at_anchor

Pork

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Anthony William writes in his book that the fat takes 12 hours to digest, that it causes sleeping problems and that it makes it difficult for oxygen to travel through the bloodstream.

So is pork a healthy source of fat, calories and protein? What are pros and cons of eating it? 

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Most of William's claims are based on bro science or not any evdence at all.
Which doesnt necessarily mean that they are wrong, but that you always have to take them with a grain of salt. 

Pork certainly doenst make it difficult for oxygen to travel through the bloodstream....Maybe the argument he is making is that pork affects arterial endothelial function which could end up reducing oxygen inflow into certain tissues.

Pork is not a healthy source of fat, calories or protein.
Chicken/fish are healthier options.
Plants are (for the most part) the healthiest.


MD. Internal medicine/gastroenterology - Evidence based integral health approaches

"Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love."
- Rainer Maria Rilke

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Yo don't want to eat much of any form of red meat in general. The evidence toward adverse health outcomes is pretty significant at this point. I would not make pork a significant source of calories unless obtaining better sources of calories was not possible or removing pork would result in malnutrition. 

 


“If you find yourself acting to impress others, or avoiding action out of fear of what they might think, you have left the path.” ― Epictetus

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@at_anchor

7 hours ago, at_anchor said:

Anthony William writes in his book that the fat takes 12 hours to digest, that it causes sleeping problems and that it makes it difficult for oxygen to travel through the bloodstream.

So is pork a healthy source of fat, calories and protein? What are pros and cons of eating it? 

   He's mostly using bro science to explain the downsides to pork, so take a pinch of salt, but it does ring true from certain perspectives. I'll explain later.

   Richest source of fat and protein you could ever consume. Pork bellies, and Gammon, ideal for bulking up protein and fats if you are really hitting the gym hard plus labor work. Ideal food if you are into ketogenic diet or carnivore diet In bacon form, I'd cook until it's crispy for thin slices, or if thick slice I'd steam it a little bit, then pan fry it. Those are some of it's pros.

   The cons, it does increase likelihood of heart problems, does make digestion a bit longer, and increases likelihood of cancers related to the heart and stomach/intestines. If you consume too much in one meal setting, can result in cramping, and not cooking pork properly can result in food poisoning.

   Also sluggishness, guaranteed with pork, not just for health/physical reasons, but you are absorbing the essence of the pork, which is naturally a lazy animal itself. The only benefit, is it actually can help you sleep, provided you listen to your body, if it's eaten enough of the pork fat and meat. You will feel lazier than normal, so unless you do want to feel lazier and recover from fat or protein deficiencies, while aiming to gain weight and bulk, then pork is ideal. 

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As with most things, don't overeat the same thing and you won't experience many of its cons.

Most cons you get from foods come from that. Overconsume and you'll get heart disease from pork, kidney stones from spinach, or serious intestine problems from potatoes. Most scientific studies are done in isolation. You are only given certain food to eat under certain conditions, for a certain prolonged period of time, they measure stuff around and give you some pros/cons.

The fact is that if you eat foods in moderation, you will be forced to have a diverse food palette. This means nothing is overconsumed, nor is it eaten in an isolated way. I say, research, but don't think much about the cons. Instead, eat in a way that won't lead to their manifestation.

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Fat is fat at a molecular level and how your body handles it and turns it into energy, if we're talking at like a Krebs Cycle turning lipids into ATP bottom level. Shouldn't matter much if you're eating similarly fatty cuts of beef, pork, lamb, or whatever else. Pork actually has more unsaturated fats, so it's higher in Omega 3. But still nowhere as much as fish.

If you want less fat then sub for chicken or turkey. But saturated fat does not clog up your arteries and cause heart attacks like previously thought during the low-fat craze. You can eat a high fat+protein and low carb diet and have high cholesterol and be fine. It's when you add too much carbs/sugar and it causes inflammation in the arteries, basically little micro-cuts where plaque can start accumulating.

Edited by Yarco

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8 hours ago, Danioover9000 said:

absorbing the essence of the pork, which is naturally a lazy animal itself

This is interesting. Do carrots also have essence? Would you say that eating a fox makes you more clever and eating a dolphin makes you more playful? 

@Michael569 @undeather I would like to try being a vegan for a year. Do you think that a diet with about a thousand calories and only 40g of protein daily is gonna make me healthier if I don't crash and burn before the year is over? It's a bit extreme. 

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But saturated fat does not clog up your arteries and cause heart attacks like previously thought during the low-fat craze. You can eat a high fat+protein and low carb diet and have high cholesterol and be fine. It's when you add too much carbs/sugar and it causes inflammation in the arteries, basically little micro-cuts where plaque can start accumulating.

 

The evidence regarding ApoB-carrying lipoproteins, cholesterol as a surrogate & cardiovascular disease progression is casually proven, beyond any doubt and by multiple lines of evidence over the last 50 years. It does not matter what youtuber X says or what some maverick doctor writes in his book - the amount of evidence is simply overwhelming. The inflammation hypothesis has, at best, some supportive elements going for it. 

 

Quote

I would like to try being a vegan for a year. Do you think that a diet with about a thousand calories and only 40g of protein daily is gonna make me healthier if I don't crash and burn before the year is over? It's a bit extreme. 

Thousand calories sounds like wayyy too little, even if you want to lose weight. 

Whats your current weight/height? 
Whats your goal with the diet? Weightloss? 

Edited by undeather

MD. Internal medicine/gastroenterology - Evidence based integral health approaches

"Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love."
- Rainer Maria Rilke

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9 hours ago, Yarco said:

ut saturated fat does not clog up your arteries and cause heart attacks like previously thought during the low-fat craze. You can eat a high fat+protein and low carb diet and have high cholesterol and be fine.

It's a threshold effect but I would be careful with using words such as DOES NOT. 

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32827219/ - this is a pretty darn robust Cochrane Review, one of the largest reviews of the topics so far. 15 RCTs over 56 thousand participants were polled in meta-analysis. 

  • included long-term trials suggested that reducing dietary saturated fat reduced the risk of combined cardiovascular events by 17% (risk ratio (RR) 0.83; 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.70 to 0.98 - Look at the confidence intervals - everybody in the story got better after following SFA replacing diet 
  • Meta-regression suggested that greater reductions in saturated fat (reflected in greater reductions in serum cholesterol) resulted in greater reductions in risk of CVD events, explaining most heterogeneity between trials 
  • he number needed to treat for an additional beneficial outcome (NNTB) was 56 in primary prevention trials, so 56 people need to reduce their saturated fat intake for ~four years for one person to avoid experiencing a CVD event. - while this may not seem like much, in a scale of 100 million people we are talking about 1.5 million people who will get to live much longer and a significant cut in premature loss of human life. 

As @undeather said. These clowns on YouTube who spit in the face of major evidence should actually be put on a trial for causing premature loss of human life and it is sad and scary to see millions of people following their agenda. 

Saturated fats are one of the major causes of heart disease mainly for increasing the distribution of ApoB containing lipoprotein. These are problematic because they take long time to get rid of. 

AboB is like these tiny hands on the top of lipoprotein particle (lipoprotein is a shell that carries different particles like fats and nutrients around the body but it also contains cholesterol) AbpoB is like a magnet for the proteins called proteoglycans inside the tunica intima (inside the artery) and they readily and irreversibly bind to it ,which our body does not like happening and so it causes release of immune signals that attract monocytes (white blood cell type) and they start to gobble up these particles gradually turning into foam cells which then trigger a variety of inflammatory pathways one of which are release of growth factors stimulating the growth of the muscular layer of tunica media (the middle layer of the artery).

With time as foam cells themselves end up trapped inside tunica intima because they are full of gobbled LDL, they are now being pressed by the growth of the tiny muscle beneath them and also getting crowded with other dead and dying foam cells, all this mess starts bulging u in a lumen (the inside of artery) and plaque starts forming up - early atherosclerosis progresses. The more this happens, the more monocytes are being attracted, the more foam cells produced, the more the tunica media muscular layer grows - and with a few decades atherosclerosis has formed if the process is not slowed down through dietary modification or certain meds 

  (it is infinitely more complex than that and our doc above would be able to explain it much much better) - the mechanism is well described, well studied and very well known. Here is a really good review of the process https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5310383/ 

It is also funny how we always poo poo on seed oils and toxic vegetable oils but actually the less saturated fats people consume and the more plant oils they replace them for, the less this happens and the lower their ApoB circulating levels get. There is a reason clinical guidelines and public health guidelines have been advising for reduction of SFAs in public food and why you now see oils everywhere rather than fucking butter or margarine. This research has been done decades ago and this is exactly what they were telling us 

Ofcourse having insulin resistance as you suggested is definitely a contributing factor but perhaps more to diabetes complications (renal damage, peripheral neuropathy and premature blindness) than to atherosclerosis itself. 


“If you find yourself acting to impress others, or avoiding action out of fear of what they might think, you have left the path.” ― Epictetus

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I prefer fat from organic grass fed beef.

I’m doing carnivore and consume about a pound and a half of beef per day and about 6-10oz of suet per day.

Whenever I eat pork I notice an inflammatory reaction whereas with the beef there is no such reaction. 


The game of survival cannot be won. 

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