Abandon4093 said:
As far as I know it's still a mixture of high fat diets and consumption of rich sugars and carbs that is an issue. I wouldn't say animal fat is completely healthy. Of course it can be part of a healthy diet. But I wouldn't suggest going downing the some fat, even if it isn't saturated.
And isn't fish oil more effective at boosting brain function than red meat animal fats?
Again, as I said, diets high in fat have never been shown to cause any health related issue I know of, such as heart disease where they get a lot of undeserved blame. In fact, I know of many people who have switched to paleolithic diets which are high in protein and fat and low in carbs (with no refined sugars or grain products) compared to what the USDA recommends and they often have chronic health issues disappear. In fact, Dr. William Davis (who just released a book that I've heard is quite interesting on the topic of wheat) stated in an interview that he hasn't seen a single heart attack from people who follow his dietary recommendations and cut grains while eating more protein and fat. Given that he's a cardiologist that's fairly significant. You can find the interview, not to mention links to a lot of other good information, here: http://www.fathead-movie.com/
As for fish oil, it certainly is important as it's the best way to get Omega-3 fatty acids. Most meat you buy in stores is grain fed and low on Omega-3's (fish being an exception of course as far as I know). If you don't supplement with Omega-3's then the ratio of Omega-6's to Omega-3's in most people can be as much as 20:1, when a 1:1 ratio is generally considered about ideal. Skewing towards Omega-6's has been linked to increased incidence of depression and reduced brain functions.
As to saying animal fat isn't completely healthy: what makes you think that. There's never been a study showing it isn't. Some studies have shown weak correlations between meat consumption and diseases like heart disease, but these are always observational studies which can't draw any causal relationship by design, and never seem to eliminate other factors which have proven to be issues such as carb intake in the form of sugars and grains, and even smoking in some studies. And perhaps more to the point, the majority of the saturated fat we eat gets converted to unsaturated fat once it's in the body, so why saturated fat specifically would cause an issue while others don't seems pretty suspect to me. Especially when you consider the only way our ancestors could have gotten enough fat for our brains to develop as they have over millions of years (our brain being mostly made up of the stuff) is by eating animals.