Too early to know for sure but I'm going to say it's very unlikely, the relationship between diet and body composition is rarely so straight forward.

Fingers crossed it's some PUFA found in all common seed/plant oils on the market, forcing all the anti-"saturated animal fats" crowd to eat crow and those oils to be pulled from human consumption. :^)

I’m on the same page as you regarding the anti-“saturated animal fats” crowd, but I actually don’t mind them. My animal-based cooking oil spend would be a lot higher if everyone stopped buying plant-based oils.

You try to avoid oxidised UFAs and you get oxidised cholesterol instead [0], which is at least as bad and probably worse [1].

[0] https://sci-hub.se/https://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/jf97...

[1] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/mnfr.200500063

That seems like a needlessly bitter response, why the antipathy?

There is a weird crowd of people on the internet that have convinced themselves that seed oils are the cause of many ailments.

It doesn’t have a ton of scientific backing but Joe Rogan promoted some guru doctor a while back that spread the idea to a lot more people.

>Joe Rogan promoted

You mean he did an episode where he had a conversation with the doctor? Or was the doctor a sponsor of the show where he advertised products?

I don't think simply having a conversation about an idea counts as promotion.

Advertising is another matter though..

Having a conversation in a very public place can certainly end up promoting ideas

Take a popular piece of media, inject a conversation about fringe ideas with some crackpot that would have very limited reach otherwise. This gives very high visibility to very fringe ideas.

Giving undue weight to fringe viewpoints is promoting those viewpoints.

Promotion: "activity that supports or provides active encouragement for the furtherance of a cause"

Simply discussing an idea, even giving undue weight, is not promotion.

Conflating the two is dangerous as it provides justification for censorship. The free exchange of ideas and information is the only way a democracy can survive.

If the idea is bad or wrong, it will be debated and ultimately defeated in the marketplace of ideas.

> If the idea is bad or wrong, it will be debated and ultimately defeated in the marketplace of ideas.

This implies the existence of a marketplace of ideas where people can freely trade thoughts.

It was not the case in the past (i.e. you go to jail or are excommunicated for dissent), and it is increasingly not the case in the modern world (i.e. the algorithm is telling you what they want you to hear).

You cannot have a free marketplace of ideas in a world where the forums these ideas are being discussed have an incentive of causing conflict and keeping you engaged.

This is not an attack on you or anything, I just think we should all be more aware that everything we hear today has an agenda hidden behind it, which is malicious more often than honest.

> If the idea is bad or wrong, it will be debated and ultimately defeated in the marketplace of ideas.

Sure, and I have a bridge to sell you.

The marketplace of ideas is a myth predicated on the willingness of participants to promote and evaluate their ideas honestly, and due to that honesty to stop promoting such ideas when they are shown to be wrong or inadequate. It requires participants to even be interested in how good their ideas are and be open to discussing them and changing views if these ideas are found wanting.

Observing real life, what we have is people flooding the zone with unmitigated faeces, either for profit or idealogical motives. They are uninterested in whether these ideas are true, good or even useful, whether there are 'better' ideas, and they often dominate through volume and repetition. Tribal cohesion ensures the spread of ideas as much or more than honest debate.

The marketplace of ideas is dead, if it ever really existed. A fairytale for children.

> If the idea is bad or wrong, it will be debated and ultimately defeated in the marketplace of ideas.

And saying "Rogan promoted quack doctor making nonscientific claims again and thus the idea spread" is necessary part of that process. Too many people think that "marketplace of ideas" means "I get to spread lies and other side can not say that I am a liar".

The problem with Joe Rogan is that he's not smart and his audience is not smart. He's a pseudo-intellectual. He gifts crackpots an enormous audience of gullible people. He lends credibility to them with softball interviews devoid of critical analysis. He's spoon-feeding suckers what they want to hear. He couches it all in a thin veneer of balanced reporting and barstool philosophizing, under the guise of fairness, but he's elevating ideas that have no business being elevated. It's even worse than outright promotion.

wanting censorship of "unapproved" conversations is objectively worse

If he’s not smart why’s he so successful. Why did he have a job hosting fear factor. A job hosting UFC. A job being a stand up comic. He’s also short - which I thought meant the cards are stacked against you? He also has a black belt. They don’t give those out. He currently has the biggest, arguably most successful podcast of all time.

But he’s not smart right? Years and years of winning but he’s not smart.

You are capable of thinking and you are smart but that doesn’t mean you are right. Don’t conflate the two

How can one conclude he isn’t smart? Are you politically charged against him. Has he wronged you or your loved ones? Would you say he was not ‘smart’ if you had write a report for a 3 Letter agency?

You can get to the top once if you’re lucky. But if you keep ending up there…

> Why did he have a job hosting fear factor. A job hosting UFC

That has no relationship with someone being able to have meaningful discussions on complex topics. Probably even the opposite..

You don’t get a job in front of camera unless you’re good looking or talented. Rogan was not good looking.

He’s certainly talented. However again that has almost bo relationship to being able to have meaningful discussions on highly complex topics.

I think it stops being just a conversation when you make the choice to broadcast it.

When you have a massive megaphone, your choices have impact at scale.

So "having a conversation" is functionally identical to promoting, as is "just asking questions" if you're Tucker Carlson, or "exercising your free speech" if you're Elon Musk amplifying easily disproven talking points about immigration, etc.

Noblesse oblige.

> I don't think

yes.

‘I’m just asking questions’ might be one of the more toxic lines I’ve come across in the last few years.

The saga of John Yudkin and Pure White and Deadly should give you pause.

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Yudkin

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pure,_White_and_Deadly

Or you know the article on highly processed foods that made the home page the other day: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39746915 ... Could the seed oils thing be a bit much? Sure. Could canola and its use be part of the problem as a highly processed food. Maybe. Is any one doing the research? None of us know...

Why people have some aversion to seed oils, a highly processed food: "Canola oil is made at a processing facility by slightly heating and then crushing the seed.[34] Almost all commercial canola oil is then extracted using hexane solvent, which is recovered at the end of processing. Finally, the canola oil is refined using water precipitation and organic acid to remove gums and free fatty acids, filtering to remove color, and deodorizing using steam distillation. Sometimes the oil is also bleached for a lighter color." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapeseed_oil

I'm not sure that sounds like food...

> I'm not sure that sounds like food...

A lot of things don't when you describe them in such detailed, clinical ways.

You can also buy (just like you can with quality olive oils) cold pressed canola which is manufactured simply by crushing the seed. The seed oil folks would have it that this is no better, AFAICT.

Biggest comment score hit in a while...

(... worth it.)

'At least I annoyed someone' is one of the biggest red flags for a fool who thinks they are smart.

Parties interested in intelligent discourse will avoid you, and lurking readers will cement their opion as opposite yours.

It's the scream of a child rationalising rejection.

This is true in some forums, but not on this one. On this one, posting things that are even slightly non-consensus leads to grumbling and downvotes.

Far fewer people can downvote than can upvote, though. You generally have to post something a little more evocative than "slightly non-consensus".

But even taking your argument at face value, even if you take pride in having annoyed people for having expressed an opinion you find valuable, it's boring and petulant and ugly to then brag about it. Surely you can't be arguing for that kind of behavior.

You know the saying: flak in the ass is a good sign you're on target!

Yeah once it becomes clear you’re in the kind of forum I am talking about the satisfaction doesn’t come from the presumed effect on others but the signal that you actually may have said something important.

Discounting one set of reductive misinformed ideas while putting forward another. You love to see it.

> The matched subjects who ate meat (including poultry and fish) were more than twice as likely to become demented as their vegetarian counterparts (relative risk 2.18, p = 0.065) and the discrepancy was further widened (relative risk 2.99, p = 0.048) when past meat consumption was taken into account

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8327020/

That's a small observational study from 1993, with p>.05 outside of the subgroup analysis. Whatever search strategy led you to it is severely flawed.

is this better? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10517714

> While we did not find statistically significant evidence to support an association of consuming relatively more plant- and fewer animal-based foods with the risk of dementia, our HR of 0.93 (95% CI: 0.86–1.01) for the hPDI cannot rule out a subtle beneficial effect of healthy plant-based eating on the brain.

"cannot rule out a subtle effect". Otherwise not statistically significant. Great.

it doesn't seem like plant food causes Alzheimer though

Oh, yeah. Sorry, that makes sense.

I get migraines from plant and seed oils, my thought on this is, that they're kinda rancid. You can't get them fresh enough in the supermarket. The one oil I didn't get strong migraine from was fresh olive oil.

You're also looking at a time-window of 1-5 days, depending on your metabolism.

Olive oil pulled from human consumption? Good luck with that.

The idea that eating fat leads to higher body fat is the most dangerously-wrong health misconception in history.

Honest question: how? I've never seen anyone who's obese and having a diet that made me go "huh that's odd how can they be obese?"

While the inverse occasionally has been true, generally people who I consider in good shape appear to eat less, and less greasy food.

So while there might be exceptions it seems to be a damn good rule of thumb to me.

Because of homeostasis: dissolved substances like fats in the bloodstream are regulated within bands, and beyond certain limits the amount ingested doesn't translate to more: it's excreted or winds up elsewhere. Your metabolism may cause states worse than other people, sure. But that pound of butter you ingested isn't directly causing rises in the bloodstream to infinity. It's long-term accumulated burden and excess over time.

Cholesterol levels don't track intake directly. Lowering cholesterol and fat in diet needs to be done in consultation with somebody who understands your metabolism. Some vitamins are fat soluble. Some fat is beneficial.

Homeostasis is amazing.

While I always knew that sugars where the main culprit for body fat thanks to a highschool biology class, I have never understood why fat is less of a problem so thank you. Could you link me with sources or search keyword in order to know more of what the body is doing with excess fat ?

I tried "what does the body do with excess fat" and I think it covers it. For sure, you get higher triglycerides floating around in the bloodstream, and the liver is under stress. at the extreme end, its Steatorrhea which is .. unpleasant (olestra goes to the same place)

The lymphatic system is also involved.

So it's not entirely "eat as much fat as you like" by any stretch. It's more that over time, the body tends back to a baseline model. Continual high levels of fat which cause surplus in the bloodstream are heading to arterial blockage and isn't good, but the relationship of fat ingested to fats in the blood is a more complex path. "it depends"

I'm not a bio scientist or a med. Happy to be corrected.

> I've never seen anyone who's obese and having a diet that made me go "huh that's odd how can they be obese?"

Your question isn't refuting OPs claim: the people you are observing to be fat are fat because of their carb/sugar intake, not fat.

i.e. if you just fed someone large amounts of protein and fat they would be lean; it is the sugar and carbs that make them fat.

No they wouldn’t stay lean. If you fed someone more calories than their body uses to maintain its current weight, they would get fat eventually. Regardless of whether they eat carbs, fat or protein.

Let's say you're being fed just the amount of calories your body needs to maintain. What influence on body fat has the distribution of carbs, protein and fat from food then?

My point was that regardless of what you eat, if you eat more than your body expends, some of the excess will be used to produce fat and you will gain weight. If you lead a sedentary lifestyle and eat 3000 calories of nothing but lean meat per day, you will gain weight.

You are right that different foods (macronutrients, more specifically) have different thermic effects and therefore require different amounts of energy to metabolise. Protein takes more energy to process than fat. This does not change my overall point.

Not much for getting lean but it's easier to overeat carbs and fats are calorie dense. That said you need to eat a mix of the three to be healthy because they all have important body functions.

You're so wrong. With only protein and fat, they would not be able to gain much weight. I've tried to gain weight on low carb/high fat, and it doesn't work. I was uncomfortably full after every meal. My tracking showed a significant calorie surplus, but my body wasn't absorbing it. Adding in more carbs made a huge difference. Hormones tell your body when to store fat.

Did you know that bodybuilders in the 1950's(before anabolic steroids) used the egg and steak diet before contests as cutting diet to get lean? They would eat, as the name suggests, large quantities of steak and eggs with butter and have a carb refeeding day every 4 days. They would get really lean on a very high-calorie diet, think 4000 to 6000 calories.

The inventor of diet famously lost a contest for being too lean.

Lack of carbs supresses appetite, JFYI.

I never claimed otherwise and it does not negate my point.

Humans are bad at lipogenesis: we can only convert tiny fraction of the carbs into fat. Thus: the fat your eat is largely the fat you wear.

You cannot explain it otherwise (without showing a undiscoverd way humans can convert carbs into fat).

> i.e. if you just fed someone large amounts of protein and fat they would be lean; it is the sugar and carbs that make them fat.

This is dangerous. It may work on the short term, but it is very dangerous on the long run.

Why would a mammal's body evolved to use fat cells to store and utilise lipids for energy?

Plants have carbs in starch. Mammals evolved away from starch to store and use triglycerides.

During fasting, the human body is able to survive for months without food.

Thus months of lipid metabolism

> Why would a mammal's body evolved to use fat cells to store and utilise lipids for energy?

Hibernation?

For short term glucose storage is preferred by mammals bodies that i know of.

> Humans are bad at lipogenesis: we can only convert tiny fraction of the carbs into fat.

Because historically food is scarce or difficult to obtain, in general organisms develop mechanisms to make good use of it: when excess food ("energy") is available, it is stored rather than wasted.

This is also true in particular for mammals, and for humans. It's quite obvious that humans are very effective at storing excess energy.

It is said that sumo fighters maintain their body mass (muscle + lots of fat) by eating rice (i.e. carbohydrates) and protein.

Lipogenesis (fat generation from carbohydrates) takes place mostly in the liver. "Excess acetyl CoA generated from excess glucose or carbohydrate ingestion can be used for fatty acid synthesis or lipogenesis."

https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-ap2/chapter/lipid-met...

The conclusion being: "Humans are great at lipogenesis. That's how we store excess energy."

Nope. If humans eat both carbs and fat (most of us do), the excess calories of fat goes mainly into the storage (or plaques to your arteries), while the carbs are used in the sort term (converted into glucose).

> Lipogenesis is mostly derived from carbohydrates and is a relatively minor contributor to whole-body lipid stores, contributing 1–3% of the total fat balance in humans consuming a typical diet.

From:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biolog...

Believe what you will. "It is said" wrt sumo fighters does not sound very scientific.

The human body doesn't need to store excess calories. It could store the excess calories or it can excrete energy through urine(glucose, ketones) Or it can ramp up metabolism, there are many scenarios. Not all lead to adipose tissue growth. Why not muscle growth, which is somehow always overlooked in these discussions.

Funny enough adipose tissue and muscle growth are both through hormones. If testorone and hgh are high then muscles growth will prioritised over adipose tissue.

People with type 1 diabetes have figured out how to stay thin after eating copious amounts[0]. They won't inject themselves with insulin. Unhealthy, sure, but they won't store calories, as adipose tissue (fat cells) remain inactive, even though blood glucose is dangerously high.

Just looking at calories is simplification, and is just for general guidance.

[0]https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/22658-diabuli...

High fat and protein is keto right? What's so dangerous?

Ketosis is probably our rudimentary "wintersleep mode". Rudimentary as we are basically tropical animals (look at our lack of fur).

We should not eat for ketosis. But we can eat (restricted to fat and protein) and still stay in ketosis, which is marketed as the keto diet and is not well tested in long term studies. You are a guinea pig when you do this long term.

>You are a guinea pig when you do this long term.

As opposed to being reliably obese? What's your baseline? I recently checked the average weight of men and women and I am honestly shocked.

Short term you can lose weight with ketosis. Long term you are taking unknown risks.

The risks of obesity are well known. Also, you do not get obese by lack of a keto diet. One usually gets there with a rubbish diet.

For me I went keto because I had a problem with sugar addiction going back since childhood. I managed to maintain a healthy weight through exercise etc but as I aged I felt that my bodies ability to handle sugar was decreasing, and it had significant impact on my energy levels, physical appearance and digestion.

Keto not only simplified my diet but massively improved my digestion, and helped me form more awareness of risks of sugar.

Regarding no long term studies.. its hard to believe much these days I rely on body feedback. Years ago the American diet was supposed to be healthy, look how that science turned out.

I'm glad it works for you. I'm not keto hating, I just find people advising to do it long term to be on the quacky side (there simply is no such evidence).

> Years ago the American diet was supposed to be healthy

The result of lobbying. True nutrition experts knew all along.

> if you just fed someone large amounts of protein and fat they would be lean;

A large amount of protein would make them fat - experiments have shown that about 8% of ingested protein gets converted to glucose in the liver:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3636610/

    The authors calculated that ∼18 g (79%) of the 23 g of ingested protein could be accounted for by deamination; thus those carbon skeletons were available for gluconeogenesis and release of new glucose into the circulation. The remainder, presumably, was used for new protein synthesis.

    The total amount of glucose entering the circulation from all sources was calculated to be 50 g over the 8-h period. However, only 4 g (8%) could be attributed to the ingested protein.

I think you misread that experiment. It appears that some quantity of protein was converted to glucose, but that it wasn’t dependent in the quantity of protein consumed.

Just guessing as to the parent comments meaning.

But I suppose that plenty of fats are healthy and part of a balanced diet. And someone who eats nothing but refined sugar is more likely to be over weight that someone with a high % of fat in their diet.

I think you're right

The danger is two fold

1. People don't eat fatty foods which have solid evidence for their benefits (e.g. Virgin olive oil)

2. People substitute the lack of fats with sugar, which I believe (not an expert) has a lot literature linking it with obesity

"Being fat" and having too much fat (or the wrong kind of fat) in the blood or brain are not equivalent. Eg people with high cholesterol can be quite slim also.

> I've never seen anyone who's obese and having a diet that made me go "huh that's odd how can they be obese?"

Are they eating fat _or sugar?_ The body will aggressively squirrel away any unused sugar as fat. As one example, a Big Mac contains 7g of _added_ sugar. Fries? Coated in dextrose. Sugar is added to damn-near everything.

"Starch and glucose efficiently stimulate insulin secretion, and that accelerates the disposition of glucose, activating its conversion to glycogen and fat, as well as its oxidation. Fructose inhibits the stimulation of insulin by glucose, so this means that eating ordinary sugar, sucrose (a disaccharide, consisting of glucose and fructose), in place of starch, will reduce the tendency to store fat. Eating “complex carbohydrates,” rather than sugars, is a reasonable way to promote obesity. Eating starch, by increasing insulin and lowering the blood sugar, stimulates the appetite, causing a person to eat more, so the effect on fat production becomes much larger than when equal amounts of sugar and starch are eaten" From https://raypeat.com/articles/articles/glycemia.shtml

Where I live, there's only one beer brand that does not have glucose syrup. Sad.

People get fat through consuming more calories than they burn for energy during the day. There are extra but around the edges but no matter the ratio of fat to carbs to protein, if someone consumes (food or liquid) 3,000 calories a day but only burns 2,500 calories a day then a decent portion of that 500 cal difference will get stored as body fat. You could eat 0 calories of fat but if that total of carbs and protein is over your energy burn then over time you will add body fat.

I believe most people gain excess body fat through eating a little bit more than they need each day and then two or three weeks a year they eat and drink much more (holiday, Xmas, birthday etc), rather than consuming vast amounts of food day in day out of the wrong macro nutrient make up.

The calorie hypothesis isn't the most likely from all the research I've done. The calorie as a unit of measure doesn't even make much sense IMO.

A calorie is measured by burning food a specific distance away from a specific amount of water and measuring how much the water temperature rises. It's based on an assumption that the body uses all energy in the food the same, and that fire is analogous to the complex process from digestion to energy use in the cell. The calorie as a measure effectively equates the body to a coal power plant.

Which the body basically is.

Anyone who tracks their calories daily for a long period of time will see that when they eat more they gain weight, when they eat less they loose weight.

Like I said above, there are other aspects that can factor but “calories in calories out” accounts for 80% of weight loss and weight gain (applying the broad brush of the 80:20 rule)

> “calories in calories out” accounts for 80% of weight loss and weight gain

That is simply not true for people that are already obese.

If a calorie is a calorie, would you agree that I would be just as well of eating 1800 calories of fat rather than a balanced diet? Could I stick to 1800 calories of gasoline?

We can't simply burn food and deem that an accurate analog to how the body processes and utilizes different food. Ask anyone that live(d) primarily on rabbit meat.

And to be clear, the 80:20 rule is am extremely broad and inaccurate rule of thumb that isn't useful when applied to something specific. You can't claim that calories in equals 80% of calories out because Paredo.

But it does depend on the type of foods. For example, let's take a serving of almonds listed at 160 calories. Your body may only absorb 120 (depends on the person) of those calories to be burned due to the fiber in the almonds. While foods with sugar and little fiber, you get close to 100% of the listed calories.

Sure, and that kind of thing falls into the 20% of the 80:20 rule of most things. The vast majority of people loose or gain weight based on their calorie in take / expenditure

This is counter to the point that was made regarding fat. The almonds have a higher ratio of fat to other macros.

Your body can't take fat from plants and animals and directly embed it into fat calls. The metabolism of ingested fat takes much more steps than say sugar, which can be directly absorbed into fat cells and also raises insulin resistance. Sugar and refined carbohydrates are a far bigger reason for obesity than fat consumption or "greasy food".

>> The idea that eating fat leads to higher body fat is the most dangerously-wrong health misconception in history.

Modern equivalent of medieval leeches and enemas for "fever" (almost anything was called a 'fever' back then) and eating goat testicles for potency. Eating them raw obviously :)

Medical leeches are still very much a thing. They’re used to help improve venous circulation after plastic surgery around reattached body parts, help with burn recovery, etc

We've probably done more harm with the similar, and also incorrect, assumption that eating more saturated fats go directly to the blood and clog arteries.

Can you point to some evidence that increased saturated fat consumption does not increase LDL? Or that there is no link between serum LDL levels and plaque build up? Or are you making a different claim?

Dr Michael Eades is a good gateway toif you're interested. He wrote a book a while ago now titled Protein Power [1], I think he is working on an update/sequel as well.

At the high level, my basic claim is that the idea that dietary saturated fat directly leads to heart attack is incorrect. The history of this claim dates back to President Eisenhower. After having a heart attack while in office he wanted to tell the public how he could avoid the same fate. Researchers cut corners to meet political targets, ignoring data that disproved their hypothesis and claimed that plaque found in cadaver arteries was made of saturated fats and that it got there due to the person's diet.

The claims weren't backed up by the studies used and we were told that this was now a known fact when it wasn't. We've spent many decades since avoiding saturated fats in favor of unsaturated fats, which are highly oxidative and have concerning side effects when run through the Krebs Cycle.

Dr Eades also has a few interesting talks on the subject when he walks through the Krebs Cycle and the difference of saturated and unsaturated fats in case that's helpful. I think [2] is one I watch years ago, though he has other similar talks on YouTube as well.

[1] https://proteinpower.com/ [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MTNJNAZPiw

There are exceptions, I have the APOE 4/4 variant gene which results in my metabolism not dealing with saturated fat as well, and eating saturated fat does end up raising my bad cholesterol among a bunch of other terrible side effects

perhaps not coincidentally, this variant also comes with a higher risk of Alzheimer's disease

Probably the combination of sugar and salt. The fats our body makes. Probably doing ketogenics and fasting reduces Alzheimer's.

More likely we'll need to start paying attention to sugar intake. I've heard researchers call Alzheimer as "type 3 diabetes". This makes total sense to me since sugar consumption is a big driver of body fat accumalation.

Probably the opposite. Eating more "good" fat assuming you then have less sugar. Nuts, olive oils, omega-3s, etc.

Per the Nature paper, this fat is believed to be part of an immune system response and not related to your intake or total body fat. It is also far from clear that eliminating the production or use of this fat during a microbe invasion would lead to more or less dementia down the road (a good reminder that clinical trials are useful and also risky). This work shows a very refreshing and solid hypothesis and lots of people work on it, but it’s not reason to start changing diets.

Yeah, I almost wish I hadn’t asked given the comments. Really points at an interesting mechanism though. Hopefully this means some kind of preventative or even treatment is possible.