[awolf]

The connection between saturated fat and coronary heart disease has had a lot of legitimate doubt cast upon it in the past decade.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20071648

If you say "eating fatty things will give you heart disease", most people will blindly agree with you. In actuality there is very little valid basis for making that claim.

(Edit, and this is a parenthetical because I do not believe anecdotal evidence is useful for arguing for general cases: My personal n=1 experiment: I have comprehensive blood panels done every three months. Over the past four years I adopted a diet that is high in healthy animals fats and proteins, high in vegetables, low in fruit, and devoid of grains. As in: 3 eggs plus sausage or bacon and a salad for breakfast. Every day.

Prior to starting, I had mediocre to bad cholesterol. My numbers are now: 105 LDL, 70 HDL, 52 triglycerides. Superb by all measures.)

[xorcist]

> The connection between saturated fat and coronary heart disease has had a lot of legitimate doubt cast upon it

So has the belief that all fat is all good for you, to put it lightly. Human nutrition is a lot more complex than that. Unless you like experimenting with yourself for the sake of it, go with a balanced diet.

[zo1]

"go with a balanced diet." As much as I'd like to, it's next to impossible to even figure out what a "balanced diet" is these days. The information conflicts even on something that basic.

[Taek]

Balanced diet: some fat, some sugar, some protein. You've got a lot of flexibility, just make sure every major food group has something of a presence. No need to micromanage.

[awolf]

The position that saturated fat is causative in heart disease is not the default position. If an idea is going to generate prescriptive advice it should come with ample supporting evidence.

Despite this we've been strongly indoctrinated with the idea that fat == unhealthy. It has caused us to change our behavior by avoiding foods that our parents and grandparents have been eating down through the generations. We've moved away from the default "balanced diet" on bunk data.

[justin66]

> healthy animals fats and proteins

Given you eat sausage and bacon every day, I wonder what you'd classify as an unhealthy animal fat or protein and what your rationale is?

[awolf]

I define healthy fat as meat which came from a healthy animal. I define a healthy animal as an animal that was raised in accordance with its species' natural diet and lifestyle.

Grassfed beed, pasture raised pork, wild caught seafood.