High Fat vs Low Fat Diet

High Fat vs Low Fat Diet?

Which is better?

Fat is Bad

We’ve been told fat is bad, especially saturated fat, that it leads to heart disease and should be avoided or eaten in moderation. Some people have tried to differentiate between healthy fat and unhealthy fat.

Fat is Good

However the tide is starting to turn. The Ketogenic Diet is picking up steam. The ketogenic diet is a high fat, low carb, and low/medium protein diet. Is this the way to go?

What do other animals eat?

In order to get to the bottom of this I wanted to see what other animals do.

Wild animals use natural instincts and eat what they are designed to eat without anyone telling them what is good or bad.

Do they eat a high fat diet or not? Is it high carb? How much protein?

Here’s the tweetstorm short-version of it (and under my saved instagram highlights under “Fat” I talk a bit about this):

Trivia Question of the Day!

Which of the following has the highest fat diet?

A- Cows (that eat grass)
B – Gorillas (that eat leaves from about 200 different varieties of plants)
C- Lions (that eat warm-blooded animals like antelopes and zebras)
D – Humans

— Kevin Stock (@kevinstock12) April 9, 2018

Here are some hints…

— Kevin Stock (@kevinstock12) April 9, 2018

Option A

Cows and other grazing animals are called ruminants. They eat roughage, grasses, and shrubs made of a lot of cellulose. We can’t use cellulose for energy but they can.

— Kevin Stock (@kevinstock12) April 9, 2018

Ruminants are foregut digesters which mean, they have bacteria in the stomach(s) that ferment fiber to produce short chain fatty-acids, saturated fat.

— Kevin Stock (@kevinstock12) April 9, 2018

Through ruminal fermentation they are really eating a diet that consists of 70-80% fat and 20-30% protein with virtually no carbohydrates

— Kevin Stock (@kevinstock12) April 9, 2018

Option B

Option B, Gorillas, eat leaves which are about 60% protein and 40% carbohydrates, and minuscule amount of fat, maybe 5%.

— Kevin Stock (@kevinstock12) April 9, 2018

BUT they are what is called hindgut digesters, and all that vegetable fiber, which makes up about 75% of the leaves is fermented into, you guessed it, SCFA.

— Kevin Stock (@kevinstock12) April 9, 2018

This changes the whole picture for the gorilla. The diet is actually composed of about 20% protein, 10% carbs, and 70% fat which is nearly all saturated.

Pretty darn close to the their ruminant friends.

— Kevin Stock (@kevinstock12) April 9, 2018

As a side note –
All herbivores use one or the other of these methods of getting energy from what looks like an energy deficient food source in the form of low calorie plants.

When it is actually a high fat diet.

— Kevin Stock (@kevinstock12) April 9, 2018

Option C

On to option C, the Lion.

Lions like us, can’t use fiber as an energy source like herbivores do.

But the good news is, they eat the herbivores = a high fat, moderate protein, low carb diet.

— Kevin Stock (@kevinstock12) April 9, 2018

So far the cow, gorilla, and lion are pretty much equal as far as having a diet that is around 70% fat all with very minimal carbohydrates.

— Kevin Stock (@kevinstock12) April 9, 2018

Option D

Now what about us humans…?

— Kevin Stock (@kevinstock12) April 9, 2018

Well this was a trick question.

Wild animals figure out what to eat with their natural instincts. Turns out, all members of a species are designed to eat the same foods if left to their own devices.

Cows eat grass, gorillas eat leaves, lions eat antelope.

— Kevin Stock (@kevinstock12) April 9, 2018

Our species, homo sapien, is designed to eat the same food. We should all have a similar diet. A diet that matches what we are designed to eat.

— Kevin Stock (@kevinstock12) April 9, 2018

Yet we have hundreds of diets, thousands of foods.
And because of this, civilized humans are the only chronically sick animal besides the animals we domesticate.

No wild animal living on its natural diet suffers the chronic diseases we do.

— Kevin Stock (@kevinstock12) April 9, 2018

So what are we designed to eat?

Well this tweetstorm is already a hurricane, so I’ll have to answer this later this week.

— Kevin Stock (@kevinstock12) April 9, 2018

It turns out there is some pretty good evidence for what we are designed to eat. 

Maybe this could end the “high fat vs low fat” debate.

By the way, come join me on twitter for the next tweetstorm ?

Or better – I also email these out every Saturday at 7…