What is the straight dope on low carb high fat diets?

[DrCube]

I’m coming around to a lower carb diet. Not Atkins. Not ketogenic. I look at it this way: protein is necessary to build muscle. Fat is required for brain function, is antiinflammatory, and does lots of other good things (outside of trans fats – I’m not convinced saturated fats are bad for us yet). Carbs, basically, are filler to top off our energy requirements for the day. This is why long distance runners carbo-load. But your average couch jockey doesn’t need a bunch of extra calories. So there is a target amount of proteins and fats you should plan for, and carbs are literally icing on the cake that sedentary people need much less of than very active people.

[ultrafilter]

@Deeg

I have to question how “high fat” the paleo diet was. Outside of seeds where would the fat have come from? Wild game does not have much fat.

Organs. Every part of the animal and all that.

[Deeg]

@ultrafilter

Organs. Every part of the animal and all that.

How much fat is that? If we say a hunter-gatherer gets 50% of calories from game* how much of that would be fat from organs?

Maybe I’m just nit-picking the “high” portion of “low-carb high-fat” diet. I’m guessing the amount of fat in such diets is way more than paleo societies ever got.

• • This is a completely made up number–I have no idea what percentage of overall calories came from game in a typical HG society.

[DSeid]

Probably it matters some what the carbs and what the fats are. If that means avoiding refined carbs and a diet rich in MUFAs and omega threes, probably pretty dang healthy. Eating bacon all day? Proabably not.

As to the actual diet of paleolithic times … we actually have some pretty good ideas, both by studying the diets of extant hunter gatherer groups and by studying the fatty acid composition of wild game. This is how the possibly biggest names of Paleo put it:

… PUFAs and MUFAs ordinarily constitute most of the total carcass fat (11). MUFAs and PUFAs are the dominant fats in the edible carcass of caribou for all 12 mo of the year … a year-round dietary intake of high amounts of SFAs would have not been possible for preagricultural hominins preying on wild mammals. Even with selective butchering by hominins, in which much of the lean muscle meat is discarded, MUFAs and PUFAs constitute the greatest percentage (>50% of energy as fat) of edible fatty acids in the carcass of wild mammals throughout most of the year … <snip> … Both the current US macronutrient intakes and suggested healthful levels differ considerably from average levels obtained from ethnographic (20) and quantitative (21) studies of hunter gatherers in which dietary protein is characteristically elevated (19–35% of energy) at the expense of carbohydrate (22–40% of energy) (20, 21). Although the macronutrient compositions of hominin diets during the Paleolithic period cannot be directly determined, recent isotopic data from Neanderthal (117) and Upper Paleolithic European (118) skeletons support the notion that protein consumption may have been substantially higher than current values. …

Which is not evidence that the diet is “better” but let’s at least be clear about what was more typical within the wide range of diets eaten in Paleolithic times. If Paleo is your argument then you aim for 19 to 35% of your energy from protein, complex high fiber carbs at somewhere in the 22 to 40% of energy range, and a diet low in saturated fats and high in MUFAs and omega-3s. If have access to wild caribou, musk oxen, deer, (marrow and organs inclusive - but beware of those prion diseases), fish and fowl, and lots of wild fruits and vegetables go for it. Eating well marbled steaks and bacon does not replicate it however.