Thank you

Saturated fat tends to be far more stable, so animal fats and coconut oil are both great for cooking. Lard and tallow are both good options (particularly if you render it yourself from grass-fed fat that you get from your butcher / farm shop), goose and duck fat are delicious, and of course coconut oil works a treat.

Vegetable oils (peanut, sunflower etc.) are pretty stable at heat, but they’re so full of n-6 fats that you’re best to avoid them anyway.

Hope that helps.

Robb, in addition to the canola oil thing, I’d be interested in your views on normal rapeseed oil – it’s available over here and touted as healthy. Obviously it has a decent n-3 / n-6 ratio, but the n-3 is all ALA; and even though the ratio is good, it still just seems like a boat-load of n-6 to take in. I know ALA converts poorly to EPA / DHA, but what I’ve never understood is whether it can be considered to buffer n-6 fats at all.

I only ask because cutting veg oils out of the mix limits some cooking options (coconut oil is great but the flavour doesn’t lend itself to everything, and you can’t use lard or tallow for some stuff too well). I’m just wondering if rapeseed oil is a potential for those rare occasions where an oil would be best, or if it should be avoided. I know it’s never a cut-and-dried answer, but some opinions would be great.

Cheers,
Nick.

Could you comment on the whole Canola Oil thing? Cordain puts it on the good oils list because of the Omega 6:3 ratio’s but everything else I read said that the refinement process of making it pretty much destroys any benefit the oil could have. I also heard someone mention that Cordain was sort of forced into supporting Canola Oil by the publisher. Would love to have you clear this subject up.

Thanks

I will indeed but I’m hoping to get it published in a peer reviewed journal. Couple of months if all goes well. Mat is helping me with it.

Could you further describe this inflection point between elite performance and health?

Thanks,
Ben

please read carefully – “Lots of nuts have an unacceptably high omega 6 / omega 3 ratio. Here are the best choices: Walnuts, Macadamia nuts, Pecans”

I did not say nor mean to imply that almonds aren’t recommended – just that they are not the very “best” choice, according to this one criteria.

No short article like this can be comprehensive, the point of this type of guide is simply to (re)acquaint the reader with the relevant issues. Each person must weigh out the issues and make their own decisions.

@ Anthony

Brother, I didn’t mean to aggravate Kiwis, but if I can buy local produce I still think it’s a better choice. These are all personal value/priority choices and I think shipping food all over the planet is nuts. I realize that lots of good people in New Zealand produce some of the highest quality produce on the planet – but you all are the exception. A much more common source of food product here in the states is China. I don’t buy food from China – ever.

DAy 1
Breakfast: 2 eggs, 1/4 avocado 1 dehydrated veggie toast
snack: 1/2 apple
lunch: 5 meatballs – lean ground beef/onions/garlic, tomato sauce, 1/2 zucchini grated, 1 yellow pepper
snack:1/4 cup almonds, cucumber
2 pcs slicked turkey, lara bar
Dinner: 1/2 chicken breast, lettuce, peppers
dehydrated tomato wrap, roasted tomato garlic pesto (no dairy homemade)

Day 2
breakfast: 2 eggs, 1/4 avocado, 1 dehydrated veggie toast
snack: turkey sausage, Lara bar
Lunch salmon sahimi (5 pcs) green salad, soy sauce
dinner: 1/2 chicken breast, lettuce, peppers, dehydrated tomato wrap, 1/4 avocado, 2 dehydrated veggie crackers, handful of almonds

DAy3
Breakfast: 2 eggs, 1/4 avocado, 1 dehydrated veggie toast, 1 turkey sausage
Snack: 1/2 apple, handful of almonds
Lunch: 1 cup lettuce, 1/2 cup peppers, dehydrated tomato wrap, 1/4 avocado, 50g of sliced turkey
Snack: 30g of beef jerky, cucumber, 1/3 cup berries, handful of almonds
Dinner:1/2 chicken breast, 2 cups steamed broccoli

Robb, you are, and always will be, “the man” who supplies the best information, whether it be from your own wealth of experience and knowledge or your willingness to share the results and knowledge of others.

Thank You.

Let’s not confuse issues here. There is a bunch of stuff floating around in popular culture at the moment about the distance food travels – it’s bad from a economic nationalism perspective, it’s bad because of food miles, etc. I can have the free-trade economic debate with you, and I can have the food miles debate with you (in short – New Zealand has very energy-light production, and the energy intensity of the transportation is still less than the energy-intensive production in many places in the northern hemisphere). But, the distance food travels has no impact on its healthfulness. To be clear, moving a fruit from here to here does nothing to turn the fructose to sucrose or increase the omega 6s.

In fact, while I’m at it, I’m going to plug New Zealand meat: it’s all grass fed. All the happy little sheep and cattle roaming around on grass pasture all over the country. Healthy and delicious.

That is almost as much as one of Barry Cooper’s posts printed out and weighed.

Take care Dave, Happy Holidays.

Thank you for the props and thank you for all the great information over the years. Nancy and I were really jazzed about the information we got from your nutrition cert at Level 4 last spring. Even though you have been talking to me for many years about this stuff, and even though I have been studying nutrition for almost 30 years, we still learned from you. We also were inspired to teach our athletes with a very simple, direct, paleo program. THE RESULTS HAVE BEEN ASTOUNDING!! Seriously – I still get almost daily feedback from people who participated in one of our Leaning challenges and are STILL seeing progress. We have been able to positively impact several hundred people – this year! Performance has increased, pain has reduced and folks have lost a LOT of weight. Robb – one of our people has taken off 140 pounds since last January, when I suggested a paleo approach. You read that right 140 pounds this year!! More will be forthcoming.

Your friend Dave

Great post, we were looking to start a this after the holiday’s. It’s like you read my mind. Thanks for sharing.

I’m trying to lean out. Is it OK to eat a small amount of fruit as a snack by itself or should I combine it with some protein and/or fat to try to blunt the insulin response?

Thanks,
Dan