What's the most important rule of the Peat diet to you, the "take home" message?

[XPlus]

Help me get the best out of the RP diet if I am not willing to drop green fibrous vegetables or fibrous legumes.

I eat all kinds of vegetables, black beans, some lean meat, yogurt, cheese occasionally and only low fructose fruit like tomato. I'm looking to Peat for wisdom but am not willing to stop eating vegetables. If someone doesn't adhere perfectly to the Peat diet, what is the most important thing to take from his advice?

Depending on the ratios you take of these compared to other foods, if your body could perfectly convert the beta carotene to vitamin A, balance out the acidity and phosphorus, out compete the bacteria in digesting all the fiber, use lactic acid more efficiently than sugar, convert all the tryptophan to B3, have the capacity to filter out all the toxins, then you must be already on the right track.

 

[narouz]

Also, a clarifying exercise.
Extreme silly reduction/summary, but still...

If you mean silly in it's older sense, as useless, then you may be right that it may be too simplified to provide much guidance at this stage. But it's not non-sensical, or inaccurate wrt what Peat has said. Ask a silly question ... OP was asking for one rule - eat to raise metabolism seems like that one rule to me. The many words Peat has used to describe the many ways one might go about that will take OP longer to wade through.

Probably silly in just about every sense. :)
But I would still venture to say
that even this extreme type of exercise in reduction or summary
does force one to think about things in a way that may have some value.

I've taught writing quite a bit.
Mostly I teach how to write nonsense and drivel.
But when I'm not busy doing that
I've also taught other basic forms of composition.
One of those is Summary.
It is surprising how difficult it is to write a good Summary.
Forces one to make a lot of tough choices about what is most important,
to winnow the wheat from the chaff.
It is difficult but also very valuable as a basic critical thinking exercise, imo.

 

[tara]

Probably silly in just about every sense. :)

Whether or not it is silly, it is what Peat has said himself.

It is surprising how difficult it is to write a good Summary.
Forces one to make a lot of tough choices about what is most important,
to winnow the wheat from the chaff.
It is difficult but also very valuable as a basic critical thinking exercise, imo.

Yes. And what is most important inevitably often depends on point of view and/or context.

 

[narouz]

[Ask a silly question ... OP was asking for one rule - eat to raise metabolism seems like that one rule to me. The many words Peat has used to describe the many ways one might go about that will take OP longer to wade through.

The "eat to raise metabolism" thing...

Yes, Peat did say that.
It is not that the idea is silly.
What is somewhat silly is to think you're (OP) gonna take that Cliff's Notes approach with Peat
and learn much of anything.

I do think that many cling to "eat to raise metabolism
rather than any particular foods"
in a similar way that many also cling to "There is no Peat diet."
It's a dodge.
Unless one actively does not want to know what Peat thinks.
Because Peat by all means does address particular foods.
And the first logical question after
"eat to raise metabolism"
should be
"Well, what kinds of foods will raise my metabolism?"
And Peat has written a ton about exactly that.
Why ignore that?

That's where the real silliness begins.

 

[tara]

[...ongoing tangential discussion, feel free to ignore ...:)]

@ Narouz,
Who's ignoring anything? We can't fit everything into a single thread or a single post. People are responding to a specific question. Which ONE rule.
I agree that just reading 'eat to raise metabolism' is not going to be enough information to be useful in itself for most people. But to pick out what are the most important one or two rules, people come to it with different viewpoints, and present different key variables, often the ones that we credit with making the most difference to ourselves.

So which is the most important single food rule?
Minimise PUFA?
Get enough good quality protein, but not too much?
Get plenty of easy to digest carbs, preferably quite a bit of sugar from fruit/juice?
Don't starve?
Find milk you can drink and drink lots of it?
Don't overfeed your intestinal bacteria?
Watch out for allergens and gut irritants?
Balance your muscle meat with gelatine?
Salt your food to taste?
Only drink water if thirsty?
Get more calcium than phosphorus?
etc ...

I can imagine that there are probably different people for whom each of those guidelines is the most important first change they could make.

And then the non-food tactics:
Get out in the sun or supplement red light?
Move but don't overexercise?
Go to sleep at night?
Close your mouth?
Evade EMFs?

If your point is that Peat's dietary ideas cannot be reduced to a single sentence summary and still be much use to a beginner, I agree with you.
If you think you can spell out exactly which foods a particular person should eat, based on what Peat has written, without knowing rather a lot about them, I suspect you are wrong. Following such advice has lead many people astray.

I don't think I am dodging what Peat has said about foods. I think I am acknowledging that many of us come here with already damaged metabolisms/systems, and that unravelling this can be complex.

 

[narouz]

Who's ignoring anything? We can't fit everything into a single thread or a single post. People are responding to a specific question. Which ONE rule.

Sorry. :)
I didn't mean here in this thread.
I lapsed into thinking you were riffing on the whole
"Is There a Peat Diet" thing.
I must've got my threads crossed.