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Kurt G. Harris, MD, called wheat,
excess fructose and excess linoleic acid the Neolithic Agents of Disease (NAD).
He was, easily, the early favorite in my search for a dietary regimen that
could be stated as a philosophy of eating rather than depending on counting
calories, carbs and other macronutrients. I first wrote about him nine years
ago in The Nutrition Debate #19. He then dropped out of “the nutrition debate”
and later deleted his Archevore website. Today he is a diagnostic radiologist
practicing in Sturgeon Bay, WI. Some of his writing is still online at Psychology Today.
Harris didn’t write for Type 2
diabetics like me. He aimed his program at people who wanted to eat in a
healthy way to avoid the chronic diseases of modern civilization.
Others followed him in this goal and the field became a tangled mess, leading
sadly I suspect to his premature retreat. For awhile I hoped he was writing a
book. Alas, it seems not.
Harris was inspired by Gary Taubes.
His training in scientific method fed his inquiring mind and led to his
epiphany. He liked to write and coin words too. If this sounds like a eulogy,
it’s only because I fear he is lost to us, and it is our loss.
The three NADs, which he explained in
“A Dietary Manifesto – Paleo 2.0,” are just another way of describing his
12-step program (which I list in The Nutrition Debate #19), for “getting
started” and going “as far as you can down the list…” The wheat proscription
means gluten, and includes the other gluten grains (barley, rye, etc). That’s
big.
The excess fructose NAD is also big, but here Harris leaves a
little room if you’re not diabetic or prediabetic. Harris is infamous (in Paleo
circles) for calling apples “bags of sugar” and most modern fruit “candy bars
on a tree.” He concludes, however, “If you are not trying to lose fat [or
are carb intolerant as in type 2 diabetes], a few pieces of fruit a day
are fine.” Fructose, however, is not only found in fruit. Take a look at “Retrospective #97” for a list of fruits and vegetables and common sweeteners
that contain fructose.
Avoiding excess linoleic acid (Omega 6s) is perhaps the hardest
dietary goal of the three NADs because it is so hard to know where they hide.
Harris advises, “The way to correct the modern excess of n-6 linoleic acid is
to avoid the modern sources of it. Stop eating all temperate vegetable oils and
veggie oil fried food – cooking and frying oils like corn, soy, canola, and
flax, all of it. And go easy on the nuts and factory chicken. These are big
sources of n-6, especially the nuts and nut oils.”
All fats are combinations of saturated fatty
acids (SFAs), monounsaturated fatty acids and polyunsaturated fatty acids
(PUFAs), but the combinations vary enormously. Corn and soybean oil are
over 50% PUFA, while butter and coconut oil are just 3% and 1.8%. Corn
and soybean oil have more than 20 times as many PUFAs as butter
and coconut oil.
The ratio of n-6 to n-3
is also important, and corn oil easily has the worst ratio. But in terms of
absolute numbers, the best advice is to avoid excess Omega 6s
altogether, and that is best done by eliminating all seed and vegetable oils.
To put some “meat” on the PUFA/n-6 advice,
I’ve created this table using the USDA’s National Nutrient Database:
|
Cooking/salad oils & fats (%)
|
SFA
|
Mono
|
PUFA
|
n-6
|
n-3
|
n6/n3
|
|
Corn oil
|
12.9
|
27.6
|
54.7
|
53.2
|
1.2
|
45.8
|
|
Soybean oil
|
15.7
|
22.8
|
57.4
|
50.4
|
6.8
|
7.4
|
|
Canola oil
|
7.4
|
63.3
|
28.1
|
18.6
|
9.1
|
2.0
|
|
Olive oil
|
13.8
|
73.0
|
10.5
|
9.8
|
0.8
|
12.8
|
|
Butter (incl.+/-16% water)
|
51.4
|
21.0
|
3.0
|
2.2
|
0.3
|
6.9
|
|
Coconut oil
|
85.5
|
5.8
|
1.8
|
1.8
|
0
|
∞
|
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