Autoimmune in Strasbourg

Isadora

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Hi, everybody!

Thanks, Charlie, for making this easier, here are my answers to your questions:

What's your age?
45

How did you find the forum?
Frantically searching Google to read testimonials from people who have experience with the RP diet.

How did you find Ray Peat's work?
Good one. I can't remember! Brain fog? If you refer to how I liked it, well, I think it is worthy of a Nobel prize if he is right in his theories and his views on the human body/life in general, inasmuch as I have gleaned them through his articles and other materials available on the net. I can't wait to read his books. However, I am not a scientist myself so take that for what it's worth.

How long have you been Peating?
Five weeks.

What is your favorite part about Peating?
Simplicity, once you get the hang of it.

What is the worst part?
The tendency one might have to apply it religiously, using, for instance, Peat's own quantities and ratios of food and supplements. That can be a recipe for (relative) disaster -- rapid weight gain, etc. I think one should listen to one's body and ease into Peat's diet, especially if they come from a low carb pattern.

What are your health issues?
Hashimoto's, possibly SLE (auto-antibodies to dsDNA, yikes!), gluten intolerance, peri-menopause. After a lifetime of good health, came a year of everything falling apart. That was also the year I went full speed on a Paleo diet, low carb, so I am rather upset about that and I sometimes think I may have brought all of this upon myself...

What other questions should we ask?
Where does one live, maybe? Strasbourg, for me.

I want to thank you all for all the information you generously conveyed to one another, which benefited many more watching, including myself!
 

charlie

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Isadora, welcome to the forum. :welcome
 

jyb

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I think Strasbourg might be a good place for bone broth. I know they have a few traditional slow cook meat dishes...
 
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Isadora

Isadora

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Thank you, Charlie! :)

jyb: They do have a dish that takes many hours to cook in the oven, the Baeckoeffe, but it has pork in it. As to the Pot au Feu and the availability of good beef -- unfortunately, this is not a good spot. I have run up and down Alsace, looking for a source of grassfed beef and found NONE. Butchers stare at me when I ask and mumble that "it is no longer done". So... I'm still looking. I'm thinking of importing some, but I have yet to find a place. Maybe neighboring Germany might have it, but I don't speak German so it's not easy for me to do that research... I hear Austria and Switzerland care about grassfed beef, too. Until then, I'm buying organic, but even so, it doesn't work for liver and bones -- they simply don't sell those in the organic stores, as there is no demand... How annoying is it to see those "Bio" stores full of GRAINS? I hope the grassfed "trend" will reach France soon enough... Meanwhile, any suggestions for sources of good beef (especially including bones and liver) are welcome!
 

jyb

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Isadora said:
Thank you, Charlie! :)

jyb: They do have a dish that takes many hours to cook in the oven, the Baeckoeffe, but it has pork in it. As to the Pot au Feu and the availability of good beef -- unfortunately, this is not a good spot. I have run up and down Alsace, looking for a source of grassfed beef and found NONE. Butchers stare at me when I ask and mumble that "it is no longer done". So... I'm still looking. I'm thinking of importing some, but I have yet to find a place. Maybe neighboring Germany might have it, but I don't speak German so it's not easy for me to do that research... I hear Austria and Switzerland care about grassfed beef, too. Until then, I'm buying organic, but even so, it doesn't work for liver and bones -- they simply don't sell those in the organic stores, as there is no demand... How annoying is it to see those "Bio" stores full of GRAINS? I hope the grassfed "trend" will reach France soon enough... Meanwhile, any suggestions for sources of good beef (especially including bones and liver) are welcome!

Don't those dishes have bones in the cooking too? I remember getting one of those when I visited, and it was quite gelatinous. The gelatin is a good sign.

I don't think its the end of world for non-organic meat if you follow a Peat diet, where you don't need meat everyday. I'm not sure if it matters that much if the once a week liver you eat is not organic, it should still have good vitamin A, copper etc. Otherwise, milk, cheese, oysters...
 
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Isadora

Isadora

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jyb, I thought Peat considered grass feeding a key element: "with cheese and milk, the feeding of the animals (grassfed vs. grainfed) is more the issue than raw vs. pasteurized" -- if it's that important for lactate products, it must be for meat, as well... I do eat meat (at least) twice a day, it's a lifelong habit, hard to break... I try to eat lamb as much as I can and goat/sheep cheese, because I read these animals don't take to grain feeding. And, luckily, we do have available at some butchers good game in this area, plentiful during winter, so I got used to eating that.

But this would make a great topic if it hasn't been discussed yet: how important is grassfed meat/cheese/milk in a Peat-style diet and where do people get it? Especially in Europe, as I know that in the States this is not so difficult.
 

jyb

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Isadora said:
jyb, I thought Peat considered grass feeding a key element: "with cheese and milk, the feeding of the animals (grassfed vs. grainfed) is more the issue than raw vs. pasteurized" -- if it's that important for lactate products, it must be for meat, as well... I do eat meat (at least) twice a day, it's a lifelong habit, hard to break... I try to eat lamb as much as I can and goat/sheep cheese, because I read these animals don't take to grain feeding. And, luckily, we do have available at some butchers good game in this area, plentiful during winter, so I got used to eating that.

But this would make a great topic if it hasn't been discussed yet: how important is grassfed meat/cheese/milk in a Peat-style diet and where do people get it? Especially in Europe, as I know that in the States this is not so difficult.

Here in the UK organic milk (quite a common supermarket product) means the cow were fed a lot of grass, but it doesn't exclude grains.

I don't think its as key as you say, for example compared to eating milk vs muscle meat. I could be wrong, but between the two evils I would think eating excess muscle meat (iron, inflammatory proteins, lack of calcium vs phosphorus) is far worse than drinking the standard grainfed cow milk. RP talks a lot more about the former in his articles.
 

Wilfrid

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Bonjour Isadora,

Try the following if you want to order some grass fed beef:

http://vente-directe-viande-bovine-char ... 97306.html

I see that you are in Strasbourg, I'm in Cannes.
I work at an organic shop and will have a quick look today on the address of an organic meat and milk producer labeled "Nature et progres" in Alsace.
I think this one should have some grass fed beef too.
As soon as I get the address I will post it here.

A plus tard.
 
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Isadora

Isadora

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Bonjour Wilfrid,

Quelle belle surprise!

Thank you so much for the address! I will email them ASAP. And I will keep looking also -- I know they must be somewhere... I see cows on these fields, so somebody's got to eat them :) (Actually, one explanation I heard is that the farmers themselves and their families and friends tend to keep those animals for themselves, I don't know if that's true...)

To your knowledge, is there any organization working to develop the label "Grassfed" in France? I think that would be a good idea, I'd volunteer some of my time for that to happen...

jyb: I am trying to compensate with gelatin, I think that may be a great "trick"! I have tried to move away from meat -- but then cheese isn't much better in terms of tryptophan, etc. When I ate grains, it was easier, somewhat, but now... Fat fish is off limits too on account of PUFAs, I am gluten intolerant, I don't do too well on nightshades and I don't want to be a fruitarian... To me, ruminant meat, including the gelatinous parts, seems like the best idea and my digestive system is better adapted to that than to anything else I have tried. I am also experimenting a lot with organ meat, and France is a blessed territory for that -- too bad they're not organic... Can I interest you in a recipe for a Transylvanian Butcher's Omelette? (disclosure: veal brain is involved)
 

jyb

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@Isadora: RP thinks the calcium and nutrients in milk make it very different from muscle meat, not the same effect of tryptophan despite high in both.
 
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Isadora

Isadora

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jyb, "true that", I will try to eat more cheese, after all this would make my life easier! Thanks for helping me figure that out. My exaggerated reliance on meat may not be such a good thing -- and my paleo year must have reinforced it. I should cut down and see how I feel. Provolone cheese and apples for dinner today.
 
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