Free The Animal

A commenter on my recent Lard post highlighted a post by Dr. Mary Dan Eades, and that reminded me of a section in Taubes’ Good Calories Bad Calories. Let’s take a look at both. First to Eades. Now let’s compare lard to that darling of the disciples of the Mediterranean diet: olive oil. Olive oil contains 71% oleic acid, that heart-healthy, monounsaturated fat that we’re supposed to get more of. Lard contains 44% oleic acid, which is more than sesame oil (41%) and double or nearly so the amount in corn oil (28%), walnut oil (28%), and flaxseed oil (21%), more than double the amount in cottonseed oil (19%) and sunflower oil (19%), and nearly triple that in grapeseed oil (15%) and safflower oil (13%). The oleic acid content of lard also exceeds that in beef tallow (43%), butterfat (29%), and human butterfat (ie the fat of breast milk at 35%). Lard also contains a fair amount (14%) of the 18-carbon saturated fat, stearic acid, which has been shown in clinical testing to lower cholesterol. [...] Like olive oil, lard contains 10% of the omega-6 fatty acid linoleic acid, again, roughly the same as human butterfat (breast milk) at 9%….

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Following up from this, I don’t see how you could have a better lipid panel than this, which is a clip right off my Med record on Kaiser’s website, results obtained yesterday: Total Cholesterol is really a bullshit number, because observe that I could get to an “ideal” <200 by making my HDL worse, like say 50. Triglycerides way low, just like you want, and HDLs stratospheric, also, just like you want. LDL is only 4 points off “above optimal” figure of <100. The ratios are as follows: Total/HDL = 2.1 (average is 4-6 and ideal is 2-3; I’m on the extreme end of ideal) HDL/LDL = 1 (average is .3-.4 and ideal is above .4; again extreme end of ideal) Triglyceride/HDL = .4 (optimal is <2, so again, extreme end of ideal) While my fasting glucose seems high at 109, free insulin was only 6 (standard being 4-29, lower the better) and Glycohemoglobin (HGBA1C %) comes in at 4.8 (standard range 4.6 – 6 with the lower range being optimal). Glycohemoglobin is the percent of hemoglobin with sugar bound to it and doesn’t change very rapidly over time, while a blood glucose test is sugar levels at that moment,…

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