Jakethomas I don’t see how you can blame danny roddy for misinterpreting peat’s work. Peat himself has answered tons of emails recommending to consume a certain amount of OJ and a certain amount of Milk per day. So how do you get around that? Basically everything you just said about Danny is wrong based on that. And just because Peat tells people how to make gummy candies doesn’t mean he is saying don’t buy regular gummy bears. I think if anything you are misinterpreting him.
“Told me flat out that you should only use white sugar as a supplement in times of stress, but otherwise, it’s demineralizing and to avoid it.”
Guess what? Ray Peat has said about one million contradicting things and his “followers” just use the “context” argument. He said in interviews that he drank milk shakes and ate chocolate and people who know him have reported that he drinks coke, not even mexican coke!! So I guess he was one stressed son of a gun to need so much sugar. Then he tells you something else? I am sorry something doesn’t jive about all of this. Not that you are lying, it’s just he incessantly and directly contradicts himself and gets a free pass because of ?context. In this example alone anyone with 2 brain cells can see the direct contradiction even with the context pass.
Who cares what Peat eats. His recommendations are terrible. He recommends the same thing to every one whether you have a spike stuck in your abdomen or whether you are menopausal. His body of work is interesting but keep in mind he doesn’t conduct experiments or studies. He is more of a researcher. He got a lot of stuff from broda barnes and Hans selye, etc. Probably why so many of his recommendations don’t help and if serotonin was so bad you would think those medicines he recommends would make people feel better right away but instead they make people feel like hell. He seems to be like every other guru where feedback from ?followers? doesn’t encourage him to amend his work at all.
One thing that is weird are his replies about gaining muscle, that just sitting at home increasing carbs from fructose sources and drinking milk and eating ray peat approved foods puts all this muscle on people. That is comical.
Here’s an email by him that is posted on raypeatforum:
“My recommendation is to eat to increase the metabolic rate (usually temperature and heart rate), rather than any particular foods. Usually the increased metabolic rate, with adequate protein, causes some muscle increase, and when that happens the basic calorie requirement will increase. The increase of muscle mass should continue for several weeks, and during that time the weight might increase a little, but usually the loss of water and fat will compensate for the greater muscle mass. I have heard from several people that they think I recommend drinking whole milk, which I don’t, because the amount of fat in whole milk is very likely to be fattening when a person is using it to get the needed protein and calcium. When a person wants to lose excess fat, limiting the diet to low fat milk, eggs, orange juice, and a daily carrot or two, will provide the essential nutrients without excess calories.”
Except it doesn’t happen that way at all. We haven’t seen that in anyone, just people getting very fat. Ok so let’s say you gain a whole 2 lbs of muscle just from changing your diet, no resistance training. How many calories can one additionally expect to need solely from that? I have never heard of people getting muscular without exercising or increasing muscle to any noticeable degree from just food unless they came from a concentration camp. We are talking about well-fed americans, many coming to him after wapf and paleo..
Also he says he doesn’t recommend particular foods, then he recommends particular foods as he has done in probably thousands of emails. He also says he doesn’t recommend whole milk but talks about vitamins added to the milk as being bad. Find me a brand of low fat milk with no added vitamins at Whole foods? I feel he’s either out of touch with many things about exercise and diet or he is just saying things that don’t make sense and then backtracking later on when people don’t have success. I think he is doing one grand experiment on people with these email answers of his. His recommendations aren’t based on any evidence. Like someone mentioned there are not studies of anyone doing this type of diet. And yes it’s a diet!! It’s a list of foods to eat and a list of foods to stay away from. People who say this isn’t a diet because he never published a book are ridiculous. He has made the diet himself in all his interviews and emails. What emerged is an emphasis on tropical fruits, sugar, eggs, milk, gelatin, liver and certain supplements. It’s one of the most narrow “diets” around.
I think people who have fared the best are the ones that got away from low carb from studying his work on sugar and people who added some stuff here and there, not committed to following his every word. i feel sorry for people who eat this way and expect their health to improve. They get that initial placebo effect or benefit from the added carbs where they were low carb and then attribute the benefits of correcting that extreme to all this wackiness about not having any pufa and low serotonin and no cooked carrots.