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Comment by tracker1 | Hacker News Reader

It's sad that some bad science and religion caused such a disproportionate stance against animal fats in general for well over half a century.

From fat soluble nutrients to poor hormone production. Combined with industrial food it's definitely taken a toll on society.

edit: s/decade/century/

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Half a decade? Hasn't it been going on for well over 40 years by this point?

On the bright side, it seems like fewer and fewer people take it seriously.

s/decade/century/

> From fat soluble nutrients to poor hormone production.

the question is how much extra fat average consumer gets from meat.

Most meat has a perfectly fine proportion of fat to protein. You, in general should be getting about 1g fat per 2g protein for nutritional levels. Most don't get nearly enough, and what they do get is a very unbalanced ratio from seed oils.

Fat can be used for energy, but is also a primary nutrient source. Carbs are solely for energy and the proteins and fats derived from vegetarian sources are of poor quality and low absorption.

Most excess energy that gets stored as fat comes from carbohydrate sources, which are much easier for the body to break down.

> Most meat has a perfectly fine proportion of fat to protein.

I think popular cuts (pork butt, chicken thighs) have worse proportion than that.

Here's the nutrition information for a 3-ounce serving of skinless chicken thigh, per the USDA: 9 grams fat. 20 g protein. About 1g fat per 2g protein in the chicken thigh. It's far higher than more recent recommendations, but those have been far too low in terms of natural fat intake.

Pork butt is about 20g protein and 16g fat, which isn't in and of itself bad, as it can still be used for energy (like carbs can).

If you look at a lot of western nutrition issues, most are centered around lack of fat soluble nutrients and hormone deficiencies, which are sourced significantly from fatty acids.

Edit: there's also obesity, but fat is far more satiating than carbs and tend not to cause the insulin/carb cycling in terms of hunger response that you get from sugars and simpler carbs. In the end, one should not be specifically avoiding fats from animals in natural proportions. That isn't to say you cannot overeat meat, only that it's less likely than overeating from other sources.

> 3-ounce serving of skinless chicken thigh

skinless is obviously not popular cut.

> tend not to cause the insulin/carb cycling in terms of hunger response

they contribute to extra calories.

More than half the calories people take in is purely for energy. Excess is excess, it doesn't matter so much that it's fat or carbs. The difference being that if you're downing refined sugar or heavily processed foods there's other negative impacts that you don't see from excess fats.

Unless you're suggesting that getting an extra ounce of natural animal fat is worse than eating something like a cereal bar with lots of refined chemical additives that aren't real food, including refined fats that don't even exist and would never be taken in in nature?

My point is very simple: person can over consume calories from animal fat the same way as from processed food or refined sugar.

Fat is 2.5 more dense in calories, and switching to lean meat can cut calories intake significantly.

And doing so, will likely cut more than an ideal ratio for nutrition, where overconsumption of calories from fat is less likely than from other sources. That also doesn't consider the fact that the effects of excess sugars/carbs is worse than excess calories from fat.

> will likely cut more than an ideal ratio for nutrition

or likely will not

> That also doesn't consider the fact that the effects of excess sugars/carbs is worse than excess calories from fat.

this is offtopic, I never stated that excess cabrs/sugars better than fat

And my assertion is that most people aren't getting enough fat from a modern Western diet. That they shouldn't be afraid to eat it in natural proportions... You're the one asserting otherwise.

> that most people aren't getting enough fat from a modern Western diet.

yes, my observations are very opposite: fats are popular filling in western diet, you can check contents of muffins, croissant, sausages, not even talking about deep fried food, you will see more than half caloric intake is from fat.

And those are not natural animal fats, they are largely refined seed oils.

I think it is up to discussion if it is bad or good.

But even if you don't eat processed fat, with sedentary office life one may still overconsume calories even from eating fatty meat.

Compared to what? Overeating sugar laden carby snacks? The US has been "avoiding" fats for half a century... it hasn't done any good... maybe a different approach is overdue?

I'd like you to show me someone who is obese because they ate too much fatty meat and had nearly zero sugar/carbs. Because I can show you about 120 million in the US alone where the opposite is true.

> I'd like you to show me someone who is obese because they ate too much fatty meat and had nearly zero sugar/carbs.

that's my personal experience, I already cut sugar/raw carbs, but still need to watch on fatty meat to maintain neutral caloric intake.

Fat is far more satiating which is why keto and paleo diets are relatively easy to adopt. For most people, it’s easier to control overeating within the same calorie amount by reducing carbs and increasing fats.

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