Acetones

Aajonus distinguished between acetones, acetates, and directly consumed animal fats. Acetates are fats the body manufactures from non-fat precursors, primarily proteins and carbohydrates. Acetones are generally the fat that results from utilizing carbohydrates specifically as a fat-precursor source. Both represent what he called "inefficient fats" because they are derived rather than supplied. When fat comes directly from an animal, the body receives it already in the form it needs and can extract two and a half times more energy per unit compared to a fat manufactured from carbohydrate or protein.

His phrasing on this point was explicit and repeated across multiple contexts: "A fat, an acetone made from carbohydrate or protein only has a small amount of energy ability to produce fat that is from fats that the animals have made, and animal fat is two and a half times more energy per calorie than an acetone and acetates that are made from carbohydrates or protein." The acetones and acetates derived from carbohydrates are described as very inefficient, capable of producing energy but at a fraction of the yield available from naturally occurring animal fat consumed in its raw state.

One of Aajonus's most repeated characterizations of acetone-based fat is that it burns at roughly half the efficiency of a properly sourced raw animal fat. He stated that "when you make a fat from an acetone, you make an acetone from a carbohydrate, it's a very poor burning one. It will burn one-half the energy of a good raw fat that's made from fat, pure fat from an animal." This half-efficiency applies whether the acetone was derived from dietary carbohydrate or from protein being redirected away from tissue-building toward fuel production.

He extended this comparison further by noting that even coconut fat, which is a plant-derived fat rather than a directly consumed animal fat, still burns two and a half times the energy created by the same amount of protein or carbohydrate converted to fuel. So the hierarchy he established was: raw animal fat at the top, plant fat like coconut producing more energy than any carbohydrate or protein conversion, and acetones made from carbohydrates at the bottom of the energy-production hierarchy.

Aajonus gave a particularly vivid explanation of what happens when high-carbohydrate foods, especially those that have been fried, enter the body and are processed into fat. He described how when the body takes something like a potato chip or a french fry and converts the carbohydrate content into a fat, it creates an acetone that is "50 times its normal size of a fat molecule." He said: "When it utilizes it as an acetone that's 50 times its normal size of a fat molecule, 50 times, so think about that when you're eating a chip or a french fry."

The compounding problem with fried, pasteurized chip-type foods is not only the acetone size but also the acrylamide content. Aajonus linked high-carbohydrate foods fried in oil to massive acrylamide production, describing how a potato can go from baseline acrylamide content to 1,500 times that amount when fried. Cereals, chips, and french fries were cited as the worst offenders. These acrylamides were found by Swedish researchers in 60 percent of the composition of cancerous tissue and in tumors specifically, making the cooked-carbohydrate-to-acetone conversion not merely inefficient but actively harmful in his view. The acetone size problem combined with the acrylamide toxicity made chips and fried starches among the foods Aajonus most strongly cautioned against.

For a pasteurized chip specifically, he noted that pasteurization causes the fat to swell four or five times its normal size even before the acetone expansion is factored in. So the cascade is: high carbohydrate food, fried in oil (often with trans fats, making it plastic-like), pasteurized, then converted in the body into an oversized, poorly burning acetone. He acknowledged that animal fat, even if pasteurized, is better than any vegetable oil, but made clear the overall picture is still far from optimal.

The conversion of meat protein to acetate or acetone occurs when the body lacks access to raw fat at the time of digestion. Aajonus was consistent and direct about this: "To digest meats properly, you always need a raw fat. Otherwise, you're going to turn all of that fat, all of that meat, into either an acetate, a fat, or a pyruvate, a sugar, instead of using it to rebuild the body."

His framework held that when raw fat is absent from the meal, the body prioritizes energy acquisition and will cannibalize the protein in the meal, converting it through the liver into an acetate rather than directing those amino acids toward cellular rebuilding. This is why he always insisted on pairing meat with butter, cream, eggs, or another raw fat source. The logic is simple in his presentation: if the body needs fat for energy and none is available in food form, it makes fat from protein, producing a low-energy acetone rather than using protein for its intended purpose as a structural and regenerative material.

He made a direct practical point from this: "Rather than use the meat to turn it into fat, and carbohydrates, when they're turned into an acetone, that's very difficult to burn and use. It utilizes energy. Where it's made from fat, it's easier. Well, why not just eat fat instead of going through all that exhaustive conversion in the liver? Eat fat with your meat."

One brief but interesting exchange in the source material touches on the relationship between ketones (a term used in clinical medicine) and the metabolic state Aajonus described. A participant reported that his mother, a nurse, saw a blood test showing exceptionally high ketone levels and was alarmed by it. Aajonus's framing of high ketones on the Primal Diet differs from the conventional medical concern that ketosis represents a dangerous or pathological state. In his framework, the presence of ketones in the blood when one is eating raw fats is not the same metabolic event as ketoacidosis from starvation or diabetic crisis. The implication in the source material is that a person eating the Primal Diet, particularly one avoiding fruit and consuming large amounts of raw animal fat, may show high ketone readings on conventional blood tests without this representing the kind of metabolic emergency medicine associates with the finding.

Aajonus used the question of athletic performance to illustrate why acetone-based energy is inferior. He pointed out that athletes who rely on carbohydrate-driven energy are essentially running on a poorly burning fuel system. He argued that the adrenaline response, rather than genuine nutritional energy, is often what drives carbohydrate-fueled athletes: "Those poisons can create an adrenaline reaction, like most athletes use it. It's the adrenaline that runs them. It's not the nutrients, the good fat."

The weightlifter example appears in multiple passages and is central to his argument. He asked rhetorically whether anyone has ever seen a thin, muscular weightlifter who is also genuinely strong, and concluded they do not exist, because serious strength requires the kind of dense, efficient energy that only comes from dietary animal fat rather than from acetones derived from carbohydrates. A bodybuilder who avoids fat and relies on carbohydrates is making fuel from acetones, burning at half the efficiency, and requiring twice the metabolic work for the same output.

Aajonus repeatedly identified the liver as the site of this exhaustive conversion process. When the body must manufacture fat from non-fat sources, it does so through the liver, and this places a significant metabolic burden on the organ. His recommendation to eat raw fat with meat was in part a liver-protection strategy. By supplying fat directly, the body bypasses the need for the liver to undertake the energy-expensive process of converting protein or carbohydrate into acetate and acetone forms.

The liver passage is referenced implicitly across several discussions but never receives a highly technical breakdown in the available sources. What is clear is that Aajonus viewed the liver-mediated conversion of protein to acetone as an evolutionary mismatch with how the body is designed to function, essentially a fallback mechanism that is adequate for survival but deeply inefficient compared to simply eating fat in raw form alongside protein.

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