I came across an interesting bit of information the other day about gorillas. Sixty to seventy per cent of their diet is leaves they can’t digest themselves. They depend on the actions of healthy gut bacteria, and because of this they live on a high fat diet. Initially this sounds like nonsense – where did the fat come from? They eat leaves, shoots, and other fibrous plant material, which serves to feed the bacteria in their guts. These bacteria love to eat these fibers and have the ability to break them down and digest them. When they are finished digesting them, they poop out short chain fatty acids as the left over byproduct. The gorilla then absorbs these fatty acids as food.
As far as the gorilla is concerned, all those leaves simply turn into fat in their guts and that makes them very happy. Fat is high-energy food that supports them very well. This same process takes place in most all critters. Even termites can’t digest the wood they eat without the bacteria living inside of them. They have special bacteria in their termite tummies that break down the wood and turn it into fat for the termite to live on.
News flash – we work the same way. We have bacteria in our guts that turn soluble fiber into short chain fatty acids that we absorb as food. Think about that for a second – all that salad and fiber you eat that you think is good, low calorie diet food actually turns into fat in your gut. We don’t have the bacteria for breaking down insoluble fibers like wood and straw, but we do have the bacteria for breaking down the soluble fibers like you find in fruit, oatmeal, vegetables, legumes, and so on.
You might be on what you think is a low fat diet full of good fiber and resistant starch and never let a drop of fat pass your lips, but you are still on a high fat diet!
Before you freak out, please understand that the short chain fatty acids the bacteria produce from the fibers are the healthiest thing you could be taking into your body. These particular fats are what is responsible for most of the health benefits of a vegetarian diet. A healthy diet is not about what you put into your mouth near as much as what is left over after your gut bacteria have finished with it and what actually passes across the gut wall and into your blood stream.
The reason I am bringing this up is because a lot of literature is coming out in the scientific circles that points to a high fat diet as being the most optimal diet for humans. The low fat, high carb diet promoted by the USDA Food Pyramid has been an unmitigated disaster. It has single handedly created the chronic disease crisis we are currently facing with heart disease, cancer, dementia, and diabetes. These are all directly caused by a diet high in simple carbs – meaning the 7 to 9 servings of bread and whole grain products that form the base of the food pyramid. These foods all turn into sugar in the gut and enter the body as sugar, and consuming too much sugar causes all these diseases.
Here is a bonus shocker – the second most promoted food on the food pyramid is protein. This includes the dairy foods, meat and fish, legumes, seeds, and nuts. We all know we need protein, but what we don’t all know is that we eat on average 3 to 5 times as much protein as we need in this country, and all that extra protein is turned into more sugar by our liver. You can be eating a total caveman paleo meat diet and never let sugar or grains pass your lips and yet have your bloodstream jam packed with excess sugar from the broken down excess protein. It is not what you eat, but what ends up floating around in your blood stream that determines your health.
So what the heck? My vegetarian low fat diet might be a high fat diet and my carnivore paleo diet might be a high sugar diet. No wonder it is so hard to figure out this healthy diet stuff! You add on top of that the past 50 years that nutrition researchers flat out lied to us about what foods are good for us and we end up totally confused. It is small wonder that there are so many diet books written. The unfortunate reality is that nutrition information in this country is run by commerce. Government recommendations are run by what information sells product profitably. Companies that are looking for support for their products pay for nutrition research. If your research does not support the food companies, then you do not get funded to do your research.
Enough of politics, it is not my strong suit. Lets get back to our great apes. The point I wanted to make is that the diet high in fibrous vegetable matter nicely lines up with the newer findings that a high healthy fat diet is good for us. But when I read what health gurus are taking and doing with this information, I don’t see functionally useful diets coming from them. I just don’t see average people eating big spoonfuls of coconut oil and grass fed butter as their main source of calories each day. Avocados are good and guacamole is even better as a high good fat food, but again I just don’t see average folks living on the stuff.
Bad fats are bad, so that is no solution. Fried foods are death-on-a-stick, and vegetable oil anything is a heart attack waiting to happen. I make do with avocado oil and olive oil, but will average people make this shift – particularly considering how much cheaper the killer vegetable oils are? The price of good fish oil is ridiculous, and it can’t be used in cooking. Ghee and organic grass fed butter are delicious and a good alternative, but if you don’t want to die horribly from the sugar caused diseases, what are you going to put that butter on? Butter just is not as good if you are not putting it on some fresh hot French bread or baked into some yummy cookies.
So where is our high fat diet going to come from? I say lets eat vegetables and let our gut bacteria make the fat for us. I can buy enough food for a week for two of us for $30 when I buy loads of fibrous vegetables. I can add some of that healthy oil to my veggies when I cook them and supplement the dishes with little bits of chicken or fish. If I pressure cook my legumes, I can make them safe enough to eat and the resistant starch and fiber in them will also turn into healthy fats by our gut bacteria. I’ll even eat my bananas green because that is when they are high in resistant starch that I can’t digest but my bacteria can. This can work.
When we eat sugar, easily digested starches, or excess protein we grow bad guy bacteria in our guts and promote killer inflammation in our body. When we avoid these foods and eat fibrous vegetables, healthy fats, and small amounts of protein we promote the growth of good guy bacteria and low inflammation in our body. Low inflammation equals less disease and a happier life. It is almost too simple to be believed.