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I only started feeling tooth sensitivity after several months in to avoiding starch and preferring sugar. I agree starch can be bad for teeth as well but my guess would be that cavity forming bacteria in the mouth produce acidity slightly faster with sugar, where as starches take them a little longer, therefore calorie for calorie sugars would produce more acid in the mouth. Therefore the demand for basic electrolytes would likely be slightly higher if you are taking in a lot of sugar than if you take in a lot of starch. I think it is all a game of ph. Vinegars made from fruit reach the acidic state much faster than vinegar made from grain. Rinsing and brushing teeth after everything sugary is not a practical option in many circumstances. Taking it a step further, observe how long a yam resists decay sitting out on a counter top vs something like an orange.
 

tara

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Interesting... 10:1 Carb/protein seems rather extreme though... why do fruitarians often end up with health issues then? It seems some claim that you get deficiencies like B12 on this type of diet, others think its a non issue, so what's the deal?
Okinawans weren't fruitarians or vegans, so they got some B12 etc from pork and seafood etc. They tended to eat a lot more starch than fruitarians. (Though sweet potatoes have a bit less less starch and more sugar than regular spuds).
Okinawans may have tended to eat a low calorie diet, but they also tended to be small in stature, so proportionally it's not so extremely low. (Being small may have conferred a longevity advantage in itself, too.)

A good question is how much muscle mass does a baby put on during the first 6 months, when they are still getting all of their food as breast milk. I suspect during these stages the majority of growth would be fat and bone mass.
Babies are surely building muscle and other lean tissue too in their first few months - they vary a bit, but go from barely able to move, to getting increasing control over their limbs and body to being able to maybe sitting and crawling etc. And all the other lean tissue too - their integumentary and cardiovascular and all other systems are growing in proportion too. Faster than at any other time.

Dr. Peat's point is that liver health is poor and more protein helps the liver metabolize under the stresses of our diet etc. And that low protein drives down metabolic rate by depriving the liver of ability to adequately process.

I think if we started out with low PUFA high carb diets, we probably could do fine with low protein. But most of us need remedial protein levels at this point, does that make sense?
This is how it looks to me:
On the one hand, the liver and other systems need protein as material to maintain metabolism, and for repair, building, enzymes etc.
On the other hand, if there is more protein than the system can effectively digest, process and eliminate the waste from, the excess becomes a stressful burden.
We need protein, but there's no point in feeding a lot more than we can use.
There is also some capacity for nitrogen recycling if we eat lots of fruits and roots/tubers.
How effective the digestion and waste removal is varies from person to person with time and other factors. Some people may be starved of protein and need more of it. Some have had plenty of protein, but be short of a range of other minerals or sth.


Edit: Interestingly there is a greater carb to protein ratio in sweet potato (yam) ~8 vs potato ~5.
Nice. The yam has a good deal more potassium and choline as well. I guess I should start experimenting with yams, I feel better on high carb with equal parts sugar and starch.

This is an issue of an Americanism...yams ARE sweet potatoes in the US, I believe. Yams worldwide are bright white or sometimes a very pale yellow. Tastes nothing like a sweet potato lol

In case anyone's interested ...
Sweet potato (in US, maybe aka yam):
Sweet potato - Wikipedia
Can have various coloured flesh: whitish, golden, orange or purple that I know of.
(One of the staples in Papua New Guinea, along with taro, I think.)

Yam:
Yam (vegetable) - Wikipedia
Edible tubers from plants of the dioscorea family. Some of them have steroidal saponins. This is the family from which comes the wild yam they extract diosgenin to make progesterone etc out of.

Also not to be confused with other tubers:
Oca/Oxalis tuberosa/New Zealand yam:
Oxalis tuberosa - Wikipedia

Taro
Colocasia esculenta - Wikipedia
Along with the sweet potato above, this is one of the staples in PNG, about which there was brief discussion with Peat (some mix up with potatoes - I don't think they traditionally eat many spuds).

Cassava/manioc/yuca:
Cassava - Wikipedia
Has to prepared properly to deal with anti-thyroid chemicals. Second only to regular spuds as a global staple tuber. (Sweet potatoes come 3rd, yams 4th.)
 

tara

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I believe sun is beneficial generally, but how do you explain the fact that the skin area of the body with most ageing (wrinkles) is often the face?
I hadn't thought about it before, but just speculating, could it be because:
- The face is exposed to the weather including sun more than any other part of the body
- The face's functions includes a lot of movement - eating, talking, eye movements, and facial expressions for communication. So it has loose skin that moves a lot, and some of that skin gets habitually put in particular positions that eventually develop into wrinkles. We tend to also develop wrinkles in some other moving parts, like the knuckles, and the crook of elbow, for instance. People who claim to read hands will look at the 'wrinkles' in your palm.
 

yerrag

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Ray Peat Diet Causes Cavities?

Lots of theories here as to what causes cavities and it seems like sugar is not one, in fact several people in that thread cured their problems with sugar.

Seems like - high thyroid function, not eating bad foods, getting the fat solubles are some possible solutions. Some foods in general aggravated some people there like wheat, ice cream, dried fruit to name a couple. I will add a +1 to dried fruit. I no longer eat raisins. They don't seem to sit well with me.

Everything is blamed on sugar, but it causing tooth decay has been there too long. I think it's time to put this old canard to rest. Don't you just wish you had eaten more sugar cubes, cotton candies growing up lol. I had real bad teeth before they became permanent, I'd grin and my front teeth would show black indentations. Then I would go on to have 11 cavities that had to be filled (with mercury), and then after removing the fillings and replacing them with composite ones, I still had to suffer through periodontal problems, losing some teeth in the process. And through all these, I was faithfully brushing my teeth and using dental floss. And I still wasn't big on eating candy.

If I had to live my childhood again, aside from eating more candy, I would have drank more milk or ate a lot more cooked greens to build my body's calcium stores. I would also be more conscious of doing things outdoors, spending more time in the beach, and walking a lot during the day outside (I did that anyway but wasn't conscious of its benefits). I would also not he eating so much fiber from fruits. Back then, I believed my dad when he said eat more fiher.

But I'm also glad distilled water was only sold for refilling liquid for car batteries.

The long and short of it, if I, or my parents, knew to minimize on endotoxins, and optimize on calcium, I wouldn't have so many cavities from bone leaching, and no periodontal disease from endotoxins.
 
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Taking it a step further, observe how long a yam resists decay sitting out on a counter top vs something like an orange.
But that's an uncooked yam, right? Cooked tubers actually spoil very fast in my experience. Cooked potatoes smell terrible when you leave them sitting outside the refrigerator from dinner to breakfast. And we don't eat uncooked tubers, but we do eat raw fruits normally.
 

tara

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I started to bake my sweet potatoes lately as mineral content is lost with boiled sweet potatoes.
Unless you turn the liquid into soup. :)
 

yerrag

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Unless you turn the liquid into soup. :)
Or use the liquid for cooking rice, but naah, it doesn't make a good combination. I use the cooked greens liquid instead.
 
B

Braveheart

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I sometimes took some eggshell powder here or there, but no, the vast majority of the time my high calcium intake came from foods alone. With fruit and raw dairy, my calcium to phosphorus ratio was well above 1 to 1, but the fructose also added a lot of benefit as well, as Ray Peat has written about (fructose being protective for teeth and bones from phosphorus, etc.). Yeah, I am not too sure where that idea came from, but many fruits out there are not really acidic. And it is really only an issue if someone consumed fruit and doesn't wash their mouths out thoroughly right after and maybe brush. Even most dentists say that fruit isn't an issue for most people as long as they wash and brush. It's when the acid and sugar is left on the teeth for a long period of time to feed bacteria, etc. A lot of the time I blend my juices in shakes I make blended with milk too, so the calcium in milk will likely buffer the acidity in the fruit juice, which is a plus as well.




I used to think that way, until I began to have cavities a few years down the road. Trust me, it is better safe than sorry because that dental bill isn't pretty, lol. I went a few years without any cavities and then BAM, some time down the road I notice them. It caught up with me.
I like all your comments on this thread, thank you. I'm interested in your diet, specially your good cal/phos ratio....care to expound a little?
 

Jackrabbit

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Before I got to my present understanding of carbohydrate metabolism, I was very much into the glycemic index of food. It helped me deal with hypoglycemia, as I found it very helpful for me to eat brown rice instead of white rice, given that brown rice does not as quickly turn into blood glucose as white rice does. But that was before I turned my metabolism around by avoiding PUFAs for many years. When my body started to metabolize sugar well as a result, I ditched brown rice and returned to white rice. Then I got to understand what Ray Peat meant when he said: The degenerative diseases that are associated with hyperglycemia and commonly called diabetes, are only indirectly related to insulin, and as an approach to understanding or treating diabetes, the “glycemic index” of foods is useless. Physiologically, it has no constructive use, and very little meaning (Glycemia, starch, and sugar in context).

If I'm absorbing and metabolizing sugar readily, as a healthy body does. I'm not given to raising my blood sugar even if I take in highly glycemic food. The body cam just as easily clear out the blood sugar as it comes in, whether it comes in at a high rate or a slow rate. And so, I agree with Peat in how he sees the concept of the glycemic index. I'm not saying I can eat tons of sugar with impunity though. I'm saying this in the context of eating in regular quantities.
I think it’s interesting that fructose and even sucrose are relatively lower in the index, especially as compared to starches, and I’ve heard Peat talk on KMUD about the fact that you can consume and cause too much glucose to rise in the blood too quickly which will result in weight gain. I don’t think Peat thinks it’s a good idea to raise blood sugar fast so if you eat a lot of bread(or potato, or cornflakes) all at once you can cause that to happen and it will mess with your metabolism and cause weight gain, which he definitely isn’t in favor of.
 

yerrag

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I think it’s interesting that fructose and even sucrose are relatively lower in the index, especially as compared to starches, and I’ve heard Peat talk on KMUD about the fact that you can consume and cause too much glucose to rise in the blood too quickly which will result in weight gain. I don’t think Peat thinks it’s a good idea to raise blood sugar fast so if you eat a lot of bread(or potato, or cornflakes) all at once you can cause that to happen and it will mess with your metabolism and cause weight gain, which he definitely isn’t in favor of.
I don't think that is what Ray Peat meant. Please show me a reference to what he said and we can discuss it. You seem to be blaming blood sugar rising and causing weight gain to intake of high glycemic food, and not so much to the body's inability to absorb and metabolize sugar. But Peat has already said that glycemic index is a false construct, so your attribution to Ray Peat of overweight to be related to intake of high glycemic foods is contradictory to his views on the concept of glycemic index.
 
Last edited:

Jackrabbit

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Ok from “Sugar Part 2” :
RP: a group in Los Angeles a few weeks ago measured the amounts (of HFCS) in some soft drinks and found that they accurately reported the content of fructose and glucose, but when they hydrolyzed the material they found that there was much more carbohydrate in the drink than just the fructose and glucose. There was about 4-5 times as much caloric value in some kind of carbohydrate present that was not glucose or fructose . So 4-5 times more food in your soda pop than you were thinking, you’re going to be more likely to get fat, not because fructose is fattening but just because you’re getting an huge amount of pretty much the equivalent of eating flour.
Int: so a huge amount of starch strongly stimulates insulin , and insulin stores as fat
RP: mm hmm
Int : whereas if it was actually sucrose from white sugar, then it would be much easier for your liver to store it as glycogen in the liver?
RP: yes.

So obviously RP doesn’t believe that insulin won’t be secreted in response to a high glycemic food like flour (or potato, rice, etc.) and because sucrose is half glucose, then it’s not totally immune to fat/insulin but earlier in the same interview he does discuss that fructose does protect against the insulin secretion to an extent so pure sugar would certainly be easier to handle. However, you can’t just eat a cup of sugar in five minutes and expect it to not raise blood glucose levels!!!!
 

Kartoffel

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Ok from “Sugar Part 2” :
RP: a group in Los Angeles a few weeks ago measured the amounts (of HFCS) in some soft drinks and found that they accurately reported the content of fructose and glucose, but when they hydrolyzed the material they found that there was much more carbohydrate in the drink than just the fructose and glucose. There was about 4-5 times as much caloric value in some kind of carbohydrate present that was not glucose or fructose . So 4-5 times more food in your soda pop than you were thinking, you’re going to be more likely to get fat, not because fructose is fattening but just because you’re getting an huge amount of pretty much the equivalent of eating flour.
Int: so a huge amount of starch strongly stimulates insulin , and insulin stores as fat
RP: mm hmm
Int : whereas if it was actually sucrose from white sugar, then it would be much easier for your liver to store it as glycogen in the liver?
RP: yes.

So obviously RP doesn’t believe that insulin won’t be secreted in response to a high glycemic food like flour (or potato, rice, etc.) and because sucrose is half glucose, then it’s not totally immune to fat/insulin but earlier in the same interview he does discuss that fructose does protect against the insulin secretion to an extent so pure sugar would certainly be easier to handle. However, you can’t just eat a cup of sugar in five minutes and expect it to not raise blood glucose levels!!!!

I'm pretty sure that the study Ray mentioned in that interview was heavily criticized, and I believe the authors admitted that they had made some kind of mistakes in the determination of carbohydrate content. HFCS very likely contains no more carbohydrates than listed.

https://www.fasebj.org/doi/abs/10.1096/fasebj.24.1_supplement.562.1
 

yerrag

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Ok from “Sugar Part 2” :
RP: a group in Los Angeles a few weeks ago measured the amounts (of HFCS) in some soft drinks and found that they accurately reported the content of fructose and glucose, but when they hydrolyzed the material they found that there was much more carbohydrate in the drink than just the fructose and glucose. There was about 4-5 times as much caloric value in some kind of carbohydrate present that was not glucose or fructose . So 4-5 times more food in your soda pop than you were thinking, you’re going to be more likely to get fat, not because fructose is fattening but just because you’re getting an huge amount of pretty much the equivalent of eating flour.
Int: so a huge amount of starch strongly stimulates insulin , and insulin stores as fat
RP: mm hmm
Int : whereas if it was actually sucrose from white sugar, then it would be much easier for your liver to store it as glycogen in the liver?
RP: yes.

So obviously RP doesn’t believe that insulin won’t be secreted in response to a high glycemic food like flour (or potato, rice, etc.) and because sucrose is half glucose, then it’s not totally immune to fat/insulin but earlier in the same interview he does discuss that fructose does protect against the insulin secretion to an extent so pure sugar would certainly be easier to handle. However, you can’t just eat a cup of sugar in five minutes and expect it to not raise blood glucose levels!!!!
Right, but you are talking about a situation where excess amounts of carbs are taken in that overwhelms the system. The insulin response from high blood sugar causes blood sugar to not only convert to glycogen, but also to fat because glycogen stores are maxed out.

If you go back to my post which you responded to, I ended the post by saying that I'm talking about regular intake, in normal meals by normal people.
 

Jackrabbit

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I'm pretty sure that the study Ray mentioned in that interview was heavily criticized, and I believe the authors admitted that they had made some kind of mistakes in the determination of carbohydrate content. HFCS very likely contains no more carbohydrates than listed.

https://www.fasebj.org/doi/abs/10.1096/fasebj.24.1_supplement.562.1
I was more focused on the fact that Ray doesn’t deny the fact that excess carbs will cause a spike in insulin which will then be stored as fat.
 

Jackrabbit

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Right, but you are talking about a situation where excess amounts of carbs are taken in that overwhelms the system. The insulin response from high blood sugar causes blood sugar to not only convert to glycogen, but also to fat because glycogen stores are maxed out.

If you go back to my post which you responded to, I ended the post by saying that I'm talking about regular intake, in normal meals by normal people.
Ok I guess I’m just pointing out that foods that are higher up on the glycemic index can in fact end up triggering fat gains because they are going to raise the blood glucose more, so you might not use the glycemic index as your guide, but I don’t think it’s moot because you do have to be careful how you eat your starches if you’re going to eat them. That was why I posted about the glycemic index values of boiled vs. baked sweet potatoes. Of course, if those same baked sweet potatoes are cooled, they also have a lower glycemic index value.
 

Kartoffel

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I was more focused on the fact that Ray doesn’t deny the fact that excess carbs will cause a spike in insulin which will then be stored as fat.

Why? I assume he understands very basic biochemistry.
 

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