Diversity In Diet May Be Hurting Us All

[ecstatichamster]

So I've been doing some Peat eating for about 3 weeks.

And there are things that are bothering me.

I'm not lean. I've gained a quick 10 pounds on this diet. I can't get my temps up. I'm sure I will but so far nothign has worked. My teeth hurt (I think I over supplemented with magnesium. I've stopped and I think it's already a little better today.)

My theory is that perhaps it's best to live on high starch, low fat and lowish protein. But the SAME starch. So the critters in our gut become well adjusted and happy.

I think diversity of diet may be hurting us. A lot.

Besides, the biggest is the replacement of starch with sugar doesn't feel right with me.

For one thing, when I drink OJ I get a huge sugar craving. It subsides in about 15 minutes, but it shows me that I'm spiking insulin a lot. And this is AFTER a protein meal. (Perhaps not long enough afterwards...maybe I should try an hour after?)

Also, I went from small amounts of high quality dairy (quality aged raw milk cheese) to massive amounts of yogurt (non fat) and reduced fat (pasteurized) cheese, which doesn't feel right to me either although it's convenient and easy.

But the major thing is replacement of starch with sugar, supposedly to diminish endotoxin load.

So I"m thinking, what is it about starch that is bad?

It's supposedly endotoxins. But the people who live a long time eat the SAME foods all the time.

And I think that is the key.

I've read that when stool microbes are analzyed, people who are lean and fit and healthy have a REDUCED gut microbiome diversity.

(I'm looking for that study now, can't locate it at the moment.)

and this recent post really made an impact on me
viewtopic.php?f=225&t=9032

I've TRAVELED in Southeast Asia, and Italy. And I've found that the healthiest people are lean and fit and don't show their age. Kind of like Ray actually. He SOUNDS older than he looks, and is VERY vital and lean.

The recent thread on long lived people is something I've studied (I've read about them in many places.) And they eat a lot LESS than I do, and they don't eat a VARIETY of foods. They get stuck on a steady diet and just stick to it.

Maybe that's healthy -- finding starches that are friendly, sticking to them, with low fat and lowish protein.

 

[milk_lover]

This makes sense to me too. No need for too much diversity. I avoid eating white rice in my country because a lot of cooking oil is used in the preparation. So for me avoiding white rice is similar to avoiding most of the PUFA in a typical UAE diet. White arabic bread is made from flour, sugar, yeast (I think), and salt. Simple and almost no oil and I feel great on it. The last three months, I've been eating white bread almost daily with no apparent ill effects. Carrots and occasional cascara sargada are great in reducing any bad effect from starch like endotoxin and serotonin. Aspirin and red light, I believe, have made me tolerate bread better.

 

[Matt1951]

Starch - causes leaky gut - causes inflammation. Well cooked starch along with some fat, is ok according to Ray Peat. Sugar is better. Middle Eastern people, because they have been eating wheat for many thousands of years, are possibly better adapted to eating wheat.

 

[ecstatichamster]

post 117032 Starch - causes leaky gut - causes inflammation. Well cooked starch along with some fat, is ok according to Ray Peat. Sugar is better. Middle Eastern people, because they have been eating wheat for many thousands of years, are possibly better adapted to eating wheat.

this doesn't make sense to me because so many long lived people eat starch and don't seem to suffer.

 

[Zachs]

post 117043

post 117032 Starch - causes leaky gut - causes inflammation. Well cooked starch along with some fat, is ok according to Ray Peat. Sugar is better. Middle Eastern people, because they have been eating wheat for many thousands of years, are possibly better adapted to eating wheat.

this doesn't make sense to me because so many long lived people eat starch and don't seem to suffer.

Me either. Every long lived culture on earth eats a majority of calories from starch. In my personal experience, leaky gut/endotoxin is from pufa, iron and meat.

I have actually been thinking a lot about this exact topic recently. Westerners are the only people to eat a different cultures food every day of the week. Pasta on monday, tacos on tues, pot pies on weds, etc. And even three different foods stuffs every day, french toast for breakfast, rice and beans for lunch, Chinese takeout for dinner.

Compare this to an average Asian diet where it's basically a rice dish with veg and a bit of animal products 2-3 times a day, 7 days a week. The same can be said for most cultures.

I actually did a little contest with myself to eat a rice and veg based meal every meal for a week. I'm only on day 3 and it's been really interesting. I thought I'd get really sick of it but I havnt and actually crave it now.

 

[FredSonoma]

post 117020 This makes sense to me too. No need for too much diversity. I avoid eating white rice in my country because a lot of cooking oil is used in the preparation. So for me avoiding white rice is similar to avoiding most of the PUFA in a typical UAE diet. White arabic bread is made from flour, sugar, yeast (I think), and salt. Simple and almost no oil and I feel great on it. The last three months, I've been eating white bread almost daily with no apparent ill effects. Carrots and occasional cascara sargada are great in reducing any bad effect from starch like endotoxin and serotonin. Aspirin and red light, I believe, have made me tolerate bread better.

Is this true for white rice everywhere?

 

[YuraCZ]

post 117060

post 117020 This makes sense to me too. No need for too much diversity. I avoid eating white rice in my country because a lot of cooking oil is used in the preparation. So for me avoiding white rice is similar to avoiding most of the PUFA in a typical UAE diet. White arabic bread is made from flour, sugar, yeast (I think), and salt. Simple and almost no oil and I feel great on it. The last three months, I've been eating white bread almost daily with no apparent ill effects. Carrots and occasional cascara sargada are great in reducing any bad effect from starch like endotoxin and serotonin. Aspirin and red light, I believe, have made me tolerate bread better.

Is this true for white rice everywhere?

I don't know but I cook rice in plain water...

 

[Dean]

post 117058

post 117043

post 117032 Starch - causes leaky gut - causes inflammation. Well cooked starch along with some fat, is ok according to Ray Peat. Sugar is better. Middle Eastern people, because they have been eating wheat for many thousands of years, are possibly better adapted to eating wheat.

this doesn't make sense to me because so many long lived people eat starch and don't seem to suffer.

Me either. Every long lived culture on earth eats a majority of calories from starch. In my personal experience, leaky gut/endotoxin is from pufa, iron and meat.

I have actually been thinking a lot about this exact topic recently. Westerners are the only people to eat a different cultures food every day of the week. Pasta on monday, tacos on tues, pot pies on weds, etc. And even three different foods stuffs every day, french toast for breakfast, rice and beans for lunch, Chinese takeout for dinner.

Compare this to an average Asian diet where it's basically a rice dish with veg and a bit of animal products 2-3 times a day, 7 days a week. The same can be said for most cultures.

I actually did a little contest with myself to eat a rice and veg based meal every meal for a week. I'm only on day 3 and it's been really interesting. I thought I'd get really sick of it but I havnt and actually crave it now.

It's also interesting that those long-lived, starch-eating cultures ate/eat very little fat.

Good luck with your experiment, Zach's. I spent a year in SE Asia and never tired of my desire to eat plain rice, especially the sticky rice in Laos and Northern Cambodia. When I was in Laos, I'd be quite content to go to the market in the morning and get a bunch of sticky rice, some hard boiled eggs, and a bag of pickled greens for my daily food . Very satisfying.

By the end of the trip, however, I was having great difficulty digesting rice, even though I had no aversion to actually eating it. I believe people of Asian descent have differences in their appendix or something that adapts them better to extensive, life-long rice eating. If you aren't of Asian descent, it may behoove you to choose a starch you are more ancestrally adapted to if you are going to try a high, mono starch diet that is intentionally undiverse--an idea/theory that I am also intrigued by and don't dismiss at all.

 

[Matt1951]

Japanese Americans eating the standard American diet live longer than Japanese in Japan.
Japanese eat a lot of seafood. Which Asians are we supposed to copy? India? They eat a lot of rice, and bread, but don't generally have such a long life span. Although people in India do not suffer nearly as much as Americans from certain diseases.
Are there other factors causing increased life span? Such as good health care, low stress in society, and so forth. Many Asian countries had low lifespans in history, eating a lot of rice.

Would you personally be healthier eating more fruit and less starch?

Just because rice is all many Asians could afford for such a long time, is that the optimum food source, given a choice?
Lowish protein? How low? Don't get ridiculous.
Every long lived culture gets a majority of their calories from starch?
Many Japanese have disability the last ten years in life - should we look at how long people live healthy?
People live to old age in many countries now - maybe the longest in Andorra. Should we therefore copy their diet?
People in France live a long time - should we copy their diet?
Are we able to look at the scientific evidence, and select foods that are good for us, or do we just look at the oldest aged populations and copy their diet?

 

[ecstatichamster]

yes I think we should find common elements in long lived peoples, and copy their diet. With Peat wisdom.

 

[Zachs]

I have studied different cultures and diets extensively and I have come to the conclusion that the types of foods aren't the point. It's a variety of things that make people live long with few diseases and disability.

Favoring saturated fats over pufa. Using saturated oils or fats for cooking or just not eating a lot of fat sources.

Eating more plant foods than animal foods. (This especially for lIving long but not necessarily for vigor and strength.)

Avoiding all refined products as well as fillers, gums, emulsifiers, dyes, fortifications, etc, etc. (The refined grains and sugars isn't the problem exactly, just the calories displacing nutrient dense foods.)

Getting the majority of calories from carbohydrates.

Eating simply, using minimal ingredients, being consistent, not over or under eating for personal metabolism.

And of course the big non food related factors of stress reduction, good sleep, sunlight, fresh air, nature and human interaction.



When you talk about the minutiae of nutrition than you can definitely get into arguements over the best diet but overall I think Peats philosophy agrees with most if not all of the above points. Peat's personal preference for dairy, fruit, small amounts of seafood and ruminents is a great template and works well for himself and others but it's not his diet or disease, as many cultures show us. It's the overall application of diet and lifestyle that matters.

 

[FredSonoma]

post 117058

post 117043

post 117032 Starch - causes leaky gut - causes inflammation. Well cooked starch along with some fat, is ok according to Ray Peat. Sugar is better. Middle Eastern people, because they have been eating wheat for many thousands of years, are possibly better adapted to eating wheat.

this doesn't make sense to me because so many long lived people eat starch and don't seem to suffer.

Me either. Every long lived culture on earth eats a majority of calories from starch. In my personal experience, leaky gut/endotoxin is from pufa, iron and meat.

I have actually been thinking a lot about this exact topic recently. Westerners are the only people to eat a different cultures food every day of the week. Pasta on monday, tacos on tues, pot pies on weds, etc. And even three different foods stuffs every day, french toast for breakfast, rice and beans for lunch, Chinese takeout for dinner.

Compare this to an average Asian diet where it's basically a rice dish with veg and a bit of animal products 2-3 times a day, 7 days a week. The same can be said for most cultures.

I actually did a little contest with myself to eat a rice and veg based meal every meal for a week. I'm only on day 3 and it's been really interesting. I thought I'd get really sick of it but I havnt and actually crave it now.

It's also interesting that those long-lived, starch-eating cultures ate/eat very little fat.

Good luck with your experiment, Zach's. I spent a year in SE Asia and never tired of my desire to eat plain rice, especially the sticky rice in Laos and Northern Cambodia. When I was in Laos, I'd be quite content to go to the market in the morning and get a bunch of sticky rice, some hard boiled eggs, and a bag of pickled greens for my daily food . Very satisfying.

By the end of the trip, however, I was having great difficulty digesting rice, even though I had no aversion to actually eating it. I believe people of Asian descent have differences in their appendix or something that adapts them better to extensive, life-long rice eating. If you aren't of Asian descent, it may behoove you to choose a starch you are more ancestrally adapted to if you are going to try a high, mono starch diet that is intentionally undiverse--an idea/theory that I am also intrigued by and don't dismiss at all.

Do you think rice might be intrinsically more difficult to digest than other starches? Or just certain people would be better for certain types?

 

[ecstatichamster]

white refined rice is more digestible to me than most starches. And it doesn't contain toxins such as potatoes do.

 

[zooma]

Favoring saturated fats over pufa. Using saturated oils or fats for cooking or just not eating a lot of fat sources.

Getting the majority of calories from carbohydrates.

Zach, could you give us some thoughts on your high saturated fat experiment?

I know you have followed strict diets at either end up the spectrum, with the low fat high carb diet and then this high dairy fat diet. What has made you come back to high carb?

 

[Zachs]

post 117073

Favoring saturated fats over pufa. Using saturated oils or fats for cooking or just not eating a lot of fat sources.

Getting the majority of calories from carbohydrates.

Zach, could you give us some thoughts on your high saturated fat experiment?

I know you have followed strict diets at either end up the spectrum, with the low fat high carb diet and then this high dairy fat diet. What has made you come back to high carb?

Sure, I set off to prove to myself that I basically did the paleo diet all wrong. Eating a high animal product, high pufa (nuts, seeds and oil) high raw vegetables, very low sugar and starch. After reading the Edwards blog, it made a lot of sense to me that a high fat diet can actually be healthy and give a high metabolism as long as the main dietary fuel is saturated fat. So based on that I made up a diet I had never done before, a very high saturated, zero pufa, zero starch, moderate sugar and protein. My main calories were from full fat dairy, chocolate and fruit with small amounts of eggs and meat.

Although I don't think I did it long enough to show its long term effects, I proved to myself that it was possible to be in good health on a high fat diet. I never went low carb though, eating at least 100g of sugar a day to stay out of ketosis. I did eat a LOT of calories and didn't gain any far which also proved to me that it's the combination of fat and carbs that really cause fat gain as well as pufa.

The positives I had were the enjoyment of foods, at first anyway. Dairy is very satisfying to me but after a few months a really craved starch and got sick of milk and eggs and definitely couldn't stomach liver and oysters at all. Also my digestion was pretty grear. Zero gas or stomach discomfort, but toward the end I was not pooping enough and think endotoxin was starting to build up as I was getting some exzema and inflammation in my joints. The major positive was hormone production, I had a great libido and gained muscle mass without exercising.

Negatives, besides getting sick of the foods and the constipation, I experienced a decent amount of heart palps and some spells of a heavy heart beat/chest constriction. I think that is mainly from too much fat in the bloodstream and inflammation of the cardiovascular system. I do believe that a high fat diet, regardless of type will cause heart disease long term.

If you say my posts from last year, you'd know that I lost all my excess fat and regained thyroid and metabolism health doing a high starch zero fat, low protein diet. I saw great success in all aspects except of digestive issues. This time around I have concluded that it came from eating too much unripe fruit and other things like garlic, onions and tomatoes. This time around I am eating more simply, well cooked veg, some leafy greens, lots of grains, a few ripe fruit, mainly citrus and lots of sugar. Animal products are the same, a bit of dairy and eggs.

Digestion This time has been wonderful, 2 good fibrous poops a day really clears out estrogen and endotoxin. No gas which was from unripe fruit last time. Inflammation is at a minimum, cardiovascular health feels amazing dispite not excersizing, sinuses are clear, libido is insane and energy is consistent. My one negative is that I think I will find it harder to maintain my size, fat drops fast eating like this and muscle mass as well. I'll keep doing my muscle control exercises and probably add in some calisthenics.

 

[Dean]

Do you think rice might be intrinsically more difficult to digest than other starches? Or just certain people would be better for certain types?

I honestly don't know. My scientific/biological/physiological aptitude is woefully inadequate. I was simply passing on my own experience and some information I remember coming across about Asians, their appendixes, and their capacity for rice eating. I don't remember where I came across that info and can't vouch for its credibility.

I don't think it's entirely unreasonable to surmise, however, that there could be some genetic and physiological predispositions that could be shaped by cultural ancestry and pertain to individual diet that could conceivably be more exposed, even exasperated, by something like a highly minimalistic diet that relied on the "wrong" food(s).

 

[ecstatichamster]

I'm heading in the direction of fine tuning with more potatoes yams and rice. That may become my primary staple for awhile, with some eggs and a bit of dairy.

I do enjoy cooking and I eat a bit of a varied diet for dinner including fish or meat and always a vegetable that is cooked pretty well, often collards, kale or broccoli or cauliflower or cabbage. Yes those are mildly goitregenic (at least the cruciferous veggies are) but I think on balance it's a good idea.

 

[Westside PUFAs]

post 117066 Japanese Americans eating the standard American diet live longer than Japanese in Japan.

Source for this statement?

The number of Japanese Americans is so small:

"The two metropolitan areas with the highest Japanese populations according to the 2010 Census, were Greater Honolulu Combined Statistical Area (149,700), and the Greater Los Angeles Combined Statistical Area (134,600).[1] About 60% of the Japanese American population lives in two states, California (34 percent) and Hawaii (26 percent)."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U ... opulations

That is not a large enough population to drawn much conclusion from besides logical observation that shows that there are many of JA who are overweight, much more so than in Japan especially historically. I know this because I live in an area with many JA. I see it everyday.

And "living longer" by way of drugs and medical methods is not the same as living optimally, as in being able to walk, healthy bones, eyes, senses, cognitive function, weight, and things like diabetes and other diseases that make life miserable even though one may still be "living."

post 117066 Just because rice is all many Asians could afford for such a long time, is that the optimum food source, given a choice?

Yes, it is.

It's not "this or that" it's "this and that." It's one of the sources.

It goes back in history. It's not a money thing. It's a source of glucose. They understood that when you get hungry, you need glucose to burn and what better way to get glucose than to eat...glucose. Even Peat said "The body has lots of flexibility, and doesn’t have to be given everything every day (or even every week).” - RP (quote from Roddy Patreon feed)

Which makes sense when you analyze daily nutrition needs. Potassium is important for example, but one can water fast for up to two months with no potassium intake, yet the RDA is around 5k mg's a day. This is because of recycling. Obviously the body has stores for it if you don't have a heart attack from electrolyte imbalance when going for a long time without any intake of it.

In "Guns, Germs, & Steel," Jared Diamond talks about how rice was an early major crop in both China and India. China also cultivated foxtail millet and broomcorn millet (starch). India also cultivated wheat, barley, sorghum, millets circa 10,000 years ago. (p. 126)

I don't know how anyone can think that this

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24880830

is being caused because everyone is eating fat-free steamed starches, vegetables, and fruit. Both PUFA from oils and SAFA from mammalian cream products (cheese, ice cream etc.) is increasing, it's not just PUFA.

 

[Tarmander]

Sure, most long lived, tribal peoples ate a very consistent diet, and many sick Americans eat something different every night of the week. However a big part of that consistent diet was the fact that freshness could not be maintained for very long. Yet in "civilization," you can get a frozen Indian dinner, a frozen Italian dinner, and a frozen Mexican dinner that will sit in your freezer for six months and come out right as rain.

I think the freshness made more of a difference then the consistency. I actually find eating something occasionally different, as long as it is fresh, makes me feel better. It just doesn't make sense to me that if someone living in Asia on Rice all of a sudden moved to Africa and lived on Milk would have their health tank. Sure maybe there is an adjustment period, but in my mind the freshness in both diets would be the important factor.

 

[Matt1951]

Here is one link discussing lifespan of foreigners in Japan, and Japanese and Asian Americans. http://www.turning-japanese.info/2014/01/longevity.html. You can find several articles with a web search.

Rice is/was the primary food in large parts of Asia because of economics. It was what people could afford. The Japanese navy in the 19th century solved the disease of beriberi by adopting a more varied diet for their sailors, which had been based primarily on rice. Grains have traditionally been the lowest cost food source for most people on earth. Potatoes provide more nutrition per acre, India as one example, is increasing potato production.

Health problems in the US plot nicely against time, from when PUFA was massively adopted in the US in the early 20th century.