Peat Diet&Pleasure: Your Personal Experience; No Discussion

[frustrated]

Re: Peat Diet&Pleasure: Your Personal Experience; No Discuss

The everything in moderation argument is actually quite good. Assuming you have no ultimate knowledge about nutrition, it prevents catastrophic results e.g. you just eat soy protein and baked beans and get bone loss in your 30s. It is analogous to taking out insurance.

 

[frustrated]

Re: Peat Diet&Pleasure: Your Personal Experience; No Discuss

The only thing difficult about a "strict Peat diet" is the starch avoidance. I don't derive much pleasure from eating so, even though starch meals are the tastiest foods, for me it's not a problem. But even if I did, I would still avoid starch because I actually have good reasons to.

From what I've read of your posts you don't eat starch because
a) you think it made you gain weight
b) peat says its not an ideal food

I don't think this is enough of a reason for you to deprive yourself of a potato a day, or a baked bean meal every weekend.

 

[pboy]

Re: Peat Diet&Pleasure: Your Personal Experience; No Discuss

Narouz, I think when people say 'moderate diet' they basically mean "don't make me feel bad about what I eat"...I don't think they actually care at all about what you eat actually, but when
they sense the notion that you eat a certain way because it is somehow objectively better, then it makes them feel either guilty or defensive about what they do. For example, if you said "I have to eat this way because I have stomach issues and my doctor recommended it", they wouldn't encourage you to change or 'be moderate' or anything, but if you say that you eat a certain way because other stuff is 'toxic' or 'inhumane', people get defensive. I literally have found that the best solution to all diet and food issues regarding social situations...just say you have some kind of medical problem and that takes care of everything...but its always best not to resort to that unless the people and situation demand it.

Typical American moderate diet is yea, some of everything basically...most people don't even have any clue what is in their food, whether its pork beef, vegetable oil or butter, additives, what the colorings/gums/conditionors are derived from, they don't care either as long as its affordable, taste good, and is convenient. I don't blame them as this is ultimately what everyone wants, and what the Peat diet actually encourages, just obviously with a higher level of intelligence and slightly more emphasis on what to select.

My experience eating a Peat based diet has been pretty much nothing but positive, but since I begin in a major health deficit its hard to quantify exactly what has changed so far. The taste, convenience, affordability, joy, and sense are all things that I love about eating a Peat diet and have benefitted from. Some things I have not done, or cannot do yet, are consume dairy and supplements. Supplements I just don't believe are necessary, not that they're bad, but I ultimately want to figure out how to normalize my body with food only. A major difficulty I have adjusting to the Peat diet, and a cause for quite a bit of a need of compensation, is that I cannot comfortably digest milk, which makes it very hard for me to get adequate protein and I barely get enough calcium, as well as I'm sure the dairy is providing a good dose of iodine and b12 helping with energy levels. I compensate with nettle / horsetail tea for the calcium and just try to eat enough other stuff to get enough protein but I still manage to only get up to about 40g a day. I might try to reintroduce dairy slowly...its just difficult because I don't want to suffer while readjusting. Also...I'm really trying to stay as vegetarian as possible, meaning I don't supplement gelatin either (contributing further to protein difficulties). Am I shooting myself in the foot?

 

[narouz]

Re: Peat Diet&Pleasure: Your Personal Experience; No Discuss

Typical American moderate diet is yea, some of everything basically...most people don't even have any clue what is in their food, whether its pork beef, vegetable oil or butter, additives, what the colorings/gums/conditionors are derived from, they don't care either as long as its affordable, taste good, and is convenient. I don't blame them as this is ultimately what everyone wants, and what the Peat diet actually encourages, just obviously with a higher level of intelligence and slightly more emphasis on what to select.

pboy-
I'm gonna have to respectfully disagree with you on your interpretation of a good Peat diet.
I just don't see it as, basically, a typical American diet "with a higher level of intelligence" etc.
In fact, my personal interpretation is
that a good or pretty strict or optimal Peat diet
is in fact an "extreme" diet or a very immoderate diet
judged from the perspective of a "typical American diet."

Am I shooting myself in the foot?

You made a good start at painting a picture for me of how you conceive of a Peat diet,
what kind of stuff you eat,
and how you feel about it in terms of pleasure.
Thanks.
But I wish you would go further, be a bit more detailed,
then I could make a better reply about your foot and any possible shooting thereof.

 

[narouz]

Re: Peat Diet&Pleasure: Your Personal Experience; No Discuss

The only thing difficult about a "strict Peat diet" is the starch avoidance.

frustrated-
Personally, I wouldn't assess that the difficulty begins and ends there.
Maybe we can get some more people doing a detailed response
especially with regard to pleasure/difficulties.
As I say: we don't have much data in that area,
and I'd be very interested to learn how other Peatians experience their diet in that regard.

(I don't believe I've had the pleasure of reading your post on the topic, frustrated. )

From what I've read of your posts you don't eat starch because
a) you think it made you gain weight
b) peat says its not an ideal food
I don't think this is enough of a reason for you to deprive yourself of a potato a day, or a baked bean meal every weekend.

Yes, I do take your point.
I am serious about my health, though.
And I do very much like being...not fat.
For me, the jury is still out about how much starch one can eat
and not get fat.
This does go back to the question here about diet & pleasure:
we're talking about how much pleasure do you need or want from a diet,
and how much are you willing to sacrifice for health concerns.

Again, I would like to hear how others deal with these somewhat murky, subjective areas
of the Peat diet experience

 

[Swandattur]

Re: Peat Diet&Pleasure: Your Personal Experience; No Discuss

Oo, I want to play this game!
Some of my earliest food memories are these. One is where I'm standing next to my Mom in the kitchen begging for pieces of raw beef that she's getting ready to cook. Of course it could be me as a cat in my past life, I guess. :) This was in the fifties, and she got meat at a market where she knew the butcher. Another memory is of me below table level peering up at the scrambled eggs on toast at a place called "Sandy Shack" on the beach in New Smyrna Florida. I can still smell it. I have another memory of loving liver, but then I must have over eaten on it and couldn't stand it until as a teenager I had liver and onions at a restaurant in our small town that was run by the Frank family who were also friends of our family. They were some good cooks. Some descendants still are. My Mom had to change her way of cooking to what was then thought to be healthy for high blood pressure that my Dad had. Oh well. She was not very happy about it.
As a teenager I became interested in cooking. Mostly I cooked deserts. When I left home and got married I really got in to cooking fairly elaborate meals at times. I really liked trying out different recipes. In college a friend introduced me to Rouladen and that German spinach rolled dumpling kind of thing (don't know how to spell it). Very delicious. I still cook Rouladen. I think she also got me started on Saurbraten, more yummy! Later we got a Vietnamese sister who was the sister of a Vietnamese guy I knew in college and introduced to my family. She was fifteen when she left Vietnam and sixteen when she came to live with us. Having her join our family has really enriched our lives. Later their whole family emigrated to the U.S. Anyway, she introduced us to some really good Vietnamese dishes. It seemed amazing that she could remember how to make these good dishes considering her age when she left Vietnam. Of course, I think many members of the family participated in the preparation of meals. So, she probably had a good amount of experience, and what she hadn't cooked she had watched the preparation of. Of course she's a really intelligent capable person and could do pretty much whatever she set out to do.
My Grandma and Grandpa used to cook barbecued chicken from a recipe from cousins in Georgia. I still make that barbecue. My Grandma also used to make homemade bread rolls, some of which were cinnamon sticky, buttery, sugary rolls. A dish she always made at Christmas dinner was ambrosia, which was really cut up oranges from their trees with some sugar and coconut. She made a separate bowl for me, because I didn't like coconut at all. Every year the plain bowl got bigger and the coconut bowl got smaller. I remember as small child sitting at my place next to Grandpa eating two slices of bread with corn syrup poured on. Oops! We also had pecan pie once or twice a year made with pecans from their trees.
Another great memory I have is of the huge lime tree my parents had planted in the back yard. I loved to sit hidden underneath it and smell the limes or the blossoms at those times of year. We also had guava trees for a while in the back yard. Those are food of the gods! I think I could live quite happily if it would work on just guavas.
Another food memory of our old neighborhood was being inscensed that my friend's mother made them drink dry low fat powdered milk instead of whole fresh. My sister remembers that, too about their house. A good thing I had at a friend's house was some barbecued venison we made. One time my parents took us to a restaurant where we ate really good lobster. One of the best pizzas I ever ate was the Pizza we got from the Officer's Club after swimming at the beach. My Dad used to work for the Space Program then. Most of the people in my old neighborhood worked in one capacity or another for the space program. The other best pizza I ever had was the pizza we kids got during the time my Dad was in the hospital with a broken leg in North Florida when a horse fell on him.
Then there was the Alabama interlude when I was seven and got to eat really good Swedish cinnamon bread that Mrs. Peterson was always making next door. We also dug potatoes from the field in back of us after they had harvested. These were left in the ground. So, we ate those. Besides Mrs. Peterson's bread there was taffy my mom made from fresh cane syrup that came from a nearby field. I remember the cane grinder.
Well, this got pretty long. Anyway, this shows that I was a food hound from way back. No question about it.

 

[narouz]

Re: Peat Diet&Pleasure: Your Personal Experience; No Discuss

Oo, I want to play this game!
Some of my earliest food memories are these. One is where I'm standing next to my Mom in the kitchen begging for pieces of raw beef that she's getting ready to cook. Of course it could be me as a cat in my past life, I guess. :) This was in the fifties, and she got meat at a market where she knew the butcher. Another memory is of me below table level peering up at the scrambled eggs on toast at a place called "Sandy Shack" on the beach in New Smyrna Florida. I can still smell it. I have another memory of loving liver, but then I must have over eaten on it and couldn't stand it until as a teenager I had liver and onions at a restaurant in our small town that was run by the Frank family who were also friends of our family. They were some good cooks. Some descendants still are. My Mom had to change her way of cooking to what was then thought to be healthy for high blood pressure that my Dad had. Oh well. She was not very happy about it.
As a teenager I became interested in cooking. Mostly I cooked deserts. When I left home and got married I really got in to cooking fairly elaborate meals at times. I really liked trying out different recipes. In college a friend introduced me to Rouladen and that German spinach rolled dumpling kind of thing (don't know how to spell it). Very delicious. I still cook Rouladen. I think she also got me started on Saurbraten, more yummy! Later we got a Vietnamese sister who was the sister of a Vietnamese guy I knew in college and introduced to my family. She was fifteen when she left Vietnam and sixteen when she came to live with us. Having her join our family has really enriched our lives. Later their whole family emigrated to the U.S. Anyway, she introduced us to some really good Vietnamese dishes. It seemed amazing that she could remember how to make these good dishes considering her age when she left Vietnam. Of course, I think many members of the family participated in the preparation of meals. So, she probably had a good amount of experience, and what she hadn't cooked she had watched the preparation of. Of course she's a really intelligent capable person and could do pretty much whatever she set out to do.
My Grandma and Grandpa used to cook barbecued chicken from a recipe from cousins in Georgia. I still make that barbecue. My Grandma also used to make homemade bread rolls, some of which were cinnamon sticky, buttery, sugary rolls. A dish she always made at Christmas dinner was ambrosia, which was really cut up oranges from their trees with some sugar and coconut. She made a separate bowl for me, because I didn't like coconut at all. Every year the plain bowl got bigger and the coconut bowl got smaller. I remember as small child sitting at my place next to Grandpa eating two slices of bread with corn syrup poured on. Oops! We also had pecan pie once or twice a year made with pecans from their trees.
Another great memory I have is of the huge lime tree my parents had planted in the back yard. I loved to sit hidden underneath it and smell the limes or the blossoms at those times of year. We also had guava trees for a while in the back yard. Those are food of the gods! I think I could live quite happily if it would work on just guavas.
Another food memory of our old neighborhood was being inscensed that my friend's mother made them drink dry low fat powdered milk instead of whole fresh. My sister remembers that, too about their house. A good thing I had at a friend's house was some barbecued venison we made. One time my parents took us to a restaurant where we ate really good lobster. One of the best pizzas I ever ate was the Pizza we got from the Officer's Club after swimming at the beach. My Dad used to work for the Space Program then. Most of the people in my old neighborhood worked in one capacity or another for the space program. The other best pizza I ever had was the pizza we kids got during the time my Dad was in the hospital with a broken leg in North Florida when a horse fell on him.
Then there was the Alabama interlude when I was seven and got to eat really good Swedish cinnamon bread that Mrs. Peterson was always making next door. We also dug potatoes from the field in back of us after they had harvested. These were left in the ground. So, we ate those. Besides Mrs. Peterson's bread there was taffy my mom made from fresh cane syrup that came from a nearby field. I remember the cane grinder.
Well, this got pretty long. Anyway, this shows that I was a food hound from way back. No question about it.

Swandattur-
That is a wonderfully rich and detailed description of your past regarding food and pleasure!
I enjoyed reading it very much--I could almost smell and taste the foods you mention!
Thank you.
I wish now you would update your experiences,
bring us up to the present and
your Peat eating experiences.
If you have trouble getting going,
just look back at the initial post in the thread
and think about some of the questions and "thought experiments" there
and start by responding to those if you like....

 

[Swandattur]

Re: Peat Diet&Pleasure: Your Personal Experience; No Discuss

Writing about it was really good for me. It almost seems like in feeling better, the physical change results in a mental reassessment that takes you back to when you felt better before. I do intend to write about the other aspects. Thanks for the compliment.

 

[Swandattur]

Re: Peat Diet&Pleasure: Your Personal Experience; No Discuss

Starch used to be my favorite food. Actually, bread of all kinds was my favoritest favorite. I could mostly take or leave beans. Refried beans pretty good, baked beans, good, other beans I would never have missed unless they could be eaten safely as an alternative starch. I did like really good French fries, and an occasional baked potato is pleasant. Love hush puppies. However, It appears I don't do well on starches.
In my twenties I gained a little weight, and In my thirties I gained more. I tried to diet but it was like Garfield said, "die with a T." I would be so hungry, and I couldn't stop thinking about food. I would manage to lose some weight, but I was unable to stay with it. I began to notice that starches seemed to be my downfall. It didn't occur to me to try not eating any starches. I gradually gained more weight.
When I went on the low carb diet for mild diabetes, I was hoping other problems such as insomnia and lingering depression would clear up if I controlled that and lost weight. Well, I did lose weight, but many of you know the down side. Maybe I'm losing the thread of what I should be talking about.
Staying off starches and eating the closest to Peat that I can manage is... Well, first of all I am allergic to milk and gelatin. So, that means I am not entirely eating Peatwise. I eat meat instead of gelatin and milk or much dairy. I take calcium supplements. I do balance my meat with fruit and sugar. I eat plenty of salt. I don't eat much food that comes mixed, except sometimes barbecue out and sometimes organic ketchup and some mustard. I drink coffee in the morning with lots of sugar and half and half and/or this canned Brazilian Cream that I hope does not contain carrageenan. This amount of dairy in coffee doesn't seem to be a problem. I also eat butter. Off and on I've tried coconut oil as food, but stopped again because I think I may be a little allergic. I love salt on things or just mixed with sugar sometimes.
If I am having a hard time mood-wise, I find it very hard to shop in the grocery store and hard to think I have to stay away from so many foods. When I'm feeling good, I can practically skip through the grocery store, maybe even thinking how convenient it is not to have to go down most of those middle rows. Well some times, anyway, but it's not a problem. I'm just happy to feel so good and not feel hungry all the time. Saying what I buy in the grocery is probably the best way to explain what I eat. I skip the bread and go get some eggs, then I get some half and half and coffee. I have to skip all the rest of the dairy, which is a little disheartening at times. I may get some bacon. Then I go by the meat case. I might get some soup bone kind of meat for someone else, but I just can't eat it without consequences. So, I get what looks good in beef, maybe some thin sliced round steak, maybe in what appears to be a more organic choice. I may get chicken breasts, because if you can't have cheese, you need some alternative to continual beef. I might get frozen shrimp. There isn't likely any fish that's good. If I'm in a bad mood,I may start grumbling to myself about lousy no good grocery stores with **** for food! I start imagining what if I completely lose it here and start yelling and screaming and kicking things? Probably not good, don't go there. However, in a good mood I go down an aisle ( why is that word spelled with an 'S'?, really, why?) and get some organic applesauce and then some dates and any other dried fruit that has no bad oil on it. Next, I might get some raw sugar, and I know that brown sugar isn't the best, but I need it, and it doesn't seem to bother me. I go over to the produce, picking up some organic real apple juice on the way, and then get whatever seems okay. I get mushrooms, grape tomatoes, onions limes or lemons, maybe butter lettuce or baby spinach leaves. I know the last two are not preferred, but they make me feel good to eat. I get whatever fruit appears well ripened. I might get summer squash if it looks good and not old. Over at the frozen foods, I might get some guava, or guanabana for smoothies. Other things I might pick up are peach jam, or pepper jelly, or Worcestershire sauce. All done!
At the health food store I find other things like macadamia oil and Publix has Nestle's Creme'de Leite.

 

[Swandattur]

Re: Peat Diet&Pleasure: Your Personal Experience; No Discuss

I forgot a few things. I think the 'everything in moderation is a good rule if you have no idea what's good and what isn't. Of course, there would be some things that all diet people say to avoid. Transfats are universally thought bad, and they are really a fake food, so you could be sure that is a good one to avoid.
I didn't say what I make with the foods I get. I may cook the thin round steak as a steak and make a sauce with butter or ghee, Worcestershire, Krazy salt, Louisiana Hot sauce, and raw sugar. Or I might make German Steak Rolls with bacon, (pre cooked) little onion, mustard, raw sugar, dill pickle, salt and pepper. Roll up and cook in oven until tender. If I do cook chicken breasts, I make a sauce with some of the pepper jelly, peach jelly, dried peppers, dried shallots, Krazy salt, and the butter from the pan after browning the chicken. I may eat the chicken on a bed of butter lettuce. With the beef, I might make a spinach salad with crumbled up crystalysed ginger, real bacon bits, Krazy salt, (I no longer use the 'original' because they've added too much oregano or something. I use one of the other flavors.)
Crushed vitamin C since lately vinegar makes my nose stuffy, macadamia oil, honey, and a little raw onion, and maybe some apple juice. Sometimes I have shrimp with a butter and Louisiana hot sauce and ketchup sauce. For snacks I eat raw sugar coated dates, fresh fruit either raw or cooked in butter and raw sugar. I snack on some other dried fruits as well. I get guava paste and cut it up and coat with raw sugar. I've been eating one egg cooked in butter with my coffee lately, and some fruit. I drink some tea with lemon. I was eating lots of oranges when we had fresh ones off the tree. Lately that's how the diet looks. All these things taste good to me and keep me from being hungry when I shouldn't be. If I feel pretty good (not depressed at all), then I am pretty happy with my diet.
It's hard to imagine going back to eating whatever, because I was having so much trouble with that. I know I have a problem with any starch. If I stay off starch it looks like my blood sugar stays down.

 

[narouz]

Re: Peat Diet&Pleasure: Your Personal Experience; No Discuss

I forgot a few things. I think the 'everything in moderation is a good rule if you have no idea what's good and what isn't. Of course, there would be some things that all diet people say to avoid. Transfats are universally thought bad, and they are really a fake food, so you could be sure that is a good one to avoid.
I didn't say what I make with the foods I get. I may cook the thin round steak as a steak and make a sauce with butter or ghee, Worcestershire, Krazy salt, Louisiana Hot sauce, and raw sugar. Or I might make German Steak Rolls with bacon, (pre cooked) little onion, mustard, raw sugar, dill pickle, salt and pepper. Roll up and cook in oven until tender. If I do cook chicken breasts, I make a sauce with some of the pepper jelly, peach jelly, dried peppers, dried shallots, Krazy salt, and the butter from the pan after browning the chicken. I may eat the chicken on a bed of butter lettuce. With the beef, I might make a spinach salad with crumbled up crystalysed ginger, real bacon bits, Krazy salt, (I no longer use the 'original' because they've added too much oregano or something. I use one of the other flavors.)
Crushed vitamin C since lately vinegar makes my nose stuffy, macadamia oil, honey, and a little raw onion, and maybe some apple juice. Sometimes I have shrimp with a butter and Louisiana hot sauce and ketchup sauce. For snacks I eat raw sugar coated dates, fresh fruit either raw or cooked in butter and raw sugar. I snack on some other dried fruits as well. I get guava paste and cut it up and coat with raw sugar. I've been eating one egg cooked in butter with my coffee lately, and some fruit. I drink some tea with lemon. I was eating lots of oranges when we had fresh ones off the tree. Lately that's how the diet looks. All these things taste good to me and keep me from being hungry when I shouldn't be. If I feel pretty good (not depressed at all), then I am pretty happy with my diet.
It's hard to imagine going back to eating whatever, because I was having so much trouble with that. I know I have a problem with any starch. If I stay off starch it looks like my blood sugar stays down.

You should be a food writer/critic, Swandattur.

Having been, as you describe it, such a "food hound,"
and having eaten such a diverse and sensual diet,
I am curious how you would respond to the Thought Experiments (in the original post). :)

 

[Swandattur]

Re: Peat Diet&Pleasure: Your Personal Experience; No Discuss

Not sure what the original post was. Food, at least in my family, is naturally connected to things about family. Luckily, I don't seem to have any associations with any dinner time tensions, like the time my youngest sister kept chattering on about something that obviously was pushing the envelope of my father's tolerance. Luckily he didn't blow. Also, using limes in food can take me back to sitting under that lime tree in the back yard as a kid.

 

[narouz]

Re: Peat Diet&Pleasure: Your Personal Experience; No Discuss

Not sure what the original post was. Food, at least in my family, is naturally connected to things about family. Luckily, I don't seem to have any associations with any dinner time tensions, like the time my youngest sister kept chattering on about something that obviously was pushing the envelope of my father's tolerance. Luckily he didn't blow. Also, using limes in food can take me back to sitting under that lime tree in the back yard as a kid.

It's cool that food was a unifying force in your family.
Seems like lime hasn't found its way into American cuisine
as it has with many Asian and Indian cuisines.

The original post is here:
http://www.raypeatforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1503

Here are the "Thought Experiments" suggested.
Only if you feel like it.

Thought Experiment #1:

Imagine that tomorrow we get a newsletter from Dr. Peat.
In it he says that he has shifted his opinion even more towards
the statement he has already made about diet:
that one should eat primarily to raise metabolism, rather than eating specific foods.
Peat now says he believes the following is the best path to great health:
don't even worry about metabolism; rather, just stay true to your Appetite, your Desire for foods.
In other words, Peat now advises to eat whatever you Want.
Eat for desire, pleasure, variety, satisfaction, etc.
There is no need--in fact it will be unhealthy--to worry or restrict yourself
when it comes to grains or vegetables or even PUFA.
Peat no longer, in this thought experiment, places much importance on that.
The healthiest foods for you, he says,
will be the most delicious.
Just be true to and be guided by what you Want.

With that imagined Peat shift in mind,
please address in your response these kinds of questions:
How much, if any, do you think you might change your diet?
Do you think you would still stick very closely
to the Peat diet you had been eating,
because you have come to feel that it is indeed, say,
the most delicious and satisfying diet?
Or do you think you might include other kinds of foods,
or move away from the foods you had been eating?

(If you have any qualms or difficulties about entering into and responding to
such imagined scenarios--no problem. Just say that this is the case and, if you like, explain why.)


Thought Experiment #2:

Let's imagine that a writer for the New Yorker magazine comes to our site
and asks members about a Peat diet.
Let's imagine that this reporter has already written a glowing article
about the health benefits of a Peat diet.

Now he is here to gather information about
the relative pleasure (or non-pleasure) of a Peat diet.
He puts his question to you in this form:

"How would you describe to our (the New Yorker's) readers
what you guess they would experience if they tried a fairly strict Peat diet--
not in terms of health benefits,
but just in terms of
how they would most likely experience the diet's relative
pleasure, variety, ease, difficulty, deliciousness, restrictiveness, freedom, etc?"

So please try to imagine what your answer
to the imagined reporter might be
and weave that into your response.

(Of course, such a question calls upon you to form some notion
of what a typical or average New Yorker reader would be like in terms of diet and pleasure.
It is obvious that most such readers will be a part of the developed world,
and probably will tend to have a decent amount of money.
Beyond that, you will just need to form a rough estimate of what such people are like
in terms of their food preferences.
I would think they would be like many of the people we know in our day-to-day experience.
And again, as with both of the thought experiments,
if you have any qualms or difficulties about entering into and responding to
such imagined scenarios--
no problem. Just say that this is the case and, if you like, explain why.)

 

[Swandattur]

Re: Peat Diet&Pleasure: Your Personal Experience; No Discuss

It's pretty hard to suspend disbelief well enough to imagine Peat saying, "Oh well, throw out all that other dietary stuff I recommended and start eating whatever you feel like." I could imagine he might learn something new that would make him adjust a few of his recommendations, but not the whole thing to the point where he he said eat whatever you feel like. The only way I could imagine that is if you added a sci-fi scenario where people gained the knowledge and ability to produce all the foods people eat in a healthy form. So, starches would work like fruit or something like that. The thing is people can probably adjust their notions of what they think is good. I like all sorts of food. I don't think I could adjust to, say, thinking a traditional Eskimo diet tasted good. Maybe you have to grow up with that one. When I'm feeling pretty good, I don't seem to miss pizza and bread and other stuff. I like to have enough variety to make food interesting and flavorful. I would like it if I could eat at least some foods at some restaurants, because it's nice not to feel too restricted. I think the better you feel the better you can adjust to any restriction. If Somehow magically any food was made healthy, it would probably be my nature to eat all sorts of things. I think, though, that liking a food is connected with your perception of how it makes you feel. So, it's hard to divorce one from the other.
I guess what I'm saying is I like variety, but I definitely want to feel good, so I might be attracted to those lovely red berries or those pretty speckled mushrooms, but they aren't food, they are poison! Just look, don't touch.

 

[narouz]

Re: Peat Diet&Pleasure: Your Personal Experience; No Discuss

Swandattur-
Yes, I admit, it is a tall order to imagine Peat saying that (Thought Experiment #1).

What about "Thought Experiment #2"?
What would you tell the New Yorker magazine's reporter?
(Again, just if you're in the mood.)

Thought Experiment #2:

Let's imagine that a writer for the New Yorker magazine comes to our site
and asks members about a Peat diet.
Let's imagine that this reporter has already written a glowing article
about the health benefits of a Peat diet.

Now he is here to gather information about
the relative pleasure (or non-pleasure) of a Peat diet.
He puts his question to you in this form:

"How would you describe to our (the New Yorker's) readers
what you guess they would experience if they tried a fairly strict Peat diet--
not in terms of health benefits,
but just in terms of
how they would most likely experience the diet's relative
pleasure, variety, ease, difficulty, deliciousness, restrictiveness, freedom, etc?"

So please try to imagine what your answer
to the imagined reporter might be
and weave that into your response.

(Of course, such a question calls upon you to form some notion
of what a typical or average New Yorker reader would be like in terms of diet and pleasure.
It is obvious that most such readers will be a part of the developed world,
and probably will tend to have a decent amount of money.
Beyond that, you will just need to form a rough estimate of what such people are like
in terms of their food preferences.
I would think they would be like many of the people we know in our day-to-day experience.
And again, as with both of the thought experiments,
if you have any qualms or difficulties about entering into and responding to
such imagined scenarios--
no problem. Just say that this is the case and, if you like, explain why.)

 

[Swandattur]

Re: Peat Diet&Pleasure: Your Personal Experience; No Discuss

Looks like my last post got lost. I think I mostly said we need a Ray Peat grocery store to maximize all the things you mentioned. The food tastes good. It's easy to fix, but not always easy to find. Without the Peat grocery store it can be limited. Most of the food in the real grocery store is out, but lots of it isn't that good anyway. It is tricky finding okay food in a restaurant. One important thing I've noticed about being on this diet is this: I rarely ever go off my food. I don't get tired of food like I used to. I think it has more quality now. I enjoy it more than before.

 

[Swandattur]

Re: Peat Diet&Pleasure: Your Personal Experience; No Discuss

Hey! Yeah Ray Peat's Grocery or Ray Peat's Market.

 

[narouz]

Re: Peat Diet&Pleasure: Your Personal Experience; No Discuss

Hey! Yeah Ray Peat's Grocery or Ray Peat's Market.

I wonder if one will ever spring up!

 

[Swandattur]

Re: Peat Diet&Pleasure: Your Personal Experience; No Discuss

It might catch on in Seatle Washington. They go for fresh healthy foods big time.

 

[gretchen]

Re: Peat Diet&Pleasure: Your Personal Experience; No Discuss

frustrated--

Oh...I forgot I wanted respond to one other point made by Asimov in your quote from him above:

I don't think it's good to be extreme about anything, including diets.

Ah...the argument for moderation.
This used to drive me crazy with an old girlfriend.
She would say my various diets were obviously stupid and wrong.
Her basis for arguing that way was always:
you should eat moderately, like I do.

To me, this is a patently weak argument masquerading in the dressed up language ("moderation")
as a high-toned, intellectually compelling one.
It is the same as saying: don't eat a weird diet.
Eat a normal diet.
Eat what most people eat.

Or, one could question the implications of such a "moderate" diet this way,
as I did:
In order to eat a moderate diet
would one, presumably:
-eat some home-cooked food, and also (to be moderate) some fast food?
-eat some raw food, and also some cooked food?
-eat some meat, but also eat some vegetables?
-eat some PUFA-free foods, but balance that--for moderation--with some high-PUFA foods?
-eat some sugar, but also eat some of the normal modern sweeteners like Splenda and aspartame?
-eat some fruits, but balance that with pork consumption?

Yes, moderation remains very popular, especially with middle aged females.