Over the past years I have spent way too many hours reading discussion forums about training and nutrition. I’ve learned quite a lot, laughed quite a lot and despaired quite a lot. Learning almost always involved the topic of weightlifting, to which I am a late-in-life devotee. Laughing always involves the testosterone-driven know-it-alls, and despair has always been the result of the half-assed knowledge being thrown around as “information” regarding dietary fat.

It has been a great relief to watch the Paleo community reverse their mainstream adherence to the saturated-fat-will-kill-you mythology. All those years of reading the most beloved training gurus advise lean meats and shot glasses of olive oil drove me crazy. Meat had become good, but the fat thing was mysterious. Somewhere along the line, the training gurus had heard that olive oil was good, so they suggested drinking it, and they knew there was a lot of smack talk about saturated fat, so they warned to be cautious of saturated fat intake. Even worse than all of the “drink olive oil” and “avoid too much saturated fat” advice columns were the completely confused explanations of the differences between fish oil, cod liver oil, flax oil and the general Essential Fatty Acid issue. In this venue, we have a cadre of readers willing to wade through the most detailed writings on geometry of knees-hips and back angles as it relates to lifting, willing to experiment with the Black Box, the Wendler 5/3/1, various percentage systems, select eastern European philosophies and whatever the various coach-du-jour has to say on the topic of getting stronger. I think you all are up to the task of wading through some fat chemistry so that you are not at the mercy of your on-line, discussion forum “guru”.

Trends come and go in the world of strength training. Just as easily, trends come and go in the nutrition suggestions attached to athletic programming. It might be fine to experiment with lifting percentages and lifting protocols ad nauseum, but it is not fine to follow whims when it comes to nutrition. Nutrition is set in the past, in our evolutionary-determined, metabolic milieu. Robb Wolf and Scott Hagnas have done a solid job explaining the evolutionary nutrition deal. We are biologic organisms that evolved to function optimally on an evolutionarily-determined diet. Let’s move forward assuming you accept that premise. The majority of the questions that weightlifters, Crossfitters and endurance athletes ask the uber-patient Robb Wolf on his Paleo Solution podcasts involve things like this: “How much fat should I eat if my training program is 3 days mainsite Crossfit, 2 days Catalyst O-Lifting, some longer runs to keep up my endurance and 7 jiu jitsu practices a week?” Sometimes they ask if bacon is okay or if coconut oil is only acceptable if eaten on a tropical beach, as opposed to the inner city of Detroit, or something like that. I believe the solution to these questions, as well as the “drink olive oil” suggestion is a little lesson in fat chemistry. If you knew what your olive oil was missing out on perhaps you’d take up drinking egg yolks instead. Or perhaps you would truly eat Paleo, a diet comprised of an incredibly varied array of lipids found in every portion of animals and plants, not just the ones our modern eating habits recognize as “healthy”.

Dietary fat is an amazingly complex world of chemistry, which is perhaps why our understanding of it is so dismal. As we delve into this fascinating yet intellectually challenging topic, we should keep in mind that when we feel overwhelmed with molecules, there are simple guiding questions you can revert to: “Does my body have a need for this particular fat? Is there something that my body does with this fat that I require for excellent health and training response/recovery?” If the answer is “yes”, then be assured you should eat it. But you all aren’t simple, as your comprehension of strange Bulgarian squat progressions certainly demonstrates. Hopefully, in this article I can demonstrate that there is a wide spectrum of fats present in our food supply and that each one performs an important function in the body and therefore, that you should feel confident in consuming all the traditional dietary fats.

Did you know that athletes are often in the same group as strict vegetarians and alcoholics when it comes to their likelihood of having nutritional deficiencies? Many a scholarly article on an individual, common or esoteric nutrient includes some sort of statement such as, “In our present time, deficiencies of this nutrient are rare, except with strict vegetarians, athletes and alcoholics.” Alright, sometimes they say “endurance athlete” which thankfully, leaves out many a PM reader, but, still, many athletes of all types engage in a very busy lifestyle, train hard, too long and too often. Why is it that nutritionally you are in the same boat as strict vegetarians and alcoholics (and I’m sure no one has ever met an alcoholic athlete….)? Essentially you are asking your body to perform under unusually taxing conditions. You are creating an imbalance between the amount and assortment of raw materials you put into your body (food) and the building projects you are requiring your body to do with those raw materials (recovery). In particular, if you are a strength athlete where the destruction and construction of muscle, bone and connective tissue is part and parcel of your daily existence, you are requiring your body to continually construct enormous amounts of new cells. The mountains of concern regarding optimal protein intake and timing to produce muscle mass is in sharp contrast to the amnesia regarding the other elements that go into constructing muscle tissue. Your muscle cells aren’t just made out of protein, obviously. As a strength athlete you are also counting on your anabolic hormones and growth factors to put in some overtime. I know you all have determined that squats and deadlifts are some of the best movements for eliciting the testosterone response, but have you determined what your body needs to make sure you can produce that testosterone?

Lately, this Journal has featured some excellent articles on training programs for adolescents. Young athletes in particular require a nutrient supply in excess of adults because their bodies are still forming. Every study done on the nutritional intake of adolescent girls who are involved in athletics find them deficient in multiple nutrients. Adolescent girls have already grasped into their parents’ fear of fat and are in grave danger of eating suboptimal amounts of dietary fat. Adolescents of both genders are at the mercy of very busy parents and frozen dinners which do not even begin to incorporate the diverse range of fat required for growth and performance.

Overtraining and other less dramatic sub-optimal training responses, are usually first and foremost connected to the athletic programming. This makes sense since the level of training is frequently absurd. However, it seems that most often the extent of the nutrition exploration, at least in non-professional athletes, stops at “maybe I wasn’t eating quite enough” or “maybe I need a post workout meal”. Maybe that’s it. But maybe your body is unable to keep up with your demands because you are supplying it with a monoculture of macronutrients that leaves your body searching for raw materials. If you provide your body with primarily only one type of fat then it has to use some of its metabolic effort to produce all the other fats you need to stay alive. There is a good chance that you don’t really have metabolic effort to spare. Most of us know that eating the rainbow of fruits and vegetables is beneficial because it ensures that we are exposed to the entire range of vitamins, minerals and phytonutrients. However, most of us don’t follow the “eat from every color of the rainbow of fats” theory. We should actually think about fats the same way we think about fruits and vegetables. No, you shouldn’t eat only broccoli as your vegetable, and no, you shouldn’t eat only almonds as your fat source.

Before we get into looking at the specifics of the fats, let’s address one other common misconception regarding your need for the entire spectrum of naturally occurring fats (yes, trans fats are bad, partially hydrogenated and hydrogenated fats are bad and so is Earth Balance). Your body does have the metabolic prowess to cobble together many types of fats for you if you don’t provide them via your food intake. Three terms become useful here: Essential nutrients, conditionally essential nutrients and non-essential nutrients. Any nutrient labeled “essential” means that no human body can produce this nutrient. It MUST be provided for the body through the food and we need it to stay alive. Non-essential nutrients are nutrients that we can metabolize through various enzymatically-driven steps primarily occurring in the liver. During the 1980s we got smart and figured out there was a third category of nutrients: the conditionally essential ones. These are nutrients that theoretically, with an ample supply of other raw materials, our body can make for us. However, there are a host of situations that render the body unable to perform certain metabolic activities that results in nutrients becoming, temporarily, essential. These situations are: childhood, middle/old age, alcoholism, obesity, performance/competitive athletics, metabolic illnesses (like hypothyroidism) and many other genetic or autoimmune diseases. We can look at two fat-dependent nutrients to see how they might become essential for some of us.

1. Cholesterol is made for us by our liver. We can never eat enough cholesterol to supply our body’s requirement. As we age, our liver gets tired, but our need for cholesterol increases because it is involved in cardiovascular repair, hormonal production and brain and nervous system construction. Just as our need for cholesterol increases, our ability to produce it slows down (1,2,3). There are many wise researchers out there suggesting that cholesterol should be considered a “conditionally essential nutrient” in the elderly just as it is for people hospitalized with traumatic injury or illness. 

2. Vitamin A. Vitamin A is not found in carrots or tomatoes or any other orange vegetable. It isn’t found in vegetables at all and it doesn’t matter what the label on the back of the carrot bag says. Vegetables contain beta-carotene, a precursor to true/complete Vitamin A which is accurately termed retinol or retinoic acid. Vitamin A becomes a conditionally essential nutrient for anyone whose liver isn’t up to the complex, nutrient-intense process of converting beta-carotene to the biologically-active retinol. Don’t be too confident in your liver. Studies show that beta-carotene absorption is low even in healthy men and conversion of beta-carotenes to retinol is terribly low in women (4). Vitamin A is relevant in a discussion of fats and recovery because Vitamin A is a fat-soluble nutrient. In real life this means that retinol, or true Vitamin A, is found in foods with fat including egg yolks, lard from pastured animals, butter from grass-fed cows and liver. Retinol is important to your athletics because it is a critical component of the production of testosterone. Low Vitamin A levels, in animal and human studies, are correlated with low basal testosterone production. Of extra importance is that diets high in protein are shown to deplete Vitamin A reserves, so a diet relatively high in protein, like many of you consume, especially require focus on adequate Vitamin A intake.

The word lipid is a general term with various definitions, but let’s go with one from the American Oil Chemists’ Society: Lipids are fatty acids and their derivatives, and substances related biosynthetically or functionally to these compounds. This is a nice, inclusive definition because it allows us to include cholesterol, which is not a fat, but is related functionally in the body to fats. And this definition reminds us that chemically, fats are acids. Let’s explore five categories of Lipids. The first important concept for you to know is that each of these five categories is a lipid that is present in your body. Some of them might sound vaguely familiar, others you might know quite a lot about. The ones that you have never heard of before are most likely the ones separating you from death or perhaps a neurologic illness like autism. As a basic premise, again, be sure that if your brain requires sphingolipids to function, you needn’t be afraid of them in your food supply. Got sphingolipids?

1. Simple Lipids –these include:

          a. Triglycerides – a glycerol molecule with three fatty acids attached to the hydroxyls. These are the fatty acids       measured in your blood which most closely reveal your intake of excess carbohydrate that are being stored as triglycerides.

          b. Sterols – a tetracyclic ring with a free hydroxyl group. This is your cholesterol as well as your desmasterols and your lathosterols.

          c. Waxes – usually saturated fatty acids connected to long chain alcohols.

2. Glycerophospholipids – includes phosphatidylcholine and cardiolipin.

3. Glycoglycerolipids – primarily, although not strictly, plant lipids, these have sugars attached to the fatty acid.

4. Sphingomyelin and glycosphingolipids – long chains, not found in plants, important in cellular signaling.

5. Fatty Acids – the dietary fats.

Every day eating decisions center mostly around the Fatty Acids. There are two primary groups; saturated and unsaturated. The chemistry behind this classification will give you a rock solid basis for understanding what to cook with and what you should look for in your diet. Saturated fats are the solids at room temperature. Unsaturates are liquids or oils. Saturated fats are solids because the carbon chains are straight so they can stack up tightly like logs on a tractor trailer. Unsaturates are oils because the carbon chains have double bonds giving them a little kink. They can’t pack solidly. They are like a pile of branches you trimmed off a tree, random and unruly. It is the double bond between the carbon atoms that gives unsaturated fats their problematic property. The term “saturated” refers to the fact that all the carbon atoms in the molecule are electrically neutral-they are saturated with hydrogen atoms. Unsaturated fats have an electrical charge at the site of the double bond. This creates an unstable (=unsaturated) molecule and results in a high level of reactivity for the unsaturated fats. Reactivity in fats or oils is undesirable. It is the process of spoilage or rancidity, otherwise known as oxidation. This is one reason why seed oils cannot be Paleo. They require industrial processing in order to extract the fat from the seed/nut/grain and to mask the rancidity that they INSTANTLY experience just to render them shelf stable. This is also the reason that the unsaturated fats are the WRONG fats to use in cooking. As soon as you expose them to high heat they oxidize and then you’re eating damaged fats. In an ideal world, you would purchase recently cold-pressed olive oil and drizzle it on your salad, you would put butter on your cooked vegetables and you would fry up your sweet potatoes in beef tallow (you know, how McDonalds used to cook its French fries before the invention of hydrogenated oil). Your saturated fats are nice and stable even upon exposure to high heat. Tallow will not form free radicals.

The saturated fats are classified by the length of the acid chain: short chain, medium chain and long chain. In the human body, the different lengths of saturated fats experience varying post-ingestion routing and ultimately, different metabolic fates. The long chain fats require digestion by bile and are transported through the lymph system. In order to be incorporated into the mitochondria of our cells for production of energy, long chain fats must be shuttled in via the carnitine transport system. The medium and short chain fats do not require bile for digestion. They enter the liver and the blood stream directly from the small intestine and they can enter the energy production system without carnitine transport. Long chain fats cannot be used to directly produce oxidative energy whereas the short and medium fats can be.

There is only one short chain saturated fat in the human diet, butyric acid, found in dairy fat. Butyric acid is the reason that in my nutrition work, everyone is encouraged to eat butter. Even people who are allergic to dairy are taught to make their own clarified butter. Clarified butter (also called ghee) is butter fat with the dairy proteins removed. Butyric acid can be produced by anaerobic bacteria in the gut (especially the clostridium) except we all have such screwed up intestinal microbes that most people can’t count on that process. Butyric acid is anti inflammatory in the gut and decreases epithelial permeability. In other words, all that damage you did to your intestines while you still ate gluten would be repaired by butyric acid. Butyric acid is also involved in cell apoptosis or death of unhealthy cells. Insufficient butyric acid is under investigation as a cause/treatment of the recently ubiquitous intestinal illnesses like IBS and Crohn’s disease (5).

There are three medium chain fats important to the human body, lauric acid, caprylic and myristic acid (6,7). Lauric and myristic acids have been shown to increase HDL (“good cholesterol”). Lauric acid is the primary fat found in human breastmilk. If your breastfeeding days are over you can get the medium chain saturates in coconut fat and red palm oil. Goat milk is a good source of caprylic acid. These medium chain fats have powerful antimicrobial properties. Lauric and caprylic acids are effective against the lipid-coated viruses which include measles, strep, staph and HIV. Caprylic acid is used to disinfect food preparation environments and greenhouses. Caprylic acid is also a major constituent of ghrelin, a peptide produced in the stomach that controls appetite stimulation and fat storage.

The long chain saturates include stearic acid and palmitic acid found in animal fat, fish, palm and eggs. The highest amounts come in cacao or raw chocolate. I find it hilarious that vegans and yogis sing the praises of dark and raw chocolate and seem virtually addicted to it. Perhaps they are desperately seeking some saturated fat? Stearic acid surrounds the heart and is the preferred fuel for the heart in times of stress. Palmitic acid is a component of our lung surfactant. The long chain saturates are also a primary component of every single cell membrane in the body.

The unsaturated fats include the monounsaturated (meaning that there is one double carbon bond) and the polyunsaturated (more than one double bond). The more double bonds, the more reactive and unstable the fat. It is important to understand that the majority of the animal fats like tallow and lard are predominantly unsaturated fat. For example, olive oil is about 70% monounsaturated fat. Lard (from pigs) is about 50% monounsaturated fat. It doesn’t matter to the human body whether you eat lard or olive oil, the body ends up with the same monounsaturated lipid. If you eat lard from pastured pigs you also get Vitamin A and Vitamin D. There is no plant oil that will supply these two fat-soluble nutrients. The polyunsaturates include the two Essential Fatty Acids we hear so much about: Omega-6 (Linoleic Acid) and Omega-3 (Alpha-linolenic Acid). Linoleic acids form the pro-inflammatory prostaglandins and alpha-linolenic acid forms the anti-inflammatory hormones. The reason for choosing fish, egg or pastured meat sources of Omega-3 polyunsaturates over the plant versions like chia, hemp and flax is that for many of us, the DHA becomes conditionally essential. DHA is the final form our body needs for action. The animal sources of Omega-3s contain DHA ready to use. The plant sources require extensive metabolic conversions for DHA to be created and ready to use. The presence of saturated fat is required for adequate conversion of plant Omega-3s to DHA. Especially problematic for the Omega-3 fats is that their high degree of unsaturation means they are extremely fragile with regard to light and heat. At the risk of making myself unpopular, your cheap fish oil capsules in the clear plastic bottle are wrecked. No one needs an on-line calculator to tell them how many grams of oxidized polyunsaturated fat to take in every day. Oxidized polyunsaturated fat is unarguably dangerous to your health. Capsules made from extract of soybean are incredibly effective at hiding the fact that you are swallowing grams of rotten fish oil. You would be better off with raw egg yolks from your local farmer’s markets.

There are also several very long chain polyunsaturates that have only recently been identified by researchers. These include the new darling of lipid and health research, Conjugated Linoleic Acid or CLA. CLA was originally named alpha-rumenic acid because it is produced in the rumen of ruminants! Otherwise known as the stomach of animals that chew their cud. CLA has powerful tumor-killing properties as well as a connection to stronger bones, decreased catabolism and increased body fat loss. Since you don’t have four stomachs you can’t make CLA. You have to get it from your food. Lab results from a local Arizona ranch demonstrate the effect that cattle-raising practices have on CLA content in beef. Cattle that were raised on pasture, but grain-finished had barely measurable levels of CLA in their fat. Cattle that went straight from pasture to butcher had more than five times the CLA content of the grain-finished animals. This is a perfect example of how Paleo-Person had a regular supply of a certain type of fat that a modern “Paleo diet” adherent may be completely missing. When it comes to fats in the diet the definition of Paleo cannot be “avoids dairy, legumes, grains and processed foods”. The definition of a Paleo diet must be “eat all the portions of animals that would have been ingested by Paleo Person”.

The world of lipid chemistry and human health is fascinating. Are you still wondering what sphingolipids are? Sphingolipids are a lipid component of nervous tissue, involved in cell-to-cell communication, immune recognition and they act as cell-to-cell mediators. Sphingolipids are a component of myelin (nervous tissue). They are involved in regulation of cholesterol absorption. All cells contain glycerophospholipids as a component of the inner cell membrane, the sphingolipids as a component of the outer cell membranes and cholesterol as a component of both parts of the cell membranes. Studies show that sphingolipids derived from egg, dose-dependently lowered plasma LDL levels. Did you know there are two cholesterol-type lipids called lathosterols and demasterol that are important in the creation of sperm cells and myelination? What about octacosanol? This long chain fatty alcohol increases endurance performance in animal studies and biochemical parameters after exhaustion. It improves oxygen usage. You have to search the literature long and hard to find a food source of octacosanol other than wheat germ oil, but it turns out that beeswax is a great source as are citrus peels and roe (fish eggs). Paleo-Person did not centrifuge their honeycombs and filter out the honey. They did not eat only fish fillets leaving behind the organs, eggs, bones and skin. Eating Paleo means eating the whole, real food. If you do this you become exposed to a vast array of dietary fats that are important and useful to the human body especially for the processes of growth and recovery.

There are a few strategies you can employ to assure that you actually provide your body with the fullest range of lipids that it requires to keep you alive, well and powerful. Grease up by following this principle: “a variety of pristine fats with a focus on whole healthy animals.” When I teach nutrition there are a few concepts that I lay down as a foundation for making top choices in daily fat eating:

1. Don’t get stuck in a groove. Switch up your foods. Please don’t be one of those people who only eats fish and poultry. Sheep, pigs, goats, deer, elk, moose, bear, bison, cows and rabbits are all delicious and nutritious. Each animal has different fatty acid profiles. Find your nearest hunter or international market and start trying new animals. Don’t tell me you don’t have access to either of these options. If you live rurally without an international market you will be surrounded by hunters. There is always mail order too.

2. Don’t be squeamish. The most nutritious parts of the animal are the ones you discard or get sent to the pet food factory. Paleo Person was extremely fond of bone marrow, the raw fat from around the kidney, fish eggs, brains, and cartilage. All these pieces of the anatomy offer a variety of fats that you need. If you aren’t that bold, how about a gravy from your roast chicken drippings? It really isn’t fair to say you eat Paleo if you wouldn’t at least contemplate some of these hunter-gatherer staples.

3. Search for good sources of animal fats. Decent sources of animal fats aren’t in our face at the corner market…unless you are lucky enough to be surrounded by carnecerias, Latino butcher shops. A good carneceria makes its own carne asada and carnitas and will collect the rendered fat and sell it. If you live in a place with a farmer’s market, you might still have to specially request the fats. Many cattle ranchers don’t even routinely sell their suet (beef fat prior to rendering) unless they strike up a relationship with an avid bird watcher. My recent conversation with our local pork provider went like this “Do you have any lard for sale?” “Gosh, no I don’t think we bring it with us. Let me ask my partner. Hey, this lady wants lard. Did we bring any?” Thinly sliced beets or yams crisped up in a hot pan of lard, sprinkled with sea salt are delectable. Local, pastured eggs are a must, and the yolks are like gold. I add a raw yolk or two to the coconut smoothies I make my kids and I feel like I’m done with my parenting for the week. A bedtime cocktail of vanilla, cinnamon, coconut milk, raw honey and raw eggs is de rigueur for my mass gain guys.

4. Coddle your polyunsaturates. You can cook in your tallow, butter, coconut oil and palm oil. These are your stable saturated fats. If you are consuming polyunsaturated fats make sure you have not oxidized them into a puddle of free radicals. Have your nuts been sitting in a hot stockroom for the past year? Does your fish oil have to be locked away in a shell to disguise its rancidity?

5. Consider the dairy fats. The vast majority of us do not eat tallow, lard, brains and bone marrow. Many of us cannot afford or access animals raised in their natural habitat. If you find yourself on a steady diet of chicken without the skin and lean steak, consider adding some high quality dairy fat to your diet. The health problems associated with dairy are strictly issues with dairy proteins and dairy sugars. Get some raw heavy cream if you can find it in your state or some good butter from cows raised on grass. You can always clarify the butter to remove the dairy proteins if they are of concern to you.

6. Don’t get caught without fat. When you eat, include fat.

7. If you are overtrained, training hard, ill, a kid, pregnant (or planning to get pregnant), or a senior, place extra emphasis on finding good sources of fats and eating plenty of them!





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