Are Fibrous Green Vegetables And Beans So Bad?

[EnoreeG]

Mr. Eno.

I congratulate you for your robust physiological state of health.
There a couple of Pakistani gentlemen I work with whom are around your age.
Despite the PUFA, vegetables, fast food, grains and legumes they eat, they're in good health for their age - except maybe for a bulging belly. One of them is 79, he has a grip of steel when he shakes my hand, he can literally shake my whole body. He also has a full head of hair and wears no glasses.

When I asked about where he was brought up, he told me that it's in the mountain region. He told me that his mother breastfed him until he was 4, and they had no doctors around. They used to eat lots of ghee, milk, and fruits.

Since for many of us around my age, who are in their 20s & 30s, we seem to suffer from many perplexing health issues. Obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, hairloss, gynocomestia, bad back and knee pains and digestion issues. Mind you, where I live is a modern urban area, with access to good medical facilities.
Many of our mothers were prescribed contraceptive pill when they're young, most of us have been delivered in the hospital, had all the compulsory vaccinations and our moms fed us formulas because it they found it more convenient.

Prenatal imprinting is a big piece of the perplexing puzzle. I remember Dr Peat once saying that no body knows the effect what something given to pregnant women might be because sometimes take a long time to show, later in life and sometimes even generations. Now the health problems our generation struggles with are very likely influenced by this earlier imprinting.

While your diet and lifestyle may not be ideal at a Peat scale, your capacity to handle stressors seems obviously much more that I can take at this point of my life.

Yep, I think you are right to toally suspect the things happening in previous generations. The later generations are now often born with a tougher route back to good health, even at a young age. My generation is also not as healthy as the one before, that would be 100 years old now.

Also, the Pakistani soil may have been better than American soil, even 60 years ago if they took care of it generation after generation!

 

[EnoreeG]

The solution may just be to switch away from use of so much simple sugars that start and encourage that fermentation in the wrong place. You definitely don't want fermentation in the small intestine. I agree with Peat on that.

Hum just to be clear, Ray likes the simple sugars precisely because they don't ferment - or minimise fermentation. A lot of the sugars people here use is from things like *filtered* OJ, so the potential for fermentation is low. And I think its true that milk, eggs, meat, some filtered simple sugar, etc don't ferment much - I can't remember the last time I farted (I'm slightly but barely exaggerating).

Now, that was just the "side effects" of fermentation, irritation and serotonin aspect. On the positive effects that different foods deliver, there are other considerations Ray has for favouring more dairy and fruit rather than more vegetables. Like a few other health writers, he believes animal products have more useful nutrients like very high calcium, A/D/E, etc. But you have to read his articles to know in detail which nutrients he consider useful and why. And I think on that subject, on the vitamins from diet rather than from fermentation, he is not unique. All the Weston A Price stuff is also a lot in that vein, but since then I've seen others writing about animal products being more dense or just good due to the saturated fats and then asking "why bother?" when it comes to vegetables.

I happen to favor the veggies. No big thing. I have reactions to dairy if there's any carbs involved. Cheese and butter are fine. Yes, meats have "density" for whatever that might mean. I guess it means more protein and fat. And definitely strong on the fat soluble vitamins. But as to all other types of nutrition, like enzymes, vitamins and phytonutrients, fruits and veggies far outstrip the animal products. So the best diet is some of each. I tend to put heavier emphasis on veggies volume-wise. but that still leaves my emphasis way over on animal products calorie-wise, as veggies are somewhat low in calories and like fruit, contain a lot of water.

Weston A Price foundation has an agenda as formidable as most health organization. Look at their "sponsors" (people who pay a lot for special booths and consideration at a WAPF conference). They are dairy, meat and fish producers. WAPF is beholden to them to emphasize the good qualities of those products to keep the money flowing. But at the same time, they don't publish negative information on those products, and they also say very little about fruits and veggies, pro or con. It's not fair, but it's business.

Want to be a WAPF sponsor so you can get some advertising for your products on their web pages? Here's how (there's different levels up to a $10,000 donation to get some action at one of their events):

http://conferences.westonaprice.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/SponsorExhibitorInformation.pdf

 

[sctb]

I would say that whether or not beans and vegetables belong in your
diet is secondary to how you ought to be making that determination.
I believe that one should take hypotheses from the literature, but
ultimately be guided by self-experimentation, since what we're really
after is to optimize our own health and wellbeing.

... to say that veggies and beans are bad is too extreme for me to take seriously, and that I should eat ice cream and cola instead is weird but It's not unbelievable

Why extreme and unbelievable? It's also uncharitable to say that Peat
advocates a diet of ice cream and cola. I would try to resist the
temptation to make your own argument sound better by misrepresenting
the other side.

... in my diet I restrict dairy and sugar because I think they do nothing but bad.

I think it would be worthwhile for you to suspend disbelief and
experiment with foods rather than rule them out a priori.

... eating so much sugar must be bad for your oral health.

Why must? This is another unsubstantiated claim, and again
uncharitable in assuming that a Peat-inspired diet must have
"so much sugar".

... Ray Peat seems to be very viscerally fat and using a lot of supplements, like pregnenolone which made him look much younger than he really is

This is just off the rails. It's irrelevant to your health how Ray appears
now, in the past, or in the future. Your claim that he uses a lot of
supplements is unsubstantiated. This is not a fruitful path of reasoning.

Nobody ought to be asking you to give up beans and veggies because
Ray Peat said so. However, given the content of his research, wouldn't
you say that it's a worthy hypothesis to test on yourself? I did, and
found that I felt and performed better without them, not to mention
that I was happy to replace them with more palatable foods.

Cheers and best of luck,

Scott

 

[Such_Saturation]

As you may have heard, you need both Magnesium and a little Boron in the diet to properly direct Calcium into the proper locations (teeth, for one) and not have it expelled into the blood plasma and soft tissue where it causes problems. So check this out on how important Boron and Magnesium are to bone/tooth health:

I think this is interesting: Effect of dietary boron on mineral, estrogen, and testosterone metabolism in postmenopausal women.

 

[tara]

And when he says eat minimal carrots, it's probably because he know if you eat too much you get the fermentation. Carrots are the sweetest of all veggies that aren't actually a fruit! Have to go easy there!

Peat's concern about too much carrots for people in a hypothyroid state is that some of us have trouble converting the carotene to vit-A, and the excess carotene hanging around can cause issues.

If you can handle lots of fibre, and don't get overloaded with endotoxin and serotonin, then that's great.

 

[tara]

On dental health, here's a couple of inputs that imply it's not really just about avoiding sugar:

Notice in these that milk (dairy) and calcium are not the important inputs. A few people may be a little low on calcium input, but much more prevalent in the USA and many countries, is Magnesium and Boron deficiency. As you may have heard, you need both Magnesium and a little Boron in the diet to properly direct Calcium into the proper locations (teeth, for one) and not have it expelled into the blood plasma and soft tissue where it causes problems.

I agree it's not just about avoiding sugar, and that magnesium and boron are also necessary. Peat also emphasises the need for magnesium, and it's role in many things including bone and teeth health. His take on boron seems to be that it is necessary, that a diet with lots of plan/fruits usually supplies enough, and that supplementing to excess has it's own risks.
I have found his and others' evidence supporting the benefits of plenty of calcium and a positive Ca:P ratio to be convincing so far.

 

[tara]

I believe that one should take hypotheses from the literature, but
ultimately be guided by self-experimentation, since what we're really
after is to optimize our own health and wellbeing.

I agree with this. And nice post in general.

 

[EnoreeG]

And when he says eat minimal carrots, it's probably because he know if you eat too much you get the fermentation. Carrots are the sweetest of all veggies that aren't actually a fruit! Have to go easy there!

Peat's concern about too much carrots for people in a hypothyroid state is that some of us have trouble converting the carotene to vit-A, and the excess carotene hanging around can cause issues.

If you can handle lots of fibre, and don't get overloaded with endotoxin and serotonin, then that's great.

Interesting! I'm one of those (or was) due to Type2. I took vitamin A to stay free from upper respiratory infections for about 30 years. Even a pound of carrots a day wouldn't prevent it. For the last 6 months, I've been seriously off almost all supplements though, and am surviving fine with no symptoms of vitamin A deficiency. But then I eat about 1/4 pound of butter a day. I don't really know if I'm now converting carotene or not! I eat very few carrots, but get carotenoids in other veggies.

What issues will excess carotene cause?

 

[tara]

Peat's concern about too much carrots for people in a hypothyroid state is that some of us have trouble converting the carotene to vit-A, and the excess carotene hanging around can cause issues.

Interesting! I'm one of those (or was) due to Type2. I took vitamin A to stay free from upper respiratory infections for about 30 years. Even a pound of carrots a day wouldn't prevent it. For the last 6 months, I've been seriously off almost all supplements though, and am surviving fine with no symptoms of vitamin A deficiency. But then I eat about 1/4 pound of butter a day. I don't really know if I'm now converting carotene or not! I eat very few carrots, but get carotenoids in other veggies.

What issues will excess carotene cause?

Yellow/orange tinted skin and callouses can be an indicator of accumulating carotene.
For me, I get averse to carrots after a very small quantity cooked, a larger quantity raw, and not at all if I rinse my grated carrot well before eating it. I still eat some green veges a few times a week. The orange callouses I had a year or two ago are less so now.
As I understand it, Peat has said that the carotene is unsaturated, and therefore has effects like PUFAs. I don't know if there are other issues too.

I think vit-B12 is needed for the conversion to vit-A

 

[Amazoniac]

Tara,

Have you read Fiber Menace, by Konstantin Monastyrsky?
It seems to align with Ray Peat's work.

 

[tara]

Tara,

Have you read Fiber Menace, by Konstantin Monastyrsky?
It seems to align with Ray Peat's work.

I enjoyed reading quite a bit of it a year or two ago. It helped me ditch my 'the more fibre the better' view. I am convinced that many of us do better not to eat excessive fibre, and my digestion seems somewhat happier with less.

But I'm not going to argue that people who have really good health in their 70s and no signs of digestive difficulty even in the form of gas while eating lots of fibre from fruits and vegetables should suddenly stop eating them. Many veges have their good points as well as their burdensome ones.

I would argue against adding lots of bran etc, though, and if someone is having digestive trouble, then trying less fibre altogether would be worth a go.

 

[narouz]

I love beans...I have to confess.
And they're so cheap!
John Steinbeck said something like
if you've got a bag of beans,
you know you're fine.

I wish the Peat diet was a big plate of rice and pinto beans with green onions and salsa with a lot of cilantro.

 

[BingDing]

Green, leafy vegetables are really healthy...so long as a cow or a goat detoxifies them first!

I strongly disagree with the notion that PUFAs in whole foods are any better than PUFAs in refined oil. The gut breaks everything down to molecules and the small intestine has a specialized mechanism to transport fat into the body. It does it one PUFA molecule at a time no matter how you eat them.

And the negative health consequences of PUFAs are enormous. Just the chain reaction of oxidative damage from free radicals is probably the main factor in arterial plaques; they are full of oxidized low density lipoproteins, LDLs. The lipo part of a lipoprotein is a fatty acid. Since saturated fatty acids are not oxidized, it is chemically impossible for dietary saturated fats to cause coronary artery disease.

Did you ask what oxidative damage is? I thought so. Consider that white blood cells kill pathogens by latching onto them and flooding them with free radicals. The resultant oxidative damage kills both the bacteria and the white blood cell. Not a pretty sight. And sure as ***t not something you want to encourage in your arteries.

Add the thyroid suppressive, metabolism suppressive, immune system suppressive, carcinogenic features of PUFAs and you get a pretty good idea of what is most important in the RP way of eating.

The OP certainly can read more, IMO.

 

[charlie]

 

[tara]

I agree that PUFAs from any source are a health hazard.

Just to keep some veges in proportion on this count, though:
28g/1oz butter: 0.9g PUFA
28g/1oz almonds: 3.4 g PUFA
100g wild atlantic salmon, dry cooked: 3.3g PUFA
100g durum wheat: 1g PUFA
1 head of boiled cabbage (1.26kg) : 0.3g PUFA
1kg boiled drained spinach: ~1g PUFA
1 cup/175g boiled drained swiss chard: ~0.0 g PUFA
[Edited to remove incorrect info.]

I also agree that goitrogens in cabbage etc are an issue, esp. if thyroid function is already compromised. I think boiling reduces this issue, but I don't know that it completely eliminates it.

I too prefer most of my greens to be first detoxified by ruminants.

 

[Westside PUFAs]

If you like beans and greens, eat them. I eat them often and I've noticed noting but improvements. Some say that the so called "blue zones," areas of the world with the most centenarians, all eat beans. I think most negative so called "effect"s of beans are gone form cooking.

Peat has written about beans and leafy greens leading to lower metabolism.

"Besides fasting, or chronic protein deficiency, the common causes of hypothyroidism are excessive stress or “aerobic” (i.e., anaerobic) exercise, and diets containing beans, lentils, nuts, unsaturated fats (including carotene), and undercooked broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, or mustard greens. Many health conscious people become hypothyroid with a synergistic program of undercooked vegetables, legumes instead of animal protein, oils instead of butter, carotene instead of vitamin A, and breathless exercise instead of a stimulating life."

Peat's view on vegetables can be confusing. He's said broccoli was a good source of vitamin K in an email with Kasra:

"Some fibers, such as raw carrots, that are effective for lowering endotoxin absorption also contain natural antibiotics, so regular use of carrots should be balanced by occasional supplementation with vitamin K, or by occasionally eating liver or broccoli."

Nothing confusing about occasionally.

The naturally occurring PUFA in whole foods is not the problem.

Tell that to the hibernating animals who ate all that natural food and put them in a state of torpor.

Squirrels (unlike dormice and bats) are unable to retain a high level of body-fat which means that they cannot sustain themselves through the winter, even if they wanted to hibernate. Squirrels eat PUFA but do not get fat. But they are not eating unbound free oil PUFA, they are eating whole foods.

Humans are not hibernating animals. We are a primate species that evolved in the tropics. Humans love the sun and are diurnal, not nocturnal like many hibernating mammals such as bats. The suicide rate in cold dark places is high because of being cold and dark. We naturally like warm and light. People travel to the islands and warm places and beaches etc., and people always talk to each other about the weather. People I know in the northeast always complain to me about how bad the weather is, only to love how it is for 3 months, June, July, August, and then back to hating it. Industry allowed people to live in cold climates but it doesn't change how we like warm and light.

I agree with Peat on that quote because starch will satiate and provide energy, not broccoli or cabbage. We have to be specific about the word "vegetable." The animal protein and butter part of the quote has to be specified as well, because meats are animal protein, but he personally eats milk and cheese as his daily animal protein, and he's spoken about the fattening effects of butter.

 

[narouz]

“Beans are a warm cloak against economic cold.”
-John Steinbeck

“Beans are a roof over your stomach.”
-JS

 

[tara]

“Beans are a warm cloak against economic cold.”
-John Steinbeck

“Beans are a roof over your stomach.”
-JS

Fits with Peat's view - beans are poverty food?

 

[janus]

brocolli. :)

broccoli.

 

[pboy]

yea they are super nutritious and are dense enough to always be satisfying, but the problem is they have the skins that have tannins, saponins, and other irritants, and indigestible sugars, and have a lot of resistant starch. Humans are not supposed to be ruminaters, and things that produce gas are the equivalent and go hand in hand with endotoxin...it kind of ruins mood and hormones. Lil bit of beans at night might not be the worse thing but I don't know why you would unless you needed to. They are pretty solid nutritionally and have low methionine protein...I cant hate on them because truth is we live in a world that isn't quite ready for how many people there is for everyone to eat optimally yet, and I see beans as better than grains nutrition wise, they wont give diabetes and are nearly neutral in terms of acid balance and all that. I think mung dal in India are the only beans sold and eaten commonly that are shelled like a refined grain is, and potentially if people got smart and started refining other beans they would be much more tolerable and non mutagenic and less gassy, while still very nutritious.

So yea I cant recommend them, but...for a lot of people they are for sure better than freezing, starving, or eating incomplete food that leads to disease. Beans might not be fun, and be gassy, and even irritating or constipating in too high an amount, but at least they'll keep people alive, somewhat warm, and relatively healthy (not optimally).

I don't eat em, if you're smart, even on a budget you can eat complete without beans and do better but most people aren't as informed, savy, don't know how to...don't really know much or have nutrition tables and all that. It is what it is