This became a very long post, so here is a summary if you want to skip the rest: 1) Given that saturated fat doesn’t promote weight gain, what is the importance of balancing omega 3 and 6 in your diet, and in the saturated fats of the animals you eat.2) how do you source in supermarkets animals that are likely to have a good balance of omega3 and 6Having dabbled in paleo/primal food before Christmas I opened a flood gate and received some 5 paleo books as gifts. With these, and the web, I’ve got totally bewildered by the amount of information and the number of variables by which you could describe whether or not it should be consumed. Although I also have questions about oils, smoke points, butter and more, I want to ask about omega 3 and 6 in fats. I’ve put in double question marks where I’ve written a statement but am unsure whether I’ve got it correct. I get that saturated fat has been given a bad rap and is unlikely to be directly linked to weight gain or cardiovascular diseases and that saturated fat is a good source of energy and vital for cell growth. Based on this fact, we get forum threads like this, in which bacon is worshipped. However, Lauren Cordain says we should only eat lean meat (as a proxy for active wild game) with low saturated fat, while Mark Sisson and (I think but I don’t have his book) Robb Wolf say that we should only eat pasture raised animals, as their fat is different from grain-fed animal fat. Now, this is where I get confused. I understand that this is because pasture raised cattle have a better ratio of omega 3 and 6 fats. Omega 3 (as in olive oil) lowers bad cholesterol (??LDL cholesterol that can scale arteries??), whereas too much Omega 6 ??is – or can promote bad cholesterol?? I also don’t understand whether the omega 3&6 are part of, or in addition to the saturated fat. So, whether or not you have eaten a free range cow won’t affect the saturated fats’ effect on weight gain, but will effect whether or not it will give you a heart attack?? The books say we should aim for a 1:1 ratio between omegas 3 and 6 (or a more realistic 1:4), is this per meal, or is the effect long term. i.e. eat pork rind one day, eat a tin of mackerel the next? So is the bacon worship that I see here, and other paleo friendly sites misguided, unless we are sourcing non-grain fed pigs? I checked on the UKs largest supermarket store’s website (Tesco) – all of their pork is grain-fed, even the really expensive outdoor raised ranges. I also checked the upmarket supermarket Waitrose, and although happily even their basic range is outdoor raised, it doesn’t state the feed used (so I’ve emailed to ask them). With beef it will be easier to source pastured animals, as the majority of beef in the UK (I assume, but need to research) must be outdoor raised during the summer (but most are in barns in winter), lamb must be good as well, as I’ve never seen indoor reared sheep. That’s what Wales (and New Zealand) is for! Free range chicken is tricky – a lot of labels are proud to declare that they are corn fed (is that better for omega ratios than other grains perhaps?), but unless you’ve reared it yourself on a really small scale, I doubt any free range chickens get much out of their pens but whatever feed they are provided with – I imagine the land surrounding their sheds is a barren dustbowl with nothing but dirt to peck at. The same goes with eggs –Mark Sisson says that free range eggs have more Omega 3, but I can’t really see how commercially reared hens get a different diet to caged hens (although obviously I agree with the animal welfare benefits. Thanks for any clarification on this!
