❄️ ETERNAL METABOLIC WINTER

Mammals evolved from reptiles and amphibians for the sole purpose of surviving winter. They have a stable body temp, regulate their own metabolism, and are often furry.

As soon as the season starts to shift, it’s a race for mammals to stop being sexy and get FAT as quickly as possible, or die trying.

How does a mammal keep track of time and know that winter is coming?

Partially by the sun angle and temperature, but also by the shift in foods available to them. Mammals use these signals to slow their metabolism, drop their body temperature and conserve energy for the long winter.

One such symbiotic pathway is particularly illuminating:

Acorns are tasty to squirrels → Acorns makes squirrel fat → Squirrel gorges and hides acorns all over the place → Oak trees spread → Squirrel survives winter

Acorns, also used to fatten Iberico ham, are very high in PUFA, the key refined component of seed oils. Squirrels get fat just on acorns, imagine if they had acorn oil to drink!

In late summer/fall, mammals gorge on:

• Nuts and seeds dropping from trees: High in PUFA

• Fruits like apples: High in fructose

• Insects: High in PUFA and MUFA

• Honey: High in fructose

This combination of fructose and PUFA is a key signal to get fat, and it happens all over the animal kingdom. Bears fatten up on pine nuts and honey (PUFA & fructose), squirrels on acorns, deer on berries and nuts etc.

As prey animals accumulate PUFA, predators consume them, and the signal to fatten cascades up the food chain (the problem with American high-PUFA pork and chicken raised on soybean oil)

That’s why we like grassfed beef/elk/lamb etc. This more closely resembles a springtime diet, higher in omega-3 from fresh grass, as opposed to omega-6 from corn and soy.

What this means for you:

I’m not saying you can’t eat an apple or a handful of almonds, I’m saying you can’t drink their ultra-refined counterparts in massive quantities. The American diet of ultra-processed food largely depends on two sources of calories: Soybean oil (40% PUFA) and high fructose corn syrup.

Therefore it is no surprise that we are the fattest nation by far, we are forcing ourselves into ❄️ ETERNAL METABOLIC WINTER ❄️

Do humans hibernate, though?

Hibernation is an ancient mammalian pathway, preceding the dawn of primates by millions of years. It seems that among mammals, hibernation may be a spectrum. There are levels between total shutdown and lowering your energy expenditure seasonally.

One thing is absolutely certain, modern resting metabolic rates and body temperatures are dropping. An April 23’ study in Nature Metabolism demonstrated we burn 200 calories less than we did in the 1980s while at rest!

“Total daily energy expenditure has declined over the past three decades due to declining basal expenditure, not reduced activity expenditure”

The author explores the drop in human body temps, and notes that feeding mice PUFA drops their body temp in this twitter thread about the paper, calling for further study on PUFA metabolism.

Join us in ☀️ ENDLESS METABOLIC SUMMER ☀️ on Seed Oil Scout, everyone is way sexier over here.

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