Sometimes Sugar Is Better Than Starch

[Westside PUFAs]

because their early detection system (salivary amylase) isn't effective.

I don't think there is such a thing as an early detection system because there are no other cells other than whats on the tongue. Salt and sour cause the glands to salivate but that doesn't mean the pancreas starts pumping insulin. Even just being really hungry or thinking about food can cause salivation but that doesn't mean the pancreases detects sugar right in front of it. It has to pass by.

Their two quotes again:

"Because food is only in the mouth for a few seconds, oral amylolytic “predigestion” is often assumed to be of minimal importance, particularly given the presence of pancreatic amylase within the gastrointestinal tract.

"In contrast, pancreatic amylase, produced by the gene AMY2, has not undergone similar genetic repetition (15) even though the vast majority of starch digestion occurs in the small intestine via pancreatic amylase (16)"

Salivary amylase is produced by the salivary glands by default, regardless of what you eat. People produce varying amounts of it. But to claim that simply putting starch in your mouth is going to cause your pancreas to secret insulin is not true. The pancreas could already be in a pre-diabetic state in the first place, wasting insulin.

If they were just fat and insulin resistant, they shouldn't have performed similarly to the the HA group with the pure dextrose solution in both glucose tolerance and insulin release.

I don't regard a dextrose solution as I do a boiled potato with cofactors, or even white rice's own cofactor in its fluffy state, all the while consuming a low fat diet and not having excess adipose tissue. It's not a good study.

 

[Westside PUFAs]

Also, Masterjohn talks about sweet taste stimulating this but ignores the fact that fructose does not require insulin to be metabolized.

 

[Westside PUFAs]

But I'm not surprised Masterjohn would use that study because he has a bias against starch as he comes from the WAP crowd. For him to concede now would mean he would have to admit he was wrong about some things related to "carbs." Even though WAP does "allow" starch in the form of some grains, their "camp" in speeches like his often bashes it.

I don't hate Masterjohn. I just used him in a video to debunk someone. I just think he's biased against starch and doesn't look at the very important nuance.

 

[Peater Piper]

I don't think there is such a thing as an early detection system because there are no other cells other than whats on the tongue. Salt and sour cause the glands to salivate but that doesn't mean the pancreas starts pumping insulin. Even just being really hungry or thinking about food can cause salivation but that doesn't mean the pancreases detects sugar right in front of it. It has to pass by.

How do you explain insulin levels rising before glucose from the meal begins entering the blood stream? The assumption is that somehow the taste of food stimulates the vagus nerve, which then signals to the pancreas to release hormones. A vagotomy abolishes the cephalic response in rats. Maybe there's even some sublingual absorption of simple sugars, in small amounts, that can stimulate the pancreas through the bloodstream prior to glucose absorption from the intestine. Who knows? In terms of relevance to the study I posted, when both groups consumed pure glucose, they both had a significant rise in insulin within 9 minutes. When they consumed the starch solution, only the HA group had a rise in insulin by the 9-minute mark, the LA group was still at baseline.

Salivary amylase is produced by the salivary glands by default, regardless of what you eat. People produce varying amounts of it. But to claim that simply putting starch in your mouth is going to cause your pancreas to secret insulin is not true. The pancreas could already be in a pre-diabetic state in the first place, wasting insulin.

If the pancreases of the LA group was already in a pre-diabetic state, then why did that not show up when they were tested with pure glucose? Their insulin and glucose response was similar to the HA group. Again, insulin resistance or diabetes had nothing to do with it. The LA group was tested against themselves with both meals, and faired significantly worse when starch was used, despite the amount of glucose being the same in both tests. The only difference was that insulin rose earlier with the glucose solution compared to the starch meal, causing the pancreas to have to play catchup to the glucose load for the entire meal. In the HA group, early insulin response didn't differ between either meal.

Diabetes

"It has recently been established that the early insulin response to meal ingestion is of great importance for subsequent glucose tolerance. This was first suggested by results demonstrating a negative correlation between the 30-min insulin response to oral glucose, as a marker for early insulin secretion, and the 120-min glucose value, as a marker of glucose tolerance (22). Furthermore, prevention of the early insulin response by somatostatin results in glucose intolerance (23), and sham feeding, which increases circulating insulin, improves glucose tolerance after intragastric glucose (9). The importance of the early insulin response for postprandial glucose tolerance is also illustrated by studies reporting that brief administration of a minute amount of insulin during the first 15 min after food intake markedly improves glucose tolerance in obese (10) and type 2 diabetic subjects (24). Whether specifically the neurally mediated cephalic insulin response to meal ingestion is of importance for postprandial glucose homeostasis has, however, not been established."

I don't regard a dextrose solution as I do a boiled potato with cofactors, or even white rice's own cofactor in its fluffy state, all the while consuming a low fat diet and not having excess adipose tissue. It's not a good study.

Yet both groups did fine with the dextrose, and only one group struggled with the starch. Also, both groups had similar BMIs, and baseline insulin and glucose values.

Also, you keep bring up pancreatic amylase. I don't think anyone's suggesting the majority of starch digestion is occurring in the mouth, even in people with high amounts of salivary amylase. The idea is that some of the glucose gets cleaved off of the starch chain. This will happen in greater amounts in HA people compared to low LA people, which somehow leads to better preabsortive insulin release. The majority of starch digestion is still going to occur in the pancreas.

None of this means one group can eat starch and the other can't, nor does it mean someone with high salivary amylase can't be insulin resistance, or someone with low salivary amylase can't be insulin sensitive. All it means is stimulating insulin early in the meal is a valuable tool, for everyone, and some groups may have to be a little more aware of this than others.

 

[Peater Piper]

By the way, you or anyone else can try this test, which is what I did before I knew Chris wrote about it. I ate the same meals each day, tracking my glucose. For some I'd consume a teaspoon of honey 15 minutes before the meal. Honey made a consistent difference, especially with starchier meals. I usually just go with fruit now, which works just as well, but I didn't want to test with it in case the fiber could confound things.

 

[schultz]

You can't taste sweet where there is no fructose. Sweet potatoes have fructose, which is why they are sweet. Sucrose tastes sweet because it is half fructose. Rice, other potato, grains, legumes do not have fructose. The argument makes zero sense.

Are you suggesting that glucose is not sweet?

We're talking about eating starch, not lactose or dextrose. Dextrose, which is made from corn, is probably similar to HFCS but not as sweet. Moreover, fructose does not require insulin, showing more flaws in Masterjohn's argument.

Dextrose is just glucose. It's another name for it. It is called dextrose because the way it polarizes light to the right (dextro means right). Fructose is called levulose sometimes and it's because fructose polarizes light to the left.

 

[Westside PUFAs]

All it means is stimulating insulin early in the meal is a valuable tool, for everyone, and some groups may have to be a little more aware of this than others.

I don't think that is a valuable tool and I explained in detail why. We can keep going in circles on this.

Are you suggesting that glucose is not sweet?

Yes.

 

[schultz]

Yes.

 

[Tenacity]

I think @Westside PUFAs is on to something here - the only overtly sweet foods are those containing sucrose or fructose, and both those things have fructose in common...

 

[Mito]

the only overtly sweet foods are those containing sucrose or fructose, and both those things have fructose in common...

View attachment 4514

 

[Tenacity]

Okay, you got me there - I didn't even consider lactose. How come starchy foods don't taste sweet, then? Do they only taste sweet once the glucose chains are broken down by amylase? I haven't had starch in a long time so I've not tested this...

 

[Westside PUFAs]

I didn't even consider lactose

We're talking about starch. Not lactose.

 

[Tenacity]

We're talking about starch. Not lactose.

Sure, but you literally said where there is no fructose there is no sweetness - not true, I'd definitely describe skim milk as slightly sweet.

 

[Mito]

I don't think there is such a thing as an early detection system because there are no other cells other than whats on the tongue.

So what do you believe the body uses salivary amylase for if not for signaling? We have agreed it does not perform any significant digestion.

 

[Westside PUFAs]

Sure, but you literally said where there is no fructose there is no sweetness - not true, I'd definitely describe skim milk as slightly sweet.

I said sweet potatoes, corn, and some winter squashes are the only starches that taste sweet on their own without adding anything to them because they have fructose. Peas to a lesser extent. And then he posted that chart but I was talking about sweet food starches, not lactose or maltose. Many plants have fructose but those are the only starches that taste sweet. All of the other starches do not taste sweet: White rice, brown rice, black rice, black beans, pinto beans, wheat berries (not wheat bread with added sweetener), amaranth, barley, buckwheat, farro, emmer, kamut, millet, muesli, quinoa, rye, sorghum, spelt, teff, triticale, parsnip, celeriac, burdock, tapioca, sunchoke, jicama, rutabaga, water chestnut, taro, cassava, all do not taste sweet. Beets and carrots do not count as they are not true starches. So what Masterjohn is claiming is that when any of those many non-sweet starches I just listed hits your tongue, that it sets of a cascade of insulin because your body somehow knows that it is starch even though it doesn't taste sweet. go ahead and don't swallow rice or a russet or yellow potato, just swish it around in your mouth and see if your saliva turns it into "sweet." He contradicts himself because he claims that the both the taste of real sweet like fruit and the taste of non-sweet starch will cause a rise in insulin just from the taste but does't mention that fructose doesn't require insulin, the liver takes care of it, not the pancreas. And I just find it weird that he focused so much on salivary amylase and this one trivial point about it, even if it were true, when the real process of starch digestion happens with pancreatic amylase. And someones reaction to it completely depends on other things like body fat and overall diet.

So what do you believe the body uses salivary amylase for if not for signaling? We have agreed it does not perform any significant digestion.

I think it is a useless leftover from evolution. People with apparently little to no SA still eat starch. As an experiment, you could swallow a lot of starch without a lot of saliva by spitting a lot of using a lot of salt and become slightly dehydrated. Without a lot of saliva, the starch will still digest just fine. The pancreatic amylase will do its job. The whole process is not dependant on saliva.

 

[schultz]

Sure, but you literally said where there is no fructose there is no sweetness - not true, I'd definitely describe skim milk as slightly sweet.

Yes he did say that, which I found to be an odd claim. Glucose is sweet, it's just not quite as sweet as fructose or sucrose.

As for salivary amylase, I don't know much about the topic. I'm interested in the discussion though.

 

[Westside PUFAs]

Glucose is sweet

go ahead and don't swallow rice or a russet or yellow potato, just swish it around in your mouth and see if your saliva turns it into "sweet."

 

[Mito]

I think it is a useless leftover from evolution.

So you think it was needed at some point in our evolution. Any speculation as to what SA might have been used for in the past?

 

[Ideonaut]

He may or may not show my comment but I'll just post it here:

"Chris,

You forgot about pancreatic amylase. It seems odd that the body would rely only on saliva for eating such large amounts of boiled/steamed starch as billions have/do. I think a real amylase problem is very rare and there are other things that are causing the blood glucose and insulin problems.

If one had “dry mouth” (no saliva) but still ate starch and drank a little water, they would still produce pancreatic amylase, if they did not have any kind of enzyme or pancreatic disorder. If one thinks they may have a deficiency of an enzyme or something else to where they can’t produce any or enough amylase, both pancreatic and salivary, then they should get the correct blood and other tests to see if they truly do.

But there are other things to look at before assuming one is amylase deficient. The first is how much adipose tissue they have. The more adipose tissue, the more likely they will have too much free fatty acids or the “spill over effect” causing glucose and insulin problems. And if one has too much adipose tissue, that shows that they haven’t been eating/living healthfully for at least 6 months but usually much longer. Which is one reason why your purposed experiment is not objective.

The second is their fat intake. I will get to that below when I talk about your purposed experiment.

I think you contradicted yourself a bit by saying that ones blood sugar will still rise rapidly after eating starch if they are a non or low salivary amylase producer and since you didn't mention pancreatic amylase, by that measure one would conclude that their blood sugar would never rise at all after eating the starch because they don't have or produce enough amylase to convert the starch into glucose in the first place. If that were the case, then the person will just be eating a bunch of fiber-like amylopectin and amylose and they wouldn't convert it into sugar.

As far as your experiment, it is as poor experiment because for option 1 of your experiment, a simple potato starch vs dextrose is not objective due to lack of cofactors, something that you once placed prime importance on. A powered potato starch and a dextrose solution likely do not have/or enough of the glucose contributing cofactors like potassium which acts similar to insulin. I know this is why you then purposed option 2, which is the better way to do it but the problems of option one should be noted. But even though option two is better, a persons fat intake is something that is very important when talking about “carbs.”

Many of the people thriving on high starch diets do so in a low fat setting. Not no fat (though no overt fats work for many), but low fat. It seems that high fat, included saturated, mixed in with starch is precisely what causes the energy crashes and blood sugar problems you speak of.

I’m not a vegan as I eat lean animal protein. For me, the two most “insulinogenic” things-starch and protein, are the exact things that cured my blood sugar problems. It was my high fat intake that was causing blood glucose problems. It’s called lipemia - too much fat in the blood.

Fruits are great but fructose does not require insulin and although many fruits do have sucrose, it is boiled/steamed starch with the occasional cultural variant of a tradition flour product (i.e. Ugali, etc) that provide starch in the traditional form. It is likely that even the traditional flour products depend on exactly what they are and how they are prepared. There is also a difference in satiation from fruit vs. satiation from starch which is why people fail on the "Nutritarian" Joel Fuhrman concept, and also fail on raw fruitarian diets. The starch provides much needed glucose from the starch itself and not from non starchy vegetables and fruits. It's the missing link in those diets, of course animal protein may be a factor as well.

When looking at starch from an evolutionary perspective, one has to consider the importance of boiled/steamed starch vs baked and fried starch. I encourage you to read these:

http://www.mccarbthyism.com/Boiled-vs-Baked-Starch.html

The-Fourth-Macronutrient

”It’s a contradiction to talk about instincts with respect to nutrition and then ignore that there are times when our hunger for carbohydrates varies from the desire for something sweet to the need for something starchy, satisfying, and soothing.

Starches are chains of glucose sugars that also provide glucose to cells, but the distinct and irreplaceable job of starch is to make muscle cells more responsive to insulin, and thus pull more glucose out of the blood, more so than would be possible if sugars alone were sources of glucose. Insulin is the hormone that controls the entrance of glucose into cells, particularly muscle cells. Since most of what muscle cells do with the glucose they draw from blood is to make glycogen, and since glycogen is the storage form of glucose that muscles tap into for explosive and sustaining movement, starch is critical to energy and endurance. Try to find a successful athlete who doesn’t rely on starch for stamina. Try to find a civilization that does not rely on starch as a staple. It’s only when the climate is severe and farming is impossible that humans are forced to abandon this critical food. So why haven’t we heard this before?

Whenever you hear a discussion of starch and what starch is and where you find starch, the discussion is always in regards to starch in the plant. But starch in the plant is useless unless it’s cooked. We don’t efficiently digest raw starch. Starchy foods must be cooked in water to reach the gelatinization point, usually a temperature slightly below the boiling point of water. It’s here where starch granules absorb water and burst into the soft and fluffy texture that our digestive system can handle. This is starch on the plate (or in the bowl) where it has its effect. However, drive off the water with the high temperatures and dry conditions of baking or frying, and starch loses its unique function. Baked and fried starches are effectively sugars in that they supply glucose to blood but fail to enhance the response of muscle cells to insulin. The reason is simple. Starch-digesting enzymes work only from the end of the starch chain, disassembling the chain in packman-like fashion, signaling the muscles to absorb more glucose from the blood in response to insulin. Baking and frying temperatures shatter the chain, disrupting this signal. Glucose is still provided but without the direction to increase its utilization by muscles. So in reality, the fourth macronutrient is the one we as a species created and adapted to--boiled starch. Only in this form can starch perform its critical function.” - Natalie Zimmerman of McCarbthyism

Although the context here is starch and amylase, I think it’s important to remember these things about glucose:

Glucose is the only fuel used by red blood cells because they lack mitochondria. Without glucose, red blood cells could not survive. Red blood cells carry oxygen from the lungs to the tissues. Without red blood cells, most of the tissues of the body would suffer from a lack of energy because they require oxygen to completely convert their fuels to carbon dioxide and water.

Glycolysis exists. The human body have 10 specific enzymes specifically evolutionary adapted to break down glucose and another additional 8 specific enzymes to convert glucose to ATP in the Citric Acid Cycle. And of course, glycogen.

How you get your glucose is up to you. I prefer boiled starch over most flour products, most fruit outside of craving sweet, most lactose, and it’s probably best to minimize pure sugars like cane/maple, and minimize the conversion of your muscle tissue to glucose.

Thanks for the education, WestsidePUFAs! I'll boil my spuds from here on out. Peat says to have some fat with your starch, if I recall correctly, whereas you say to avoid it. Haidut seems to think that pretty much avoiding fat is the road to heaven, I don't know which to go with, since I don't know Peat's rationale. Enlightenment anyone?

 

[Westside PUFAs]

So you think it was needed at some point in our evolution. Any speculation as to what SA might have been used for in the past?

I think it's purpose is to give a pre coat. But it could be that we are in an in between stage of losing SA completely so eventually it will be gone and PA takes over for good.

Thanks for the education, WestsidePUFAs! I'll boil my spuds from here on out. Peat says to have some fat with your starch, if I recall correctly, whereas you say to avoid it. Haidut seems to think that pretty much avoiding fat is the road to heaven, I don't know which to go with, since I don't know Peat's rationale. Enlightenment anyone?

I don't say avoid it. I say that I don't add fat to my starch because it doesn't mix well for me. It causes blood sugar and fat gain problems. I only have fat by itself and after plenty of time before and after a starch/protein meal. I think the fat is best used when it has a chance to go in by itself and do its thing. I don't like to mix it up. If you do well with mixing fat with your starch then thats great. Even when eating starch with no fat added, there is evidence that our bacteria synthesize saturated fat from the starch and fibers itself, so I find that interesting. It's like a natural butter, butyrate.