Meat with saturated fats is the BEST food to raise HDL and lower fasting plasma triglicerides, as well as shift LDL from a small dense pattern, which slips under artery walls, to a larger, bouyant pattern, which is not atherogenic. Besides if your diet is working then the heart disease should NOT be there. Isn't it ironic how you have heart disease when you eat low amounts of animal foods? So do you think going even lower is gonna help? Every day The AHA and USDA whips Saturated Fat because we've gone so low and had so many problems, do you think going yet lower and lower is better? Meat is not all saturated anyway (huge misconception). Most beef and pork fats are about 45-55% saturated with about 35-45% of it monounsaturated (most unsaturated fatty acids in animal foods is oleic acid, which is what makes olive oil healthy) and low amounts of polyunsaturated fats, with omega-3s and Omega-6s in about a 1:1 ratio.
Americans also consume a lot of omega-6 polyunsaturated vegetable oils like corn and canola which create inflamation. Think about it, these vegetable oils are unnatural, when u squeeze an olive, u get olive oil. You don't get corn oil from squeezing corn, it must be chemically extracted which damages the the fragile polyunsaturates by boiling them, then they are deoderized because they smell terrible and are horrbly rancid. Hexane is also a solvent used to extract the oils, and bleach is used to give them a pretty color. All these fats cause inflammation
Also, the attack on saturated fat only has proven it is bad in the context of processed meats and starch, check out this pie chart of what the USDA says where our sat fat is coming from. A lot of it is comming from "grain-based deserts", processed meat, and pizza, as well as the huge ambigious "other foods" it's not saying meat or saturated fat is bad for you, its saying saturated fat is common with junk food that also contains processing toxins, starch(potato chips), and sugar(cake).
http://rawfoodsos.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/usda_saturated_fat_sources.jpg
and look at a full critique here of some of the studies
http://rawfoodsos.com/2011/02/04/the-new-usda-dietary-guideline/
Eating meat doesnt mean Mcdonalds, i mean real, fresh meat. Mcdonalds processes meat with ammonia (which can burn your skin and make you blind if you get in contact with it) and cooks them with toxic trans-fats. If this is our source of meat, of course it is bad for us and we get cancer. (btw, a vegitarian activist group called the CSPI protested and forced Mcdonalds to stop cooking with natural animal fats and forced the shift to partially hydrogenated soybean oil, and now they are suing KFC for using trans-fat, when the CSPI forced trans-fat in the first place
Lets also dissect a typical fast food meal
The good:Sat fat from beef, Lettuce, tomato, onions
The Bad:
The ugly: Potatoes(starch, Omega-6 and trans-fat overload)
Coke( high fructose corn syrup)
Sauce(ketchup and BBQ also have HFCS)
White bread (white flour, empty carbs)
The trans fat in which the beef may be cooked in
Beef is processed with ammonia taken from slaugheterhouse cuts like head and hooves of a cow
This is the point im trying to make. In McDonalds are we really eating a whole lot of saturated fat or are we eating bad fats with lots of sugar and nasty toxins???
Also, I will admit we are wasteful with meat, we should eat the yummy steaks as well as the organ meats (liver has rediculous amounts of nutrients). Of course we stopped eating organ meats and wasted the fats in the animals that could be used to make lard or beef tallow. After all, we shouldn't be eating ARTERYCLOGGINGSATURATEDFATS (sarcasm) which has been falsely demonized and made into one word by the media.
Lastly, the meditarranean diet isnt what it is made out to be. The French eat 4 times the amount of saturated animal fat than americans, and Spain and Switzerland also have people eating high amounts of fats. I don't know about the Greek, but I know Armenians and Turks love their kebobs.
Lastly, The amount of cholesterol differs individually between people, as long as you have a High HDL/Total cholesterol ratio you are fine.
Heart disease in fact acts upon cholesterol, high cholesterol is an effect of inflammation, not a cause. Your body raises cholesterol to repair damaged tissue.
Basically the arguement to lower cholesterol to fight heart disease is as sound as this
1. You get an infection
2. Your white blood cell counts go up
3. The solution is simple, lower your white blood cell count and you will fight off the infection
See? A statistical association shows that something can be a cause OR an effect or a coincidence, but correlation does not prove causation.
Flawed logic like this is making the makers of Lipitor very rich
Oh, and about nutrient density:
