Peat Is Right About Starch

Ritchie

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If one material can be persorbed I see no good reason to believe other materials are so unique that they can't be. That isn't demonstrated in the animal studies.


I can't read German and don't have access to the full texts so it's true I'm putting some degree of trust in them. I don't think it is misplaced though.
If you come across any solid study showing that normal consumption (involving the eating and chewing) of cooked starch in humans results in significant presorption of starch particles into the blood please post it, I'd be interested in seeing that. So far i've seen no evidence of it apart from very questionable and dated animal studies that involve either uncooked starch or starch particles that are inserted directly into the rectal or gastric tract of an animal, thereby bypassing much of the normal digestive process. That study you posted seems to be suggesting that meat when eaten is presorbed into the blood in the form of meat fibres, and maybe it is, but like you I can't see the study methodology either.
 

Zpol

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It's not hard to do starch a starch free diet. Although if you don't have an illness I'd agree well cooked potatoes and rice are perfectly fine foods.
I personally start the day with salted bananas (organic, extremely ripe, I try for different varieties than the industrialized cavendish whenever possible), coffee, either Impower BCAA's or gelatin, later I have two salted eggs and a large OJ (Uncle Matt's), then for lunch a beef stew or ground beef dish with extremely well cooked veg (celery, kale, collards, italian parsley, etc, basically ones that are high in vit K and minerals), salted dates or raisins plus allergen free organic chocolate chips, then an afternoon snack an apple (organic, extremely ripe only) plus a Wild Zora lamb snack or Salt&Pepper Mighty bar plus coffee, then dinner, carrot salad, some kind of zero fat meat or fish with ghee, OJ or Mexican Coke, Glycine, then another snack after work usually carrot sticks dipped in Coconut Oil mayo and leftover meat from dinner, glass of grape juice mixed with Gerolsteiner water or Nature's Charm caramel sauce on apples for a treat. I try to maintain roughly a 40% carb/30% protein /30% fat macro ratio and never ever let my blood sugar get low. I keep my purse, car, work desk, and to-go bags, stocked with surf sweets gummi bears, meat bars, apples, and/or raisins, honey lozenges. This is totally doable for most people I think.
 

SuperStressed

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It's not hard to do starch a starch free diet. Although if you don't have an illness I'd agree well cooked potatoes and rice are perfectly fine foods.
I personally start the day with salted bananas (organic, extremely ripe, I try for different varieties than the industrialized cavendish whenever possible), coffee, either Impower BCAA's or gelatin, later I have two salted eggs and a large OJ (Uncle Matt's), then for lunch a beef stew or ground beef dish with extremely well cooked veg (celery, kale, collards, italian parsley, etc, basically ones that are high in vit K and minerals), salted dates or raisins plus allergen free organic chocolate chips, then an afternoon snack an apple (organic, extremely ripe only) plus a Wild Zora lamb snack or Salt&Pepper Mighty bar plus coffee, then dinner, carrot salad, some kind of zero fat meat or fish with ghee, OJ or Mexican Coke, Glycine, then another snack after work usually carrot sticks dipped in Coconut Oil mayo and leftover meat from dinner, glass of grape juice mixed with Gerolsteiner water or Nature's Charm caramel sauce on apples for a treat. I try to maintain roughly a 40% carb/30% protein /30% fat macro ratio and never ever let my blood sugar get low. I keep my purse, car, work desk, and to-go bags, stocked with surf sweets gummi bears, meat bars, apples, and/or raisins, honey lozenges. This is totally doable for most people I think.
Ive never found a candy without starch and or glucose syrup (which is made from starch)
 

Zpol

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Ive never found a candy without starch and or glucose syrup (which is made from starch)
Yes, I'm leery about glucose syrup, tapioca syrup, and rice syrup. They are derived from starch but supposedly they are processed using an enzymatic process which breaks down the starch which is then filtered out. But if there is any traces remaining, I don't know.
 

ExCarniv

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It's not hard to do starch a starch free diet. Although if you don't have an illness I'd agree well cooked potatoes and rice are perfectly fine foods.
I personally start the day with salted bananas (organic, extremely ripe, I try for different varieties than the industrialized cavendish whenever possible), coffee, either Impower BCAA's or gelatin, later I have two salted eggs and a large OJ (Uncle Matt's), then for lunch a beef stew or ground beef dish with extremely well cooked veg (celery, kale, collards, italian parsley, etc, basically ones that are high in vit K and minerals), salted dates or raisins plus allergen free organic chocolate chips, then an afternoon snack an apple (organic, extremely ripe only) plus a Wild Zora lamb snack or Salt&Pepper Mighty bar plus coffee, then dinner, carrot salad, some kind of zero fat meat or fish with ghee, OJ or Mexican Coke, Glycine, then another snack after work usually carrot sticks dipped in Coconut Oil mayo and leftover meat from dinner, glass of grape juice mixed with Gerolsteiner water or Nature's Charm caramel sauce on apples for a treat. I try to maintain roughly a 40% carb/30% protein /30% fat macro ratio and never ever let my blood sugar get low. I keep my purse, car, work desk, and to-go bags, stocked with surf sweets gummi bears, meat bars, apples, and/or raisins, honey lozenges. This is totally doable for most people I think.

It is doable, but for a man with high calorie demand, seems too low.

And I found hard to reach 2.8-3k a day without potatoes and rice.

Starch free feels really good on the gut, a person with gut and thyroid issues should try to heal without it, but once you healed and start to be active and your calories requirements are high potatoes are good.
 

SuperStressed

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It is doable, but for a man with high calorie demand, seems too low.

And I found hard to reach 2.8-3k a day without potatoes and rice.

Starch free feels really good on the gut, a person with gut and thyroid issues should try to heal without it, but once you healed and start to be active and your calories requirements are high potatoes are good.
Same issue here but I need even more calories than that. I keep attempting starch-free living, by the end of day 1 I find myself ordering a pizza because I just couldnt meet my energy demands. Its bad because I have bad bacteria and I know starch is likely feeding it yet starving myself wont help either.
 

ExCarniv

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Same issue here but I need even more calories than that. I keep attempting starch-free living, by the end of day 1 I find myself ordering a pizza because I just couldnt meet my energy demands. Its bad because I have bad bacteria and I know starch is likely feeding it yet starving myself wont help either.


I did a week of starch free and lost too much weight while I'm below my ideal weight, I felt really well on the gut and overall, but I can't lose more weight so added potatoes almost daily and rice twice a week to bulk up my calories.
 

kreeese

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ABSOFUCKINLUTELY!! HAHA ONE OF MY CORE PRINCIPLES I HAVE BEEN TEACHIN AND PREACHIN FOR YEARS NOW TO GET LEAN AND HEALTHY IN MY 50S
WEIGHT NEVER CAME BACK...SUPER EZ TO GET LOADS OF CALORIES IN WITHOUT STARCHES GRAINS ETC.
HAPPY NEW YEAR FROM NYC!!!
 

GreekDemiGod

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I find that is hard to reach high caloric demands without starch.
Me too. This is an under-rated aspect when discussing no starch approaches.
I need 3k calories to maintain weight and 3.5k if I am to gain lean muscle mass.
Quite hard to do it without starch. I eat white rice and potatoes as a compromise. I don't eat any other form of starches.
I tried going no starch for digestion and mental benefits , but I will lose weight doing so and I don't want that.

I think no starch is only an option if you're sedentary and don't care about body composition.
 
M

metabolizm

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There's some valuable discussion in this thread. @Ritchie makes the valid point that Ray's concern about starches is based on an old study where rats were fed raw starch. There aren't any human studies showing that cooked starch is at all harmful.
 
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ursidae

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This is a conjecture but I suspect Ray Peat’s first decision was to have milk as a staple and the rest of the diet protocol followed from that. “Milk is the perfect food” is the starting point that everything is built up on, which is why sick and allergic people are being encouraged to push through the issues.

Milk and starch are a horrendous mix so you become starch intolerant —> fruits, you become spacey and unmotivated—> need copious amounts of coffee to offset the opioids, need carrots and mushrooms for the constipation due to opioids/calcium, need thyroid to utilise all the retinol and to have the enzymatic strength to digest the milk, tons of gelatin to balance one of the highest tryptophan foods (milk), antibiotics for the IBS/SIBO due to the natural bacterial content of milk and its incomplete digestion, progesterone DHEA testosterone metergoline to overcome the hormonal imbalance caused by the bio active hormones. It’s an endless chain

The entire diet serves as an antidote to the problems induced by milk. I think this might be one of the reasons for the wide spread starch intolerance here. You’ve got to do the whole eccentric protocol or it doesn’t work
 
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metabolizm

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This is a conjecture but I suspect Ray Peat’s first decision was to have milk as a staple and the rest of the diet protocol followed from that. “Milk is the perfect food” is the starting point that everything is built up on, which is why sick and allergic people are being encouraged to push through the issues.

Milk and starch are a horrendous mix so you become starch intolerant —> fruits, you become spacey and unmotivated—> need copious amounts of coffee to offset the opioids, need carrots and mushrooms for the constipation due to opioids/calcium, need thyroid to utilise all the retinol and to have the enzymatic strength to digest the milk, tons of gelatin to balance one of the highest tryptophan foods (milk), antibiotics for the IBS/SIBO due to the natural bacterial content of milk and its incomplete digestion, progesterone DHEA testosterone metergoline to overcome the hormonal imbalance caused by the bio active hormones. It’s an endless chain

The entire diet serves as an antidote to the problems induced by milk. I think this might be one of the reasons for the wide spread starch intolerance here. You’ve got to do the whole eccentric protocol or it doesn’t work

The need for a thyroid supplement is a dead giveaway that something is wrong. I mean, isn’t that supposed to be the point of the diet - to increase metabolic rate? To improve thyroid function?
 

GreekDemiGod

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The need for a thyroid supplement is a dead giveaway that something is wrong. I mean, isn’t that supposed to be the point of the diet - to increase metabolic rate? To improve thyroid function?
Smh...
Well, show me a diet that makes you go from hypothyroid to having high thyroid function in a short amount of time, and without any form of supplements or hormones
 

GreekDemiGod

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There's some valuable discussion in this thread. @Ritchie makes the valid point that Ray's concern about starches is based on an old study where rats were fed raw starch. There aren't any human studies showing that cooked starch is at all harmful.
From personal experience, for people with digestive issues, starch is endotoxin-promoting. That's the point about starch.
Go with the foods that you digest best, that's Ray's advice.
 

Korven

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Smh...
Well, show me a diet that makes you go from hypothyroid to having high thyroid function in a short amount of time, and without any form of supplements or hormones

This.

You're only gonna spin your wheels trying to fix things naturally. Fixing untreated hypothyroidism with a good diet is like bringing a knife to a gunfight. Of course you shouldn't be completely reckless with using exogenous hormones but I'd rather feel good and be warm, not have SIBO and acne than spend the rest of my life trying to find some magical diet. Also I don't think a Peat diet necessarily means "OJ and milk", some people here do carnivore with some honey/fruits, some do the vertical diet with meat/rice, etc.
 

Tenacity

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Milk and starch are a horrendous mix so you become starch intolerant

Any evidence for this? I handle milk and starch together just fine. In Ray's November 2020 newsletter, he speaks of long-lived people whose diets consisted of milk and bread.
 

YourUniverse

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This is a conjecture but I suspect Ray Peat’s first decision was to have milk as a staple and the rest of the diet protocol followed from that. “Milk is the perfect food” is the starting point that everything is built up on, which is why sick and allergic people are being encouraged to push through the issues.

Milk and starch are a horrendous mix so you become starch intolerant —> fruits, you become spacey and unmotivated—> need copious amounts of coffee to offset the opioids, need carrots and mushrooms for the constipation due to opioids/calcium, need thyroid to utilise all the retinol and to have the enzymatic strength to digest the milk, tons of gelatin to balance one of the highest tryptophan foods (milk), antibiotics for the IBS/SIBO due to the natural bacterial content of milk and its incomplete digestion, progesterone DHEA testosterone metergoline to overcome the hormonal imbalance caused by the bio active hormones. It’s an endless chain

The entire diet serves as an antidote to the problems induced by milk. I think this might be one of the reasons for the wide spread starch intolerance here. You’ve got to do the whole eccentric protocol or it doesn’t work
Whats your experience with antibiotics?
 
M

metabolizm

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Smh...
Well, show me a diet that makes you go from hypothyroid to having high thyroid function in a short amount of time, and without any form of supplements or hormones

I don’t think there is such a diet, but Ray has been eating this way for at least thirty years, and I’m pretty sure he’s been taking thyroid the entire time. Granted, he is an old man now. I’m totally sympathetic to the idea of using a thyroid supplement to get you out of a bind, but I don’t think that’s how Ray uses it, and it’s not how Danny Roddy uses it either. Danny Roddy follows Ray’s diet almost to a T.
 

Birdie

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Have you actually read and listened to Peat, instead of just reading people's interpretations of him? He has said potato is an almost perfect food and has spoken positively about the potato many many times, said that masa Harina is good, said rice with butter would be okay for most people, said slow fermented sourdough bread was probably on par with rice and potatoes. The only people that say things like starch is "anti Peat" are new to Peating and are obsessively orthorexic. The only thing that is "anti Peat" If there was such a thing would be PUFA.

Also "exercise" isn't anti Peat at all... Seriously just read more of his things and listen to his interviews, hold off posting on here for a bit, it wouldn't surprise me if you had only just read thing on this forum and never read an article on his website or listened to an interview. He doesn't like the long distance jogging you see people do with their mouths hanging open gasping in air. Has said many positive things about lifting weights, sprints, a.k.a. building muscle
Thanks for adding this. I think it's always a good idea to go back and read or listen to Ray. I find it easy to wander off and notice it in other people too.
 

ursidae

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Any evidence for this? I handle milk and starch together just fine. In Ray's November 2020 newsletter, he speaks of long-lived people whose diets consisted of milk and bread.
many of the individuals on this forum have a problem with starch and report improvement when experimenting with low/no dairy diets. I suspect the type of flora that thrives on one is problematic when consuming the other. The last time I experimented with dairy I got IBS and digestion of starch took a while to recover
 

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