Sugar Or Starch? Perfect Health Diet Confusion?

[stargazer1111]

I know for me personally, I cannot digest any starch at all. Even white rice and potatoes are nightmarish. It just sits in my digestive system like a brick and I get severe IBS pain.

Since switching to peat and consuming a combo of milk sugar and fruit sugar, I feel great. I feel almost as great as I did when I was 18 or 19. No digestive system problems.

Also, my blood sugar spikes to almost diabetic levels when I consume starch. It stays within the fasting range most of the time even after consuming 50-60 grams of sugar.

I will stick with the sugar, myself.

 

[raypeatclips]

Ray Peat's Answer - " When a non-starchy fruit is available I think it’s always preferable to starch. Alkali-processed corn is the only kind that I’m willing to eat, and seldom that (e.g., corundas made with wood ashes)."

I'm not surprised by his answer, but I'm surprised he didn't include potatoes as well as the corn.

I wonder if Peat avoids starches because of his belief in the persorption issue, the high phosphate/calcium ratio of most starch sources or if he actually gets serotonin/endotoxin symptoms from it (mood, energy, brain function etc...) . After all he supplements with thyroid and should have a well working metabolism so he should be able to digest potatoes and rice fairly well.

I would enjoy some further clarification on him, although I guess it could get quite annoying asking him to clarify his clarifications of things.

 

[Wagner83]

I think Ray is worried about persorption a lot, and he has said that starch particles from potatoes are very big, ten times red globules and starch particle from rice if i'm not wrong?

 

[johnwester130]

these are my thoughts on starch

starch by itself - disgusting and inedible

starch with a meal - better than by itself

starch with coconut oil and salted - much better,

Ray Peat's writings, I think, speak about starch if eaten in isolation.

 

[johnwester130]

I'm not surprised by his answer, but I'm surprised he didn't include potatoes as well as the corn.



I would enjoy some further clarification on him, although I guess it could get quite annoying asking him to clarify his clarifications of things.

I think ray peat may avoid starches because after a while they become tasteless and un-appetising.

 

[schultz]

Alkali-processed corn is the only kind that I’m willing to eat, and seldom that (e.g., corundas made with wood ashes)."

I've been meaning to make the alkali corn, but always forget about it. I have a corn grinder, so I would buy a big bag of corn and do the boiling and all that, just for the fun of it, and maybe as a teaching moment for the kids. I was looking up what minerals wood ash has in it and found a study showing the mineral content of ashes from different woods.

I think it was this paper if anybody is interested: https://www.fpl.fs.fed.us/documnts/pdf1993/misra93a.pdf

Levels of calcium, potassium and magnesium are not too shabby. One could use it as a supplement of sorts. I assume burning the wood at higher temperatures would leave a purer ash. I guess there is no carbon left because it's burned as fuel in the fire? Charcoal is made by heating the wood without oxygen from what I remember.

Now I really want corundas!!!

 

[Westside PUFAs]

these are my thoughts on starch

starch by itself - disgusting and inedible

starch with a meal - better than by itself

starch with coconut oil and salted - much better,

Ray Peat's writings, I think, speak about starch if eaten in isolation.

That's not a good argument against starch though. Meat, eggs and cheese without salt and/or sweet, tangy condiments are also disgusting. There is no such thing as saltless cheese for a reason. No one would buy it. Even the best cut of filet mignon still needs salt. There is a whole industry to flavor meat because as you say, it would be disgusting and inedible. And even meat tastes better if it's marinated for hours but starch just needs a little salt in the case of quality potatoes. Yellow potatoes are naturally "creamy" without any fat added.

 

[lollipop]

Yellow potatoes are naturally "creamy" without any fat added.

So true. I baked a Yukon gold and simply opened it on a plate and served. I did not even salt it. My husband that the “butter” I put in it was perfect and tasty. I had to admit that I added “nothing”. He couldn’t believe it. Very tasty.

 

[stargazer1111]

I've settled on a good balance between starch and sugar. I seem to crave one or the other if I get too little of it. I usually split my carbs into half starch and half fruit sugar at each meal. Seems to work well.

 

[jet9]

I've settled on a good balance between starch and sugar. I seem to crave one or the other if I get too little of it. I usually split my carbs into half starch and half fruit sugar at each meal. Seems to work well.

stargazer hi, are you still eating 1:1 starch:sugar ratio ?

 

[stargazer1111]

stargazer hi, are you still eating 1:1 starch:sugar ratio ?

Nope. Sugar only at this point. Starch and fiber cause too many digestive problems for me.

I'm drinking orange juice, sugared milk and eating meat. That's it.

The starch cravings disappear after a while without it. I feel much better this way. Very warm, energetic, clear mind.

 

[Hgreen56]

Peat's argument is starch causes endotoxins. And starch is high in glucose but more mixed sugars are better with fructose and glucose. There are some good studies that bear this out.

show them, i would love to see these

 

[ecstatichamster]

show them, i would love to see these

Glycemia, starch, and sugar in context

 

[Jessie]

People who do better with starch have liver problems. I think it's easy for many people that are "peating" to unironically run into problems with utilizing sugar properly. To the layman, they can read Peat's advice about avoiding PUFA and methylation, and thus they tend to avoid all choline rich foods, like eggs and liver.

Choline is an essential nutrient for sugar utilization, there's no way around it. And the more sugar (or fat) you eat, the more choline you'll need. So eat eggs and liver, Peat recommends them for a reason. He's clearly not a fan of methylation, but he's certainly not on this anti-choline train either.

Also choline is actually needed for converting sugar into cholesterol. So when people are trying to raise their cholesterol by eating sugar, it's only going to work if you have enough choline to make the process happen. Without it the sugar will never be exported as cholesterol, and it'll just be converted to fat and start accumulating on your liver. A good staring point is shooting for around 1 gram daily. If you have fatty liver I would do 2 grams daily, which is probably going to require supplementation.

 

[opson123]

People who do better with starch have liver problems. I think it's easy for many people that are "peating" to unironically run into problems with utilizing sugar properly. To the layman, they can read Peat's advice about avoiding PUFA and methylation, and thus they tend to avoid all choline rich foods, like eggs and liver.

Choline is an essential nutrient for sugar utilization, there's no way around it. And the more sugar (or fat) you eat, the more choline you'll need. So eat eggs and liver, Peat recommends them for a reason. He's clearly not a fan of methylation, but he's certainly not on this anti-choline train either.

Also choline is actually needed for converting sugar into cholesterol. So when people are trying to raise their cholesterol by eating sugar, it's only going to work if you have enough choline to make the process happen. Without it the sugar will never be exported as cholesterol, and it'll just be converted to fat and start accumulating on your liver. A good staring point is shooting for around 1 gram daily. If you have fatty liver I would do 2 grams daily, which is probably going to require supplementation.

How would you go about reaching 1g of choline without eggs or supplementation? Egg yolks cause really bad gut pain so I'm afraid to try them again.

 

[Jessie]

How would you go about reaching 1g of choline without eggs or supplementation? I once tried egg yolks to get a lot of choline in and if there ever was a time I was seriously contemplating suicide, it was then. The pain in my gut was extremely bad and it went away only after I pooped the eggs out several days later. Granted I was an idiot and probably ate too many at once, iirc it was 3 or 4, but I'm afraid to try them again.

You don't have to eat eggs, I was just using them as an example. Other really good sources are liver, shrimp, tuna, cod, and lean chicken. Some lesser but still good sources are milk, broccoli, green peas, asparagus, and mushrooms. Also, there's nothing wrong with supplementation. In my experience choline l-bitartrate is very safe, I've taken up to 1-1.5 grams while also eating a high choline diet. Dietary protein can also be converted into choline, but I feel like this conversion is probably inadequate in a lot of people. If you have problems storing glycogen, then most of the protein is probably being wasted via gluconeogenesis, so I wouldn't rely on this as an efficient method for maintaining choline status.

 

[opson123]

You don't have to eat eggs, I was just using them as an example. Other really good sources are liver, shrimp, tuna, cod, and lean chicken. Some lesser but still good sources are milk, broccoli, green peas, asparagus, and mushrooms. Also, there's nothing wrong with supplementation. In my experience choline l-bitartrate is very safe, I've taken up to 1-1.5 grams while also eating a high choline diet. Dietary protein can also be converted into choline, but I feel like this conversion is probably inadequate in a lot of people. If you have problems storing glycogen, then most of the protein is probably being wasted via gluconeogenesis, so I wouldn't rely on this as an efficient method for maintaining choline status.

Thanks!

 

[Uselis]

I was browsing threads on Perfect Health Diet yesterday and can't remember if Jamminet or somebody else said that cravings for sugar are mistaken by cravings for starch + fat. According to him (or somebody else) it's what we used to seek in nature which I found quite odd. What are starch + fat foods in nature? Hard to imagine early humans doing steak with potatoes lol. Also most starch requires thorough cooking except bananas perhaps?

 

[gately]

It become pretty apparent to me in the last few years that some people will do better on mostly fruit and some people will do better on mostly starch, and that trying to force your body to eat one way when it prefers the other is a recipe for disaster. I think the reasons for that are individual and likely complex. This forum is filled with people who got worse on a rice and potato based PHD, and filled with people who got better eating lots of starch (including wheat.) Eat what works for you.