A viewer asks: “Is it really safe to eat all of the fat that comes from cooked regular hamburger and to prefer fatty cuts of meat? Several cardiac surgeons famously became vegans after seeing all of the seeming sludge in people’s arteries back in the day, from eating a diet full of fast food—mostly fatty carbs and sugar. Now many carnivore advocates say to get as much fat as you can, so I eat the fat that comes off the meat. It tastes good but I wonder if I’m tempting fate.” What can we tell him?

First, we would say that one size does not fit all when it comes to diet, but you are reacting to the dilemma created by a manufactured aversion to fat, on the part of the medical community, that was a manipulation of human thinking to deprive you of a premium source of nutrition, which is fatty meat, being calorie rich and highly nutritious, but without the dangers widely touted within that era making fat the culprit behind atherosclerosis. Seeing fatty deposits in the lining of blood vessels and attributing that to fat in the diet being excessive, and thus clogging the pipes, so to speak, from that excess, was entirely a simplistic notion to begin with and not at all the true source of difficulty. Atherosclerosis is the consequence of a chronic viral infection within the blood vessels, and the formation of plaques is a bodily response to the irritation resulting from an immune response to the presence of the attacking virus, so it is a defense mechanism intending to ward off the injured area. As is true of many defensive measures of the body, they can be stimulated to excess and contribute new problems. This is why inflammation causes so many problems and so many disorders that are viewed as entirely autoimmune attack when such is not the case. The whole idea of high cholesterol being the culprit is a faulty way of thinking. So we would say the danger from eating fatty meat is taking in more calories than needed, and that can lead to weight gain that is unneeded, but that is no different than eating to excess with any type of diet. Fat is not the culprit it is made out to be.