The Paleo Diet - Loren Cordain [30]
See Appendix 2 for a table contrasting the fats in domestic and wild meats.
The ratio of omega 6 to omega 3 fats in Paleo diets was about 2 to 1; for the average American, the ratio is much too high—about 10 to 1. Eating too many omega 6 fats instead of omega 3 fats increases your risk of heart disease and certain forms of cancer; it also aggravates inflammatory and autoimmune diseases. The lean meats, fish, fruits, vegetables, and oils found in the Paleo Diet guarantee that you will have the proper ratio of omega 6 and omega 3 fats—and of all other fats.
Cereal Doesn’t Help
Cereal grains are low in fat. But the little fat they do have is unbalanced—tilted heavily toward omega 6. For example, in game and organ meat, the average ratio of omega 6 to omega 3 is 2 or 3 to one. In eight of the world’s most commonly consumed cereals, this ratio is a staggering 22 to 1.
Cereal grains also have contributed to generations of blubbery cows that bear little resemblance to the lean wild animals our ancestors ate. Grain-fed cows have become loaded down with palmitic acid; worse, the fats in their meat have taken on the same high omega 6 to omega 3 ratio that’s in their grain.
Milk Doesn’t Help, Either
Dairy foods have taken a further toll on humanity’s health over the last 9,000 years or so. Milk, cream, cheese, butter, and fermented milk products (including yogurt), ice cream, and the many processed dairy products of the twentieth century are some of the richest sources of certain saturated fats in the typical Western diet. In particular, fatty dairy foods contain palmitic and myristic fatty acids—two substances that elevate blood cholesterol. When you evaluate dairy products for fat percentage by calories, butter is the worst at 100 percent fat. Cream is 89 percent fat, cheeses average about 74 percent fat, and whole milk is about 49 percent fat. And most of the fats in these dairy products—about 40 percent—are the bad saturated fatty acids. Despite their wholesome image, whole milk and fatty dairy products are some of the least healthful foods in our diets. Their fatty acids (palmitic acid and myristic acid) raise your blood cholesterol; they also raise your risk of developing heart disease and other chronic illnesses.
The Trouble with Unbalanced Vegetable Oils
The next major misstep in food innovation happened just a few decades ago, when vegetable oils became part of our diet.
In the 1940s and 1950s, when most of these vegetable oils were introduced, nobody realized that the ratio of omega 6 to omega 3 fats was terribly important to health. What food scientists knew at that point was pretty simple—that polyunsaturated fats lowered blood cholesterol. And it was with this limited piece of the total picture that they happily created a great variety of cooking and salad oils that were highly polyunsaturated—but regrettably also extremely high in omega 6 fats. The worst offenders are safflower oil and peanut oil (with extremely high omega 6 to omega 3 ratios), cottonseed oil, sunflower oil, sesame oil, and corn oil. Walnut oil is more balanced. And flaxseed oil is better still—low in omega 6 fats and high in omega 3.
Trans Fats Are Terrible
Cooking and salad oils are just part of the high omega 6 problem. Nearly all processed foods—breads, cookies, cakes, crackers, chips, doughnuts, muffins, cereals, and candies—and all fast foods are cooked with some form of high omega 6 vegetable oil. Worse, many of these foods are still made with hydrogenated vegetable oils that contain harmful trans-fatty acids. Trans fats raise blood cholesterol and increase your risk of developing heart disease. A study published in the American Journal of Public Health concluded that consumption of trans fats by Americans was responsible for more