did, you want to foolishly suggest that smoking is always good for you, despite all the scientific evidence against this notion!

Then there are in vitro studies like these:-

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1569298/ (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1569298/)

which show that benzopyrene, (a toxic PAH, incidentally present in both cigarette-smoke and in foods, by the way), has a direct negative effect on human cells:-

http://caluniv.academia.edu/ParagNandi/Papers/298939/The_In_Vitro_Effect_of_Benzo_a_Pyrene_on_Human_Sperm_Hyperactivation_and_Acrosome_Reaction (http://caluniv.academia.edu/ParagNandi/Papers/298939/The_In_Vitro_Effect_of_Benzo_a_Pyrene_on_Human_Sperm_Hyperactivation_and_Acrosome_Reaction)


What I also find interesting is that heat-created toxins like benzopyrene affect the DNA in harmful ways:-

http://www.caspases.org/showabstract.php?pmid=16926039 (http://www.caspases.org/showabstract.php?pmid=16926039)

It would not surprise me, therefore, if heat-created toxins from cooked foods have a powerful epigenetic effect on offspring. Smoking, which involves damage from heat-created toxins, has been shown to have a negative epigenetic influence on future offspring re dramatic asthma increases for example:-

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn7252-pregnant-smokers-increases-grandkids-asthma-risk.html (http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn7252-pregnant-smokers-increases-grandkids-asthma-risk.html)

What it boils down to is that while one can quibble about a few of the studies, the masses of studies as a whole show clearly that heat-created toxins derived from cooked foods harm the body. Naturally, it is perfectly reasonable to suggest ways to reduce such toxin-intake or their effects(re boiling in water or doing exercise or practising caloric restriction  etc.) - but, given the masses of scientific data debunking the notion that cooked foods are healthy and the wealth of anecdotal info from RVAFers on how much better their health is after cutting out cooked meats from their diet, it is increasingly untenable to suggest that cooked food either has no discernible difference in effect from raw foods(given such numerous chemical changes induced by cooking) or to suggest, like Wrangham does, that eating cooked foods is way more beneficial than eating raw foods.

Title: Re: tallow v. butter
Post by: TylerDurden on January 08, 2011, 07:59:49 pm
Thanks-I have a question  on that one. Is butter regarded as "bad" as cheese? I am asking b/c a frined of mine has epilepsi and he has been thinking about starting a ketogenic diet in order to try to cut back on meds. Howeve, rhe would need to up the calories of the fattiest beef he can get (about 68% fat) but he hasn't found out yet where to get any tallow or suet and has been thinking of using butter for that. Any thoughts?
Thanks
Nicole
  In the RVAF world, anyway, butter is seen as being "less worse" than cheese. Butter is supposed to be lower in lactose/casein than the other dairy-types. Ghee is supposed to be even more lactose-/casein-free than butter.

I would also strongly advise your friend to read up on the negative side-effects of ketogenic diets. There are some things to watch out for, such as making sure to drink lots of water etc.
Title: Re: tallow v. butter
Post by: lex_rooker on January 09, 2011, 02:24:51 am
Well Tyler, I don’t know what to say.  Your evidence is overwhelming.

In the first study, BaP was shown to exacerbate existing cancer caused by asbestos.  Asbestos being a well known and documented carcinogen.  Can you say “promotional stimuli”?

In the second study, sperm were washed of all their natural fluids and then flooded with various concentrations of BaP, all of them hundreds of times the levels that would be found in the body, and sperm function was affected.  Wonder what would happen if they flooded them with various concentrations of salt water, vinegar, fruit juice, or a host of other common things we consume.  All of the above will instantly kill sperm but seem to be relatively harmless, and some might say enjoyable, even when consumed in large quantities and high concentrations.

Your third study states that 4 different lines of breast cancer cells were exposed to BaP and the DNA of these cancer cells was effected.  Apparently it has no effect on normal cells as these weren’t mentioned.

The final link is about the effects of smoking.  I’ve never smoked as my body reacted violently when I attempted it, and I trusted that it was telling me this was not a good thing. Therefore I’ve chosen not to smoke my pork ribs, chicken, or grilled steaks.  I prefer to eat them.   My body has had no severe adverse reaction to eating grilled ribs, chicken, or steak, at least that I’ve been able to detect.  But then I’m cheating as I’m in vivo, not in vitro.

The lessons of the above studies are quite clear.  1. If you are either an in vitro cancer cell (specifically breast cancer or mesothelioma), or an in vitro sperm cell you should avoid solutions containing high concentrations of BaP.  2. Smoking tobacco (or anything else for that matter) is probably not the healthiest lifestyle choice, whether you are in vitro or in vivo.

Though entertaining, might I suggest we abandon this foolishness and let the thread get on with arguing the merits of tallow vs butter?

Lex
Title: Re: tallow v. butter
Post by: TylerDurden on January 10, 2011, 01:18:05 am
In the first study, BaP was shown to exacerbate existing cancer caused by asbestos.  Asbestos being a well known and documented carcinogen.  Can you say “promotional stimuli”?
Your point is completely invalid, of course. It is absolutely irrelevant that asbestos is a known carcinogen as the WHOLE POINT of the study was that abestos combined with benzopyrene, a known carcinogen and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon(PAH) present in cigarette-smoke and cooked foods, has a much nastier carcinogenic effect than asbestos on its own( re mention of an increased synergistic effect etc.). Plus, there are plenty of studies showing that benzopyrene on its own is carcinogenic without the need of asbestos or similiar carcinogen:-


http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8832894 (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8832894)






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In the second study, sperm were washed of all their natural fluids and then flooded with various concentrations of BaP, all of them hundreds of times the levels that would be found in the body, and sperm function was affected.  Wonder what would happen if they flooded them with various concentrations of salt water, vinegar, fruit juice, or a host of other common things we consume.  All of the above will instantly kill sperm but seem to be relatively harmless, and some might say enjoyable, even when consumed in large quantities and high concentrations.

I’m afraid you’ve been conned by a rather hoary old-wives’ tale/urban legend which has since proven false re that saltwater remark – it seems  that sperm do eventually die after dispersal but the saltwater notion is apparently not valid. The TV show Mythbusters did a routine experiment and managed to disprove the notion that one could use  acidic drinks like cola as an effective spermicide. They also used as a comparison, a safe sample of sperm in a saline solution. Indeed, saline solutions are commonly used to store sperm quite safely and are offered on sale all over :-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MythBusters_(2003_season)#101_Uses_For_Cola (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MythBusters_(2003_season)#101_Uses_For_Cola)


While dispersal of sperm will eventually kill off sperm, due to quite other reasons, it isn’t quite as easy, therefore, to kill off sperm. More to the point, such damage done to sperm seems to include damage to the DNA of sperm, which is something only benzopyrene seems to do, unlike fruit-juice or whatever. In other words, microscopic amounts of benzopyrene, a type of PAH, will have a slight negative effect on sperm re DNA-damage or overall infertility but not other more harmless substances - and, over a lifetime of ingesting   daily amounts of such PAHs one can expect more damage to occur.


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Your third study states that 4 different lines of breast cancer cells were exposed to BaP and the DNA of these cancer cells was effected.  Apparently it has no effect on normal cells as these weren’t mentioned.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC223267/ (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC223267/)

This is pure equivocation. The fact that that 1 particular study  didn’t happen to mention the effect on normal cells just cancerous ones, does not remotely mean that normal cells are not affected. Indeed, there are studies showing that normal cells are indeed affected by benzopyrene re DNA damage  or other aspects:-

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC220015/ (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC220015/)

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC220015/?page=1 (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC220015/?page=1)

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC349016/ (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC349016/)

 
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The final link is about the effects of smoking.  I’ve never smoked as my body reacted violently when I attempted it, and I trusted that it was telling me this was not a good thing. Therefore I’ve chosen not to smoke my pork ribs, chicken, or grilled steaks.  I prefer to eat them.   My body has had no severe adverse reaction to eating grilled ribs, chicken, or steak, at least that I’ve been able to detect.  But then I’m cheating as I’m in vivo, not in vitro.
  This is pointless obfuscation on your part. I have already previously pointed out that the heat-created toxins found in cigarette-smoke(specifically HCAs and PAHs) are also found in cooked foods in general, not just smoked foods, so eating non-smoked cooked foods and not smoking could not prevent one from taking in such heat-created toxins. As for your mention of having no adverse reactions to eating grilled ribs, that is purely your personal claim, and rather  pointless in view of the multitude  of other RVAFers’ own anecdotes about the ill-health they got from eating grilled ribs, me being just 1 individual  in the whole mob. Besides,  I have previously had some people in appallingly bad health on SAD diets  assure me that they were in fine health, so I prefer to rely on the fact that most cooked-foodists in the end suffer some form of age-related condition, derived from heat-created toxins in cooked foods, rather than just 1 lone individual’s vague assurances. The evidence linking AGEs to arthritis etc. is just too damning.


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The lessons of the above studies are quite clear.  1. If you are either an in vitro cancer cell (specifically breast cancer or mesothelioma), or an in vitro sperm cell you should avoid solutions containing high concentrations of BaP.  2. Smoking tobacco (or anything else for that matter) is probably not the healthiest lifestyle choice, whether you are in vitro or in vivo.
  Not in the slightest. The in vitro studies show that human cells are directly negatively affected by heat-created toxins, making it extremely unlikely that the human body, as a whole, is unaffected. Plus, the data on the negative effects of HCAs/PAHs in cigarette-smoke is also applicable to the danger of eating cooked foods, as HCAs/PAHs are also found in cooked foods as well as cigarette-smoke and car-exhaust fumes – indeed, 1 past link showed that we take in such toxins in much greater amounts than we breathe in via air-pollution.


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Though entertaining, might I suggest we abandon this foolishness and let the thread get on with arguing the merits of tallow vs butter?

Lex

  Well, obviously, I was already well aware no amount of scientific evidence, however solid, would manage to convince you, given your religious beliefs on the subject of cooking. But it was a useful means to summarise, for RVAFers in general,  a very tiny proportion of the multitude of scientific studies confirming the harm done by cooked foods(I particularly appreciate the reports in the studies and media about the fact that certain heat-created toxins found in cooked foods are also found in cigarette-smoke and car-exhaust fumes). The vast majority of us(except you it seems) have plenty of anecdotal evidence of their own to support the notion that cooking causes minor to major degrees of harm, and having their own findings confirmed by science is very useful indeed.

Well, back to the so-called "merits" of tallow vs butter - six of one and half a dozen of the other re extent of their usefulness but anyway....
Title: Re: tallow v. butter
Post by: lex_rooker on January 10, 2011, 03:00:41 am
Tyler,
You miss the fact that I’m not attacking you or your premise.  Cooking may, or may not be harmful.  I just don’t know.  My point is to demonstrate that studies must be carefully analyzed.  They are highly biased and the conclusions drawn in the final reports are often stretched well beyond what is supported by the actual data.  

There are ZERO studies linking cooked food to any disease in vivo – “in vivo” meaning a real body in the real world eating real food.   The only way they can manage any link at all is through gross amounts of pure chemicals applied to cells “in vitro” (glass bottles), or by adding artificial catalysts to the environment (promotional stimuli) so as to create the desired outcome.  Your own studies demonstrate this fact.  I question whether it is reasonable to draw useful conclusions about the harmful effects of cooking from such studies, especially when there is no real world evidence linking cooking to any specific disease or condition.  Doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, only that I can find no real world “in vivo” studies that show any definitive link.  Apparently neither can you.  What you have done is take a leap of faith that what occurs in vitro under artificial laboratory conditions is what will occur in the complex and chaotic in vivo environment.  Since so many previously held cherished beliefs drawn from lab studies have proven totally false, I choose not to draw such conclusions.  My own health and dietary experience has shown that the conventional wisdom from the best research laboratories, obtained from decades of in vitro studies, is not necessarily true.

As far as religion goes, it appears we both suffer from a bit of over zealotry. I have chosen to worship the “in vivo” evidence of the real world around me, and you have chosen to worship the “in vitro” evidence in the artificial world of the laboratory.  I expect the truth lies somewhere in between and the people on this forum are quite able to make up their own minds on the subject.

Lex
Title: Re: tallow v. butter
Post by: TylerDurden on January 10, 2011, 04:31:54 am
Tyler,
You miss the fact that I’m not attacking you or your premise.  Cooking may, or may not be harmful.  I just don’t know.  My point is to demonstrate that studies must be carefully analyzed.  They are highly biased and the conclusions drawn in the final reports are often stretched well beyond what is supported by the actual data.   

There are ZERO studies linking cooked food to any disease in vivo – “in vivo” meaning a real body in the real world eating real food.   The only way they can manage any link at all is through gross amounts of pure chemicals applied to cells “in vitro” (glass bottles), or by adding artificial catalysts to the environment (promotional stimuli) so as to create the desired outcome.  Your own studies demonstrate this fact.  I question whether it is reasonable to draw useful conclusions about the harmful effects of cooking from such studies, especially when there is no real world evidence linking cooking to any specific disease or condition.  Doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, only that I can find no real world “in vivo” studies that show any definitive link.  Apparently neither can you.  What you have done is take a leap of faith that what occurs in vitro under artificial laboratory conditions is what will occur in the complex and chaotic in vivo environment.  Since so many previously held cherished beliefs drawn from lab studies have proven totally false, I choose not to draw such conclusions.  My own health and dietary experience has shown that the conventional wisdom from the best research laboratories, obtained from decades of in vitro studies, is not necessarily true.

As far as religion goes, it appears we both suffer from a bit of over zealotry. I have chosen to worship the “in vivo” evidence of the real world around me, and you have chosen to worship the “in vitro” evidence in the artificial world of the laboratory.  I expect the truth lies somewhere in between and the people on this forum are quite bright enough to make up their own minds on the subject.

Lex

Again, incorrect. There are various ways to demonstrate the harm of cooked foods via scientific studies. I have already demonstrated the in vitro examples of direct effects on human cells, a number of which you have failed to really debunk convincingly. The number of studies damning the effect of smoking are so extensive now, that no respectable scientist can reasonably debunk them en masse. Since several toxins in cigarette-smoke have  been similiarly found in cooked foods, the pro-cooked camp looks pretty weakened as regards both experiments done on isolated human cells and experiments on human test-subjects.

Then there are the in vivo studies done on animals(yes I was actually perfectly aware of the meaning of "in vivo" but hadn't had the time, then, to correct that quickly  minor grammatical errors or minor accidental switches of words).While animals are not humans, there are sufficient similiarities between humans and animals, for at least some of those studies to be notable.

And, I hasten to add that, contrary to your claims,  there indeed have been a sizeable NUMBER of studies done on human patients "in vivo" as regards the effects of heat-created toxins on humans in terms of damaging their health thus proving that cooked foods are damaging to health, some of which I have long been aware of. Here are a few samples:-

This is a general overview summarising the results of some studies showing that reducing AGEs helped alleviate certain unpleasant symptoms of diabetes:-

http://clinical.diabetesjournals.org/content/21/4/186.full

Here is an in vivo study confirming the damage done to diabetes patients when AGEs-intake was increased(changing cooking methods  to reduce AGEs/advanced glycation end products in the cooked foods consumed improved certain aspects of diabetes(since AGEs-levels are determined mainly by the severity of the cooking , it's clear that less harsher methods of cooking were used to reduce them):-

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18448830

http://content.karger.com/produktedb/produkte.asp?typ=fulltext&file=000217817

Here's an in vivo study confirming the damage done to some human experimental subjects from eating grilled meats:-

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7955064


Here is an overview, with numerous references to studies done on AGEs/advanced glycation end products and their link to diseases like diabetes, and a number of those studies were done on human patients " in vivo":-

http://www.life-enhancement.com/article_template.asp?id=1869











Title: Re: tallow v. butter
Post by: ys on January 10, 2011, 04:54:25 am
i randomly clicked on one of your links http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7955064

it has some confusing data.
can you please explain this "In a subsequent study in which six volunteers consumed charcoal-broiled hamburgers with lower levels of benzo[a]pyrene and pyrene, no aromatic DNA adducts in mononuclear cells or increased 1-hydroxypyrene levels in urine were detected."

what is the difference between hamburgers in the first study that appear to have this aromatic DNA adducts (whatever that means) and hamburgers that do not have those things?
Title: Re: tallow v. butter
Post by: TylerDurden on January 10, 2011, 05:42:24 am
i randomly clicked on one of your links http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7955064

it has some confusing data.
can you please explain this "In a subsequent study in which six volunteers consumed charcoal-broiled hamburgers with lower levels of benzo[a]pyrene and pyrene, no aromatic DNA adducts in mononuclear cells or increased 1-hydroxypyrene levels in urine were detected."

what is the difference between hamburgers in the first study that appear to have this aromatic DNA adducts (whatever that means) and hamburgers that do not have those things?

The study is making a contrast between the negative effects on health from 2 different kinds of hamburgers:- 1 lot of  hamburgers was cooked/grilled and  had a higher load of benzopyrene, a known carcinogen and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon(a kind of heat-created toxin produced by cooking) and therefore caused DNA adduct formation ; while another lot of (charcoal-broiled)hamburgers, with a lower load of benzopyrene in them, caused no DNA adduct formation in the patients.

Here's standard info on DNA adducts:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_adduct
Title: Re: tallow v. butter
Post by: ys on January 10, 2011, 06:53:28 am
so is one cooking method less harmful than the other, broiled vs grilled?  since researchers could not find harmful effects of broiled hamburgers.
Title: Re: tallow v. butter
Post by: TylerDurden on January 10, 2011, 07:15:08 am
so is one cooking method less harmful than the other, broiled vs grilled?  since researchers could not find harmful effects of broiled hamburgers.
I was under the impression that broiling was more or less the same as grilling, up till now. But , whatever the case, there must have been some difference in cooking-temperature, for the benzopyrene levels to have been lower with charcoal-broiling than with grilling.

Note that they were only looking for a specific type of harm to DNA re mutagenic activity, so other kinds of harm were not  noted, being irrelevant to the study - all they could state was that, past a certain level of intake of benzopyrene into the body via cooked-food-consumption, people started having a negative effect therefrom . Charcoal-broiled meats have, of course, other kinds of heat-created toxins.
Title: Re: tallow v. butter
Post by: lex_rooker on January 10, 2011, 04:27:14 pm
Everyone can read the studies for themselves and make up their own minds as to how relevent the information is to their daily lives.  My guess is that most of us would gain far more benefit from focusing on eating the right foods rather than agonizing over how they are prepared, but read the studies and decide for yourselves.

I also haven't tried to debunk anything. As I've said, I haven't a clue as to what specific diseases are caused by cooking, and not sure anyone else does either.  I've only suggested that people question everything and not blindly accept studies without doing some critical analysis.

We each get to choose what we wish to believe, but we must also face the consequences, good and bad, of acting on those beliefs.  To that end, I have chosen to believe that what I eat is far more important to my health and well being than how it is prepared.  So far, I'm very pleased with the consequences... or maybe it's just the high benzopyrene levels (or those darn DNA adducts) in my system that make me think so.....

Lex
Title: Re: tallow v. butter
Post by: TylerDurden on January 10, 2011, 06:02:29 pm
The trouble is that you are practising a double-standard. On the one hand, you try to claim that how a food is processed matters little, yet you also admit to eating much(most?) of your food raw - so, clearly, it really does matter a lot to you, otherwise, if the benefit were really so meagre,  you would not bother to eat raw and would instead eat almost all of your meats cooked and well-cooked at that(except, perhaps  for occasional sushi/steak tartare at restaurants) as, for social reasons,  it is a hell of a lot easier to eat cooked foods when you're eating with friends/family etc.

As for the mention  of DNA adducts, bear in mind that these were only 2 short 5-day studies involving something ridiculously small like 2 cooked hamburgers a day, yet it still had a minor effect re cancerous DNA adducts. Once one realises that people generally eat far more of such cooked foods most days of their lives, one can see how a gradual buildup of such toxins in the body  would be more likely to cause cancer or some other degenerative disease, over the course of their lifetimes.

Judging from past reports online, a large majority of RVAFers seem actually to do badly on cooked foods, even if they are of the highest quality, such as cooked, 100 percent grassfed/organic meats etc. And it is telling that people who go raw vegan/fruitarian routinely report experiencing health-benefits when they first start, implying that the raw aspect is also important.
Title: Re: tallow v. butter
Post by: lex_rooker on January 11, 2011, 12:22:27 am
The trouble is that you are practising a double-standard. On the one hand, you try to claim that how a food is processed matters little, yet you also admit to eating much(most?) of your food raw - so, clearly, it really does matter a lot to you, otherwise, if the benefit were really so meagre,  you would not bother to eat raw and would instead eat almost all of your meats cooked and well-cooked at that(except, perhaps  for occasional sushi/steak tartare at restaurants) as, for social reasons,  it is a hell of a lot easier to eat cooked foods when you're eating with friends/family etc.

Not sure I'd call it a double standard.  I've been very clear on what I do and why I do it.  I eat raw more for ideological reasons than being convinced that there are severe health consequences to cooking. The same goes for ZC.  I have no evidence that eating raw has given me any more health benefit than if I had continued eating my food cooked med rare, just as I have no evidence that eating ZC has produced any health benefit beyond what I would have gotten had I continued with eating a small salad and a piece of fruit each day.  Since I chose the mostly raw ZC path and have stuck with it for several years now, we'll never know. 

What I can say is that I believe I got at least 90% of my health benefit from eating a lightly cooked paleo diet with a small salad and a piece of fruit each day, and the only reason I won't commit to saying 100% is because I just don't know due to changing to ZC for such a long period of time.  I'm also happy to state that ZC has worked well and I have no reason to change, but would have no problem going back to my original paleo protocol.  As it is, I eat cooked BBQ'd ribs (sans sauce) and grilled steaks several times per month and enjoy them immensely.  Those PAH's, HCA, BaPs, and AGE's are absolutely delicious!

Lex
Title: Re: tallow v. butter
Post by: a87.pal on January 11, 2011, 03:10:05 am
I think everyone in this forum has the gut impression that cooking foods will lead to extra carcinogens.

What I'm not convinced of, though, Tyler, is that (A) these carcinogens get past the GI/digestive system when grains/legumes/seeds are removed from the diet, because that is where most cooked paleo dieters get problems. Further, I am also not convinced that (B) humans cannot handle a light load of these carcinogens in the gut (which is lined with/protected by bacteria might I remind you).

presumably given another 50 years once all the current cooked paleo dieters grow old (A) can be studied and proven one way or another. However, it will be along time before we can even design experiments to study (B).

knowing that it will be a long time before this is resolved, I have a very specific question: Given what we know about their chemical makeup how would you compare raw grass fed butter against melted (140-180 F/60-80 C for 30 min) grass fed suet [as I consume this more often than tallow, which I only use for pemmican].

I imagine your response is going to vary on a person's dairy tolerance, so bear the following in mind for my case: after eating butter a few more times this last week I got really sick of the taste and didn't want to eat anymore, like a really strong "stop signal." In earlier experiments I ate butter and sour cream for 2 months without any of these reactions. However, when I had tried to drink raw milk (~1 quart a day) in the past, I never really acclimated to it, even after 1.5 months, still getting gas and electrolyte imbalance symptoms.
Title: Re: tallow v. butter
Post by: turkish on January 11, 2011, 04:10:10 am
I imagine your response is going to vary on a person's dairy tolerance, so bear the following in mind for my case: after eating butter a few more times this last week I got really sick of the taste and didn't want to eat anymore, like a really strong "stop signal." In earlier experiments I ate butter and sour cream for 2 months without any of these reactions. However, when I had tried to drink raw milk (~1 quart a day) in the past, I never really acclimated to it, even after 1.5 months, still getting gas and electrolyte imbalance symptoms.

Raw grassfed butter does the same to me, not having similiar issues with lard, or raw animal fat. I get clear stop signal with animal fat, and satiety too.
Title: Re: tallow v. butter
Post by: TylerDurden on January 11, 2011, 04:40:47 am
What I can say is that I believe I got at least 90% of my health benefit from eating a lightly cooked paleo diet with a small salad and a piece of fruit each day, and the only reason I won't commit to saying 100% is because I just don't know due to changing to ZC for such a long period of time. 

Interesting, I had thought you had way back when stated having a major food-intolerance towards any carbs, but you claim that lightly-cooked, (VLC) palaeo was not that bad for you personally. My mistake.

As for the point about the double-standard, that's rather clear -one should preach what one practises, and vice-versa.
. I also find it absurd that you go in for pemmican quite frequently  and cooked/grilled meats  a few times a month, and yet eat lots of raw meats. It's  not just a contradiction, it makes no sense at all! Either one really believes that cooking is harmless and happily cooks all their meats/foods well-done until they're blackened, or one believes that cooked foods cause eventual harm and goes to the trouble of eating most of their meats raw, and only eating cooked meats/foods in extremis on social occasions etc., if at all.

Other pro-cooked-food-advocates in the pro-SFA crowd use similiar arguments. They usually state that since lightly-cooked foods are "less worse" than well-cooked foods, that therefore cooking in general is fine. However, this is a false premise. A genuine attempt to defend cooking would have to involve defending ALL forms of cooking, even grilling etc. As soon as these  accept that cooking until the food is blackened is harmful, then one has already lost half of the argument re cooked vs raw, yet they(unlike you in this thread) don't seem to realise this rather obvious point.


Quote
I'm also happy to state that ZC has worked well and I have no reason to change, but would have no problem going back to my original paleo protocol.  As it is, I eat cooked BBQ'd ribs (sans sauce) and grilled steaks several times per month and enjoy them immensely.  Those PAH's, HCA, BaPs, and AGE's are absolutely delicious!

Lex
Yes, I know, those heat-created toxins have in them some  notoriously addictive opioids which affect the brain(re affecting dopamine levels etc.), causing unnatural cravings within me for those "delicious" grilled meats if I eat them, and resulting in nasty side-effects the next day.
Title: Re: tallow v. butter
Post by: TylerDurden on January 11, 2011, 05:48:55 am
I think everyone in this forum has the gut impression that cooking foods will lead to extra carcinogens.

What I'm not convinced of, though, Tyler, is that (A) these carcinogens get past the GI/digestive system when grains/legumes/seeds are removed from the diet, because that is where most cooked paleo dieters get problems.
  First of all cooked-palaeodieters actually have a variety of other problems which are just as bad or worse as grains/legumes/seeds. On the varied cooked-palaeodiet forums I've been on, legumes/seeds are foods that people actually have fewer  problems with, specifically. The non-palaeo foods cooked-palaeodieters have the most  problems with appear to be grains, dairy, (and, to a lesser extent, carbs in general, as opposed to just seeds/legumes in particular).

As for heat-created toxins like PAHs, scientists are now largely convinced that carcinogens do indeed get past the digestive tract, given that PAHs have been directly linked to stomach- and colon-cancer etc.:-

http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a789923150&fulltext=713240928

[/quote]

.
Quote
Further, I am also not convinced that
 (B) humans cannot handle a light load of these carcinogens in the gut (which is lined with/protected by bacteria might I remind you).
  For that to be the case, one would by now have come across studies showing that humans had some sort of enhanced ability to get rid of such heat-created toxins, especially by comparison to wild animals, but there are no such studies  to date, yet 1,000s of studies confirming the damage done by heat-created toxins.  The fact that studies have also shown that peoples' health problems get better when AGEs-levels in their bodies  are reduced etc. is also indicative.


Quote
presumably given another 50 years once all the current cooked paleo dieters grow old (A) can be studied and proven one way or another. However, it will be along time before we can even design experiments to study (B).


Minor observation:- The cooked-palaeodiet is  quite a fringe diet-movement. It has a poor presence on the web by comparison to cooked, low carb and even raw vegan diets, despite it having a strong prehistoric background. The reason, I suspect, is that it isn't generally drastic enough in its dietary regime. People on other diets find near-instant recovery from just cutting out all carbs or all cooked foods, and frequently report beneficial effects therefrom.
Quote
knowing that it will be a long time before this is resolved, I have a very specific question: Given what we know about their chemical makeup how would you compare raw grass fed butter against melted (140-180 F/60-80 C for 30 min) grass fed suet [as I consume this more often than tallow, which I only use for pemmican].

I imagine your response is going to vary on a person's dairy tolerance, so bear the following in mind for my case: after eating butter a few more times this last week I got really sick of the taste and didn't want to eat anymore, like a really strong "stop signal." In earlier experiments I ate butter and sour cream for 2 months without any of these reactions. However, when I had tried to drink raw milk (~1 quart a day) in the past, I never really acclimated to it, even after 1.5 months, still getting gas and electrolyte imbalance symptoms.

Well, it all depends on you. If, like Lex, you really experience no overt issues at all with heated suet, then it would be an option for now, though I still think you would be best placed to reduce the amounts thereof. If you have issues towards both heated suet and raw dairy, then your best best is to try other sources of raw fats rather than trying the "least worst" - just keep on searching for them until you find the right sources. If you can't afford those other raw fats , then cut down on fat-intake in general via Intermittent Fasting or (mild) caloric restriction. if the reason for your need for fat is being zero-carb, then you could try going raw omnivore as that means one can reduce fat-intake more easily without issues - unless, of course, you have issues with raw carbs.
Title: Re: tallow v. butter
Post by: a87.pal on January 11, 2011, 06:17:28 am
  First of all cooked-palaeodieters actually have a variety of other problems which are just as bad or worse as grains/legumes/seeds. On the varied cooked-palaeodiet forums I've been on, legumes/seeds are foods that people actually have fewer  problems with, specifically. The non-palaeo foods cooked-palaeodieters have the most  problems with appear to be grains, dairy, (and, to a lesser extent, carbs in general, as opposed to just seeds/legumes in particular).

As for heat-created toxins like PAHs, scientists are now largely convinced that carcinogens do indeed get past the digestive tract, given that PAHs have been directly linked to stomach- and colon-cancer etc.:-

http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a789923150&fulltext=713240928


I'm a bit confused. Do you not consider the stomach and colon part of GI and digestive system? These are places that are in direct contact with the carcinogens before they enters the blood stream, so isn't there still a barrier before they get to the internal organs (heart, liver, kidney, brain, etc.)?

The reason why I mentioned grain/legumes/seeds is not because people necessarily have problems with them intrinsically, but rather because they promote gut permeability which would make it easier for carcinogens to enter the blood stream from the GI and digestive system.

In any case, I realized that the last time I experimented with beef back fat was in the very beginning of my raw paleo journey (when I couldn't digest it all) and that it may be worth revising. However, for some reason, I think that since suet is closer to the organs it should be more nutritional, though I doubt that is the case.
Title: Re: tallow v. butter
Post by: TylerDurden on January 11, 2011, 06:52:24 am
I'm a bit confused. Do you not consider the stomach and colon part of GI and digestive system? These are places that are in direct contact with the carcinogens before they enters the blood stream, so isn't there still a barrier before they get to the internal organs (heart, liver, kidney, brain, etc.)?
Sorry, I thought you meant that the heat-created toxins were dealt with in the stomach, or some such. But there are also studies showing that heat-created toxins even reach organs like the heart or the kidney:-

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_7396/is_315/ai_n42061264/

http://www.cmj.org/Periodical/paperlist.asp?id=LW2007429414606901754&linkintype=pubmed


Quote
The reason why I mentioned grain/legumes/seeds is not because people necessarily have problems with them intrinsically, but rather because they promote gut permeability which would make it easier for carcinogens to enter the blood stream from the GI and digestive system.
Well, even when I was on cooked-palaeodiet or on other diets where I happened to avoid grains/legumes/seeds, I still had issues with heat-created toxins.
Quote
In any case, I realized that the last time I experimented with beef back fat was in the very beginning of my raw paleo journey (when I couldn't digest it all) and that it may be worth revising. However, for some reason, I think that since suet is closer to the organs it should be more nutritional, though I doubt that is the case.
Well,  I get the impression that suet is the least nutritional fat, to be honest. It's so tough, difficult to digest for some RVAFers etc.
Title: Re: tallow v. butter
Post by: dsohei on January 11, 2011, 07:01:40 am
super cooked vs. completely raw, the answer is somewhere in the middle of the extremes. tyler probably has some unique biochemistry that reacts negatively with cooked meats, but that doesnt mean everyone will.
Title: Re: tallow v. butter
Post by: TylerDurden on January 11, 2011, 07:32:20 am
super cooked vs. completely raw, the answer is somewhere in the middle of the extremes. tyler probably has some unique biochemistry that reacts negatively with cooked meats, but that doesnt mean everyone will.
No, I am hardly unique. The various studies on heat-created toxins confirm, anyway, that most people are ultimately at least moderately affected by cooked meats/foods as they get older. With most, it's a gradual process over many decades, in my case, the deterioration was a bit faster, that's all.

Another obvious point:- it's not merely a question of taking a gradual decline between 100 percent raw and 100 percent-cooked/well-done blackened meat and dividing in two to get a compromise. After all, the switch between raw and cooked is very steep:- first, there is the total loss of bacteria caused by cooking( the mainstream Hygiene Hypothesis points to health-problems arising from that lack re lack of gut bacteria etc. etc.); then there's the complete destruction of the raw food's enzymes thus making digestion more of a burden; and, after all that steep decline, then there's the increasing creation of toxins from cooking and the  ever-decreasing nutrient-levels(re vitamins/minerals) as the cooking-process becomes more intense.
Title: Re: tallow v. butter
Post by: KD on January 11, 2011, 08:38:24 am
The problem as always is even with the proper proof 'in vitro' as Lex points out, you'll always have people for whatever reasons defying such paradigms because health is multifaceted and lots of things can bump or detract from health.

It makes sense to limit as much exposure to known problematic foods as possible, but there are plenty of evidence from a variety of camps on what these foods are even when they are processed or non processed.

Certainly many people from Bee Wilder and Mark Siisson would argue very much about the importance of what is eaten and what is not eaten over how it is prepared as long as it is more or less pre-modern/paleo. Some may even go as far to say that certain foods (like fat->tallow I imagine) NEED to be prepared a certain way or whatever. Personally I think the latter part is crap, but I don't see how people - particularly after poor experiences with raw vegetarian diets - can claim that any food that is cooked or raw-neolithic is going to automatically be useless in comparison to anything raw, particularly with so many examples proving otherwise.

The Sissons and WAP folks of course simplify things too much in referring to traditional diets that were free of disease, and in not recognizing that eating foods raw might accelerate or in some cases be necessary for greater healing or prevent even some traditional aging/illness as I believe Tyler is pointing out, but in the end, peoples results speak more than what studies say or what is on paper sounds healthful or even natural.

Title: Re: tallow v. butter
Post by: TylerDurden on January 11, 2011, 09:11:26 am
The problem as always is even with the proper proof 'in vitro' as Lex points out, you'll always have people for whatever reasons defying such paradigms because health is multifaceted and lots of things can bump or detract from health.
Of course, there are other factors such as fasting reducing AGEs-levels, daily exercise-levels reducing AGEs, not to mention modern hospital care allowing people to live much longer and easier than in previous times etc. But that doesn't mean that a cooked diet is healthy, merely that the cooked diet is unhealthy, and that other factors may reduce the effects of cooked foods to some extent, depending on how much the food is cooked etc. etc.
Quote
but I don't see how people - particularly after poor experiences with raw vegetarian diets - can claim that any food that is cooked or raw-neolithic is going to automatically be useless in comparison to anything raw, particularly with so many examples proving otherwise.
First of all, it's not as simple as that. Even raw plant foods are healthy, generally speaking; that is, they are not cooked, so have bacteria, enzymes, no heat-created toxins and high levels of nutrients. That is why, undeniably, according to studies and testimonials, most people(like me) who go raw vegan invariably experience an initial boost in health. The only real catch with raw vegan diets is the fact that raw plant foods do not provide absolutely all nutrients that the body needs so that, long-term, they invariably end up suffering from nutrient-loss. So, someone like SkinnyDevil can do fine, healthwise, on a diet consisting mostly of raw plant foods, and only a little raw animal foods so as to include all relevant nutrients the body needs.

As for the issue of cooked foods, since there is no scientific evidence, as yet, to suggest that humans have a magical ability to combat heat-created toxins that other animals don't, it is reasonable to state that eating cooked foods will lead to some increased deterioration - the rate also  depending on the individual's lifestyle re smoking/exercise etc. etc.. With regard to non-palaeo foods, there is the 75 percent worldwide lactose-intolerance figure for pasteurised dairy plus a host of grain-related illnesses like IBS/Coeliac disease etc., so that some deterioration must occur due to an imperfect adaptation to such foods, however raw.

My own view is that the raw and palaeo aspects are both equally important, though for quite different reasons. But one only has to look at the animal food world to see that dogs can thrive better on a raw diet that isn't ideally suited to them, evolutionarily speaking. The BARF diet for dogs  is a raw diet, consisting mostly of raw meaty bones(60-80 percent), but also including (20-40 percent)raw veg/fruit, and even some raw dairy, along with raw eggs and raw offal. Yet dogs  thrive better on such diets than on any cooked/processed equivalent. Similiarly, while I loathe the pro-raw-dairy movement, I have admittedly come across far more surprising examples of dramatic health-recovery with raw dairy consumption( re regaining fertility etc.) than I have with cooked-palaeo.
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The Sissons and WAP folks of course simplify things too much in referring to traditional diets that were free of disease, and in not recognizing that eating foods are raw might accelerate or in some cases be necessary for greater healing or prevent even some traditional aging/illness as I believe Tyler is pointing out, but in the end, peoples results speak more than what studies say or what is on paper sounds healthful or even natural.
  Well, like I said, there is already plentiful anecdotal evidence from the raw-foodist world on the benefits of raw foods over cooked foods. Of course, there is also a lot of biased subjectivity among humans too(I have come across seriously ill cooked-food-eaters who insisted they were  healthy, purely because they were "less unhealthy" than their parents were at the same age).


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Title: Re: tallow v. butter
Post by: KD on January 11, 2011, 09:49:34 am
Of course, there are other factors such as fasting reducing AGEs-levels, daily exercise-levels reducing AGEs, not to mention modern hospital care allowing people to live much longer and easier than in previous times etc. But that doesn't mean that a cooked diet is healthy, merely that the cooked diet is unhealthy, and that other factors may reduce the effects of cooked foods to some extent, depending on how much the food is cooked etc. etc. First of all, it's not as simple as that. Even raw plant foods are healthy, generally speaking; that is, they are not cooked, so have bacteria, enzymes, no heat-created toxins and high levels of nutrients. That is why, undeniably, according to studies and testimonials, most people(like me) who go raw vegan invariably experience an initial boost in health. The only real catch with raw vegan diets is the fact that raw plant foods do not provide absolutely all nutrients that the body needs so that, long-term, they invariably end up suffering from nutrient-loss. So, someone like SkinnyDevil can do fine, healthwise, on a diet consisting mostly of raw plant foods, and only a little raw animal foods so as to include all relevant nutrients the body needs.


Much of what you say here is reasonable, but you are still looking at it very much on how things are on paper as individual foods, and not as a 'diet' or healing system. There are within the raw vegan community itself people who have lived decades on raw vegan foods themselves who will suggest SERIOUS problems with various raw vegan foods whether they be fruits or plant fats or whatever, some of them, like Fred Bisci, Gabriel Cousens, and Brian Clement with 30-40 years research each 'proving' such.

You've used SD in a few examples recently, but pretty sure he does not eat a high fruit diet, and like I have already said many things factor into health, so one can't unilaterally say diets meeting certain nutrients will be by default healthy because interactions of food in the body are complex. It may be that his particular diet is very healthful, but someone simply trying to add the same amount of meat (and lack of other animal food) to their particular mostly fruit/veg diet will not be as successful. Plenty of long term raw vegans can be tested more or less positive for fulfilling basic nutrition, such as SWD eaters might potentially do. The issue is certain people will need raw proteins/fats etc.,..to correct a variety of issues that perhaps traditional people did not need and these go beyond basic bodily needs. Others who do not have these requirements - like those who can survive all kinds of awful diets - are the ones who are the real outliers I believe.

The problem is that people can do much better on meat-deprived cooked veg and vegan diets than numerous raw permutations, so while that doesn't prove cooked food is 'good' it means that issues can arise even with the expected more nutrient dense foods/lack-of-toxins in the same amount of animal food deprivation. Just because some might have success just adding the minimal needed animal proteins does not mean that this applies to everyone, which is the very reason why tallow or raw butter might have value..the way I see it.. over foods distinctly paleo or raw because these foods might present their own problems or are not available in modern times in the same quantity or quality nutritionally as might be needed and supplied by them (T + B). This can apply to similar things that seem less optimal or destructive like salt.

The issue really is even though one can find results on paper as to why tallow or butter would be inferior to many individual raw foods, its doesn't proove that a diet that is largely raw and healthful that includes these foods can't be superior than a variety of all raw approaches.

disregarding the whole issue of anti-nutrients, you can't just say an apple is healthy, and a cow is healthy therefore its healthy to eat cows and apples in any quantity and since it is free of toxins and can be rounded out nutritionally with a few other things, that this will guarantee health or even better health than on something clearly less optimal. This is true whether we are comparing to a toxic SWD diet or a cooked paleo diet because that is what is simplifying ultimately. To me its not too mysterious that one individual can have better results on a cooked LC paleo/primal than on 'anything raw' diet if that diet isn't really all that considered, without conceding any real triumphs to cooking or processing tallow or to neolithic foods.

Title: Re: tallow v. butter
Post by: dsohei on January 11, 2011, 10:53:34 am
sure, raw plant or animal foods look good on paper, but (may) react negatively when actually eaten. allergies, etc.
and disregarding the taboo-ness of raw animal foods, traditional diets are a mix of raw and cooked/processed animal foods. there are plenty of people who are getting the results they want (and the results others want) on a cooked paleo diet, whether thats low carb, zero carb or mid-high carb. it all depends on the desired results PLUS the food eaten PLUS the person's current biochemistry (which needs to be tested by good labwork, otherwise all you can go on is results, some of which are invisible).
as KD talked about, individual foods react differently in the context of a whole diet.

i do think though that very healthy tribal people ate a limited variety of foods, seasonally, focusing on fat ruminants until they killed off so many that they were forced into limited agriculture or processing foraged foodstuffs. so i would say eat 1 or 2 species of whole animal, unless you can't get the whole animal, and then you have to supplement with foods that spark discussions like this.
Title: Re: tallow v. butter
Post by: miles on January 11, 2011, 12:42:24 pm
 Well, even when I was on cooked-palaeodiet or on other diets where I happened to avoid grains/legumes/seeds

I never heard that you're meant to avoid seeds on a paleo diet? I thought they were grouped with nuts.

Legumes and grains are definitely not paleo diet material.
Title: Re: tallow v. butter
Post by: TylerDurden on January 11, 2011, 06:02:51 pm
I never heard that you're meant to avoid seeds on a paleo diet? I thought they were grouped with nuts.
  The idea is that seeds are more unpalatable so less appealing for palaeo tribesmen, and if eaten in a food, they just come out the other end , undigested.

Raw nuts also have antinutrients in them. Soaking in water for 24 hours is a good idea re reducing levels of such antinutrients.
Title: Re: tallow v. butter
Post by: TylerDurden on January 11, 2011, 06:15:51 pm
sure, raw plant or animal foods look good on paper, but (may) react negatively when actually eaten. allergies, etc.
I'm afraid that that is a flawed argument. After all, as paleophil pointed out, cooking increases the allergenicity of  foods, so cooked foods are far worse in that regard:-

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2685801/

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and disregarding the taboo-ness of raw animal foods, traditional diets are a mix of raw and cooked/processed animal foods. there are plenty of people who are getting the results they want (and the results others want) on a cooked paleo diet, whether thats low carb, zero carb or mid-high carb. it all depends on the desired results PLUS the food eaten PLUS the person's current biochemistry (which needs to be tested by good labwork, otherwise all you can go on is results, some of which are invisible).
That was not my experience on cooked-palaeodiet forums. Most got only a few benefits, and cured only minor problems. There were exceptions, but, of course, given that they were on a cooked diet, certain age-related conditions could never be resolved.
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i do think though that very healthy tribal people ate a limited variety of foods, seasonally, focusing on fat ruminants until they killed off so many that they were forced into limited agriculture or processing foraged foodstuffs. so i would say eat 1 or 2 species of whole animal, unless you can't get the whole animal, and then you have to supplement with foods that spark discussions like this.
The trouble is that the notion of very healthy tribal people, in the cooked-palaeolithic diet era is merely a false assumption, vaguely based on Weston-Price etc.. All one can state is that these tribes were healthier than modern peoples as regards certain diseases, but that doesn't necessarily mean much.
Title: Re: tallow v. butter
Post by: TylerDurden on January 11, 2011, 06:42:16 pm

Much of what you say here is reasonable, but you are still looking at it very much on how things are on paper as individual foods, and not as a 'diet' or healing system. There are within the raw vegan community itself people who have lived decades on raw vegan foods themselves who will suggest SERIOUS problems with various raw vegan foods whether they be fruits or plant fats or whatever, some of them, like Fred Bisci, Gabriel Cousens, and Brian Clement with 30-40 years research each 'proving' such.
I already referred to the point that raw vegan diets are not complete foods, so that people going years/decades on raw vegan diets will usually end up with nutritional deficiencies. As for fruits/plant-fats, other than some people who, due solely to decades on cooked/processed diets(!) have developed an unusual intolerance to carbs, there are no particular immediate problems. By contrast, cooked, low-carb diets have appalling accounts re nasty side-effects and and long-term failure re health.
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You've used SD in a few examples recently, but pretty sure he does not eat a high fruit diet,
Incorrect. He has said many times that he eats raw plant foods most of the time, with a raw-animal-food day every so often(I recall it being something like 3 days raw plant foods to 1 day raw animal food or maybe a 4 to 1 ratio?). But anyway, irrelevant since many Instinctos have done fine on 10 percent raw animal foods/90 percent raw plant foods
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and like I have already said many things factor into health, so one can't unilaterally say diets meeting certain nutrients will be by default healthy because interactions of food in the body are complex. It may be that his particular diet is very healthful, but someone simply trying to add the same amount of meat (and lack of other animal food) to their particular mostly fruit/veg diet will not be as successful. Plenty of long term raw vegans can be tested more or less positive for fulfilling basic nutrition, such as SWD eaters might potentially do. The issue is certain people will need raw proteins/fats etc.,..to correct a variety of issues that perhaps traditional people did not need and these go beyond basic bodily needs. Others who do not have these requirements - like those who can survive all kinds of awful diets - are the ones who are the real outliers I believe.
So what if there are a few exceptions which prove the rule that raw is better? Obviously, there will be situations where someone whose body is so wrecked that they need stomach-surgery rather than a raw diet or whatever.And, even some unhealthy cooked diets can cure some specific problems re diabetes or whatever, but still be unable to ward off various age-related conditions like atherosclerosis(I previously pointed out how the Masai were pitted with atherosclerosis, according to Mann's study etc.)
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The problem is that people can do much better on meat-deprived cooked veg and vegan diets than numerous raw permutations, so while that doesn't prove cooked food is 'good' it means that issues can arise even with the expected more nutrient dense foods/lack-of-toxins in the same amount of animal food deprivation. Just because some might have success just adding the minimal needed animal proteins does not mean that this applies to everyone, which is the very reason why tallow or raw butter might have value..the way I see it.. over foods distinctly paleo or raw because these foods might present their own problems or are not available in modern times in the same quantity or quality nutritionally as might be needed and supplied by them (T + B). This can apply to similar things that seem less optimal or destructive like salt.
The trouble is that the cooked food substitute may work but still add other problems, long-term re heat-created toxins.
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The issue really is even though one can find results on paper as to why tallow or butter would be inferior to many individual raw foods, its doesn't proove that a diet that is largely raw and healthful that includes these foods can't be superior than a variety of all raw approaches.
It is reasonable to assume, given studies proving the harm of heat-created toxins and personal anecdotes from RVAFers, that alternative sources of raw fats, such as raw marrow would be superior to tallow or butter. Tallow and butter could only be "less worse", not better. The exceptions I can think of are things like grains which are indeed significantly improved by cooking, but grains still cause a number of problems when cooked. Granted, raw veg can also be improved by cooking re removing antinutrient levels thus boosting nutrients(presumably only if lightly-cooked), but that effect is, at least, cancelled out by the addition of heat-created toxins derived from cooking.
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disregarding the whole issue of anti-nutrients, you can't just say an apple is healthy, and a cow is healthy therefore its healthy to eat cows and apples in any quantity and since it is free of toxins and can be rounded out nutritionally with a few other things, that this will guarantee health or even better health than on something clearly less optimal. This is true whether we are comparing to a toxic SWD diet or a cooked paleo diet because that is what is simplifying ultimately. To me its not too mysterious that one individual can have better results on a cooked LC paleo/primal than on 'anything raw' diet if that diet isn't really all that considered, without conceding any real triumphs to cooking or processing tallow or to neolithic foods.
The point is obvious:- as long as one takes care to eat all the nutrients one needs, one can be fine on a raw diet, and never need cooked foods like tallow.