How Much Natural Fat Do I Need, Anyway?

Recent advances in leptin and life-extension research point to a potentially important value in consuming a relatively higher percentage of fat in our diets.

The implications of this research are quite exciting and show how the very thing we thought was our worst enemy may well, in fact, be our best friend after all.

Eating a diet containing higher percentages of dietary natural fat using an optimized macronutrient ratio and eating only as much as you need to satisfy hunger can help reverse disease and support a radically increased healthy life span, but we’ll get to that.

Keep in mind that all-natural fats have a role to play in our health and that overemphasizing one or another isn’t particularly advisable.

What is important, certainly, is making sure we get our necessary essential fatty acids (EPA, DHA, and GLA).

The rest should simply be fat from a variety of natural and healthy sources:

grass-fed meat (beef, buffalo, lamb, elk, pork, yak, venison),
pastured poultry (chicken, pheasant, duck, goose all with skin on),
wild-caught seafood, coconut (milk, cream, and oil),
avocado,
grass-fed butter or ghee,
heavy cream (preferably raw),
olive oil,
sesame oil (in small amounts),
organic lard,
nuts, and seeds.

Where omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acid intake is concerned, current recommendations by the most knowledgeable lipid researchers and biochemists suggest an intake of no more than three to four parts of omega-6 fatty acids to one part of omega-3 fatty acids.

Omega-3 fatty acids should make up at least 0.5–1.5 percent of the total daily caloric intake.

Omega-6 fatty acids should make up no more than 2–3 percent of the total daily caloric intake.

One-to-one ratios are probably more optimal. Higher intake of omega-3 fatty acids may be desirable or necessary for a time (several months) to reverse a deficiency state.

Among the best sources of omega-3 fatty acids are grass-fed or wild game meats and organ meats and cold-water, wild-caught fish such as salmon, herring, sardines, and mackerel.

The best supplemental sources are high-quality fish and krill oils. Quality matters.

Please be aware:

Cod liver oil contains some omega-3 fatty acids but is mainly a source of vitamin A and some D. Raw, preferably soaked and dried, nuts and seeds are a rich source of the parent form of the omega-6 oils and a less rich source of the parent form of omega-3 oils.

We do need some of the parent form ALA, found readily in fresh walnuts, in flaxseed oil, and even in small amounts in fish oil supplements.

Balanced levels of omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids are also found abundantly in grass-fed meat and wild-caught fish, along with needed protective saturated fats.

Black currant seed oil and evening primrose oil are the best sources of supplemental GLA, an important omega-6 fatty acid derivative.

Our ancestors got a lot of this, in the form of DGLA, eating organ meats.

Periodic supplementation with these oils or increased dietary consumption of organ meats may be desirable in cases of GLA deficiency due to impaired delta-6 desaturase activity,

Which manifests as eczema, skin disorders, hormonal imbalances, mood disorders, and some forms of cognitive dysfunction.

Most people with deficient levels of omega-3 fatty acids are also deficient in this very important anti-inflammatory omega-6 fatty acid derivative.