One reason that so many people begin to feel and function better when they become primal fat burners is that a mainstream diet has left their body depleted and desperate to replenish its stores of critical nutrients. By optimizing the diet with nutrient-dense high-quality foods, the cells, tissues, and organs finally receive the amount of fat-soluble nutrients they need to function best—sometimes for the first time in years (or ever).
To my mind, fat-soluble nutrients are the true unsung heroes of the fat milieu. While ketones are the hot new celebrity getting the glory, and debates about macronutrient ratios grab the headlines (in the niche environment of the paleosphere, that is), the micronutrients made available by eating animal-sourced foods might deserve our respect even more. They let us claim the gift of our primal birthright—ifwe eat enough dietary fat from the right sources.
If you’re confused about what fat-soluble nutrients are, you’re not alone. Most people have only a vague notion of what vitamins, minerals, and other micronutrients do, and are unaware that almost all the ones required to fund a healthy metabolism, healthy heart, and optimally functioning brain are only or primarily found in or best gotten from healthy, pasture-fed animals. The conventional “five a day” servings of fruits and vegetables simply cannot cut it.
We need the abundance of critical nutrients found in fat-rich, animal-source food—some of which may also be found in plants but are ultimately dependent on dietary fat (and hydrochloric acid produced through the consumption of complete, animal-source proteins) to be most properly absorbed and used. The fat-soluble nutrients do everything from supporting immunity to building our bones, and they even directly affect the way the human genetic blueprint gets transcribed and activated. The steady supply of fat-soluble nutrients was a major factor in our early ancestors’ robust physiology, rapidly evolving brain, resilience, and resistance to disease; conversely, recent low-fat diets and taboos against consuming healthful organ meats have led to widespread suboptimal levels of these nutrients today, a factor that has contributed to cardiovascular disease, cancer, osteoporosis, cognitive/neurological issues, and other chronic diseases.1
This is why committing to upgrading your food sources to fully pastured animal sources, while removing the grains that block proper micronutrient utilization, delivers health payoffs. Regularly consume the meat, organs, and fat of 100% grass-fed and grass-finished animals, and you get most of the fat-soluble nutrients your body critically needs. Grain-fed (aka feedlot) animals—even if they’re eating organic grain, I’m afraid—exhibit a minute fraction, if any, of the benefits. Make sure the meat you eat didn’t spend time in a feedlot!
Will following a primal eating plan mean you don’t ever need to supplement your intake of vitamins and minerals, among other essential micronutrients? Unfortunately, probably not. A fair amount of available evidence suggests that our soils are too depleted and our environment too polluted for foods to deliver enough of the nutrients we need, so we likely all need extra help. And if you have a preexisting health condition or immune compromise (such as cancer, autoimmune disease, Alzheimer’s/dementia, or depression), I would certainly want you to work toward putting a smart and strategic supplementation program in place.
But being a primal fat burner ensures a very solid start and foundation upon which to build the rest. By eating meals that are rich in highly bioavailable and especially critical nutrients—and that also contain the fat that helps you make use of the nutrients right away—you take more of the guesswork out of how much of which fat-soluble nutrients to take every day. Then you can do some tweaking if and when you need it, assessing your unique needs for extra supplementation—a project that usually requires expert support, since random supplementation can be at best very expensive and at worst counterproductive.
Micronutrients don’t exist as isolated entities. Nature designed them to exist in synergy with one another and with other compounds that help them get absorbed and used, and put them together into our food, including fat-rich food. Fat-soluble nutrients function like a family in the body—they rely on one another to optimize their beneficial effects for healthy DNA expression, immune function, and longevity. And all families work better with some order and balance.
Here’s just one example of this. For every receptor for vitamin D on a human cell, there are two receptors for animal-source vitamin A (retinol, that is, not beta-carotene, which is a precursor to vitamin A);3 therefore, you need ample vitamin A in order to be able to properly use your vitamin D, and you need the two vitamins in relatively healthy ratios to each other, because an excess of one can create a relative deficiency of the other.4 On top of that, you also need vitamin K2 from animal-source foods to properly utilize Vitamin D3. Vitamin K2 is actually the substance that makes the vitamin A– and vitamin D3–dependent proteins come to life—it is the activator in the equation.5 While vitamin D3 (the activated form of vitamin D in your body) helps your body absorb minerals such as calcium, vitamin K2 decides how and where that mineral is going to be used. Without vitamin K2’s balancing effect upon vitamin D3, the calcium you consume can end up in the wrong places—your arteries, your heart, your joints, and your brain. Vitamin K2 also protects the body from potential vitamin D overload, particularly if you oversupplement.6
Take it one step further, and you discover that vitamins A, D, and K also need certain minerals to fully realize their benefits. Vitamins A and D3 require sufficient zinc and magnesium to do their job. And to absorb many of these minerals from our food in the first place, we need fats and the presence of these three fat-soluble vitamins, and we need hydrochloric acid in our stomachs, which we produce the most of when eating animal-source foods. It’s a full and synergistic circle—one that nature helps you with by packaging all these elements together automatically in certain high-quality primal foods. (It’s important to note that in today’s era of depleted soils, relying on plant-based foods for minerals such as magnesium probably won’t cut it. Pastured meat and seafood—to the extent you feel seafood is safe—thus become even more important sources of this nutrient.)
Vitamins A, D, and K are the three amigos in this story; they like to hang out together and resolve all kinds of sticky situations. Vitamin E complex is their sidekick, with an especially important role to play in higher-fat diets. Let’s take a closer look at all of them.
The astounding benefits of vitamin A, also known as retinol, are almost endless. It regulates your gene expression, functions as an important antioxidant, primes your thyroid receptors, and supports cell growth and differentiation (absolutely critical when it comes to preventing or treating cancers). As if that’s not enough, it helps direct the normal formation and maintenance of your heart, lungs, kidneys, and other organs7 and is essential for healthy vision, reproduction, immune function, skin health, and cellular communication.
Ever wonder why grandmothers of yore insisted that kids take a spoonful of cod liver oil (rich in vitamin A) every day? Prior to the development (and lucrative patenting) of antibiotics after World War II, vitamin A was the primary focus of anti-infective therapy and immune system enhancement.8 In the 1930s scientists discovered that cod liver oil supplementation reduced the incidence of colds by fully a third. Today we have a better picture of how vitamin A builds strength and resilience into your immune cells and offers potent resilience against a full spectrum of serious infectious and immune-related diseases.
On top of all this, the abundant benefits that come from optimized vitamin A include healthy hormone and thyroid levels, stable mood, good skin, optimized fertility, proper digestion and absorption of nutrients, appropriate cortisol response, and stress management. Run low on this vitamin, and it can be tough to stay well.
If you’re hoping to meet this need by crunching on carrots, you can’t. This is where things get confusing and true vitamin A fails to get the respect it deserves. Beta-carotene, which is abundant in yellow, orange, and red vegetables, is not vitamin A, even though the industry allows it to be misleadingly labeled as such. Call it a pet peeve of mine. Beta-carotene can at times and under certain optimal circumstances eventually be converted to small amounts of vitamin A after an extensive, complex biochemical process, albeit at a highly ineffective rate. But it would require massive amounts of carrots to make minute amounts of vitamin A—more than you could consume! And if you have thyroid issues, celiac disease, or diabetes (which, unfortunately, many people do), you can’t do this conversion at all and must get vitamin A from the sources below. The same applies to kids under about age six—which is why I urge you to help your kid fall in love with eating tasty dishes such as Liver and Bacon or Primal Pâté (the recipes are in Chapter 12).
With a nod to one of my heroes, the world-renowned biochemist Dr. Mary Enig,9 be highly skeptical about the can of tomatoes or other processed foods labeled “high in vitamin A.” They’re actually hyping up the beta-carotene inside (and the FDA permits this deceptive verbiage). Only animal-food sources deliver true vitamin A—with liver being the king of sources—and when they are from organic, fully pastured sources, the vitamin comes along with its critical cofactors and fellow fat-soluble nutrients, including vitamin D3, vitamin E complex, vitamin K2, zinc, and cholesterol.
Vitamin A is found in greatest abundance in liver, fully pastured meats, fatty fish such as sardines and fatty salmon, fish roe, egg yolks, shellfish, emu oil, cultured ghee, and butter from grass-fed cows (if you are not sensitive to dairy). Cod liver oil, with its pre-formed vitamin A along with some omega-3s, can be helpful if you truly can’t stomach eating liver, but it’s not at all the same thing nutritionally as eating whole liver with all the other synergistic nutrients contained in it. Vitamin A supplementation needs to be balanced by a sufficient intake of vitamins D3 and K2, zinc, and other nutrients for its optimal utilization. If you use cod liver oil supplements, I recommend avoiding the popular “fermented” form, because of the overwhelming likelihood that they are severely rancid.
Though official dietary recommendations for vitamin A are extremely (if not ridiculously) low—only 2,000 IU per day for women, for example—careful research has demonstrated safety and positive health benefits with doses of between 30,000 and 50,000 IU per day. Just one 3-ounce serving of beef liver can yield more than 20,000 IU, so eating it just once a week can significantly improve levels in adults and kids—and you can eat it safely several times a week. Two eggs from fully pastured (not simply “organic”) chickens can even yield as much as 5,200 IU.
Call it the “sunshine vitamin” or call it the “rock star vitamin”: D is the household name of fat-soluble nutrients. More a hormone than a vitamin, it is essential to the proper function of every cell and tissue in your body. It supports bone health, can modulate autoimmune conditions, and confers immune support and probable anti-cancer benefits. It is known to be protective to the brain, have anti-inflammatory benefits, and protect the delicate and vital fatty acids EPA and DHA in your body. It helps the gut lining and heart work properly, helps protect against seizures and migraines, and even helps prevent cavities and tooth disease (in close partnership with its pal vitamin K2). Its reach is almost endless.
What the cereal and milk makers who “fortify” their foods with added vitamin D don’t want you to know is that the numerous benefits associated with vitamin D are connected to its activated form, vitamin D3 (cholecalciferol), and not to plant-based or synthetic vitamin D2 added to foods.10
So what’s the best way to get your fill of it? Humans can synthesize D3 from a combination of cholesterol, its precursor analog D2 (which comes from certain plant-based foods and mushrooms), and ample exposure to UVB rays in sunlight. That said, you need to expose a lot of skin to the sun by getting nearly naked at noon for at least several minutes to an hour or two on a fairly consistent basis—the amount of time depends on your geographic latitude, how many receptors for vitamin D you inherently have, your ethnicity, what time of year it is, and relative cloudiness. For most, this would be possible only if you live in a sunbelt state and can get outside during the day . . . and it wouldn’t hurt if you live in a nudist camp! I jest a bit about the nudity—I live in Oregon, where aging hippies and virtual public nudity aren’t that unusual—but a fairly lengthy period of broad skin exposure is typically required (i.e., more than just your face and hands, and no sunscreen lotion) for meaningful vitamin D3 production from sunlight.
For everyone else, get sun when you can, but be sure to follow the example of your ancient primal brethren who lived and hunted at northern latitudes. They got their activated D3 from the ample consumption of animal fat from large grazing and foraging animals. In the Americas, northern Native peoples got it from marine mammals (seal, walrus, and whale fat) and oily fish (especially their heads), while in Australia, Aboriginal peoples ate insects, grubs, and emu meat and fat. Interestingly, monogastric animals such as bears, emus, and pigs seem to carry the most readily utilizable vitamin D3 in their fatty tissue. In our modern-day food supply, animal fats and fatty organs such as tallow, suet, brains, tongue, marrow, and organ meats offer the richest supply you can get. Start improving your levels by cooking with lard from a pastured pig: it’s the richest food source of all!
The best sources of vitamin D3 are fully pastured pork fat (lard), tallow, marrow, organ meats, sardines, salmon, fish roe, and egg yolks. Poultry fat, especially from large birds such as the Australian emu (and emu oil), is also a good source. Contrary to contemporary popular belief, cod liver oil is actually a relatively poor source of vitamin D.
If you are consuming vitamin D3 from natural sources or getting plenty of sun and getting enough dietary vitamin A (retinol) and K2, there is little reason to be concerned about getting too much. The current RDA is only about 600 IU per day, but current research suggests that this number might need to be as much as ten times greater.11
If you live in a seasonal, northern climate and/or work inside all day, some supplemental D3 tends to become necessary at various times of the year. Liquid, emulsified forms of supplemental vitamin D are some of the best, as they make it easier for the body to rid itself of unwanted excess and are readily absorbed even by those with impaired fat digestion. If you have a chronic inflammatory condition, such as an autoimmune disease, you may need to take vitamin D3 every day throughout the year, testing your levels regularly and adjusting your dosage accordingly. (There are testing kits you can order yourself, such as from Direct Labs and ZRT Labs.)
If you supplement at all, it’s wise to check D3 levels with a simple blood test (the technical name is serum levels of 25, hydroxyvitamin D3) a couple of times a year, or more if you have a chronic immune challenge, to ensure you have enough and are not using too much, as supplemental vitamin D can accumulate to levels that are too high.
As for what levels are optimal, newer research seems to suggest that a good range is 40 to 60 ng/dL, but absolutely no lower than 35 ng/dL. Below this level, there are many issues with bone health, mood- and cognition-related disorders, cardiovascular disease, cancer, and most forms of autoimmune disease.12 Going above 60 ng/dL, meanwhile, may also cause problems, the latest science shows, so don’t think that more is necessarily better.13 If you are struggling with a chronic infection, autoimmune condition, or cancer, vitamin D gets used up fairly quickly, so know that more supplementation might be needed. Remember, vitamin D3 requires the presence of the animal-source fat-soluble vitamins A (retinol) and K2 in balanced amounts to give you its benefits, preferably through using the foods in this plan.
This is especially key if you have a diagonal earlobe crease, which may be a sign of progressive heart disease or arterial calcification, and vitamin D supplementation without added supplemental vitamin K2 is ill advised. If this is true for you, avoid calcium supplements at all costs. Be smart and seek expert counsel in this case. Remember, the three amigos must ride together!
Mark my words: vitamin K2 is hot on the tail of vitamin D, about to steal the limelight. Weston Price was the first to reveal this mysterious nutrient—he called it “Activator X”—which appeared to be a powerful key to the robust health conferred by traditional diets. Latter-day science now knows it as vitamin K2, a key fat-soluble vitamin and the better half of the vitamin K family (its other sibling being vitamin K1). In the hip and happening paleosphere, it is the trendy subject of many a blog and podcast.
You may be familiar with K1, the plant-derived form of vitamin K, found in leafy green vegetables such as kale, lettuce, broccoli, and spinach. It makes up roughly 90 percent of the vitamin K in a typical Western diet, and its action is associated mostly with increasing the capacity for blood clotting (which is a mixed blessing—essentially beneficial after injury, but more blood clotting also means more potential for certain kinds of stroke or infarction in vulnerable individuals). The benefits of K1, as it turns out, pale in comparison to those of its newly celebrated sibling, K2.
Vitamin K2 is the animal-source version of vitamin K (MK-4) and the one our ancestors would primarily have gotten from their diet rich in fats and organ meats, and some from fermented or rotting foods (MK-7). (There are a few versions of vitamin K2; see page 118.) Today, however, animal-source vitamin K2 accounts for only about 10 percent of the vitamin K in the Western diet, meaning most people are quite deficient in it. This is a big problem. For one thing, there are dozens of proteins in the body that are reliant upon K2 for their activation. One of the most important is osteocalcin,14 a protein responsible for organizing the deposition of calcium and phosphorus salts in bones and teeth. Osteocalcin is produced only in the presence of vitamins A (retinol) and D3; K2 is the principal activator of this important protein secreted by osteoblasts, the body’s bone-building cells. When osteocalcin is activated, it draws calcium into the bones, where osteoblasts then are able incorporate it into the bone matrix. In addition, vitamin K2, when combined with vitamin D3, helps inhibit osteoclasts, which are the cells responsible for bone resorption.15 Without it in your diet, calcium fails to incorporate into your bones and is far more likely to calcify things that were never meant to be calcified, such as your heart, arteries, and joints. The same osteocalcin that vitamin K2 activates also triggers the activation of another protein called matrix GLA protein (MGP). This unique protein is responsible for removing excess calcium that can accumulate in soft tissues such as your arteries and veins. And as you likely know, arteries that become brittle and inflexible—a condition called arteriosclerosis—make you much more vulnerable to stroke. Meanwhile, similar calcium deposits in the heart are making it weaker. In other words, you are risking a possible death sentence simply because your diet is lacking in dietary animal fat and K2. Vitamin K2–activated MGP may well be the strongest factor in preventing, and possibly even reversing, tissue calcification involved in atherosclerosis and is required to prevent vascular calcification.16
A lack of vitamin K2 may be what actually killed my father. He had lost his gallbladder years prior (after years of dutiful low-fat eating) and doggedly persisted in his low-fat dietary approach to his dying day. He also confirmed and discussed his diagnosis of advanced coronary calcification with me and confided that he believed this would likely be the cause of his death. He had been avoiding fat, and for years following his cholecystectomy he had a compromised capacity to digest fat. He had the earlobe crease that indicates susceptibility to arterial calcification. And he would have been undoubtedly quite resistant to the idea that eating more foods rich in saturated fat and taking extra steps to digest it better with necessary supplementation following the loss of his gallbladder could have saved his life.
The takeaway? Boosting your intake of this critical nutrient through an optimized diet can literally change your life—arterial calcification is shockingly pervasive in industrialized populations and it is nearly universal by the age of sixty-five to some degree.17 (As an aside, it is the vitamin K2, in combination with vitamins A and D3, that gives primal diets their potential for reversing tooth decay.)18
And there’s more. Your brain contains one of the highest concentrations of vitamin K2 in your body in the form of MK-4 (one of its variants; see page 118). It is involved with the formation of myelin in your nerve cells, which is partly responsible for your capacity to learn. There are also strong benefits associated with vitamin K2 for conditions such as multiple sclerosis, cerebral palsy, epilepsy, and some forms of mental retardation associated with both glutamate toxicity and cysteine depletion. Research into the applications of vitamin K for brain health is still in its infancy, but early studies are extremely exciting.
Given all this, the fact that conventional dietary guidelines for vitamin K supplementation are still based solely upon plant-based vitamin K1 and the levels required to ensure adequate blood coagulation—as if K2 doesn’t even exist—is a really big deal. It leaves countless millions deficient in vitamin K’s most important and bioactive form, and thus vulnerable to bone loss and osteoporosis, cardiovascular disease, organ and tissue calcification, and quite possibly even cancer.19 The lesson here is to infuse your daily diet with this health-giving nutrient.
There’s a special reason that vitamin K2 ties into the goals of the Primal Fat Burner Plan. Vitamin K2 plays an important role in preventing metabolic diseases, because when osteocalcin is activated, it goes beyond its primary job of calcium ion homeostasis: it also helps to regulate insulin and enhance insulin sensitivity by signaling the fat cells to release something called adiponectin. Adiponectin is powerful: in addition to its insulin-sensitizing qualities, it has strong anti-diabetic and anti-inflammatory activities.28 One of its key effects is to lower the plasma levels of triglycerides and fat accumulation in the liver, muscle, and visceral adipose tissue. It also prevents pancreatic β-cell apoptosis (cell death) and it improves hepatic insulin action and well as mitochondrial function, ultimately improving glucose tolerance.29 That’s a pretty extraordinary range of benefits for something most people have never heard of! Interestingly, omega-3 fatty acids also have a strong adiponectin-enhancing effect.30 It’s ironic that after decades of propaganda about low-fat diets and heart health, a fat-soluble nutrient (from animal fats, no less) and an animal-source essential fatty acid can have such a powerful effect on metabolic dysregulation.
The best sources of vitamin K2 are meats and organ meats from 100 percent fully pastured animals, fish roe, shellfish, insects, certain types of cultured vegetables (depending on the culture used to make them), cultured ghee from grass-fed animals, emu oil, emu meat, and full-fat dairy products from pastured animals (for those who are not dairy sensitive).
The best sources of vitamin K1 are green leafy vegetables and (to a lesser extent) animal sources similar to those for K2.
The US RDA for vitamin K—they’re talking primarily about K1—is only 90 mcg. Current research shows we likely need about ten times as much and should focus instead on vitamin K2, aiming for a daily intake of roughly 800 to 1,000 mcg of vitamin K2 a day, especially to keep calcium where it’s needed and away from where it’s not.31
When we talk about vitamin E, we’re really referring to a complex or group of at least eight fat-soluble antioxidant compounds, including several types of mixed tocopherols. Commonly found in nuts, seeds, and green leafy vegetables, vitamin E is also found in foods and fats from fully pastured animal sources. Vitamin E requires the trace mineral selenium to most actively function as an antioxidant—this is rich in pastured meat as well as Brazil nuts.
Researchers at the Centers for Disease Control back in 1999 looked at the vitamin E status of 16,000 American men and women. Twenty percent of white Americans, 41 percent of African Americans, and 28 percent of Mexican Americans back then were deficient in vitamin E. Vitamin E deficiencies have been linked with diabetes, immune disorders, AIDS, muscle damage in exercise, Parkinson’s disease, eye diseases, and lung and liver diseases.32 While this fat-soluble vitamin also exhibits important properties that help guard against cancer,33 benefit cardiovascular health,34 support vision,35 prevent obesity-related fatty liver disease,36 and help improve brain health and reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s disease,37 there are two things that make it especially relevant for the Primal Fat Burner Plan. One is that it is a precursor to the enzyme glutathione peroxidase, which is a critical antioxidant enzyme. Second, vitamin E complex protects the body from the presence of potentially peroxidized (rancid) fats—something that is quite important when consuming higher-fat diets, to protect against any spoiled fats you might happen to ingest (see “When Good Fats Go Bad” in Chapter 11). It’s one fat-soluble vitamin supplement that many of my clients do add to their plan when they transition to fat burning, as it is a fairly simple extra insurance policy if you have the inclination and budget for it. Quality is everything with vitamin E; I tend to recommend a product called Mixed Tocopherols Concentrate from Unique E. It sidesteps a pitfall of vitamin E supplementation, which is that most are synthetic, meaning less potent, frequently detrimental, and in fact even delivering the opposite effects of natural sources of E.38 You can tell if a supplement uses synthetic vitamin E, as the label will say “dl-alpha tocopherol acetate” or “dl-alpha tocopherol succinate.” If you use a quality source of supplementation, then safety is well established across a wide range of dosages.39
Fats from fully pastured meats, nuts, and seeds are the best sources of natural vitamin E.
There are at least six hundred varieties of carotenoids, typically found in plants, pastured meats/eggs, pink/red salmon and related fish species, certain organisms (krill), and fungi around the world. The most important for humans include beta-carotene, lutein, lycopene, astaxanthin, and zeaxanthin. These are found in colorful yellow or reddish vegetables and some greens, and also in fats from fully pastured animals and in Antarctic krill oil. Also known as pro-vitamin A, these micronutrients require dietary fat for their proper assimilation and use.
Perhaps the single most important nutrient for your heart is coenzyme Q10, which is critical to the health of your mitochondria as well. CoQ10 is found mainly, if not exclusively, in animal-source fats, and it requires fat for its absorption and utilization. CoQ10 is also heavily used by all your other organs, including your brain.
Pyrroloquinoline quinone, or PQQ, is a fat-soluble nutrient (found to originate in star dust!) that has recently come to notice. PQQ literally has the capacity to increase the number of healthy mitochondria you have. It is found in high concentrations in leafy greens such as parsley and spinach, green and oolong tea, and natto. There is also a small amount in egg yolks. Dietary fat is required to absorb it.
Nutrigenomics is the interdisciplinary study of hereditary factors that influence a person’s response to diet—both how genes influence nutrient absorption and metabolism and how nutrients in our diets (or their absence) influence gene expression. Genes, both those with positive effects and those with negative effects, are expressed when the environment surrounding them is favorable for that expression. Many different stressors—both internal and external—affect how your genes behave and thereby influence the initiation and progression of chronic disease through certain non-modifiable risk factors associated with your genetic blueprint.
The magic here lies not in your particular genetics per se but rather in epigenetics, the study of these external or environmental factors that turn genes on and off and affect how cells “read” and interpret your genetic blueprint.40 Getting enough vitamins A, D3, and K2 in your diet is the most amazingly simple way to promote healthy gene transcription and DNA expression. (For the science geeks, some of the processes most adversely affected by fat-soluble nutrient deficiency are DNA methylation, histone modification, small and non-encoding RNAs, chromatin architecture, and other transcriptional regulating events such as stem cell creation.)