http://www.cholesterol-and-health.com/Campbell-Masterjohn.html

There seems to be a deadly synergy between a high-fat, high-PUFA, and high-carb diet, esp if refined sugars are the main source of carbs. John Yudkin and others have noted that refined starch is a lot less harmful than refined sugar, calorie for calorie. Most people now eat huge amounts of PUFA oils (soy, corn, flax, safflower, cottonseed, canola, peanut, sunflower, rape seed, walnut, hempseed, etc. Plus, lots of refined sugar too. This diet is a disaster that only causes gradual degeneration and one chronic disease or another.

Agreed.

http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/cgi/reprint/45/5/1997

“In further studies, Carroll and Hopkins (3) demonstrated that
diets containing 3% sunflower seed oil (polyunsaturated fat) and
17% beef tallow or coconut oil (saturated fats) enhanced tu-
morigenesis as much as did a diet containing 20% sunflower
seed oil. Rats on these diets developed twice as many tumors
as those fed diets containing 20% of the saturated fats alone.
These observations suggest that there may be a requirement for
polyunsaturated fat in mammary tumorigenesis, which is not
satisfied by fats such as coconut oil or beef tallow, but can be
provided by adding 3% sunflower seed oil to diets containing
these fats. A recent paper by Cave and Jurkowski (6) also
showed that when the polyunsaturated lipid content (com oil) of
the diet fell below 3% there was a decrease in tumor incidence
in rats treated with W-methyl-W-nitrosourea. It is thought that
linoleate may be the essential fatty acid primarily responsible for
the tumor-promoting effect of unsaturated fat (14).”

My conclusion is that the typical American / Western Diet, high in PUFAs, causes disease. If PUFA oils are eaten at all, then you should avoid meat, eggs, dairy, etc. Conversely, if you’re eating meat, eggs, and dairy, then PUFA oils should be eliminated. They are prevalent in the processed foods Americans eat, as well as mayonnaise, salad dressing, most cooking oils used in restaurants, etc. I would focus on red meat, dairy, tropical oils (coconut and macadamia), small amounts of olive oil, wild ocean-caught fish, etc.

Although I agree with your conclusions, I wouldn’t put a whole lot of stock in the study you referenced since it was a rat study. I didn’t pull the study and read it, but certain strains of rats can develop tumors at the drop of a hat when given substances that don’t affect humans at all.

Having said that, though, I do completely agree that vegetable oils should be avoided at every turn.

“–Not allowing saturated fats to dominate–Yes, yes, I know. The demonization of saturated fat conversation has been largely replaced by the Taubesian saturated fat has not been confidently linked to heart disease conversation. But controlled feeding studies, in which a single component of diet is manipulated (e.g., saturated vs. monounsaturated vs. polyunsaturated fat) have clearly shown that saturated fats do activate several factors in the inflammatory response.”

A response?

I disagree. It’s a question worthy of a post versus a comment response.

Would Gary research in a future project the science behind cancer? The chapter in the book is interesting but I wonder what he can achieve if he puts the same kind of effort as that in obesity and heart disease.

I find the way cancer is handled by the medical community mind-baffling: everything that is done weaken the immune system tremendously to the point that I’ve wondered did the people I know who died of cancer, really die from it or from the mind boggling array of drugs and industrial strength pain killers?

May I suggest you read Jenny’s excellent Blood Sugar 101 site? She has a lot of info on the multiple causes of diabetes that have identified (and unidentified but suspected) and lumped into the catch-all term “Type II”.

Some folks don’t have type II at all, but later and slower developing forms of Type I and 1.5 DM. Often their doctors don’t even know the difference, especially primary care doctors who are not up to date and still using what they learned in medical school. There are different treatment protocols for some of these “not really II” types so it’s important to to have the underlying reason for the diabetes identified to get the right treatment.

www dot bloodsugar101 dot com (replace dot with . and remove the spaces)

None of the things mentioned should cause the problem. I would suspect a problem with the beta cells themselves.

The size, shape, and wear patterns of the teeth can show whether the diet of the specimen was primarily hard seeds and vegetable matter that needed to be ground up before being eaten, as opposed to different patterns that are evident in meat eaters.

It’s good to study modern-day hunter-gatherers and then try to extrapolate what early humans ate, but it’s the dentition that really tells the story.

It has been known for years that alcohol consumption temporarily prevents gluconeogenesis, e.g., the production of glucose by the liver. This process, is, of course, an especially important backup system for keeping blood sugar in normal ranges for people on a low carb diet. The low-carber is thus more likely to experience low blood sugar -> high adrenalin -> heart palpitations after consuming alcohol.