As I've posted before, most of the "obesity epidemic" is due to too
much oxidative stress, which suppresses the thyroid and lowers
metabolism. A low-grade chronic inflammation (also related to the
excessive oxidative stress) causes more hunger. This occurs because
the "typical American diet" is low in antioxidant sources and high in
food that is either rancid or ready to go rancid inside your body (this
is called lipid peroxdiation. In general, the more unsaturated the
oils/fats you eat, the worse the condition will be. "Saturated fat"
gets a bad name, but there's no real scientific definition for it,
since lard, which is almost always classifed as "saturated fat" is
actually only about 39% saturated, unlike coconut oil, which is 92%
saturated. Asians on coconut oil diets are nearly all thin, with
hardly any heart disease, cancer, AD, diabetes, etc.
A frequent poster, MattLB, recently asked about hydrogenated coconut
oil, because there was a post about an experiment concerning it. I
bring it up here to demonstrate the complexity of the problem (which
"nutritional experts" usually fail to comprehend). If all the double
bonds in coconut oil were changed to saturated ones, without the
addition of toxic nickel (which is used as a catalyst for the required
reactions), and if the antioxidants were not destroyed, I would
certainly prefer the hydrogenated coconut oil to the non-hydrogenated.
However, there is no process that does this, so far as I'm aware.
Instead, many of the double bonds will not become saturated, the
antioxidants will be destroyed, and nickel will be added. Under these
circumstances, I would not consume it, but rather trust my sense of
taste to tell me if the oil is rancid or not. When other, highly
unsaturated, oils are hydrogenated to make margarine (soybean, for
example), antioxidants such as alpha tocopherol are always added, even
though this makes no sense chemically. That is, if you buy soybean
oil, you get soybean oil. But when you buy the more saturated soybean
oil margarine, which should be more chemically stable (assuming it
obeys basic chemical laws), you buy a product with antioxdants (and
other preservatives) added. Thus, even those with little scientific
knowledge can see that the reason is the instability created by the
hydrogenation processes used now. MattLB assumes an hydrogenation
process that has yet to be invented.
Getting back to the main topic, farmers' daughters were often referred
to as "corn fed," because the effects of eating such food were clear -
you got fat. Farmers in the 1930s thought that coconut oil would
fatten their pigs up, but instead, the pigs got leaner. After
experimenting, corn was found to fatten the pigs up very nicely (and
later soy was found to have similar effects). Since corn (and later
soy) were cheap and effective, they've been used for the last 70 or so
years by most American farmers. Now, how it's possible that the great
"scientific experts" haven't figured this out and communicated it to
the masses is remarkable, though some have done their best (such as
biochemist Ray Peat). Make your own "Chinese food." I do. I eat
plenty of coconut, dark chocolate, butter, full fat dairy, eggs, etc.,
and I'm about 120 pounds at 5'9" tall (40 year old male). I'm never
hungry either. The worst thing about the high oxidative stress diet
most Americans are on is that it greatly increases your chances of
getting a heart attack, cancer, diabets, AD, etc. Dr. Richard Stein,
spokesman for the AHA, recently stated that only oxdized cholesterol is
dangerous, but unfortunately, most of the public is getting the message
that this vital substance is some sort of horrible poison, when in fact
it is one of the best things you can eat if it doesn't get oxidized
(which is why I boil the eggs I eat and never fry them).
