Ray Peat Diet, Food Choices, and General Guidelines

Also read: Notes Toward an "Optimal Peat Diet" | Ray Peat Forum

The information below is pulled from other sites. We are in the process of putting together our own chart and food recommendation list at the link above based on Ray Peat philosophies.


*Graphic above is used with permission from Steven Smith.

Proteins:
Daily protein should be at least 80 grams, preferably 100 if you are working or otherwise active. An egg has about 6 grams, a quart of milk about 32 grams, meat, cheese, and fish are usually about 20% protein, so a pound would be enough for a day. It's important to have fruit or other carbohydrate with the protein for efficient metabolism. Milk, cheese, eggs, shellfish are good protein sources, and potato protein is high in quality, if the potato is very well cooked and eaten with butter or cream. Although potatoes contain only about 2% protein, a kilogram of potato has roughly the protein value of a liter of milk (which is 3% protein), because of its high quality. Unless you are buying eggs from a verified grass-fed, free range source he recommends limiting them to one or two a day, and making sure to have plenty of carbohydrate around the same time to prevent sugar crash.

Meats like ground beef, steak, liver, and pork chops are rich in cysteine, which “turns off” the thyroid gland as soon as your body uses up it’s glycogen and ideally shouldn't be your main source of protein. Muscle meats should be eaten with the gelatin it comes with, or supplemental gelatin (see below), to balance out an anti-thyroid amino acid called tryptophan (which is also found in whey protein formulations). Traditionally, muscle meats are eaten with the fat, skin and the gelatin that they come with, so this is mostly an issue in first-world countries where we have protein powders and pure muscle meats readily available. Chicken liver contains such a small amount of fat it's okay to have in addition to or instead of beef liver (which should be consumed weekly). Pork or chicken every 7- 10 days is okay if your metabolic rate (thyroid function) is good. When chicken is stewed, gelatin from the skin is valuable, and much of the fat can be skimmed off(just remember chicken is not optimal). With any of the muscle meats, including fish, gelatin is helpful for balancing the high cysteine, methionine, and tryptophan content. Regarding bacon, Peat says, “The nitrate isn't likely to be a problem if you eat it with orange juice. I fry the bacon to remove some of the fat, and then refry it in coconut oil, to remove most of the PUFA.”

Fatty fish like salmon and herring should be avoided because their fat content is mostly unsaturated; as a general rule, cold blooded animals like fish tend to produce unsaturated fats while warm blooded animals like cows and pigs tend to produce saturated and monounsaturated fats. Cod and sole are good fish, since they have the marine minerals (especially selenium), but low fat content. Tuna is good as protein, but the fat it contains is highly polyunsaturated; eating once a week, especially with homemade coconut mayo should be safe.of course

Regarding his recommendation of daily gelatin:
For an adult, gelatin can be a major protein in the diet, since the need for cysteine and tryptophan decreases greatly when growth slows. Ox-tail soup (boiled for 4 or 5 hours) and lamb shanks have a good proportion of gelatin. I think most stores have gelatin in one pound packages or bigger, for example Great Lakes gelatin is usually around $11 per pound. If a person eats a large serving of meat, it's probably helpful to have 5–10 grams of gelatin at approximately the same time, so that the amino acids enter the blood stream in balance. Asian grocery stores are likely to sell some of the traditional gelatin-rich foods, such as prepared pig skin and ears and tails, and chicken feet. Although the prepared powdered gelatin doesn't require any cooking, dissolving it in hot water makes it digest a little more quickly. It can be incorporated into custards, mousses, ice cream, soups, sauces, cheese cake, pies, etc., or mixed with fruit juices to make desserts or (with juice concentrate) candies.

Peat is a big fan of dairy. He prefers milk with no added vitamins, raw if you can get it, but uses standard pasteurized-homogenized when there’s no alternative. He prefers cheese made without enzymes, just animal rennet. He doesn't use yogurt because of the lactic acid and/or lactobacillus. He avoids anything with gums in it, like cream cheese. Ice cream like Haagen Dazs is okay since it has no carageenan or gums like guar/carob bean– these are often found in foods like cream cheese, canned coconut milk, and half-and-half; make sure that the ice cream does not have any vegetable oil in it as some varieties include this. Regarding yogurt, in quantities of an ounce or so, for flavoring, it's o.k., but the lactic acid content isn't good if you are using yogurt as a major source of your protein and calcium; it triggers the inflammatory reactions, leading to fibrosis eventually, and the immediate effect is to draw down the liver's glycogen stores for energy to convert it into glucose. Cottage cheese, that is, milk curds with salt, is very good, if you can find it without additives, but traditional cottage cheese was almost fat-free, so when they make it with whole milk you should watch for other innovations that might not be beneficial.

Although Peat basically scorns legumes, he said hummus in small amounts isn't nutritionally harmful, though chickpeas and tahini are both allergenic for some people.

Fats:
Best sources are coconut oil and butter; olive oil and macadamia nut oil sparingly. He is a big fan of (refined) coconut oil to stimulate the metabolism. Among nuts and nut oils, macadamia is probably the safest. See the Omega-6 list below for more info.

Carbohydrates:
Have some with every meal to prevent hypoglycemia after eating the proteins.
Fruit and fruit juices – If you're able to do it, try to consume fresh fruits and fruit juices every day. Orange juice is great because of it’s potassium and magnesium content. Tropical fruits and juices are excellent too. If you don’t have a juicer at home, you can buy pasteurized juices with no additives that say “not from concentrate” on the label. Juices that are from concentrate are made up of mostly added water that is flouridated. Fruits in general are fine (tropical are best), but grapefruit is full of phytoestrogens, so avoid it, and berries are full of small seeds you can't avoid, so it's better to skip them. He recommends avoiding bananas and other starchy-poorly-ripened-industrialized fruits, which includes most apples and pears (when these are ripe, peeled and cooked they are much more nutritious, and safer). Organic dried fruits are fine as long as they are not treated with sulfur dioxide; canned fruits are okay, especially if they are in glass. You can have a small apple and some cheese as a snack occasionally if it doesn't cause any digestive or allergic symptoms—the fat in the cheese is protective against the starch in incompletely ripened fruit.

Tubers – Potato, yams; occasionally well-cooked grains in the order of best to least desirable: masa harina, white rice or oats, brown rice. The phytic acid in the oats block absorption of much of the calcium; cooking the oats much longer than usual might improve its nutritional value. Canned plain pumpkin if eaten with some fat is okay, but carrots are less starchy for similar effects.

He recommends eating a raw carrot daily, particularly a raw carrot salad with coconut oil, for both its bowel-protective and an anti-estrogen effect. Summer squash and bamboo shoots are the best cooked vegetables; well cooked kale and broccoli are okay, too. Carrots are best salad. The fiber in whole vegetables helps protect against the effects of the unsaturated fats they contain (in comparison to fruit), which means that juiced vegetables with none of the protective fiber will act as a thyroid inhibitor because of the concentrated PUFAs. There isn’t anything wrong with using vegetables as a smaller part of your diet, but salads and steamed vegetable dishes shouldn’t be the main part of anyone’s diet. He recommends avoiding avocados as they contain so much unsaturated fat that they can be carcinogenic and hepatotoxic (toxic to the liver).

Beverages:
Coffee supports the metabolism but has to be consumed with some sugar or with meal to prevent stress response due to low blood sugar. Because of the tannins in tea, it's important to use either lemon or milk (or cream). The histamine in red wine is a special problem for hypothyroid people, usually it isn't harmful.

Avoid:
PUFAs and soy. PUFAs are found in processed foods, nuts and seeds and their butters, vegetable oils, margarine. Also keep in mind that if you have been eating PUFAs in the past, the oil change in your tissues takes up to four years during which your fat stores will be releasing enough PUFAs to cause you some troubles, so it requires some patience and also some skillful means to counteract their effects, like getting some extra vitamin E or a little thyroid to counteract their antithyroid action etc. It all depends on how your metabolism works.

Chocolate is okay as long as there are no additives.

For salty cravings, Peat recommends tortilla chips fried in coconut oil, and chicharrones (pork rinds) with no additive but salt (puffed in hot air). Another snack is popcorn popped on the stove in coconut oil, then salted & buttered; the oil and butter are protective against the starch, but it's harder to digest than tortilla chips or chicharrones.

For salt use Mortons Canning and Pickling salt.

Vinegar is a good antiseptic when it's used with raw carrot, but watch for sulfite when using regularly.

Maple syrup is heated to a fairly high temperature, and this creates some sugar-derived chemicals that can be allergenic and might be toxic.

Regarding whey protein, Peat says, “Powdered foods that contain tryptophan are extremely susceptible to harmful oxidation, and the best things are removed, for example calcium, lactose, and casein, with its anti-stress properties.”

Ray Peat Eating Guidelines : Semi Low-Carb Plans Forum : Active Low-Carber Forums

 

Ray Peats own personal diet...

Ray Peats own personal diet from:
http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/AV ... ssage/5523

Okay, Bruce, this is a summary from my correspondance with her about
what Ray Peat eats (or ate, if he's changed things) and what he
recommends. This is from 2005.

- dairy, fruit and meat are the core of his diet.

dairy for the protein, calcium, and other nutrients
fruits (or other sugars as 2nd choice) for the KAs and EAAs
gelatin to balance the aminos and to replace the need for eating
animal brains and other organs muscle meat as a supplement for
protein magnesium, etc.

- he gets from 120 to 150 grams of protein per day. Doesn't feel quite
right when he goes as low as 100. A few quarts of milk, several ounces
of cheese, gelatin in some form (broth, chicharrones, gummy bears,
etc.), at least a quart of orange juice (or equivalent other fruit),
and the occasional (rotating) eggs, shellfish, fish, and beef, bison,
or lamb, in one or two of his meals.

- says one must always balance protein with sugar (fruit being the
best) because protein alone lowers blood sugar and you need the sugar
to better metabolize the protein. So when he eats protein, he eats
sugar with it: about 1:1 fruit to meat, and about 2:1 fruit to cheese.

- says best to limit meat due to the tryptophan and antimetabolic
properties, but it can be handled if consumed with fruit and gelatin.
He does eat meat almost every day, or just beef or lamb broth When
the meat is aged he doesn't like the taste so he doesn't eat much of it.

- he eats meat with gelatin. The gelatin can be either from regular
powder or from broth cooked no more than 3 hours (otherwise you
degrade the nutrients he says).

- he avoids all fatty fish.

- says chicken should be eaten no more than one meal every 10 days due
to toxins and PUFAs.

- eggs where the chickens are fed corn and soy should be minimally
consumed (for him 2 per week if that), and with one egg you need about
10 ounces of OJ to balance it (because egg protein is a powerful
insulin activator).

- he eats shellfish about once every ten days. Shrimp, scallops,
lobsters have a high ratio of protein to unsaturated fat and help to
insure adequate selenium. Cooks them thoroughly, having known people
who got hepatitis from raw seafood.

- rotates his animal protein sources only because he gets tired of the
same meals, no health reason

- he avoids most vegetables due to their intrinsic (defensive) toxins.
He occasionally makes leaf broth for some extra minerals, but usually
prefers for a cow to process them for him. Mainly he thinks of them as
condiments.

- underground (root/tuber) vegetables are okay if cooked for about 40
minutes, and fruit-vegetables (tomatoes, peppers) are okay if you're
not allergic to them.

- he avoids all other above-ground vegetables, including greens and
many herbs (basil, etc) due to toxins (even if cooked) that far
outweigh the benefits.

- says that cooked young squashes are generally good for everyone, and
although raw shredded carrots are "nutrient subtractive," it's good to
have a plate of them every day because they lower estrogen (and thus
stimulate the thyroid) and accelerate peristalsis.

- he avoids fermented foods. Stopped using black pepper (a fermented
food, apparently) about 30 years ago when he saw the toxicity studies.
Avoids things like apple cider because it is frequently contaminated
with fungal poisons. Says that the more nutritious it is, the more
likely to contain fungal estrogen and other harmful things, unless you
know the actual materials and process used in making it.
Lacto-fermented foods are carcinogenic. Cheese is okay being fermented
because of the strong nutrients in the milk to start with that
vegetables don't have.

- says reason for people's negative reactions to dairy (if the milk
isn't contaminated) is from either preexisting gut damage (from
gluten, for example) or from a low thyroid or protein deficiency
problem. People who are under stress from low thyroid or protein
deficiency have considerable trouble adapting he says, but with
gradual changes (adding dairy back in) the tissues will adjust and do
what they have to do.

- says to eat liver only occasionally because it depresses the thyroid.

- he doesn't eat fruits with seeds that can't be avoided (berries,
figs, etc) because while the antioxidants are good, the benefits are
less than the toxins in the seeds. Other fruits like peaches, plums,
apples, etc should only be eaten if organic and tree-ripened;
otherwise they have very powerful toxins (if unripe or shelf-ripened)
that can cause gut damage. Melons, cherries, and citrus are the best
fruits.

- when off-season, says it's better to eat frozen fruit and juice
rather than rely on importation because many studies show that storage
methods and stress from importation and treatments make them carcinogenic.

- with cheese and milk, the feeding of the animals (grassfed vs.
grainfed) is more the issue than raw vs. pasteurized.

- he avoids all grains. Traditional "proper preparation" methods used
throughout the world to render them less harmful involved using
alkaline mediums such as wood ash (as opposed to "acidic" as Sally
Fallon suggests) and "lime" as in calcium oxide (as opposed to "lime
or lemon juice" as Sally Fallon asserts). Research shows that that
these methods will convert some of the tryptophan to niacin. Using
whey would be especially ineffective as well as problematic due to the
tryptophan.

 

10 Health Benefits of Gelatin

10 Health Benefits of Gelatin
http://healthmad.com/nutrition/10-healt ... f-gelatin/

Muscle growth: According to the Gelatin Manufacturers Institute of America, gelatin contains lysine, an amino acid that is important for muscle growth. It would seem, then, that eating gelatin would help growing muscles, especially for athletes and those who want a more muscular build.

Metabolism: Gelatin contains another amino acid, arginine, which is supposed to help the body’s metabolism. A stronger metabolism means more calories are getting burned, so it’s not impossible eating some gelatin could help you lose weight. However, a word of warning: One study has found that an arginine supplement could be deadly to those who have suffered a heart attack; so if you’ve had a heart attack, foods containing arginine are probably not right for you. Check with your doctor or cardiologist.

Losing weight: Gelatin does not contain fat and usually has no sugar or cholesterol in it. Which means gelatin is a pretty good food for those of us watching our waistlines. Jell-O even makes sugar free and low calories desserts, if you are interested.

Joint conditions: Suffering from stiff or sore joints? Gelatin might be able to help, especially before the condition worsens. Gelatin contains lots of amino acids important in helping to prevent the weakness and degeneration of cartilage in joints. Gelatin likely won’t help to heal a joint condition, but it possibly could prevent the situation from growing worse.

Finger nails: Remember all those amino acids in gelatin? They also help to strengthen finger nails and over a period of time can help to heal up cracked or roughened finger nails. Also, gelatin has a lot of protein, which is good for nails. If you suffer from weak nails, especially ones that break easily, you might want to try some gelatin in your diet.

Hair: Gelatin is also known to help hair grow stronger, faster and longer. Gelatin also helps to keep hair healthy and shiny. What is it about gelatin that promotes all this great hair? It’s the high amounts of protein. Just in case you need to know for dietic or religious purposes, most gelatins sold in stores are made from animal; however, gelatins can be made from some plants, most notably seaweed, so check those ingredient labels on the boxes of gelatin you might consider purchasing.

Protein boost: Gelatin itself has a lot of protein, but unfortunately nearly all that protein is protein the body can already make for itself. Thus a diet in gelatin alone is not healthy. That being said, studies have shown that the protein in gelatin does help give a boost to proteins in other foods. In other words, just as an example, if you eat a steak full of protein then add a little gelatin to your meal, the protein in the gelatin helps the protein in the steak to be more nutritional for your body. So, if you need protein, you know what to do. Add a little gelatin to your diet.

Drink purifier: According to the Gelatin Manufacturers Association of Asia Pacific, gelatins are often used in the making of alcoholic beverages, such as wine and beer, and even in some juices and ciders. The reason for this is that gelatin acts to congeal impurities, allowing for easier separation of the impurities from the drink itself. If you happen to be a home brewer or juicer, I suggest contacting the folks at Knox gelatin for any recipe advice.

Skin health: Gelatins are used in plenty of cosmetics. Why? For two reasons. First, the gelatin acts as a thickening agent, thus helping makeup and other cosmetics to remain to the skin longer and more easily. Second, we’re back to the proteins again. All that protein in gelatins is good for keeping up a good looking skin tone.

Digestion: Gelatin can also help with digestion, especially with foods that can be rough on the digestive system, such as meats and dairy and nuts and even some beans. The gelatin helps these foods to ease through the stomach and intestines.

 

Re: Ray Peat Food Choices and General Guidelines

I went ahead and took out the writing below the graphic and will let the graphic speak for itself. Thanks for your input, Steven.

 

Re: Ray Peat Food Choices and General Guidelines

J, thank you. I have added it to the "avoid at all costs" section. maybe steven can add it to the graphic is he wants to.

 

Re: Ray Peat Food Choices and General Guidelines

I have updated the guideline with a more thorough list. Please let me know if any changes need to be made.

 

Re: Ray Peat Food Choices and General Guidelines

Cliff, welcome to the forum!

That's interesting what you say about the starches.

 

Hoppimike, Welcome to the Ray Peat forum! It's great to see you here!

The community is in the process of pooling together all the information we can on Ray Peat and his philosophies. This will obviously take some time but with everyones help it will move along well. We are also working up a "Ray Peat Diet" plan that will be very thorough and made by you, the Ray Peat community. We are using all our experiences and communication with Dr. Peat to bring together the most extensive plan that we are able to so people have a place to look for a general direction of diet recommendations.

Time to kick some PUFA butt!

 

Food chart graphic has been updated. Steven wrote Dr. Peat and asked him to look at the food chart, his response will be posted below. The food chart now reflects the changes suggested by Dr. Peat.