Man 2.0 Engineering the Alpha

may even help reduce body fat levels.
    Polyunsaturated Fats
    Like monounsaturated fats, these good fats help fight bad cholesterol. Polyunsaturated fats stay liquid even in the cold because their melting point is lower than that of monounsaturated fats.
    You can find polyunsaturated fats in foods like salmon, fish oil, sunflower oil, seeds, and soy. Polyunsaturated fats contain omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids, which have largely been processed out of our food.
    Omega-3s and 6s are very important and are oftentimes referred to as essential fatty acids, or EFAs. These cannot be manufactured by our bodies, and so it becomes essential to ingest them. And because your body needs these sources to function optimally and remain healthy, it’s your job to make sure your diet has enough of these fats to avoid problems and breakdown.
    Saturated Fats
    Saturated fats might be the most misunderstood substance you can eat. And for good reason: there have been studies linking high intake of saturated fats to heart disease.
    The idea that saturated fats have been proven to be anything other than delicious goes back to a pretty flawed research study from the 1950s in which a scientist named Ancel Keys published a paper that laid the blame for the worldwide heart disease increase on dietary fat intake.
    However, there were major flaws to his study. For one, in his conclusions he only used data from a small portion of the countries where data was available on fat consumption versus heart disease death rate. When researches have gone back in and looked at the data from all the countries where data was available, there actually was no link between fat consumption and heart disease deaths. In retrospect, it seems that Keys jumped the gun here and landed on conclusions that didn’t really have a basis in fact.
    In a more modern-day context, books like The China Study and movies like Forks Over Knives have pointed the finger at saturated fats—and all animal fats—as the reason for all health problems. And yet, these studies all took a very slanted bias toward the saturated fat hypothesis and completely ignored populations that were incredibly healthy despite diets based on saturated fats. In fact, people who live in Tokelau (a territory off of New Zealand) eat a diet that is 50 percent saturated fats, and they have cardiovascular health superior to any other group of people, and yet this data and information is ignored.
    Now, this book is not about debunking The China Study, but it is important that that information be thoroughly criticized and debunked. If it were accurate, we would support it. We don’t have a horse in the diet race other than to help people live and eat in the best way possible and live longer, more fulfilled lives.
    Listen, we don’t mind admitting when we are wrong. Ten years ago we were both wrong about saturated fats, just as we were wrong about how many meals you should eat per day. That’s why we spent so much time going through all the research, testing out thousands of clients, and then coming to you with information that we knew would benefit you. And in part 3, we’re going to provide meal plans, preferred food options, and even personalized calculations that will allow you to know exactly what you need to be eating to become the Alpha.
    And our conclusions—supported by science—are that your diet should include saturated fats and you shouldn’t stress about the quantity. There are several studies of hunter-gatherer tribes that consumed 50 to 70 percent of all their calories from saturated fats without any health problems. When you receive the specific calculations for your fat intake, up to half of the fat can derive from saturated fats.
    Even Walter Willett, chairman of the Department of Nutrition at Harvard, has publicly stated (after a twenty-year review of research) that fats—and more specifically saturated fats—are not the cause of the obesity crisis and are not the cause of heart disease.
    Saturated fats also get a bit of a bad rap because they have been shown to elicit and increase cholesterol in the bloodstream. Again, we have to say that this is not as scary as the media makes it seem—cholesterol concerns are highly overblown. The truth is, cholesterol actually acts as an antioxidant against dangerous free radicals within the blood.
    When there are high levels of undesirable substances in the blood (caused by the dietary intake of damaged fats, highly processed foods, and large