heartnhands
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- Apr 4, 2016
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Please explain how a pound of protein as meat makes 80 to 100 grams? When I do the math I divide 160z by .035274 which gives 45grams....Please forgive me I'm so rusty on math and it throws me when I can't understand things that are meant to be specific. Thanks so much for the help!Also read: Notes Toward an "Optimal Peat Diet" | Ray Peat Forum
The information below is pulled from other sites. We are in the process of putting together our own chart and food recommendation list at the link above based on Ray Peat philosophies.
*Graphic above is used with permission from Steven Smith.
Proteins:
Daily protein should be at least 80 grams, preferably 100 if you are working or otherwise active. An egg has about 6 grams, a quart of milk about 32 grams, meat, cheese, and fish are usually about 20% protein, so a pound would be enough for a day. It's important to have fruit or other carbohydrate with the protein for efficient metabolism. Milk, cheese, eggs, shellfish are good protein sources, and potato protein is high in quality, if the potato is very well cooked and eaten with butter or cream. Although potatoes contain only about 2% protein, a kilogram of potato has roughly the protein value of a liter of milk (which is 3% protein), because of its high quality. Unless you are buying eggs from a verified grass-fed, free range source he recommends limiting them to one or two a day, and making sure to have plenty of carbohydrate around the same time to prevent sugar crash.
Meats like ground beef, steak, liver, and pork chops are rich in cysteine, which “turns off” the thyroid gland as soon as your body uses up it’s glycogen and ideally shouldn't be your main source of protein. Muscle meats should be eaten with the gelatin it comes with, or supplemental gelatin (see below), to balance out an anti-thyroid amino acid called tryptophan (which is also found in whey protein formulations). Traditionally, muscle meats are eaten with the fat, skin and the gelatin that they come with, so this is mostly an issue in first-world countries where we have protein powders and pure muscle meats readily available. Chicken liver contains such a small amount of fat it's okay to have in addition to or instead of beef liver (which should be consumed weekly). Pork or chicken every 7- 10 days is okay if your metabolic rate (thyroid function) is good. When chicken is stewed, gelatin from the skin is valuable, and much of the fat can be skimmed off(just remember chicken is not optimal). With any of the muscle meats, including fish, gelatin is helpful for balancing the high cysteine, methionine, and tryptophan content. Regarding bacon, Peat says, “The nitrate isn't likely to be a problem if you eat it with orange juice. I fry the bacon to remove some of the fat, and then refry it in coconut oil, to remove most of the PUFA.”
Fatty fish like salmon and herring should be avoided because their fat content is mostly unsaturated; as a general rule, cold blooded animals like fish tend to produce unsaturated fats while warm blooded animals like cows and pigs tend to produce saturated and monounsaturated fats. Cod and sole are good fish, since they have the marine minerals (especially selenium), but low fat content. Tuna is good as protein, but the fat it contains is highly polyunsaturated; eating once a week, especially with homemade coconut mayo should be safe.of course
Regarding his recommendation of daily gelatin:
For an adult, gelatin can be a major protein in the diet, since the need for cysteine and tryptophan decreases greatly when growth slows. Ox-tail soup (boiled for 4 or 5 hours) and lamb shanks have a good proportion of gelatin. I think most stores have gelatin in one pound packages or bigger, for example Great Lakes gelatin is usually around $11 per pound. If a person eats a large serving of meat, it's probably helpful to have 5–10 grams of gelatin at approximately the same time, so that the amino acids enter the blood stream in balance. Asian grocery stores are likely to sell some of the traditional gelatin-rich foods, such as prepared pig skin and ears and tails, and chicken feet. Although the prepared powdered gelatin doesn't require any cooking, dissolving it in hot water makes it digest a little more quickly. It can be incorporated into custards, mousses, ice cream, soups, sauces, cheese cake, pies, etc., or mixed with fruit juices to make desserts or (with juice concentrate) candies.
Peat is a big fan of dairy. He prefers milk with no added vitamins, raw if you can get it, but uses standard pasteurized-homogenized when there’s no alternative. He prefers cheese made without enzymes, just animal rennet. He doesn't use yogurt because of the lactic acid and/or lactobacillus. He avoids anything with gums in it, like cream cheese. Ice cream like Haagen Dazs is okay since it has no carageenan or gums like guar/carob bean– these are often found in foods like cream cheese, canned coconut milk, and half-and-half; make sure that the ice cream does not have any vegetable oil in it as some varieties include this. Regarding yogurt, in quantities of an ounce or so, for flavoring, it's o.k., but the lactic acid content isn't good if you are using yogurt as a major source of your protein and calcium; it triggers the inflammatory reactions, leading to fibrosis eventually, and the immediate effect is to draw down the liver's glycogen stores for energy to convert it into glucose. Cottage cheese, that is, milk curds with salt, is very good, if you can find it without additives, but traditional cottage cheese was almost fat-free, so when they make it with whole milk you should watch for other innovations that might not be beneficial.
Although Peat basically scorns legumes, he said hummus in small amounts isn't nutritionally harmful, though chickpeas and tahini are both allergenic for some people.
Fats:
Best sources are coconut oil and butter; olive oil and macadamia nut oil sparingly. He is a big fan of (refined) coconut oil to stimulate the metabolism. Among nuts and nut oils, macadamia is probably the safest. See the Omega-6 list below for more info.
Carbohydrates:
Have some with every meal to prevent hypoglycemia after eating the proteins.
Fruit and fruit juices – If you're able to do it, try to consume fresh fruits and fruit juices every day. Orange juice is great because of it’s potassium and magnesium content. Tropical fruits and juices are excellent too. If you don’t have a juicer at home, you can buy pasteurized juices with no additives that say “not from concentrate” on the label. Juices that are from concentrate are made up of mostly added water that is flouridated. Fruits in general are fine (tropical are best), but grapefruit is full of phytoestrogens, so avoid it, and berries are full of small seeds you can't avoid, so it's better to skip them. He recommends avoiding bananas and other starchy-poorly-ripened-industrialized fruits, which includes most apples and pears (when these are ripe, peeled and cooked they are much more nutritious, and safer). Organic dried fruits are fine as long as they are not treated with sulfur dioxide; canned fruits are okay, especially if they are in glass. You can have a small apple and some cheese as a snack occasionally if it doesn't cause any digestive or allergic symptoms—the fat in the cheese is protective against the starch in incompletely ripened fruit.
Tubers – Potato, yams; occasionally well-cooked grains in the order of best to least desirable: masa harina, white rice or oats, brown rice. The phytic acid in the oats block absorption of much of the calcium; cooking the oats much longer than usual might improve its nutritional value. Canned plain pumpkin if eaten with some fat is okay, but carrots are less starchy for similar effects.
He recommends eating a raw carrot daily, particularly a raw carrot salad with coconut oil, for both its bowel-protective and an anti-estrogen effect. Summer squash and bamboo shoots are the best cooked vegetables; well cooked kale and broccoli are okay, too. Carrots are best salad. The fiber in whole vegetables helps protect against the effects of the unsaturated fats they contain (in comparison to fruit), which means that juiced vegetables with none of the protective fiber will act as a thyroid inhibitor because of the concentrated PUFAs. There isn’t anything wrong with using vegetables as a smaller part of your diet, but salads and steamed vegetable dishes shouldn’t be the main part of anyone’s diet. He recommends avoiding avocados as they contain so much unsaturated fat that they can be carcinogenic and hepatotoxic (toxic to the liver).
Beverages:
Coffee supports the metabolism but has to be consumed with some sugar or with meal to prevent stress response due to low blood sugar. Because of the tannins in tea, it's important to use either lemon or milk (or cream). The histamine in red wine is a special problem for hypothyroid people, usually it isn't harmful.
Avoid:
PUFAs and soy. PUFAs are found in processed foods, nuts and seeds and their butters, vegetable oils, margarine. Also keep in mind that if you have been eating PUFAs in the past, the oil change in your tissues takes up to four years during which your fat stores will be releasing enough PUFAs to cause you some troubles, so it requires some patience and also some skillful means to counteract their effects, like getting some extra vitamin E or a little thyroid to counteract their antithyroid action etc. It all depends on how your metabolism works.
Chocolate is okay as long as there are no additives.
For salty cravings, Peat recommends tortilla chips fried in coconut oil, and chicharrones (pork rinds) with no additive but salt (puffed in hot air). Another snack is popcorn popped on the stove in coconut oil, then salted & buttered; the oil and butter are protective against the starch, but it's harder to digest than tortilla chips or chicharrones.
For salt use Mortons Canning and Pickling salt.
Vinegar is a good antiseptic when it's used with raw carrot, but watch for sulfite when using regularly.
Maple syrup is heated to a fairly high temperature, and this creates some sugar-derived chemicals that can be allergenic and might be toxic.
Regarding whey protein, Peat says, “Powdered foods that contain tryptophan are extremely susceptible to harmful oxidation, and the best things are removed, for example calcium, lactose, and casein, with its anti-stress properties.”
Ray Peat Eating Guidelines : Semi Low-Carb Plans Forum : Active Low-Carber Forums
