Is Eating a Peat Diet Instinctual?

[kiran]

You can get potato starch btw. Peatian or not.

 

[Ray-Z]

southern style biscuits 'n' gravy.

A good man, and true!

Thank you, Narouz. That dish is truly one of the finest flowers of American cuisine. Out of respect for my fellow Peatarians, I'll say no more.

I do think a more skilled chef than I could make an excellent, Peat-friendly version of biscuits and gravy. If you just chase down a wild boar and find an appropriate thickener (potato flour?), you've got your gravy. I wonder how the biscuits would turn out...

 

[Ray-Z]

avocado (except as guacamole)

Wha?
Guacamole is the most exalted form of avocado!

My syntax was a little convoluted. I was trying to say that avocado doesn't generally interest me, but guacamole does. I used to eat it a lot. So I agree.

Dang it, why do I always have to hang out here when I'm hungry?

 

[barefooter]

This thread is a bit old, but it really got me thinking about instinct, cravings, taste, and adaptability and it's so incredibly interesting. Before starting Peat, I was crazy in love with vegetables. I absolutely loved steamed veggies (carrot, broccoli, cabbage, etc.) with salt and butter, or even plain. Now that I've started drinking lots of milk and OJ, I have absolutely zero desire to eat vegetables. I'm curious if I go a long time without, and then say try broccoli, will I still think it tastes good. And then, the other question is, why did I always love broccoli growing up so much, if others claim that vegetables are repulsive, and young taste buds know this, before taught otherwise? Maybe I wasn't getting my nutrition met from elsewhere, and my body made a tradeoff, that it could handle the broccoli toxins, because it needed the nutrients, and thus gave me a pleasant taste sensation. It would be very interesting to do a study where you compare how much milk a child drinks to how much they like vegetables. I bet those who drank more milk would have liked vegetables less. I didn't drink much milk growing up, and loved vegetables. Anyone the same, or counter? Maybe we can get a few data points.

This gets into the whole idea of what is an acquired taste. For example, I never liked tomato or avocado growing up, but eventually "acquired" a taste for both. Is this purely psychological--people telling me it's healthy and tasty. May be a factor, but for the trend to start, someone probably had to find the food generally delicious. I haven't done much research on this, but I think our sense of taste is highly adaptable to our food environment, to ensure we can survive with a very wide range of food. If a human was stuck with only broccoli around, it would make sense for the taste buds to adapt and find it more desirable, otherwise the person would starve to death. It's certainly better to take in some nutrients than starve. This is obviously an extreme example, but it illustrates that we have to make tradeoffs on toxin intake vs nutrient intake, and it seems like our sense of taste should adapt.

 

[j.]

Probably you need calcium, and vegetables have some.

 

[messtafarian]

I think it has to do with identifying what are the most healthful and useful nutritional substances in a traditional western diet. Milk, sugar, salt, coffee, orange juice, eggs, and whole meat products are the mainstay of *our* diet, the one we grew up on. Dr Peat's ideas seem to turn on the assumption that people were eating this stuff for a reason and they were healthy and successful at surviving disease based on these foods alone -- in the western diet.

Avocado, sure, but go back to 1950 or so -- or back to the turn of the century. People in western countries had milk, sugar, coffee, eggs, butter, whole meat products, potatoes maybe and fruits in season; and baked goods although they were not standard and you could live without them. Liver pate. Chicken soup. So then you ask, well, why did people *always* eat these foods?

He's really going back to the standard american diet *before* it became adulterated with chemical additives. Meat, starch, coffee, sugar. It's not about instinct - it's about the human intuition, both physiological and social -- to choose what is really nourishing and helpful for survival. People will not choose to eat poison unless they are tricked. They can sell us Smucker's peanut butter and Soyjoy estrogen bars but basic nutrition in the western world goes back to milk, eggs and meat.

 

[Peata]

My diet growing up:

-milk
-sugar
-cold sweetened cereals
-sandwiches
-potato chips (peanut, cottonseed oil, etc.)
-beef
-pork
-salt
-potatoes
-raw tomatoes, carrots, salads
-cooked veggies like green beans, corn, some cabbage now and then
-store-bought baked goods (cookies, cakes, pies, snack cakes)
-cooking fat was margarine or veg. oil
-candy
-ice cream
-sweet ice tea
-some soda
-chocolate
-boxed mac n cheese
-wasn't allowed to drink coffee until age 17 and drank it from then on.

Some good stuff in there, but lots of junk and PUFAs too.

I had some anxiety issues from as far back as I can remember. It got worse the older I got. From puberty on, had acne, oily skin, period problems (PCOS, though I couldn't get it officially diagnosed til I was in my late 20s) I was always slim.

 

[juanitacarlos]

I'm not so big on my "instinct". I don't appear to be very instinctual towards food. I'm pretty sure if I was lost in a forest the first berry I picked would be the most poisonous one and would kill me. I had no idea PUFA was harmful until a few years ago. I thought sugar was bad. I truly believed that.

Nearly all Peat recommended foods are yummy to me. The only one questionable to me is liver, so I make pate out of it because I like pate. I think the OP was on a bender to get everyone to admit they don't actually like milk, cheese, OJ, sugar, seafood etc and we're all kidding ourselves that we like these foods and really just wanted an avocado, lettuce and bacon salad. It felt patronizing to me.

For me, finding Peat and eating to his recommendations is more about science and understanding how the body really works, not going on my instincts because by golly gosh they have been waaaaaaaaay off the mark. I hope to be more attuned to my body as I heal but I'm not quite there yet.

 

[Jupooo]

I found this Thread and hope it's alright to post here although it's so old.. Really interesting question!

Since I changed my diet and took orange juice and milk to university instead of salads and yoghurt some people commented how "disgusting" that would be, especially the milk. Nobody seemed to like it.

I wondered if it's because many of my fellow students are health conscious (I study medicine) and learned that it's bad for you due to estrogen and saturated fat, or if they simply dislike milk. How can a food with such a nutritional value be disgusting? As children, I remember nearly everybody loved cereal with milk, cocoa or even drinking pure milk.

Another question I had.. Why does everybody love bread? And pasta? What about pizza?
I would suggest that it's the combination of components that makes those dishes so delicious..
The pizza crust with salt, oil and flour.. Well it's okay. Topped with tomato sauce? Still not the most appealing thing. But adding some kind of meat, cheese, some veggies, a pinch of sugar to the sauce, some herbs.. That's what makes a pizza that great!
I think that happens often to foods we naturally would not like that much. Adding dressing and cheese to salads, fry vegetables in oil, spreading butter, cheese or meat on bread, etc.

That's not the case with Peatstyle foods.. Fruits, milk, meat, eggs.. I love all of them with no/ only a few additives to them!

 

[jyb]

How can a food with such a nutritional value be disgusting? As children, I remember nearly everybody loved cereal with milk, cocoa or even drinking pure milk.

I also wonder why we seem to have lost appetite for milk so quickly, it seems more pronounced than cheese or yogurt. I noticed myself that I'm a lot more attracted to the taste of quality milk, whereas I have to put in some efforts to drink significant amount of store milk. Maybe the plastics or hormones from a stressed cows or pasteurization makes the milk lose its taste.

Keep it in mind that the trend to dislike animal products is a lot more general than just milk. We became used to plastics and aesthetics of processed foods.

 

[Such_Saturation]

Even very famous milk brands at the store taste burnt to me, it is quite noticeable.

 

[j.]

Since I changed my diet and took orange juice and milk to university instead of salads and yoghurt some people commented how "disgusting" that would be, especially the milk. Nobody seemed to like it.

Hypothyroid people generally don't like milk and have trouble digesting it.

 

[j.]

I also wonder why we seem to have lost appetite for milk so quickly, it seems more pronounced than cheese or yogurt.

I think it's partly because the pasteurization and especially the ultrapasteurization process make it less digestible and more likely to just sit in the intestine producing gas.

Cheese and yogurt are already partially digested. Some varieties don't even have lactose, so that removes a burden to the digestive system.

Additives of vitamins play an underestimated role as well, I think. You feel bad after drinking milk? Maybe it was the micellized vitamin A in the fat-free product.

 

[Jupooo]

I also wonder why we seem to have lost appetite for milk so quickly, it seems more pronounced than cheese or yogurt. I noticed myself that I'm a lot more attracted to the taste of quality milk, whereas I have to put in some efforts to drink significant amount of store milk. Maybe the plastics or hormones from a stressed cows or pasteurization makes the milk lose its taste.

Well, store bought milk may not be the best and tastiest Option for sure. But I still like it though (in Germany, there are no vitamins added to the milk) especially if it's in glass bottles.
I can understand people who don't drink milk because they believe in the "saturated fat is evil"-nonsense. But I found it interesting how repulsed they were from the taste. I always liked milk but did not drink it due to health reasons.

I think that happened to me the other way round. I always really hated the flavor of avocados, spinach and other "super foods" but ate it nevertheless and got used to the taste, in the end I really believed that I liked those foods. And secretly I envied everybody who would say that feta cheese was NOT the best part of a green salad

 

[charlie]

I gravitated towards milk and oj all my life. Greens, avocado, sprouts..no way... :? When "they" convinced me to take my sugar away. Everything went south, fast.

 

[Such_Saturation]

When some oranges or peaches or nectarines are nice 'n' ripe I pretty much cannot stop eating until they're gone.

 

[charlie]

A really good peach is incredible.

 

[narouz]

I know firsthand how one can mistake programming for instinct.

When I was young and my girlfriend talked me into becoming a vegetarian,
our (vegetarian) group would talk about how gross it was to consider eating a cheeseburger.
We were so over and beyond and above all that.
I ate one and felt kinda sick.
In retrospect, I propagandized myself with the wonders of vegetarianism
and the horribleness of eating animal foods.
And my mind/imagination changed my perception of what I took to be "instinct."

 

[SQu]

nice thread! Important too. Seeing as reading biofeedback is key on this approach. Knowing the difference between pulse high from adrenalin or good effects of thyroid. Morning temps high from adrenalin or health improvements. Difference between thyroid not working and making you slightly more hypothyroid. All this has helped me soooo much.
But then there's appetite - a trickier thing altogether. Response to a food can be helpful, or brainwashed. I wonder how your body can know that a food will disagree in your gut before you even eat it. Sometimes your taste buds will tell you that what you're eating is exactly what you need today. Other times the signals are not so clear.
Going back to childhood favourites should be helpful then. One of the big advantages of this approach is that it's almost exactly what I ate and loved as a child. Fruit. Eggs. Milk. Cheese. Butter. We had a peach orchard, chickens, cow next door, father who refused margarine. Mother who overcooked vegetables - only now do I.appreciate that!
And why do people find milk disgusting? For those without tolerance issues, maybe fashion plays a role. Because right now the cool thing to say about milk is that it's for babies and we're weird to drink it as adults.

 

[uuy8778yyi]

Yes.

people who experiment with all the diets,

end at the ray peat diet. This is what I believe.

I have never wanted
walnut pate, avocados, sprout salad, spirulina smoothie, and sprout juice.
living on red meat, almond flour and boiled broccoli (paleo diet) , no thank you