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Pork
Hi everyone.
It seems that pork is generally considered a food that needs to be avoided on a low vitamin A diet. There is certainly a very good argument for this being the case in the instance of Lard - as Grant lays out in his books.
However, i'm struggling to find a good reason (a vitamin A based reason) to avoid pork meat, or even bacon . As far as I can tell, there isn't a great deal of vitamin A in pork fat. This website lists 93iu in 100g of it - that's some, but that's also a lot of pure fat, which most people would be unlikely to eat. It's less than what's in 1.5 bananas, and people have had success on low vitamin A diets and still eaten bananas.
I can't find much other info on the retinol/retinoic acid content of pork, but I did find this study, which suggests that there is a negligible amount of both retinol and retinoic acid in pork products, other than liver.
Does anyone have experience with trying pork on a low vitamin A diet? I don't want this to be more restrictive than it needs to be, and from this information, I can't see a good reason to avoid pork meat.
Perhaps Grant could chime in if he has found any better research on pork?
I have been including a slice or two of bacon about once a week. I haven’t noticed anything negative from eating it.
I don’t have a good explanation for why I had such a bad reaction to pork. I’m only documenting what happened to me. Others may have a different experience.
I didn't remember reading you'd had a bad reaction to, I must have missed it. Thanks for your response.
I cooked pancakes (made with all-purpose white flour) in lard this morning. They were delicious and I have had 2 bowel movements today already which is rare for me.
I started experimenting with low A since a few weeks ago. I basically lowered dairy consumption and avoid colored fruits/vegetables.
After reading this, I thought I'd give lard a try. I will continue to experiment.
So if one was to eat pork they would make sure and not eat the fat since that would hold the retinoids. However you are cooking with lard. I’m confused.
@guest I am experimenting a lot. I forgot to provide an update on this thread.
A bit of lard (refined) didn't seem to bother me, but after eating a batch of cookies made with it I realized there was a limit.
I think the great effect I got from it was due to the fat content (PUFA). I am now using more vegetable oils with a similar success. But since it also contains retinoic acid, there is a fine line in its usage.
It might also have to do with the cooking method... For cookies the lard is baked and for pancakes, it is used to fry.
I've been eating pork and seem to be detoxing very well. My husband has been doing the cooking since I've been too sick and I don't want to discourage him--he wants me to have more variety. He looked up pork and it said "zero" vit A for most of the muscle cuts.
Quote from harrymacdonald on November 9, 2018, 11:41 amHi everyone.
It seems that pork is generally considered a food that needs to be avoided on a low vitamin A diet. There is certainly a very good argument for this being the case in the instance of Lard - as Grant lays out in his books.
However, i'm struggling to find a good reason (a vitamin A based reason) to avoid pork meat, or even bacon . As far as I can tell, there isn't a great deal of vitamin A in pork fat. This website lists 93iu in 100g of it - that's some, but that's also a lot of pure fat, which most people would be unlikely to eat. It's less than what's in 1.5 bananas, and people have had success on low vitamin A diets and still eaten bananas.
I can't find much other info on the retinol/retinoic acid content of pork, but I did find this study, which suggests that there is a negligible amount of both retinol and retinoic acid in pork products, other than liver.
Does anyone have experience with trying pork on a low vitamin A diet? I don't want this to be more restrictive than it needs to be, and from this information, I can't see a good reason to avoid pork meat.
Perhaps Grant could chime in if he has found any better research on pork?
It takes 12 IU of beta-carotene to make 1 IU of retinol so it's not comparable to the amount in 1.5 bananas.
Personally pork slows down my recovery but so does beef.
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I’ve also been trying to figure out if and why pork and lard are considered to be off limits on a vitamin A elimination diet. Dr. Garret Smith is especially anti-pork:
He gives a page full of links to studies as evidence. Some of the links went to pages that just had the title of a study but nothing else that could be read. One was a study of lamb and beef fat and none of the others that I did read were convincing. His argument that pork has been traditionally considered bad doesn’t hold water. The Chinese have one of the longest and most successful civilizations in the world and pork was a staple food for them. The societies that avoided pork were mostly Middle Eastern (Jewish and Muslim).
Six of the links on Dr. Smith’s list involve something called “lard factor.” The studies were all from the ‘50s. The researchers concluded that lard must contain some unknown form of vitamin A because they could not detect even a speck of it, but it very efficiently reversed the symptoms of what they mistakenly thought was vitamin A deficiency. They were convinced the lack of vitamin A was responsible for the lesions observed in the lab rats, no doubt based on studies like the ones Grant tells about in his books. They were attributing the animals’ lesions to the LACK of vitamin A, when they were really caused by excess vitamin A. By giving the rats the lard distillate, they were replacing the source of the vitamin A they had been giving them that was making them sick, with something that had no vitamin A. They were sure that anything that cures vitamin A deficiency MUST contain vitamin A, so they concluded that the lard must have some previously unknown vitamin A activity, which they named the “lard factor.”
You can spot the problem in the excerpt below:
“The nutritional effects on rats of the distillate and residue fractions of molecularly distilled lard were studied. When vitamin A-free diets containing the residue fraction as the fat source were supplemented by distillate, or when this material was injected, the animals could be protected against the signs of vitamin A deficiency. The protection given by 2% distillate in the diet seemed nearly complete and was much better than that provided by weekly injections of 7.5 units of vitamin A palmitate.
These results could be explained neither by the presence of vitamin A in the distillate nor by a nonspecific anti-oxidant action of the distillate. It was therefore concluded that lard contains a factor with vitamin A-like activity but which is chemically different from the known forms of vitamin A.”
© 1950 The American Institute of Nutrition
Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology