Allen:

I've read the article, and it's a solid overview of the history behind the anti-fat crusade.  I suspect someone read Denise Minger's "Death By Food Pyramid"!

Valerie:

Oh, great...more associative data retrospectively mined and "adjusted" from the Health Professionals Followup Study and the Nurses Health Study (done by Harvard) until it supports the dietary recommendations the Harvard School of Public Health has already decided on.

I already wrote that article, about a previous pile of junk retrospectively mined from that same dataset.

More importantly, we have much better data on dietary fiber, from DART -- which was an ACTUAL CONTROLLED TRIAL of a fiber-only intervention.  Result: the fiber group showed a 20% increase in all-cause mortality.  (This was termed "not significant" by the authors, probably because it wasn't the expected result!)

Here's a hint: if you see a reference to the "Health Professionals Followup Study" or the "Nurses Health Study", especially in conjunction with the "Harvard School of Public Health," you're almost guaranteed to be looking at a giant pile of bull feathers.

JS

eddie:

The fulltext of DART isn't free, but I read it a while ago. If you want to see the graphs, Stephan reprinted them in this article from way back in the day.

JS

Pedro:

I was a vegetarian too, though not for as long as you were...I only lasted about a year before converting back into a guilty omnivore, though I spent several almost-vegetarian years living miserably off cheese quesadillas (I continually craved cheese for the protein and saturated fat I was missing from all the hearthealthywholegrains.)

I'm sorry it took so long for you to find us, but I'm glad you finally did -- and that you're seeing solid results. The weight loss is nice, but it's the functional improvements that will help keep you motivated. Over time you'll rediscover what it's like to inhabit a body that functions as it should.

Welcome home.

JS

Allen:

"How am I supposed to study with bunch of fillers and no calories. Don't kids need calorie dense foods like hamburgers and pot roasts and stuff?"

Especially if you're, I don't know, ON A SPORTS TEAM and practicing daily...

...not to mention you're GROWING THE BODY YOU WILL INHABIT FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE. You need PROTEIN, and all the meat-associated nutrients, to do that.

Meanwhile, here's the reaction of a bunch of actual school-age teenagers to the new guidelines:

It's not the veggie growers association supporting the guidelines: they're more focused on keeping illegal immigration easy so they can continue to exploit their workers. Most likely Mrs. Obama is simply, like most from her generation, brainwashed into believing that you can starve your way to good health -- despite her own abject failure to stay slim, and the fact that the US Surgeon General is morbidly obese.

JS

Jean:

Don't be discouraged if you don't see immediate results, especially if you've already tried LCHF. Weight loss is, in general, a consequence of good health, it takes time to heal the damage from years of the SAD (Standard American Diet), and some of the damage can never be undone -- only compensated for.

That being said, if you're looking to lose weight and it's difficult for you, keep in mind two things:
1. Be strict. It's hard to completely avoid wheat and corn. Suck it up.
2. Exercise is extremely important -- not because it burns calories, but because it restores metabolic flexibility, without which losing fat without also losing substantial lean mass becomes extremely difficult! Read this article.

I wish you the best of health on your journey.

JS

Kelly H:

There's no need to force down fat! Just don't be afraid of it anymore, e.g. eat however much of it tastes good to you. This amount will very likely increase over time...and since your cattle are grass-finished, the fat is rich in nutrients and healthy to eat.

However, there are plenty of cuts that have giant fat globs stuck to them no matter what and will be difficult to choke down for anyone...in which case you can just trim them before cooking, freeze the trimmings, and render them into tallow when you've got enough. (Be careful not to include any meat or red streaks, or your tallow will taste like burnt meat. Also, wet-rendered tallow will be much cleaner and taste better.)

"In your experience, what cuts of meat qualify as "fatty enough"?"

As you say, that depends on the breed and how they're raised. As a general rule, grass-finished beeves carry more subcutaneous fat (the "lip" around the edges of the muscle) and less intramuscular fat ("marbling") than grain-finished beeves -- though I've bought more than one grass-finished side with spectacular marbling!

In general, and as I'm sure you know, cuts from the round are very lean, and thus go well with herbed butter or other fat-based sauces. The sirloin is often lean, but can sometimes accumulate fat (particularly the bottom sirloin or "tri-tip"). Chuck usually has decent fat content as a whole, but some parts of it are lean (e.g. the "tender"), so it depends how you have it cut. And shank, skirt, and tenderloin are always lean no matter what! In contrast, short ribs are usually the fattiest cut, followed by the rib primal in general, the New York, and the brisket.

In general, the fattest "cut" is the hamburger. I seem to like my hamburger anywhere between 75/25 and 80/20. Any leaner and it's a bit dry...any fattier and it tastes more like pate, which is delicious but too rich to eat very much of.

JS

Dan:

Yes, the cat lady death is from indiscriminate love. As I said just above, "You will stop giving your time, love, and strength to those that demand it, and start giving it to those who deserve it. You will understand that ‘love thy fellow man as thyself’ doesn’t apply to someone with his hands in your pockets or his gun in your face, no matter whose authority they claim."

We get what we reward. If we reward thieves, liars, jerks, users, and drama kings/queens just as much as the solid people who get things done every day, never cause trouble or drama for anyone else, and by doing so keep the world running, we will be overrun by thieves, liars, jerks, users, and drama kings/queens.

JS