In 1955, the then US president, Dwight Eisenhower, had a heart attack. He concluded that if people ate less of it, they would reduce their blood cholesterol levels and, therefore, their risk of heart disease. Keys believed that saturated fat was to blame. Rich men were well fed but suffered from a higher rate of heart disease than those with more restricted diets. Then, in the 1950s, Ancel Keys, a physiologist at the University of Minnesota, noticed a paradox. Dietary advice primarily focused on eating more to avoid malnutrition, rather than eating less to avoid illnesses of excess. Until the 1940s, few men worried about whether certain foods would expand their waistlines or clog up their arteries, says Adrienne Bitar, a food historian and the author of Diet and the Disease of Civilisation. But who makes the strongest case? Setting the Rules The pressure is mounting on scientists and health-care professionals either to absolve or to decry animal fats, once and for all. Some argue that this directive lacks nuance, while others complain that it doesn’t go far enough. “Most people in the UK eat too much saturated fats,” NHS guidelines conclude. In the UK, the official advice is to cut down on all fats, and in particular to replace the saturated fat in our diets with the unsaturated kind. Nutritional science is less absolute than you might imagine, and warring camps are exploiting this uncertainty to promote polar-opposite agendas. It shouldn’t be surprising that books, podcasts and documentaries can draw on countless research papers about meat and saturated fat but come to opposite conclusions. Reid recommends medium rare: four minutes on one side on a medium-to-low heat, then a further two and a half minutes on the other. Add the onion and thyme with the last of your butter.Īs the steak cooks, baste it with the butter from the pan. Heat your sauté pan over a medium heat, add half of the butter, then add your steak and season with salt. Make sure your steak is at room temperature for at least half an hour before cooking. Reid favours Blackmore wagyu, which is “full-blood” – which means it’s not diluted by other breeds. Transfer the parsnips to a blender and blitz, adding some of the cooking liquid until smooth. But first, the parsnips: in a pot, heat the milk and butter with 100ml of water and a pinch of salt. It’s also rich in zinc, which supports your immunity. While this is partly made up of saturated fat, much of it is nutritious oleic acid, the kind of fat you find in olive oil. It predisposes wagyu to impressive marbling in the muscle tissue. The secret is in the breeding, says chef Mike Reid, author of M: A 24-Hour Cookbook. M Restaurants are experts in wagyu beef, from the world’s most prestigious Japanese breeds, which also happens to be rich in flavourful, beneficial fats. The best approach to red meat is to eat it less often, while indulging in higher-quality produce. Then I went to Whole Foods and bought some steaks.” But this guy made me wonder: am I doing this all wrong? I listened to a podcast and read The Carnivore Code by Paul Saladino. “I’d become plant-based after watching The Game Changers,” he says, referring to the movie that catalogues the alleged perils of animal foods. Until then, Skenderi had exclusively been eating vegetables. I have so much energy and my body feels fantastic right now.” His colleague, who had heard about the diet on an episode of the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, replied, “Meat is all I’ve been eating for the last few weeks. “One of my colleagues was heating up steak in the microwave at 8am. “I switched to a carnivore diet a couple of months ago,” says Skenderi, who is 33 and works in finance. The Meatpacking District is an aptly named neighbourhood for Skenderi to live in. He’s wearing a Henley shirt that accentuates his build: 6ft tall and a muscular 82kg. Beneath it are a yoga mat, a medicine ball and a few dumbbells. A road bike leans on a wall, and a punch bag hangs in a corner. Albi Skenderi is speaking to Men’s Health from his studio apartment in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District.
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