When originally developing RRARF, a diet and lifestyle program specifically for raising cellular metabolic activity and addressing other factors involved in health and body composition, it seemed abundantly clear that starch was a superior carbohydrate staple than fruit, juice, and sugar.
You can read about the program in how to RAISE YOUR METABOLISM.
This provision seemed important, as I was suggesting eating beyond the instinctual appetite or point of satiety. Studies show, with no real ambiguity, that when you instruct human beings to eat as much food as they like on a diet that is high in starch and fiber and low in sugar and refined carbohydrates lacking fiber, that appetite decreases spontaneously and there is a loss of body fat.
This was something I was, and still am, very interested in. What I hoped to show people was that it wasn’t that you were carrying too much body fat and presumably overeating for your metabolic rate and activity levels because you were a lazy ass or a glutton, but because certain foods (like sweets) stimulate a greater rise of calorie consumption. This is true. They do.
But of course, with any dietary recommendations built on one or a handful of compelling reasons, there are unexpected consequences as well. I believe one of those consequences is that substituting starch for all simple sugars can lower the natural desire to engage in physical activity. This could very well be due to decreased palatability and therefore lower calorie intake. Creatures like the sloth, gorilla, and panda for example are far less physically active than their biological cousins precisely because their food is less palatable, it is less calorie dense which is true of most whole foods diets, and yields lower total calorie intake. Slothism ain’t what we’re after.
I also thought that sugar and sweets should be avoided because they are addictive. I’ve been addicted to ‘sugar? before, but it was always in high-fat foods (candy bars, chocolate, doughnuts, ice cream, brownies) and was always in a reduced metabolic state or following a restricted diet that I experienced this addiction. Now, not so much. After eating a very high sugar diet for going on a couple of months now, I don’t find it the least bit addictive. Several times in the past couple of weeks I’ve found myself having only a couple of bites of things like pie and ice cream and having no urge to keep eating them. This is definitely new.
Looking deeper into the science of addiction it becomes abundantly clear that there are dozens of factors involved in addiction in terms of how foods interact with the dopaminergic system (pleasure or reward center in the brain), and a sweet taste is only one of them. In my experience though, eating to the point where it is no longer pleasurable completely eliminates one’s susceptibility to food addiction.
More importantly, asking someone to eat a no sugar diet is unreasonable and unrealistic. I’ve found that eating disordered people will do and eat anything if someone tells them it is healthy. Eating feces, drinking your own urine, eating rotten meat, eating only raw food, eating vegan diets, and what I find to be totally unfathomable ? eating salads, are all common recommendations that hardcore orthorexics are doing in the name of health.
But normal people actually look at eating a diet they don’t like, and living a life they don’t like, and freaking out all their friends and family members with their weirdness, and otherwise becoming a health hermit (HH) as undesirable, wacky, and dumb. I call these people smart. Here is an example of someone who is not smart (if I had to choose one video as the funniest I’ve ever seen, this would probably be it)?
Anyway, I can’t get over some of the interesting details observed in THIS STUDY. The study was pointed out by frequent 180 commenter Jannis in his interesting article written back in February. READ IT HERE. Yes, I was just as surprised as many of you when I learned that Jannis had a wiener, perhaps because when you read the name ?Jannis? like an English-speaking redneck it sounds like Janice, a woman’s name.
A glance through these materials will have you pondering over some very important details. Details like?
1) A high-sugar diet vs. a high-fat or high-starch diet caused subjects to eat more when eating to appetite.
2) This caused muscle gain but no fat gain whatsoever, whereas starch eaters ate far less food, lost muscle mass and fat, and hated their diets in comparison.
3) The high-sugar eaters reported much greater satisfaction with their diets, and even felt they were high in fat even though they weren’t eating much fat at all.
4) The high-sugar eaters had a much higher energy expenditure, meaning that, without instruction to exercise more, they exercised more anyway.
5) When sugar consumption rises, fat intake naturally falls and vice versa, leading one to ask whether it’s better to eat a high-sugar or high-fat diet (a diet that isn’t one or the other is generally not palatable enough for someone with free will to follow long-term). Eat more fruit and drink more juice? Or eat more butter, cream, and ribeye? Anyone who has closely monitored their exercise performance and recovery will have that question answered very clearly. By the same token, I think most who monitor their dental health will note the opposite, so there’s certainly not a clear cut answer.
What I find most intriguing is that on the high-sugar diet there was an increase in lactic acid and catecholamines (adrenaline and noradrenaline). While Jannis viewed this as cataclysmic, and taken out of context I can see why, it is extraordinarily interesting that higher lactic acid production seems to yield a greater production of growth hormone. At least this is something promoted in the bodybuilding world with textbook truism.
If there was indeed an increase in growth hormone ? and I have seen in places that sucrose increases growth hormone (so does glucose), it would explain a lot. Normally I think of the increase in catecholamines breaking down muscle tissue and blunting appetite for example, as you might see with taking amphetamines. But the subjects actually ate more and gained lean mass with no fat gain. Smells like growth hormone to me.
While there are endless interesting things about growth hormone (improves skin elasticity, removes age spots, makes people look younger, reverses gray hair, reduces abdominal fat, increases muscle mass and strength, increases libido and sexual performance), one very interesting aspect seems to be that in the short-term growth hormone causes high blood sugars and hyperinsulinemia. This really threw researchers for a loop. But lo and behold, over the long-term the increases in lean mass and reduction in body fat induced by growth hormone actually seem to improve glucose clearance and insulin sensitivity (which is a good reminder to anyone and everyone that studies, most of which show short-term effects, are very dangerous if one is trying to build solid conclusions from them? as are short-term changes in response to new diet and lifestyle habits as so many have been eager to point out lately as if I didn’t understand that as well as, or better than, any human being on earth).
But I can’t help, considering my own experiences with high sugar diets (the first one I ever did totally eliminated all my gray hair for example, which didn’t start coming back in again for 6-7 years), thinking that sugar may have some advantages here. It’s certainly hard to make everyone who follows my work suffer with anxiety over omitting many of their favorite foods over it. In a perfect world that sugar would probably come from freshly-juiced sugarcane, what one person has written to me and called the ultimate food. But there are of course many ways of scrutinizing this as well. Ice cream could win votes too by some lines of thinking (higher calorie density, therefore greater calorie consumption, therefore greater energy level, mood, heat production, etc.).
No this is not just another bandwagon, but a serious re-examination of important details that many people have overlooked. More to come, including a post soon about my own personal changes noticed with adding a substantial quantity of sugar ? mostly in the form of fruit and juice, to my diet.
Matt
2 little questions,,,,
what are you're thoughts on the 40-50 grams of fructose a day and after that it gets stored as fat ??is it true ??? sine sucrose is half fructose will it make the same effect??
and what do u now think about caffeine??
thanks ;=)
Hey Matt, Earlier in the week, I was having a conversation with my neighbor who is a bee keeper. He was telling me that the reason bees make honey is that they store it as food for the winter. They eat the honey in order to keep their bodies very warm (close to 100 degrees) to keep the larvae warm in the nest. It suddenly dawned on me that if you are thinking of raising your body temp, then sugar, in particular honey might be the way to go. I've always been a honey fan and even when I've eliminated fruit from my diet, the fructose I always break down and add back in first is honey.
Fructose doesn't necessarily get broken down into fat. It's fate probably depends on exercise levels and metabolic rate. My thoughts about caffeine have not changed over the years.
Nipper-
I've had some honey msyelf the last couple of days. First time in a while.
That mismatch between short-term effects and long-term results is so tricky for trying to understand what's going on. It's like you get one single freeze-frame and have to extrapolate from there. Thanks for making that important distinction again.
@Jenny: (I used to be a beekeeper when I lived in HI: can't make myself do it here in AK)–bees make honey not just for the winter (in HI there's something blooming year-round and they make loads of honey): they make it as food in general. If a hive swarms, they stuff themselves and effectively take all the honey with them. A beehive 'runs' pretty hot in general: it needs to be a constant 90-some degrees.
A couple other interesting honey tidbits: bees evaporate nectar (80% moisture) down to honey (20% moisture) by fanning their wings in concert, acting like a mass dehydrator. And different honeys have different ratios of sucrose-fructose depending on the source. As far as I understand, the honeys that crystallize more rapidly (like clover, lehua) are heavier to sucrose and the ones that stay runny (like macadamia) are more fructose.
I ate a boat load of honey when I lived in HI. Initially, it was an add-on to a mostly-fruit diet, so very high sugar (with some avos and cocos); later, it was part of my 'primal' experiment a la Aajonus. In both cases, I found it soothing to my digestion in some obvious ways.
I haven't been eating it at all for a couple years now, partly (I think) because of bad associations from the Aajonus thing, but thinking just of honey by itself, I can only think good things…
Hi Matt
what do you think is now the best way to do rrarf???
what do u think is best to prefer starch or sugar???
i wonder how many nutrients are needed if one wants to add soemthing like whole cane sugar to his diet Lol
Hey Ela, OK, well that makes sense since my neighbor lives in Minnesota and bee keeping in temperate zones is probably a lot different than in tropics. I didn't know that about crystallizing honeys having different sucrose/fructose ratios but that makes sense. Seems like in Minnesota, most honey is clover honey and that might have something to do with the heat requirements for winter. My neighbor says a bee will pretty much die if they are exposed to air below 50 degrees.
They are testing the boy to see if he has an autism spectrum disorder. I'm very skeptical of the autism diet, just because I think it would be really difficult to implement and then I wonder if many of the benefits from it might just have to do with eliminating dairy/gluten means that you can't eat processed foods any more and that moving to a whole foods diet probably has a bigger effect. Also, the underlying reason for the diet supposedly working has to do with gut health, which I think IS very compelling, but I saw that I fixed my own gut health by going 180 and eating more calories and more calories from fat, eliminating processed foods, eating more calories, eating more organ meats and broths and by using the RS3 salad as a magic bullet when things got slow down below.
The boy has always had constipation and I was looking at autism forums and found that this is almost universal with the disorder. The boy has been eating a lot better recently, but still not pooping as much as easily as I think is normal or healthy. My hope is that I will be able to fix his digestion by pushing fruit, gelatin and RS3. At least that is what I plan to try before I start trying to institute gluten-free dairy-free at the Nipper Ranch.
Haha! I remember watching that episode of Wife Swap. It was awesome. I enjoyed the part where the raw food woman licked the floor to prove that bacteria won't hurt you. Pretty extreme folks.
Eating feces, drinking your own urine, eating rotten meat, eating only raw food, eating vegan diets, and what I find to be totally unfathomable ? eating salads …
Hey! I resemble that comment!!! :-p
I recall French raw fude-dude, Guy-Claude Berger and his Instincto-Anopsology diet dalliance used (perhaps still does, I dont know) to wax lyrical about the taste change eating raw foods. And how this change only applies to nude foods.
I beg to differ, as I find it also applies to cooked food also. At some point eating marked flavours, 'yum' becomes 'not-yum' or 'appealing' becomes 'not-appealing'. This can be especially apparent with striking flavours like bitter, sour or sweet. Dont know where I am taking this – certainly not advocating raw mono meals, though each to their own – but I guess, more a comment that allowing oneself to eat sweet food does not necessarily imply that that will pervert from eating other nutritious food also.
Anyone care to enlighten me on the impact of a higher sugar diet on a person trying to recover from adrenal fatigue? Including a lot more fruit and things like orange juice in the diet will have a much greater potassium load and from a whole slew of sources out there, potassium seems to have a negative effect on the adrenals and salt loading is necessary.
Ohh and Jenny, I live in AK and I work in an office above a restaurant. They tried to make their own honey last summer on the roof .. temperatures got down to 45-50 degrees some nights and all the bees died.
@Jenny – what is RS3?
We've done the GF/CF thing. I think in retrospect that GF alone and ETFing in the long haul would help a lot.
I'll tell you what RS3 is, but you have to explain ETFing!
RS3 is resistant starch type three. Matt has a salad that is:
5 lbs red potatoes cooled to room temp.
Couple of ears of roast corn on the cob.
Couple of roasted red bell peppers
A can of white beans. (Black and brown turn the salad a funky color)
Eat with plenty of Matt's homeamade ranch and the good bacteria will come to funky town and make it brown!
OK duh, ETF = Eat the food.
Matt,
Posts like this make me think that the most effective way to RRARF would be seasonal. For instance, higher in sugar (fruit, honey, milk) during the summer when these foods are in season, and higher in fat and starch (cheese, butter, potatoes) in the winter when these are in season.
I know that in TCM, eating with the seasons is very important. Each season is connected with different organ function and different foods. It also seems that our bodies have different requirements for fats, sugars, vitamin d, etc. during different times of the year (in different climates as well). Just a thought… Interested to hear what you think?
TCM, ETF, GF. IFTOA (I'm fucking tired of acronyms).
sorry to start out off topic, but the room that the dad is freaking out in, is that a laundry room with a toilet or a bathroom with a washer or ??
Yes, I am easily distracted and like shiny things.
:)
and I LOVE sugary things. Now to stop feeling guilty when I eat them, sort of like raw dad over there only not as wussy as him.
@El66K: I am so lame at acronyms for the longest time I thought LOL meant 'lots of luck' and thought everyone had turned really mean all of the sudden.
Cool, thanks!
ETFing = Eat(ing) the Food, like Matt says.
I feel like if the dairy is of good quality, it's better to have in the diet than not. Unless you like a lot of fish eggs and liver.
@JennytheNipper–yes, definitely! Bees have a much smaller temperature tolerance range than we do: in climates where they hibernate, it's really important to keep the hives insulated so that they're not exposed to cold.
Also, I had friends years ago who ate 'everything' but mostly home-cooked and hearty. Their son is autistic, and when they figured that out, they took him off gluten and dairy. (He was about 3 at the time.) The difference that it made was really amazing
@Tyler–greetings, a fellow Alaskan here! Yes, I don't know anyone (in south-central AK anyway) whose bees did anything much last year. It was a crappy summer (a bad one for me to try bees for the first time in an adverse climate–mine died too).
@CM–I've been thinking a lot about the 'seasonal' thing lately too, and I like that you note that certain _animal_ products are seasonal, just as plants are. It's so blurry, though–eg 'winter pears' taste awful when you first harvest them, and only get good when they've been stored for a while. And although you can get butter from winter cows, have you seen the difference between summer and winter butter? Now I hate butter, but even I can see that that golden stuff looks so much better than the anemic winter stuff…
Matt, have you considered the possibility that your positive experience with sugar has been made possible by your engaging in PACE-style workouts beforehand? And that your reintroduction of sugar might have provided some not so convincing results without PACE? (I think I remember that in the past you wrote that fructose would make your body temperature collapse instantly. But that was before exercise rehab.) So maybe fructose or sucrose works for you because your metabolism is up and running (i.e. you metabolize sugars perfectly) – and for somebody with a damaged metabolism it may prove detrimental. An interesting question resulting from this would be: Would sugar work for somebody who is very good at hiking?
Just curious… Stiwa
Ela,
I agree with you, it is blurry and thats why I dont think it has to be exact. The easiest way to do it is just to buy as much locally produced food as possible (farmers markets).
And in regards to the butter thing, I think the whole purpose of butter is to have a way to preserve the summer milk. When Weston Price was in Switzerland he noted that the Swiss prized the summer milk for its health benefits and would make butter and cheese out of it to use in the winter when milk wasn't as plentiful.
Matt have you ever reviewed Lustig's Sugar: The Bitter Truth (on Youtube). I am just so confused at this point…
@Jenny, also look into olive leaf extract and the biokult probiotics. OLE kills a lot of bad bacteria (and yeast) in the body and biokult is a great probiotic. Along with gelatin, maybe that could do it, sans having to do a full GAPS diet or anything.
Ah, young grasshopper. You are learning a bit of what I learned 20 years ago. Back then I ate raw fruits and vegetables, and cooked meat. Lost 30 pounds in about a month or so. Got ripped to shreads. My sugar intake via fruit was very high. I ate some nuts and coconut, but not a lot. So it was a high sugar low fat diet. Zero cooked starches and zero dairy.
The diet was not sustainable, but for a while it was wonderful.
Conversely, I had gone into this diet with a bit of a gut after eating Eat to Win and loading up on cooked starches (though I hadn't gone as low in fat and meat as Haas advocated; so it's not all his fault).
None of this ever seems to make any sense. The contradictions are plentiful.
Jt,
I know you said that you were going to stop commenting on the blog, but if you still read the 180 blog and the comments section, I would really appreciate it if you came back cause I have a few questions I would like to ask you.
If I remember right, you mentioned going on vacation to the tropics and eating some fruit while there and feeling great and having a positive effect on your body. However, you said that when you went back to the U.S. and ate fruit you had the opposite experience and had negative results. Which I think that is why the 100 grams of sugar that you do have in a day are from a liquid drink that you make with white sugar or some type of koolaid.
The reason I'm bringing this up is because I recently tried the whole Peatish experiment with fruit and mostly orange juice and I had nothing but negative consequences: horrible acne, digestive problems, gained fat, dropped my body temperature from 98.6 to 97.2 and the worst part of all is that after a 10 days my feet started to get FREEZING cold, to the point where I had trouble sleeping at night cause my feet were freezing even though i covered them with 3 blankets. I've been able to bring my body temperature back to 98.6 by overfeeding on potatoes but my acne isnt completely gone and im still trying to keep an open mind on the beneficial effects of fructose/sucrose if I can find a way that I handle it positively (maybe raw honey, maybe white sugar I dont know).
Anyways the reason I mention this is because my failure with the fruit and orange juice thing might be from the fruit being picked unripe, or addition of certain type of preservatives or other chemicals. Truth is I don't know what the exact reason but I just know that it was a huge failure for me and somehow If i remember right you had the same type of problems with the fruit in the U.S.
Anyways, if you still read the blog and the comments, I hope you would be willing to come back and give me some advice and/or answer some of my questions, cause If I remember right you substituted 100 grams of starch (rice) for 100 grams of your sucrose drink and seemed to have better energy.
From my own experience starch may still be best for RRARF or for the 180 eating style at first. I found while eating a lot of nuts, and foods possibly cooked in veg oil I reacted much more negatively to sugar than starch. This was true for the first months of eating low PUFA and high starch as well. But now, after eating low PUFA for about 9 months I get no negative reaction from sugars and have only benefited from them (usually fruit, molasses, orange juice).
So maybe starch is still better in the RRARF program, especially for the first few months, thats my 2 cents.
"What I find most intriguing is that on the high-sugar diet there was an increase in lactic acid and catecholamines (adrenaline and noradrenaline). While Jannis viewed this as cataclysmic, and taken out of context I can see why, it is extraordinarily interesting that higher lactic acid production seems to yield a greater production of growth hormone. At least this is something promoted in the bodybuilding world with textbook truism."
Doesn't growth hormone boost testosterone? Or is the other way around? Does more sugar in the diet boost testosterone levels in men? Or is it simply a matter of eating more.
I am 26 now and have started noticing grey hairs popping up, i have dark hair so it's easier to see OK lol! But, one thing that I have really watched over the last 2 years was sugar. Trying to eliminate sugar from all forms, except fruit. But I stopped eating fruit like I had in the past.
I use to eat a lot of fruit, drink lots of juice. But when I started reading more about health sugar seemed to be one common thing I found to be so called healthy to eliminate.
Well now I have grey hairs showing up. WTF!!!
I have always craved juice and fruit no matter how I ate, but would never let myself drink juice. Talk about being effed up and having a non healthy relationship with fruit/juice/sugar.
Going to drink some damn OJ now!! :)
subscribing
Honye seems just sugar which has been vomited by bees to me. Matt, I think you will end up recommending a 'balanced' diet, not forbidding any food, and using only a small caloric deficit when losing weight, possibly with some cycling of calories and nutrients.
what does the comment "subscribing" mean?
@Jane that someone is following this blog/post or the comments
thank you!
Hi Matt,
I've recently had to give up grains and dairy. Coupled with my already lean mass (9%) and high exercise rate (4/5 hrs/week), I find that i'm loosing too much weight (despite eating copious amount of food)
I'm very interest in your sugar theory. How would you suggest to go about increasing ones's intake? Ice cream sounds like a great option (I can get freshly made with no milk) anything else?
Many thanks,
Leonardo
Oh, ED stands for eating disordered!! I thought a high percentage of people on the forum had some erectile dysfunction. Glad to clear that up. I was worried about the hormone profiles of some of the ladies in particular.
I hate to be so vague but I remember reading an interesting (though some what short)article, which has 'bee-n' consumed by Google's love of shopping and other random search connections, on the increased longevity and health of bee keeping populations in certain areas of Europe. It seems people had always associated Vitamin-Bee with long life and robust health. I don't know how true it was though but said that you ideally wanted to consume all the different bee products. Expensive.
I'm very biased toword the nutrient content of things and that's where I try to find explanations for new ideas. I would like to suggest that the people experiencing positive reactions from sugar are the ones that eat enough micronutrients so that when they eat sugar that seem to turbo charge the metabolism their bodies have enough building stones and can just go on building muscle or crank up the body temperature or whatever is needed. And on the opposite side if you don't eat enough micro nuitrients then the sugar will create a huge craving because the metabolism is trying to rise on too little nutrient and the body will try to get you to eat more.
Having that aspect on things I would think honey and molasses would be suprerior to white sugar because of their higher nutrient value. It also falls well into the theory that the more refined the product is the lower the nutrient content is.
"most of which show short-term effects, are very dangerous if one is trying to build solid conclusions from them? as are short-term changes in response to new diet and lifestyle habits as so many have been eager to point out lately as if I didn’t understand that as well as, or better than, any human being on earth)"
bam- smack down to the doubters, including me!
So if I'm understanding correctly, your sense is that sugar's short term effects are, like low-carbs, totally the opposite of its long-term effects, and for that reason, worth investigating. Increased lean mass, increased energy, great insulin sensitivity, etc despite initial hyperinsulinemia, hypolycemia, etc. Plausible, I suppose. And it ties in with the idea that calories aren't the enemy, despite whatever short term consequences might suggest, a foundational principle here.
I can imagine you might be frustrated with all the nay-saying and the doubts about your latest forays, Matt. Especially because I know you know you're a smart dude, and probably want not to have to re-hash ideas that you've already thought through and moved past. I suppose that's the consequence of having a blog and being well-followed. And it's a consequence of pulling 180s. :-D
As for me, I keep trying to hammer home some questions and contradictions not because I want to be a jerk, but because in my memory, you explicitly sought all that out- that cognitive dissonance that fosters growth. But for whatever reason, you've not answered some of them. Whatever- maybe sometime you'll get around to it, or not.
Just wanted to clear the air Matt, and let you know I sure do hope you can address some of my concerns (which I think are pretty well thought out too), but also let you know that you still have my full faith and confidence as a researcher.
Cheers buddy
Jenny, our gluten free-ness has been pretty mellow here, as after some experimenting I've come up with a pretty good GF flour combination that is working nicely for baking. Getting rice flour that is superfine is very helpful. I've ordered some online that is fantastic, but shipping is super expensive. I've read that many Asian markets carry very fine white rice flour, though.
This post had me at "reverses gray hair". Not just because I'm vain, but as I age, I've finally learned that hair, skin and nails tell the general health story…
FWIW, many people swear by blackstrap molasses to reverse gray hair.
Question for anyone: I know this came up in another thread, but does anyone else use coconut palm sugar? The brand I use makes certain health claims that I can't find backed up anywhere. Anyway, it tastes nice. That I know.
Jenny: where did you find Matt's homemade ranch recipe?
rosenfeltc,
You may already know, but I've had the same experience as you but less extreme I guess. I break out from eating lots of fruit, even with no refined sugar, low PUFA, high gelatin, etc. I've never given up starch completely though while doing that, but I only ate starch once every few days anyway.
The 180 Cookbook has the homemade ranch recipe. I'll give it to you now cuz I have it memorized
Add chopped scallions, fresh thyme, sea salt, a pinch of cayenne, (I also add a bit of sweet paprika and hot paprika) to sour cream and blend vigorously till it's combined. Done. I use the best quality sour cream I can find (Kalona Organics has no additives at all). It would work great with creme freche.
Mary said: Jenny, our gluten free-ness has been pretty mellow here, as after some experimenting I've come up with a pretty good GF flour combination that is working nicely for baking. Getting rice flour that is superfine is very helpful. I've ordered some online that is fantastic, but shipping is super expensive. I've read that many Asian markets carry very fine white rice flour, though."
I will look for that, thanks. I have a gluten free flour mix that works OK. I've only used it in small amounts to make crepes. I'd like something that has the looks and texture of white flour for scones because we love those.
Matt, ok so now what? While I'm always fascinated by and have learned a lot from your blogposts, they often leave us more confused about what you conclude from them, in terms of your recommendations and applying them in the real world for real people — most of whom are in poor metabolic health — in contrast to your much improved metabolic state.
And in keeping with it being "realistic" — the reality is that people are interested in fatloss as much, if not more, than good health — if people are honest — and not too willing to gain even more fat, in the name of health. So what do you -now- recommend as an effective way to RRARF to heal metabolism and overall health — without gaining more fat — and perhaps, instead, facilitate fatloss and gain lean mass?
How does one eat a high sugar diet that is low in starch and fat? Eat mostly fruit? And if high sugar is better(?) than high starch and high fat, how is ice cream — which is high in both sugar AND FAT — a good choice, in that context?
Just getting more and more confused about what to eat. I understand and do eat mostly wholesome foods — but now very confused about what to eat with what, and when, and why lol! Help!!
@ my 2 cents
You should just substitute every carb in your diet with frozen OJ. Well you can substitute some with ice cream, too.
Kidding asside, why not just "eat the food" like Matt says ever so often. Experiment with fruit for breakfast. Experiment with eating dessert. You don't have to try to go super-low in starch now. Why always go to extremes? Add some sugar and see what it does for you, preferably sugar of the unrefined kind, how about raw honey? Peat may have some good research, that may be. But his dietary recommendations are extreme. Very restrictive. Exactly what 180 is supposed to be opposed to.
Matt, about growth hormone, you might find this interesting:
1: Phys Ther. 1999 Jan;79(1):76-82.
Does growth hormone therapy in conjunction with resistance exercise increase
muscle force production and muscle mass in men and women aged 60 years or older?
Zachwieja JJ, Yarasheski KE.
Exercise and Nutrition Program, Pennington Biomedical Research Center, Baton
Rouge, La., USA.
Improved muscle protein mass and increments in maximum voluntary muscle force
have rarely been observed in men and women aged 60 years and older who were
treated with rhGH. Although rhGH administration has been reported to increase
lean body mass in older men and women, it is doubtful that this increase is
localized to skeletal muscle contractile proteins. When rhGH administration was
combined with 16 weeks of resistance exercises, increases in muscle mass, muscle
protein synthesis, and muscle force were not greater in the rhGH-treated group
than in a weight training group that received placebo injections. Side effects of
rhGH treatment in elderly people are prevalent, not trivial, and further limit
its usefulness as an effective anabolic agent for promoting muscle protein
accretion in men and women. In particular, the induction of insulin resistance
and carpal tunnel compression reduces the efficacy of rhGH replacement therapy in
elderly individuals. The evidence for a GH-induced increase in human skeletal
muscle protein and maximum voluntary muscle force is weak. The optimum dose and
GH-replacement paradigm (GHRH, GH-secretagogues) have not been identified.
Whether rhGH therapy improves muscle protein mass and force in individuals with
severe cachexia associated with major trauma, burns, surgery, or muscular
dystrophy is controversial and under investigation.
Publication Types:
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
Research Support, U.S. Gov't, P.H.S.
Review
PMID: 9920193 [PubMed – indexed for MEDLINE]
Continues…
2: Exerc Sport Sci Rev. 1994;22:285-312.
Growth hormone effects on ****bolism, body composition, muscle mass, and
strength.
Yarasheski KE.
****bolism Division, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis,
Missouri.
It is clear that the anthropometric ramifications, especially with respect to
muscle mass, of the ****bolic actions of GH and IGF-I treatment in intact and
GH-deficient adults require further study. At present, it appears that daily GH
or IGF-I treatment modestly increases nitrogen retention in most normal adults,
probably by separate but permissive mechanisms, but only for a short period of
time (approximately 1 month). During prolonged GH administration, resistance to
the anabolic actions of GH seems to occur, and optimizing the anabolic effects of
GH or IGF-I treatment will require a better understanding of the interactions
among GH, GHBP, IGF-I production, IGFBPs, the GH dose regimen, and other
unidentified regulatory factors. On the basis of the similar increases in muscle
protein synthesis, muscle cross-sectional area, and muscle strength observed in
placebo and GH-treated exercising young adults, it is doubtful that the nitrogen
retention associated with daily GH treatment results in an increase in
contractile protein, improved muscle function, strength and athletic performance.
Even in catabolic or GH-deficient populations, GH treatment provides only modest
increments in nitrogen retention, muscle size, strength, and exercise capacity.
Further, the side effects of GH treatment (water retention, carpal tunnel
compression, insulin resistance) would be a detriment, rather than an aid, to
athletic performance. In addition, whether prolonged (> 6 months) GH treatment
alone or in combination with other agents used by athletes (e.g., anabolic
steroids, beta-agonists) is associated with other adverse side effects (e.g.,
cancer, diabetes) has not been evaluated. Therefore, health professionals should
continue to discourage the use of GH by exercise enthusiasts.
Publication Types:
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
Research Support, U.S. Gov't, P.H.S.
Review
PMID: 7925547 [PubMed – indexed for MEDLINE]
3: J Appl Physiol. 1993 Jun;74(6):3073-6.
Short-term growth hormone treatment does not increase muscle protein synthesis in
experienced weight lifters.
Yarasheski KE, Zachweija JJ, Angelopoulos TJ, Bier DM.
****bolism Division, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis,
Missouri 63110.
The purpose of this study was to determine whether recombinant human growth
hormone (GH) administration enhances muscle protein anabolism in experienced
weight lifters. The fractional rate of skeletal muscle protein synthesis and the
whole body rate of protein breakdown were determined during a constant
intravenous infusion of [13C]leucine in 7 young (23 +/- 2 yr; 86.2 +/- 4.6 kg)
healthy experienced male weight lifters before and at the end of 14 days of
subcutaneous GH administration (40 microgram.kg-1 x day-1). GH administration
increased fasting serum insulin-like growth factor-I (from 224 +/- 20 to 589 +/-
80 ng/ml, P = 0.002) but did not increase the fractional rate of muscle protein
synthesis (from 0.034 +/- 0.004 to 0.034 +/- 0.002%/h) or reduce the rate of
whole body protein breakdown (from 103 +/- 4 to 108 +/- 5 mumol.kg-1 x h-1).
These findings suggest that short-term GH treatment does not increase the rate of
muscle protein synthesis or reduce the rate of whole body protein breakdown,
****bolic alterations that would promote muscle protein anabolism in experienced
weight lifters attempting to further increase muscle mass.
Publication Types:
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
Research Support, U.S. Gov't, P.H.S.
PMID: 8366011 [PubMed – indexed for MEDLINE]
Anyway, this was done in supposedly healthy people, I believe, except for the first one (not sure). Interesting nonetheless.
The gray hair topic is tantalizing, for sure. I know that people say it's genetic (and that's how come we all know someone who was turning gray in high school)… but we can overcome genetics.
Well, then, what do you make of my funny story? I just turned 34 and I have no gray hair at all–on my head. On another part of my body, though, I do have a few.(And I, too, have dark hair, so easy to see.) I can't believe I just shared that!
I started going gray when I was 16!!! And now you guys are saying it's health related? I have never heard that.
Matt, I don't know how you can call that the funniest video ever. Imagine the pain he must be going through, being forced to feed hid kids*gasp* cooked foods. Who wouldn't fall to the floor sobbing in the laundry/bathroom area? I mean, really.
Hans, thanks for trying to help.
But I guess that was my point. That's what I was doing — just eating the food — but it hasn't been so just "eat the food" around here lately. Rather it's been more about extremes — high starch, now high sugar?? low starch?? low fat??
But yes that's what I do — for the most part — is just eat the food (mostly wholesome) — what I want, with whatever I what — pretty balanced. But, while the main goal is healing metabolism and restoring health, I am certainly interested in ways of eating/combining foods that minimize fat gain, perhaps facilitate fatloss (without triggering rebound affect), and encourage lean gains instead. Which I thought was the whole point in all this "masturdebating" about it all. Otherwise, we would all just "eat the food" — right??
Peat think that growth hormone therapy is very dangerous and has a lot of side effects. He thinks of growth hormone as just another stress hormone, which isn't needed when thyroid function is optimal. There are quite a lot of studies which illustrate the harmful side effects of GH replacement therapy.
Jannis,
No one should put a naturally occurring hormone in the human body in the "not needed" category.
That smells a lot like "I am going to eat only meat".
All hormones have their place in a balanced healthy metabolism.
This being one of the major reasons for Matt and yourself challenging people to see the potential benefits of sugar in the human diet.
Ela said: "…I have no gray hair at all–on my head. On another part of my body, though, I do have a few.(And I, too, have dark hair, so easy to see.)…"
Same here! Not one gray hair on my head, but a few down below. And I'm 40 with dark hair.
Here is something that I found interesting. Drew Carey (former star of the Drew Carey Show and the current host of the Price is Right) used to be pretty heavy (maxed out at 262 pounds). He is now 185. The interesting part of the article was his 'usual' breakfast that he orders…"Sitting down for breakfast at a West Hollywood diner recently, Carey, 52, ordered his new ? usual?: scrambled egg whites with a side of fruit."
It's funny because I tried out the fruit thing by itself and then added protein because of the Ray Peat suggestions. Looks like it worked for Drew Carey.
Nathan,
I didn't say that it is not needed at all. What I meant to say is that GH levels will be very low when thyroid function is optimal. Just like cortisol and adrenaline will be very low, when there is enough thyroid.
I've been eating more fruit than ever before in my life recently and I've noticed grey hair recently as well fwiw. I'm 26. I'm also pretty sure I've been getting fatter while eating to appetite. A lot of teeth pain for the first time since I was a little kid…Eating sugar from fruit and molasses hasn't been going well at all.
One argument in favour of sugar has always been the simple fact that we have evolved such an incredibly strong taste for it, and the various counter-arguments to this I've never found to be particularly convincing. Like, some believe that during our evolution we never would have encountered sugar sources as dense as lets say ice cream, and that therefore our evolved taste for sweets isn't prepared for the "sugar overload", but this is bullshit for several reasons. One, there are natural sources of sugar like honey that are just as sweet and void of nutrients as refined sugar, and our taste buds naturally evolved to prize these foods. Two, we rarely would have encountered sources of fat as densely concentrated as butter or ghree during our evolution, yet these substances are considered staples of a healthy diet by paleotards and it is never suggested in those circles that our taste for concentrated fats could lead to a "fat overload".
Third, there are many examples that our tastebuds are actually perfectly capable of dealing with the excesses of modern society that go way beyond what we would've encountered during our evolution, like we've never had such ready access to fresh water or concentrated salt, yet we have no tendency to overconsume water and too much salt still tastes awful. The fact that concentrated sources of sugar taste so fantastic thus definitely reflects some evolved preference for just such dense sources of sugar.
So some others believe that our preference for concentrated sources of sugar serves some function that is maladaptive in todays society, like to make sure that during summer we seek out foods that will easily replenish fat stores for the coming hard winter. But this also seems to be bullshit, seeing as how in the tropics where we evolved, there really isn't that much seasonal variation in the availability of sugar, and there's not much of a harsh winter season that would necessitate loading up on fat either.
And now we have this study discussed here and on Jannis blog, showing that dietary sugar doesn't even seem to have any tendency towards making you store more body fat, in fact the opposite, its tendency is rather to stimulate the hormones (adrenaline) that makes you more active and expend more energy. So if the sugar doesn't make you fat, why have we evolved such an exquisite taste for densely concentrated sugars? Maybe because it really is the ultimate metabolic stimulus, and in pretty much every single circumstance but inescapable famine, higher metabolism wins out. Maybe the extremely exaggerated taste we get for sweets in a reduced metabolic state simply reflects our bodys craving for the one substance that will most effectively rev up the metabolism back to normal so we can get back as quickly as possible to the business of reproducing.
I'm not saying I'm totally on board with lots of refined sugar being good long-term, but it would make a heapload of evolutionary sense and completely resolve cognitive dissonance if it did function as a positive metabolic stimulus, similar to coconut oil which if anything contains even less nutrients than white sugar (yet is prized by most paleotards). So then you would just have to worry about the rest of your diet containing enough nutrients, but then maybe the question of nutrient density is a pretty overrated part of our modern health problems anyway.
Anyway, I was just thinking about this while enjoying a pint of Haagen Dasz Vanilla and thinking how fucking awesomely good ice cream can be when properly made.
nice comment Collden, I'd like to add something.
The WAPF foolishly believes our ancestors started sprouting grains for "health" and to get rid of phytic acid. The real reason is that grains undergo the process of "malting", the amylase in the grains converts the starch to sugar. "Sugary cereal" is more ancient than we think.
I can say from personal experience that taking GH can cause a lot of problems. Doctors like to use synthetic stress hormones on patients. I've had my fair share of cortisone too.
rosenfeltc – I have no solutions for you, but it is good to know I am not alone. I have never had any plan pack on weight as fast as Ray Peat's plan did. Intellectually, all his articles make sense, so I don't get why I gained.
The first time I did it, I gained 6lbs in three weeks and the second time where I ate MORE fruit, I gained 4lbs in one week and had a body temp drop. My skin broke out also.
I don't get it either and wish I knew why as I had put my faith in it for weight loss.
I will probably try it again after eating a low PUFA diet for a year. I think the PUFAs may have been my problem. Do you have any hypotheses?
lynn,
Did you try eating refined sugar instead of fruit? How was your sleep during the time when your temperature droped and you got the skin problems?
I think it could either mean that your stress hormones decreased, or that your blood sugar fall rapidly.
Collden,
Nobody talks about fat overload because there are more ways (controlled studies) of gaining nutrition knowledge than by simply trading evolution theories, and they favor fat and starch. There are many successful ketogenic trials. High sugar trials have mixed results (but are they ever positive?) but show a tendency towards higher fasting insulin and liver trigs, even with low PUFA. More balanced fat and sugar intake seems worse* than high sugar, yet this isn't necessarily true for fat and starch. I don't know how our desire for sweetness compares to other animals, so I can't comment about that, but I suspect our sweet taste is distorted by modern foods.
Jannis' study is interesting, but it is very short term with small changes in body mass.
Many cultures eat considerable coconut and/or animal fat…who gets 20% calories as sugar? Considering sugar healthy is ignoring a lot of evidence (I am implying that the lack of a healthy high sugar culture is important).
*In the context of metabolic indicators…Replacing sugar with fat (lard) helps dental health though.
Lynn,
Honestly I don’t really know, that’s why I was hoping Jt was still a reader so that maybe he can chime in cause If I remember right he had problems with fruit in the U.S. so he instead got his sucrose from a liquid energy drink that I think he made himself. As far as Ray Peat goes, I’ve read all of his articles and they all make sense to me, as in, I can understand the points he is making but at the same time I don’t have the biochemistry knowledge to really know if what he is saying is true or is making it up or perhaps extrapolating out of context. That is why, I decided to do a google site search from some of the other bloggers I read that do have the biochemistry knowledge such as Stephan Guyenet from wholehealthsource, Peter from Hyperlipid and Chris Masterjohn. Here are some of the quotes that I found from them:
Stephan Guyenet:
I read Peat's article. He's correct that the glycemic index isn't worth much. He's also correct that simply making the pancreas work is not behind insulin resistance. But he totally ignores the large body of evidence that fructose causes long-term insulin resistance, and starch doesn't. In fact, he barely mentions fructose.
If sugar is as harmless as he says, that implies that the diseases of civilization that Price and others saw were entirely due to white flour and/or micronutrient deficiency. Many of these cultures were not eating significant PUFA and they still got sick. The Tokelauans, for example, were at 3% PUFA when their diabetes skyrocketed following the introduction of sugar and white flour.
There is definitely an interplay between sugar and PUFA though. The combination of the two is the worst. Feeding rodents one or the other isn't as bad as combining them, and that's probably true for humans as well. Continued?
?The other point is that humans don't absorb big fructose loads efficiently. It sits in the small intestine and gets fermented by bacteria, leading to nasty digestive consequences. You can observe this by measuring breath hydrogen, a product of bacterial metabolism. 25g fructose is enough to cause malabsorption in about 50% of people. That's two apples (eaten at once) or one can of soda.
I am familiar with Ray Peat. A lot of what he says makes sense. I have a hard time believing some of it though. For example, the idea that the amount of PUFA we would have eaten as hunter-gatherers is immunosuppressive. It's just hard to swallow the idea that we aren't adapted to the diet we've been eating for a million plus years.
I think Peat and the WAPF are in agreement that low total PUFA is best. If I understand correctly, Peat would say to avoid nearly all PUFA including n-3, while the WAPF would say to balance n-6 and n-3 and keep the total low. I think there's enough evidence of the benefits of n-3 that the WAPF stance makes the most sense to me. I'll go even further: I think it's OK to eat more n-3 in the context of a carnivorous diet like the Inuit had. But n-6 should be kept low no matter what.
Peat also has a point that some of the effects of fish oil may be short-term. But I think there is also enough evidence of long-term benefit to justify small doses of omega-3. Continued?
I skimmed over Ray Peat's article as well. As usual, he is so far away from the mainstream that it's difficult for me to even evaluate his points. Sometimes I feel he gets a bit too disconnected from reality by reading cell culture experiments and other in vitro data. But I can't really evaluate the article at this point. I'd have to spend a while thinking about it.
?Ray Peat lumps all PUFAs into the same category, which is a mistake. I can't take his writing seriously anymore because he consistently misrepresents his references. He's right about some things, such as the fact that fish oil promotes lipid peroxidation, but I'm tired of having to second guess every sentence.
Petro Dobromylskyj (Peter from Hyperlipid):
I find Ray Peat unreadable, a pity because he's possibly correct on a lot of things. He should supply more convincing references, easily accessible, and I might finish his articles. He has posted on this very phenomenon but with three refs (not the MDA one I found). Two were abstracts and one full text. I couldn't see how any of them supported his argument, so gave up on him. He may well have been correct, especially when you look at the roll of MDA in dropping VLDLs, but hey, we all have to be convinced. I wasn't when I read his refs. You tend to give up at that point, well, I do!
I have attempted Ray Peat on a number of occasions at Bruce's prompting. I find him particularly difficult as I frequently disagree on the interpretation of PUFA studies he cites. You also get a very one sided view. Omega 3 fatty acids encourage metastasis in certain rat models of cancer. You can find this out from RP. But you have to go to the study authors to find that the same model developes less cancers in the first place on the same omega 3 based semi synthetic diet… Chris Masterjohn gives a far more balanced view, even citing lack of MDA production with cod liver oil (if it's the real vitamin A rich stuff).
Having struggled to accept that RP may well be correct on PUFA despite disagreeing on references, I still find it hard to accept his other ideas.
?Chris Masterjohn's PUFA treatise is a typical meticulous Masterjohn work and is proving a great challenge. One of my biggest problems is that I feel quite down on Ray Peat after checking three random refs from one of his essays and disagreeing with his interpretation on all three. Now Chris M has reached the same conclusions and I have a great respect for him. I've not had time for anything recently except gutting a bathroom (hence minimal blogging despite having about four posts in my head) so detailed reading on EFA is on hold and will undoubtedly delay posting or be delayed itself!
?Just a brief lunch-time (pot of cream) at work comment. I followed three sequential references of Peat's in one of his essays and none of them supported the point he was making. Two abstracts and one full text. Always check refs and think carefully. Obviously I've not bothered with any more of his essays. That may be a mistake but, if you have a point to make, the references should support it! That was several years ago and I can't remember the essay and did not feel the need to save it.
As far as Chris Masterjohn I only found this one quote on his site
I don't know what could be responsible for the scalp issue. I agree with Ray Peat that it is harmful to consume too much of the omega-3 PUFAs, but I think it is good and beneficial to consume small amounts, like 250 mg/day. High-vitamin cod liver oil allows you to get the vitamins without overdosing on the PUFAs.
However, I know Chris Masterjohn has read quite a bit from Peat and yet I don’t think he is really big on sucrose/fructose besides perhaps a few pieces of fruit a day but this is just the opinion I get so take it for what it’s worth.
rosenfelt,
I don't check this blog much anymore, but just happened to check it today and see you question.
Yes, your recollection of my experience with fruit is correct. My experiences with fruit were very similar to yours. Whenever I ate it my body temperature would drop rapidly and I would feel very agitated and weak. For years I had bad reactions to fruit, but would try to force myself to eat it because of Peat's advice. Then I went to spend a month on a tropical island last year and ate lots of the local fruit there and felt good. Then I came back to the U.S. and tried to keep eating fruit, but couldn't tolerate the fruit here.
But, I wasn't eating only fruit. I still ate 3 meals a day of starch, protein, and veggies. And I didn't notice anything magical from the fruit.
Regarding my workout koolaid, it is nothing special either. Just 100 grams of sucrose with some peptopo. It just helps me workout harder for longer by keeping my blood sugar up. Honestly, I don't even think it makes that big of a difference, it is just a habit now so I keep doing it, but I don't need it.
John, I'm not talking about nutritional science at all. Would you consider "successful trials" strong evidence that ketogenic diets are healthy? The fact is we have a strong taste for sugar (which obviously existed before modern society since things like honey have been highly valued throughout human history) and it must have evolved for a reason. If we consider sugar to be bad for us there is simply no way of escaping a huge cognitive disconnect between that and why we would have evolved such a strong preference for it. It was likely not to promote fat gain, so what else?
To all wanting to add more sucrose/fruit instead of starch, I wish you luck, but I have already been there, done that, and can say that nothing great happened. Actually, my experience is that starch works best for me. I still eat some sugar as well, not because I think it is magical, but because it tastes good.
One major guideline that I found that helps with tolerating a high sugar fruit consumption is to completely AVOID it in the morning, especially fruit. This is particular the case when having cortisol deficiency or blood sugar issues. I find it is best tolerated in the evenings.
JT,
Thank you for your answer. I'm like you in that I feel a lot better on starch as well. It's funny when you first joined this blog, I tended to clash heads a lot with you but now I'm seeing how a lot of what you say is right. I just want to apologize for anything that I might have said in the past that was offensive in any way, and I truly appreciate you answering my comments.
@Collden.
"Like, some believe that during our evolution we never would have encountered sugar sources as dense as lets say ice cream, and that therefore our evolved taste for sweets isn't prepared for the "sugar overload", but this is bullshit for several reasons. One, there are natural sources of sugar like honey that are just as sweet and void of nutrients as refined sugar, and our taste buds naturally evolved to prize these foods."
Yet honey is not too easy to find in nature, and in any case, I don't know of any healthy culture with ad libitum acces to it or other sources of concentrated sugar, specially refined. At the very least none that DOES consume them in high quantities.
"Two, we rarely would have encountered sources of fat as densely concentrated as butter or ghree during our evolution, yet these substances are considered staples of a healthy diet by paleotards and it is never suggested in those circles that our taste for concentrated fats could lead to a "fat overload"."
Yeah, mammoths surely where low fat, pemmican didn't exist and tallow is a luxury of the modern world. Also, there is more than enough proof, I believe, that high fat diets lead to spontaneus calorie intake reduction, not the other way around and, second, there is more than enough data on healthy cultures in very high fat diets to show that it is compatible with health.
"Third, there are many examples that our tastebuds are actually perfectly capable of dealing with the excesses of modern society that go way beyond what we would've encountered during our evolution, like we've never had such ready access to fresh water or concentrated salt, yet we have no tendency to overconsume water and too much salt still tastes awful"
Yet we DO have a tendency to overconsume donuts, bread is delicious, McDonalds is delicious, and our tastebuds can rarely tell us about what is killing us nowadays. So there are counterexamples.
"So some others believe that our preference for concentrated sources of sugar serves some function that is maladaptive in todays society, like to make sure that during summer we seek out foods that will easily replenish fat stores for the coming hard winter. But this also seems to be bullshit, seeing as how in the tropics where we evolved, there really isn't that much seasonal variation in the availability of sugar, and there's not much of a harsh winter season that would necessitate loading up on fat either."
Still, refined sugar is a modern invention, and was never an option to our ancestors. Refined fructose and glucose is NOT the same as honey: http://jn.nutrition.org/content/132/11/3379.full.pdf+html
"I'm not saying I'm totally on board with lots of refined sugar being good long-term, but it would make a heapload of evolutionary sense and completely resolve cognitive dissonance if it did function as a positive metabolic stimulus"
Maybe, but wouldn't that argument work for most modern fast foods, candies, etc.
I'm not saying sugar is bad, I'm saying your arguments are.
Matt,
I appreciate your willingness to modify your beliefs and experiment with different things. But, how many 180 degree health beliefs are you going to go through. The bouncing around from diets/foods and exercise programs is not healthy (mentally or physically) for your followers.
Maybe you could write your posts so that they just report your experiences with these diets. I think the problem comes when you proclaim that you have discovered some wonder diet or food and then your followers jump on the diet of the month, then you change your mind again and they follow, and then it happens again and again. Low carb, high carb, low sugar, high sugar, milk diet, potato fetish, etc…
Many physically and mentally unhealthy Orthorexics follow this blog. They are easily persuaded to fixate on supposed good/bad foods and diets. Maybe if you took a more experimental reporting approach you could help these people see that they don't need to pinball from diet to diet until the results are proven.
Please don't take this in a negative way. I still support your work and think that you have the potential to be a great health writer/ reporter. I was in the same boat as you and your followers for a long time. I had followed all of those diets a long time ago and tried to warn everyone of the negative results, like when my ear exploded on the raw milk diet. Nobody wanted to listen when I warned them. They thought i must have done it wrong since they read an article about its magical properties. But, disappointment followed for most, just like the rest of the fad diets they had followed. My guess is the same thing will happen when everyone starts adding sugar instead of starch.
Thanks rosenfelt, that is nice of you to say. I think a lot of it was my fault because my writing style may rub people the wrong way and appear confrontational. I don't intend it this way, but it seems to happen. If anyone met me in person they would see that I am an extremely laid back and nice guy. My only intention on here has been to help others deal with some of the same issues that I have been through. This whole diet/health business causes a lot of pain and suffering, and I just try to help where i can since I have experienced it myself.
Chief?
Anyone know what happened to Chief? I thought he was supposed to have a blog up that was going to offer a proof and explanation of his system. he said this months ago.
Damm, Rosencfelt, that Peat thing was clever!
Yeah, since I'm a bit of an ocd type (not necessarily a bad thing), I always try to check at least some references. Doing that with Peat can be very disappointing since his way of referencing is chaotic, and for what I've checked, specially in e-mails with him, I would say he does tend to take too much out of too little. Of course I'm a rampant ignorant on biochemistry, but I've always kept some level of skepticism. On that note, why does Stephan keeps that idea that a big problem with sucrose is malabsorption based on fructose studies when clearly sucrose is much, much better absorbed (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1433856/)! Gotta ask him, and Peat about the !Kung and their friggin mongongo nuts.
LOL about quoting Peter from HyperLipid on Ray Peat.
The guy is an idiot, per and simple! For a while (he's removed it since I was there a while back) he had something to the effect in his "about section" that he eats a "high fat diet" and "so far pubmed supports him." And he continually misrepresents, misinterprets, and ignores evidence contrary to his -oh-so-perfect high-fat diet in order to make that silly statement.
Ironically, he accuses Ray Peat of the same thing in the quote rosenfeltc provides. Oh, the irony is so sweet; the things that comes out of the drooling mouths of idiots!
And to top the whole thing off, he says he was "down on Peat" because he checked
"three random refs from one of his essays and disagreeing with his interpretation on all three. Now Chris M has reached the same conclusions and I have a great respect for him."
There you have it, ladies and gentlemen. A real thinker he is. But when Masterjohn –he is socially acceptable for some reason amongst the paleo/"evolutionary based nutrition" quacks– says the same basic thing Peat does… well, that's a different matter; after all, Chris Masterjohn is saying it, and not just the pariah Ray Peat. No one who is a real scientist acts this way.
As for Stephan Guyenet: he is a far better blogger and nutritionist than Peter. But he is spouting nonsense when he says there "…is [a] large body of evidence that fructose causes long-term insulin resistance…" I would like to ask him: "In what universe, Stephan?" Because there is NO "large body of evidence" supporting such a belief in this reality. Almost all of the research papers that purport to demonstrate such a connection are ill-conceived and poorly done. Their faults range from improper control of variables (such as feeding rats 60% fructose!) to abuse and misuse of statistical analysis to reach the desired conclusion of the researchers.
And then Stephan, after spouting such nonsense, and engaging in other examples of poor interpretation of data and/or confirmation bias, says he he is tired of "second guessing" Ray Peat because of his" misrepresentation of references." Ditto, Stephan, ditto. And how about some examples to back up what you are saying?
The truth is there are very few actual intellectuals and scientists in the world of nutrition. Of all the health bloggers I know of, I respect Matt the most because he actually is willing to question his fundamental assumptions/premises and admit he might have been wrong. This is "180 degrees" from people like Peter, who are caught up in their pseudo-scientific view of nutrition. Stephan seems open minded, but he to has weaved his own web of dogmas he needs to break free from.
Er, I meant to type "too" not "to" in my last sentence.
"Stephan seems open minded, but he to has weaved his own web of dogmas he needs to break free from."
Who hasn't? Though, the Masterjohn thing, I agree, partly, since he didn't say "the same basic thing"; for Chris, PUFAs are essential, and that's a huge difference. 3 random references, at least for me, isn't enough to dismiss someone of the apparent caliber of Peat. But I don't know much about Peter… I wasn't aware, though, that Peat was seen as a pariah in these circles. Is that so?
Anyway, I need to get a job.
I meant to say "disagreement in the understanding of 3 random references".
People always want to use the degenerative health of native people that introduce sugar to their diet.
What about Cubans? They have had the highest per capita (refined) sugar consumption in the world for generations. This is especially true since the Communists have destroyed their country and left them without access to many of their other traditional foods –in short, sugar has replaced some of their missing calories. Yet many of them are in good health, although recent generations have shown some "physical degeneration" over the last 30 some years. Who wouldn't, living in a Communist created hell-hole where there are sporadic food shortages, among other deprivations?
Nonetheless, before the Communists, and with their high sugar consumption, they were always noted for their apparent health. If sugar were so god-awful, wouldn't they have been among some of the least healthy people in the world, instead of the contrary? Furthermore, with their increased consumption of sugar as a calorie replacement, shouldn't their "physical degeneration" be much accelerated compared to Americans*? But there is no evidence that it is. Lots of Cubans have better teeth than Americans,m for instance.
Similar observations can be drawn about other countries with relatively high per capita sugar consumption, such as Hungary. The staunch anti-sugar crowd needs to explain such observations. They need to explain why countries with high sugar consumption generally have populations that are just as healthy, and in some cases healthier, than populaces that consume significantly less sugar. If sugar were so terrible, these observations would not exist.
*Yes, Americans consume a lot of sugar, but it is nothing compared to places like Cuba and Hungary. In terms of "sweeteners" what Americans consume the most of is high fructose corn syrup. Sadly, Cubans have accelerated their consumption of this sweet poison, also.
Disclaimer: I am not saying people should eat a lot of refined sugar. I just think sugar gets a bad rap that it simply does not deserve. I think sugar is "bad" to the extent that it causes micro-nutrient shortages in the diet. Other than that, I don't think the anti-sugar has a case; all they have is hyperbole and disconnected variables.
JT
Chief! We all need some Chief in our lives.. but sadly he has not been here in many moons. I wrote him an email, he said he was super busy and not much time for computer. That was about three weeks ago……
Where art thou fair Chief??
xo
I find it believable that sugar can either be good or bad, depending on health status of the person. Let's assume that sugar increases metabolism. The study Jannis posted supports that, Matt's experiences supports it, and anyone who's been around kids that just ate candy knows it's true.
Ok, now if you believe Peat that unsaturated fats can damage mitochondria, then perhaps eating sugar while carrying a high PUFA load actually increases mitochondria damage (since they try to work harder from the sugar), and thus, over time, paradoxically lowers energy output.
Or perhaps various micronutrients need to be present to perform the myriad chemical reactions to fully convert sugar to energy "safely", so someone eating refined foods ultimately runs dry on some nutrients and can't handle sugar.
Am I reaching here? Of course. But for myself, I'm doing pretty good on sugar recently, where in the past I haven't. In the interim I've been avoiding almost all PUFA, eating a lot more overall, and just recently I've been taking a *lot* of Vitamin C. It could be any of these, or something else entirely that I'm not aware of. If I had to guess, I'd say the Vit-C is a factor, since my sugar tolerance seemed to increase right at the time I started taking it. But maybe that's a coincidence, and in any event the results haven't stuck long enough yet to convince me.
I don't really buy that different people have different basic nutritional needs (excepting bona fide diseases), but I would guess that different people react to bad diets differently. And a "good" food, in the context of overall bad health, doesn't necessary make you feel better by itself.
If the answer was simple, we'd know it by now.
For people criticizing Matt's changes in views, feel free to post your ultimate diet that works for everyone.
Touche' zogby!
am i understanding this right? jannis concluded from the study that starch is superior? and matt concluded that sugar is superior? and where does fat fit in all this? or does fat just get left out in the cold again?
would love to see what a typical day of eating looks like for each of you now :o)
also i agree about comments being taking the wrong way. happens a lot so i just stay anony. you can't really get true vibe from text so its hard to know the tone and intent. but i too am glad to see jt back here. i for another think your insights have value. and i hope you stick around. i appreciate your input here, along with terpol, undertow, will, michael, rob, and others, including the 180 ladies of course :o)
zogby, your "reach" kind of lines up with my anecdotal experience.
I started Matt's diet 4 weeks ago, after being on a high PUFA, low'ish carb diet for 9 years.
I then read Ray Peat's articles and experimented with adding orange juice, then fruit, then table sugar to my meals.
Here's my experience:
Adding more starch and saturated fat = no sugar cravings, metabolism starts to increase.
Adding orange juice = no ill effects, although skin looks a bit oily and patchy.
Adding Fruit = I have sugar cravings for the first time in 9 years
Adding sugar (e.g hot chocolate, homemade oatmeal cookie after a meal) = not only do I have massive sugar cravings, my skin looks like I've aged 10 years in 3 days.
I'm really hoping I can reverse this by going back to starch instead.
great comments, collden.
i just read your 1st one above. i'm still reading. but i wanted to post this real quick. this statement brought up something that i often wonder about myself.
"So then you would just have to worry about the rest of your diet containing enough nutrients, but then maybe the question of nutrient density is a pretty overrated part of our modern health problems anyway." -collden
i think maybe that's a great possibility. who says we humans really 'need' all of the nutrients, minerals, vitamins, etc. recommended and in the recommended amounts? how could we really know that? i think it's over-hyped. not saying we don't need any nutrients, vitamins, minerals, etc. or that long-term or excessive consumption of toxic and nutrient devoid food doesn't have a negative impact. but maybe it 'is' more about revving up the metabolism with "energy dense" foods? then the rest works itself out naturally.
DML,
Good point about Stephan. I really like a lot of his research. But when it comes to sugar, he is just as all the others scientists. They almost automatically parrot this nonsense that there is a "large body of evidence" suggesting that sucrose causes insulin resistance and so on.
The fact is that there is aboslutely no connection between sucrose and insulin resistance, obesity, diabetes….
http://www.ajcn.org/content
/78/4/865S.full.pdf
About Peat and his references:
I agree that some of his articles, which are on his site, are poorly referenced. For example, in his article about glycemia and sugars, he says that sugar doesn't raise insulin as quickly as starch because fructose inhibits it's secretion, but provides no evidence in his references. When I emailed him and asked him for references for this point he mailed me ten studies which supported the argument. So, it's not like he creates his arguments out of thin air. It seems that he thinks that some of his ideas are so logical that they don't need references and so he focuses on the details.
One of the nice things about living in Europe is that at nearly any (decent) cafe we can order a Jus d'Orange Presse (fresh sqeezed orange juice) – this is also great to serve for children instead of soda! And sparkling mineral water — so hard to find in the US unless at an Italian restaurant….
As the weather warms up my daughter and I will be having lots of a jus d'orange press! Witht he season, our diets will change from the high fat/protein winter diet to the lots of fruit and carbs summer diet.
Blogger- you break my heart!
Quick rundown- I;m not convinced the Cubans were robustly healthy as a sugar eating population. After the Soviet Union fell, they lost their oil imports and had to do a lot more local food growing, and used bikes a whole bunch more. A DVD about this 'The Power of Community,' and how they incorporated permaculture into their strategy, says the average Cuban lost 15lbs or something with the change in diet and lifestyke. May be bunk, but I'm not convinced about sugar yet,
Also- the Tokelauns- if what Stephen Guyenet says is legit, and their PUFA intake was low, why the health consequences with white flour and sugar? Just the flour? I doubt Matt would buy that.
Still no one has given me an adequate explanation of why the !Kung San, eating an unrefined O6 rich staple, are not metabolically ruined if PUFA is the so central.
Peat's recommendations seem super restrictive. What happened to eat the food? Matt, I respect that you're trying to expand the list of possible food choices, but this doesn't do it in my mind. It seems that every dietary strategy. in an effort to regain health, at least provisionally de-emphasizes some foods. Cop to it. Don't just say- 'hey you can eat ice cream now- this diet is super unrestricted!' By the way, don't eat much muscle meat, or too many eggs, or chicken more than once every week and a half, and make sure everything you eat has a PUFA content of less than 3%. It's easy to imagine you're super allowing as long as you don't acknowledge that you're avoiding a whole bunch of other things. Just sayin'
Stancel said…
nice comment Collden, I'd like to add something.
The WAPF foolishly believes our ancestors started sprouting grains for "health" and to get rid of phytic acid. The real reason is that grains undergo the process of "malting", the amylase in the grains converts the starch to sugar. "Sugary cereal" is more ancient than we think.
————
FWIW, neutralizing phytic acid isn't the only reason that the WAPF foolishly believes spouting is good for – seems they're already aware of your "real issue."
From p.112 of Nourishing Traditions:
"Complex sugars responsible for intestinal gas are broken down during sprouting, and a portion of the starch found in grain is transformed into sugar."
It's also stated that many vitamins are produced during the process – it's not only about sugar.
The sidebar snippets in that chapter are full of quotes about the benefits of spouting, and phytic acid isn't mentioned all that much at all.
I wonder: why all the derision in comments on this blog towards WAPF and the seemingly popular ill-informed view that the only reasons they advocate sprouting, fermenting and soaking are to do with phytic acid?
But you're saying it's just about taste, I guess?
There IS a whole lot of jumping around here, and it can throw me off, but even though I've been guilty of hopping on a bandwagon (I don't think Matt is, but I definitely tend to do that — like going out and buying a bunch of OJ/ice cream the same day as reading posts like this)…
…I see it as healing in one major way: getting rid of my personal 'taboos' with these foods. The temporary binging really is a temporary thing: like, I'll have a ton of orange juice, then it'll make me feel awful (I HAVE been having it first thing in the morning, JT — maybe that has a lot to do with it)…but now I don't really have a problem with orange juice anymore, whereas when I was trying the primal diet I was equating it with Satan.
I'm eating whole wheat bread and oatmeal again and it's fine. I enjoy it. I also had gotten rid of grains before and was avoiding carbohydrates as a result of following the primal diet. Now I feel much more comfortable eating a wide range of foods. I love beer and when I'm over someone's house, not being afraid to eat anything and everything they're serving, whether it's whole or refined starch, cooked in vegetable oil or pounded with sugar or what…it's just a great feeling.
I have a really strong feeling that a lot of my health problems are as severe as they are because of my extreme levels of anxiety and obsessiveness. My hands start sweating at the drop of a hat. People seem to forget that in addition to dietary changes, lifestyle changes in the past 100 years have been absolutely tremendous. People are more isolated than ever now and I wouldn't be surprised if the overload of information and lack of personal connection is contributing to the massive rise in health problems via chronically elevated stress hormones or things like that.
I follow this blog because I enjoy it, and I love researching nutrition and health. I remember Matt saying something similar and saying he leaves all that when he goes to the table to eat.
I went to the casino for the first time with a couple friends. Got a double cheeseburger at Johnny Rockets, cheese fries, a vanilla egg cream, and then we went to Ben and Jerry's and I got a cookie dough ice cream.
Sugar may not be a miracle, but I kind of feel like having my pathological associations with it destroyed is a miracle. If there's anything I think this blog does for me, it's allowing me to enjoy a hobby/interest (nutrition/health) while helping me to keep that hobby/interest from interfering with my life to the point of crippling it.
And yeah, the jumping around gets chaotic, but for me personally, it's like going around to all these foods I had unhealthy 'relationships' with and healing them. Like 'oh my God, sugar' — and then I just have a bunch of orange juice or ice cream and the negative association starts dissolving.
I crave nutritious foods most of the time and don't crave the things I was eating all the time as a kid, like sour watermelon slices and Twinkies. When I feel like I can have sugar if I want it, and that there're no restrictions, and no pathological fears of it, I find naturally that I just don't want it that much.
Matt's mentioned this a lot and I think this is key. After stuffing myself with potatoes all the time I just had the urge to diversify my diet and so I got back into whole wheat bread and oatmeal and brown rice for carbohydrates. I have those when I crave them. Now I'm adding orange juice back in, and ice cream, and I don't feel like I have any excessive craving at all for any of these things.
Just another food to add into my shopping cart so I can have some if I want to. I realize my mind is telling my body, "don't eat that" — it's impossible to really listen to your body if you're caught up in so many restrictions that you're psychologically only allowing yourself to enjoy 1/100000 foods that your body (would otherwise) be craving.
I feel so strange right now and dissociated, maybe because of the quart of OJ I just drank first thing in the morning. But it's a learning experience. I still don't understand why it isn't good to do that (I want to understand more about cortisol/blood sugar/adrenal function/etc. on a solid, foundational level so this stuff makes more sense to me)…but I did it, I feel a little off now, and that's it.
I'm happy to feel like I can have orange juice if I crave it. The first thing in the morning OJ thing has been more psychological than my body craving it (didn't feel like I wanted OJ this morning, but I felt like I 'should' so I did).
Again, I just see it as a healing of a relationship. I see now I really don't have any requirement to drink the orange juice if I don't want it, but knowing I can if I do want it just feels so much better.
The farm I get my raw milk at also makes and sells gelato. I'm heading there soon and am going to pick some up. Inspired by this blog? Completely. Bandwagon on my part? You bet.
But I also love gelato and I might really crave some tonight after dinner. Normally I'd fight those urges and feel bad if I had it because I'd feel like I was nutritionally compromising myself or 'failing' in some way or another.
I want to enjoy it, and feeling like I can have the freedom to do that feels great to me.
Leonardo-
Juices are my preferred sugar source, but I have been eating a lot of whole fruit and some refined sugar – mostly pie and ice cream/gelato (oh and barbecue sauce haha).
Potassium and adrenals-
I've never fully bought into the importance of potassium and sodium in adrenal restoration. I feel like my adrenal glands have recovered incredibly well eating the highest potassium to sodium ratio I think I've ever eaten. Even with minimal sleep I have absolutely no discoloration under the eyes and tons of energy on a high-sugar diet not too different from what Carl M. describes (but the casual version that includes gelato, fried tates, and mac n' cheese).
On PACE and sugar intake, and the hypometabolic sugar crash a year ago…
I haven't really been doing much exercise lately. Not structured at least. It doesn't seem to play as large of a role as one would assume. I had some similar cold, hypoglycemic, and hyperphagic feelings starting out on the sugar, but I dropped my fat intake and upped the sugar intake and it went away. Now I seem to be able to eat plenty of fat and not have that negative response. In other words, I've sidestepped that problem with sugar, by eating more of it.
Winner – Jib
Thanks Jib. You really get it.
As far as a deeper explanation, I've gravitated farther and farther towards the idea that, from a health perspective, food is just one of many tools that can be used to re-balance a person's physiology. I think the problem with many restricted diets and many forms of self-experimentation, is that it tends to make the imbalances worse, not better. This manifests in many ways, and often shows up in a reduced body temperature.
With all the work we've done here and ground we've covered it makes it pretty obvious that everyone has a unique set of imbalances and physiological idiosyncrasies that they have developed over the years. It's clear that nutrition is best used only with an understanding of physiology and biochemistry. With physiology and biochemistry as the basis, you can use nutrition as a rebalancing tool. And of course lifestyle factors as well.
The danger is when people are bombarded with the idea that there is a "large body of evidence" that sugar is bad. For some, sugar is EXACTLY what they need to overcome a pressing health problem, regardless of what the body of evidence may or may not say. The emails I've gotten this month have been awesome. Sleep problems gone, energy problems gone, body temperatures up – some people really needed to add sugar to their diet. Others really needed to cut back on animal protein and other things we've discussed recently.
So it's not another bandwagon, and shouldn't be looked at as such. Rather, it's just another tool in the toolbox that, used wisely, can be of great use to many people.
I felt bad for that guy ALMOST enough not to laugh. My desensitization for human suffering has increased just as much as my body temps. Thanks Matt.
Being one of the orthorexic, 180D robot, diet pinballs, my experiences on eating a mother lode of fruit yielded very few changes for me. There has been nothing negative like blood sugar issues, weight gain, body temp drops, skin/teeth problems. Initially I thought that fruit was providing more sustained energy but now I think that just Mattsh** on it to begin with simply provided more calories than I was used to eating. I think I was only able to eat a lot initially because I had denied myself access to it for so long. After the honeymoon was over I cut way down and now can only eat a normal sized amount, enough to keep my satisfied for just a few hours. One positive I have noticed is that sugar cravings for cookies, desserts and any other refined sugar are gone.
Well said, Jib and Matt. Same here. All this "exploring" different foods, especially the so-called "taboo" ones, is very liberating.
And I'm glad to see JT back. Hope you stay around too.
I adore Matt and have a great deal of respect for him and the regular commenters here. But that doesn't mean that I always agree with him or everyone here. How boring would that be if we all agreed on everything?! Heck, Matt doesn't even always agree with himself, eventually. But that's having an open mind (which I find very sexy on a guy:), and having an open mind promotes growth. Keep doing what you do, Matt.
Winning!!
JT-
Just wondering a little more details on your experience with hydrocortisone to heal your adrenal fatigue. You say you were on it for 10 months. What dosage were you on? How long did it take you to wean off? What other supplements did you take along with it? Did you ever get low aldosterone from the temporary suppression of the adrenals? Also how did it effect your thyroid and sex hormones while you were on HC? Sorry, so many questions, but I am really interested in your success with this protocol.
Thanks,
Lisa
Hi EL 66K,
I exaggerate somewhat when I say say "pariah" but not too much. Many in the paleo community seem to have an initial knee-jerk vitriolic reaction against him, at least in my experience.
Hi Rob A,
You might be right about the Cubans. But on the other hand, what does weight have to with health? There is only a very weak correlation between health and weight. Also, from what I have heard, the present calorie intake** of Cubans hoovers –albeit precariously–around the pre-Communist era levels and they have gained their weight back. Ultimately, from what I have seen and the health statistics i have read read, the Cubans have been, and still are, though to a lesser extent, a healthy people
One of the more interesting things to note is that many Cubans, both pre and post Communist, have decent teeth. The anti-sugar crowd always wants to use dental health as one of the most damning indictments of sugar. If they want to maintain their dogma, they need to find a way to explain away the Cubans.
Note that discussing and using the relative health of populations is always rife with pitfalls; there is always more to is than just sugar consumptions, or wheat consumption, or whatever. There are lots of other variables at play and this makes epidemiological studies and discussions often very dubious and spurious. However, they can sometimes be useful if one of the variables under question, in this case sugar, is something that is being consumed in much greater amounts than in other countries. Thus I think using the Cubans (or the Hungarians) is appropriate in this case as long as caution and context is maintained.
**Mostly what present day Cubans lack in terms of food is meat and milk and certain types of traditional fruits.
Oh, the "anonymous" comment above is me, DML.
I'd like to chime in on negative experiences with fruit. I did a Peatish experiment a while back and had abdominal fat gain, tooth pain and skin issues. This time, I'm eating less pork in general and have been low PUFA for a lot longer so that may be the reason, I'm not having massive negatives. Mainly I'm doing it because I felt so completely wiped out from a series of infections and multiple courses of antibiotics. It has helped with my energy levels and it has helped keep me from feeling like if I miss a few hours sleep, I'm going to relapse. Also, I want to be able to do some exercise again and I just didn't feel I had the energy to do it.
I'm glad JT is back. His patronizing tone never fails to cause a spike in blood pressure which God knows, I can use.
EL66K
"Yet we DO have a tendency to overconsume donuts, bread is delicious, McDonalds is delicious, and our tastebuds can rarely tell us about what is killing us nowadays. So there are counterexamples."
Fresh wheat products are indeed delicious and I'm not convinced that they're bad foods. As for industrial junk foods, most of them are so meticulously designed to maximally stimulate our reward systems and mask the taste of staleness and rancid fats with synthetic flavours and textures that in this case our tastebuds become poor guides to our nutritional needs. The crucial difference is that our taste for concentrated/refined sugar stems from the sugar itself.
"Still, refined sugar is a modern invention, and was never an option to our ancestors. Refined fructose and glucose is NOT the same as honey"
Regardless, I haven't seen any good evidence that refined sugar promotes obesity either. The sugar in the study we've been discussing came mostly from soft drinks and sweetened cereals, it still caused increased energy expenditure and no fat gain.
"Maybe, but wouldn't that argument work for most modern fast foods, candies, etc."
Not sure what you mean, I suspect the tastiness of foods is generally a good indicator of how well they serve our nutritional and metabolic needs, but obviously industrial flavour and texture engineering throws all that out the window, precisely because the taste thus created has nothing to do with the chemical properties of the food itself.
"I'm glad JT is back. His patronizing tone never fails to cause a spike in blood pressure which God knows, I can use." -jennythenipper
not picking on you, jenny, i know you were joking.
but that was my point before. i never took his comments as patronizing. i always viewed them as him trying to be helpful. even though i didn't always agree. i still took it as him trying to help.
people tend to take things the wrong way in this gawd-awful cyberspace. poor mercury/ian/fad/bruce got bullied out (again) and he was just trying to be helpful.
if we all sat and talked in person i think it would go differently. that's all.
by "cyberspace" i meant the internet in general. wasn't saying this blog is gawd-awful lol. i love you all :o)
http://www.active.com/running/Articles/Eating_practices_of_the_best_endurance_athletes_in_the_world.htm
these guys need 20% of their calories as plain old sugar.
Good idea @ anony ! We have a chance for a180. Round table talk in Dallas in Nov when Matt speaks at nourishing traditions. I will be wearing a yam costume;-) Matt may come dresses as Ray Peat or The Toxic Avenger.
Who's in?!
Love the kenyan diet info! Pretty similar to mine but more carbs. I don't run twice a day though ;)
ok, I need to confess.
I have no earthly idea was FWIW.. here are my top three guesses:
1. For what it's worth
2. From what I wanted
3. From where I was
sorry. you can all commence hating me now.
@Jannis
Peat is magical and mysterious. He is an enigma wrapped up in a conundrum.
Again, feel free to hate me oh 180 minnions.
:)
xo
haguleira
That really was an interesting article, not only were the kenyans eating a high carb diet, the majority of their carbs were from starch sources and their sucrose came mostly from white sugar (did the article even mention fruit and fruit juice?).
All three times that I tried the Peat experiment, I did it with fruit and fruit juice and had bad results… If I do decide to experiment with sucrose again I think I'm just gonna do like JT and try plain ole white sugar in a drink during a workout or soccer game.
I too am glad JT is back! his comments were always very interesting and he actually stoked good conversation on here.
Has anyone here been experimenting with a good B-Complex? because although I am usually against supplements, after taking none for a long time and starting again on a solid B-Vitamin I not only feel better (calm, clean energy and increased stress tolerance) but I seem to be able to process sugar in my diet much better….
I think the value of characters like Ray Peat (and other 'non-mainstream' thinkers, or 'mainstream' thinkers, for that matter) is not necessarily to imitate what they do (or eat in this instance) and become a Peatski (or whoever the nutritional exemplar is) but rather to celebrate their individuality, and to use that as an inspiring example to boldly step out on your own.
@ what Chris said about J.T.- I agree. Yes he did spark good constructive convo.
@ what anony said- I agree there too. We need to stick together and learn from each other- not bully each other. The character formally known as Bruce had good points too but people just picked on him instead of taking advantage of the opportunity to learn from good constructive convo.
@ what J.R. said- Totally agree. Nicely said.
@ Deb (grass fed momma)- FWIW, I don't hate you for asking such a dumb-ass question- sweetie. At least you got it on the first guess- you poor thing. Yes #1 is the correct answer :)
P.S.- and you know I'm just kiddin ya right? Just making sure no one takes that the wrong way :)
DML and Jannis,
While I understand Peter from hyperlipid is probably beyond questioning, have you brought your issues with the likes of Stephan and Chris Masterjohn directly via email. Have you asked them to send you links to the best studies they think that indict sucrose/fructose as a cause of insulin resistance? Those two seem nice and aren't selling anything so they might be more open to change.
Matt:
You're welcome :) Happy to participate.
And yeah, about the bandwagon thing: I actually like the 'jumping around' here, and the key reason is because I don't see it as haphazard at all, because with all your experimentations you seem to be doing it with a specific reason in mind. That's real science — having a hypothesis and a purpose for an experiment but not being attached to it, i.e. not caring about being 'right' or 'wrong' and just searching for the truth.
So yeah, I don't think it's a bandwagon. I can see why the term would irritate you — if someone said that to me and I was doing the same thing you were doing I'd probably be offended, like people thought I didn't know what I was doing and were insulting my intelligence/integrity/purpose behind all my work.
I think the bandwagon thing is more about the readers, for anyone (like me) who doesn't really have an understanding of biology/physiology. But even then, I can see how it'd be offensive — it wouldn't be realistic to expect that everyone would have a thorough understanding of biology/physiology, which is why there are people like you who study those things and share the results with people who's primary concern is just doing what works and not really being too caught up in the details of why.
It's kind of funny because this really is 180 Degree Health: it's a hell of a time trying to convince people of a concept that's basically saying, if your body is really craving the hell out of it, eat it. People on low carb diets might not be able to break past the 'sugar = fat' mentality or with other people, the common 'saturated fat = heart disease' mentality.
I've been reading through your books some more and that's been helping a lot. And that's one of the best gifts someone can give to the world: years of work and experience condensed into a couple hundred pages.
This whole site is what makes it great, in my opinion, comments and all. Anyway, I'm going to (tentatively) make it one of my goals now to really get at least some solid understanding of biology/physiology. Though it's kind of funny that authors of a lot of these diet books are saying things like "carbs drive insulin drives fat."
Even with basically no knowledge about biology or physiology I remember reading that and just thinking…"Isn't that kind of oversimplified?" That kind of sounds like "food drives insulin drives fat."
Think about it. Have you ever seen a skeleton that was overweight?
Exactly!
Jib said, "It's kind of funny because this really is 180 Degree Health"
I was thinking the same thing but forgot to say it in my last comment about Matt's keeping an open mind. That's the true meaning of 180 Degree Health. Doing 180s in the interest of seeking truth rather than righteousness. And it's fun!
And did I mention that it's sexy as hell!! :)
Collden,
My point was that I don't know why we have such a strong taste for sweet (if that's even true compared to other animals). We can speculate about hunter-gatherer behaviors all we want, but why would we do only that? There are many controlled studies to consider.
DML,
First, Peter is definitely not close-minded about nutrition. He has said many times that healthy people can eat lots of glucose, and he has even said that they can tolerate fructose in the absence of hyperglycemia.
The argument that the fructose study was bad with the 60% feeding doesn't make much sense. You don't get bad results with 60% glucose diets or 60% [low pufa] fat diets. There are a few studies with sweetened beverages comparing glucose and fructose, and fructose looks worse. The same happens with sucrose vs starch.
As for Peat, being pro sugar and [saturated] fat puts you in a tough spot: there are tons of studies showing the deleterious effects of the combination…is there simply a magical combination that makes bad things happen? It's much more biologically plausible to blame the fructose vs the fat. I have nothing against Peat–I love his articles, interviews, books, and even his personality and attitude, but many of his claims are sketchy, especially some of his non-nutrition ones. He refers to scientists' (Houssay, Diamond, SG come to mind first) work as discovery/fact when it seems to actually be just his interpretation (unless he has access to literature I don't, which very well could be).
As for Stephan, he is probably the most cautious blogger in terms of incriminating or supporting a food/nutrient/etc. His knowledge is deep and well-rounded, and he interprets things properly. So, when he takes a firm stance, he's probably right.
Regarding bandwagons and all the seemingly 180 turns around here: as I understand it, Matt is all about achieving the greatest dietary freedom possible. When you get down to it, this is the opposite of paleo or orthorexia. Limiting the types of foods you eat may relieve symptoms in the short term (the "honeymoon") but in the long run it may not be the best solution because it can lead to more and more restriction as we chase the next magic bullet. I feel like I've said this all before on this blog, so forgive the repetition, but Matt is essentially encouraging people to free themselves from the orthorexic mindset.
Food didn't used to make us ill (unless it was contaminated). Now it does. Whether that's because of environmental toxins, newfangled food substances disrupting our hormones, or misguided diets that have broken our metabolism, if our metabolisms WORKED we could in theory eat whatever we wanted: fructose, PUFAs, gluten, etc.
How do we heal our metabolisms? Maybe by avoiding the offending substances in the short term, but like Captain Dietary Freedom says, if your legs are weak and can't handle heavy squats you don't avoid training them at the gym. You start squatting to make them stronger!
This message is quite different than that of most diet gurus out there, which is why it can be so frustrating to people. We want to be told it's safe to eat lots of this and dangerous to eat any of that, and if we just follow these guidelines out health problems will be solved.
It's obviously not that easy.
Regarding freedom, Chris Kresser of The Healthy Skeptic just wrote a great post I found very helpful:
http://thehealthyskeptic.org/living-with-chronic-illness-the-power-of-acceptance
It's Me
It's a bit off topic but wondered whether anyone has ever heard of or tried to seperate animal fats and carbs… apparently if you eat animal fats with carbs the carbs will get used as engery and the fat will be stored however if you eat them apart they can both be used… never really considered food combining as vaild, but anyone got any thoughts on this? Cheers Me!
I don't know if nearly five weeks of fruit binging is finally starting to pay off, or if its a more direct effect of drastically increasing my intake of refined sugar/carbohydrates in the past couple of days, but I've been feeling really good for the past 24 hours, better than at any time since I started fruit binging. I woke up yesterday morning feeling like I'd been run over by a truck, sore throat and aching all over, as if I was coming down with a major cold, but then all that went away in the late afternoon after munching on a couple of hundred grams of french pastries. I finally got into that state of buzzing with warmth without having uncomfortable hot flashes or sweating like a pig, and my heart was beating at 85-90 bpm all evening long. Then today I've had absolutely no hint of uncomfortable hot flushes, headaches or hypoglycemia, but instead have been feeling calmer, more relaxed and at the same time more focused than in a long, long time.
Then I just realized while having my evening pint of ice cream that my teeth no longer hurt when eating ice-cold foods. Thats a first for me in 20 years.
Also, I've put on about 12-13 pounds since I started, but judging by how my pants and other clothes fit, I still haven't gained any significant amount of fat in spite of adding about 1500 kcals of fruits to my daily intake for over 5 weeks, and these past five days an additional 1000 kcal from ice cream.
John, as the review on sucrose and insulin sensitivity that Jannis posted shows, the research on sucrose is very far from conclusive. Most studies incriminating sucrose are in animals fed a combination of sucrose and large amounts of lard (at best) which is way higher in PUFAs than Peat would recommend. I haven't seen that many studies comparing balanced diets with only variable amounts of sucrose. I did find one good long-term study in mice where the mice fed the high-sucrose diet seemed to perform better than those on either the high corn-starch or the high milk-fat diet, weighing less and showing drastically lowered fasting glucose and insulin among other things.
http://jn.nutrition.org/content/136/3/582.full
Do please give one (or several) examples of good controlled studies that you think incriminate sugar.
EL 66K
About the !Kung, mongongo nuts contain astronomical amounts of Vitamin E, like 10 times more than almonds per gram of PUFA. Considering everything Peat has written about the health benefits of Vitamin E, including being able to pretty much neutralize most harm caused by PUFAs (he even suggests in one article that Vitamin E can directly saturate PUFAs), I don't think it's a blow to his theories that the !Kung are in apparent good health.
"Thus, we found that the excess consumption of fat and sucrose diets induced 2 different types of glucose intolerance not only in obese but also in lean mice. It is important to consider the effects of macronutrients lean as well as obese mice to clarify the pathogenesis of metabolic disorders. Further study is warranted to clarify the mechanisms of insulin resistance in both obese and lean animals fed the HF or HS diets for a long time."
John,
Can you please explain why sugar plus saturated fat is a bad combo?
And do you know of any evidence, proofing that sucrose causes hyperglycemia?
Thanks
About sugar and animal studies. I have reviewed a lot of rat studies over the past few weeks, and I think that they should be ignored with regard to human health. Rat studies, which seem to have the same design, often produce totally different effects. Some show that sucrose causes obesity and diabetes, while others show a positive effects as compared to starch.
Besides, we aren't rats. A review of several sucrose studies came to this result:
In young healthy adults or sedentary overweight adults and in the setting of controlled experimental high carbohydrate diets, no negative effects of sucrose on insulin sensitivity were seen.
Source: Sugars, insulin sensitivity, and the postprandial state.
Anonymous: Can you name the study from which you have that passage, or at least tell us what kind of fat and what kind of sugar they used?
Thats from the study I linked Jannis, but I don't think their data support any conclusion that the mice on the high-sucrose group were insulin resistant.
Thanks Colleden,
Here is a good rat study, comparing sucrose vs. starch.
Rats were feed a diet containing either 188g of starch or sucrose.
As in the study I discussed on Andrew's blog, the sucrose rats gained more weight. But the weight was LBS. The sucrose rats had significantly more muscle mass and more good fat (brown adipose tissue) than starch rats. But not more total fat. Of course, the sucrose rats produced more heat. Their diets contained a good amount of PUFA, too.
Full PDF here: http://www.ajcn.org/content/47/3/420.full.pdf
"Thats from the study I linked Jannis, but I don't think their data support any conclusion that the mice on the high-sucrose group were insulin resistant."
Right Collden, the researchers were smart enough to set up the study and do all the measurements and yet when it came to the conclusions they all just became dumb and weren't able to analyze their data right…
Just like thousands and thousands of smart researchers out there are wrong and dumb because there is one researcher out there Dr. Raymond Peat who really knows how the human body works and everybody else is just constantly making wrong decisions and assumptions.
Jesus christ, the sucrose fed mice were clearly not insulin resistant since they had lower glycemia and much lower insulin levels and responded with a faster drop in glycemia in response to insulin infusion than either of the two other groups. They were basically the opposite of the high-fat group who had the highest glycemia, highest insulin and most blunted response to insulin infusion, all classic signs of insulin resistance.
What they did observe is that sucrose-fed mice had a slower glucose clearance rate than starch-fed mice in response to a pure glucose infusion (likely due to slower insulin secretion as they speculate), which makes perfect sense since mice who've been fed sucrose as opposed to glucose all their life would probably be strongly adapted to the slower rise in blood glucose caused by sucrose. Nothing pathological about that and by most metabolic measures like body weight, insulin, glycemia and cholesterol levels, the sucrose-fed mice were the healthiest of the bunch.
I appreciate all of the kind comments. Thank you to everyone who doesn't get annoyed by my presence here.
Lisa,
I usually took the HC in small doses spread throughout the day. Usually 5mg at a time. Sometimes I would try to take a bigger dose in the morning and then smaller doses later. It helped with symptom control, but i don't really think it cured me. It didn't have a negative effect on my thyroid or hormonal profile at all.
rosenfeltc,
You might want to make sure you have some solid food with you as well in case you have some blood glucose dips from ingesting the sugars while training.
Regarding all the diet bandwagon hopping and pinballing going on around here. I think it is unhealthy mentally and physically. It is definitely a type of orthorexia as well. It just appears different than the others because the fixation changes frequently. But, the obsession with eating the "right" "healthy" food/diet is still there, just like with any other type of orthorexia.
This pinball orthorexia may even be more unhealthy than the paleophilia, low carbism, fruitarian, primal dieters, and all the other orthorexic examples that we all make fun of on here. The reason it might be more unhealthy is because your body never gets a chance to adapt. It is always under stress trying to establish homeostasis.
This new sugar kick might have been a positive thing if the point was to free people from the sugar-phobic orthorexia, but that is not what is going on. People are now fixated on getting sugar instead of starch because they think they will get some magical health benefit. It would have been different if the point was to say that it is OK to have some sugar in your diet if you enjoy it. But this is not what happened here, so lets try not deceive ourselves about what is really going on.
I personally am sick of the "fructose" meme going around. People suddenly think fructose, found in fruit, vegetables and various sweeteners such as sucrose, agave and honey, and nuts (small amounts), is the worst thing you could consume. It is all because of the scare campaign about high fructose corn syrup. If anything is wrong with high fructose corn syrup, it may be the processing (unnatural transformation of half of the nearly pure glucose in corn syrup to fructose, but not the fructose itself.
Stephan Guyenet is no different than the other dogmatists when he believes that eating two apples is problematic in a diet because of fructose. Now you see that the fructose campaign has reached its inevitable point of maximum lunacy.
For all those looking for ways to up your sugar intake, I thought I would share one of my favorite methods. It is called dessert! Or, you can just start consume my second favorite health beverage coca-cola. I go to my favorite local mexican taco shops and order a coke with my lengua tacos. If you go to the real mexican restaurant they will have the real cokes made out of real sugar. I think it is even Peat approved.
This is probably one of the healthier ways to do it because it is with a large mixed meal so I don't get any big blood sugar swings or spikes. And even more important is that it is actually enjoyable!
Since I am sharing my superfood secrets I think I will tell you my favorite way of consuming barley. It was the favorite food of gladiators, so it must be good. I take in the form of the superfood beverage called beer. I like it this way because it is fermented and people drank it thousands of years ago which would make it WAPF approved. Also, it benefits are verifiable, you will actually feel the magical properties after having a few!
Since this could be the next bandwagon I thought I would go ahead and put it out there so that some of you could get a head start.
JT, that's really funny. I too am glad you're back. And I wanted to point out to everybody that JT is right that's it's worth getting your hormones tested. I put it off forever coz of money, but when I finally did, and got the results, I was surprised. My cortisol is completely normal, which I would have never suspected, because symptomatically I'm borderline "severely" adrenal fatigued. Turns out instead I have NO DHEA. A normal range is 0-70, 70 being a teen and 0 being, well, dead. I'm at 2. Basically, I'm almost dead. So I stopped the Isocort (this explains why it didn't seem to have an effect) and started pregnenolone this weekend (it's the precursor to DHEA and supposedly safer). Hopefully this will show results, but the point is despite my hemming and hawing at spending the money because I was SURE about what was wrong with me, it turned out to be necessary.
I drink coca cola (real sugar stuff, not HFCS) and beer all the time, but my health isn't the best. Didn't work for me, sorry. Maybe I combine it wrong? I drink it with pizza usually (I think a good sources of carbs, fat, and fibrous vegetables), not mexican.
I will try it with tacos now and report back in 1 week with my results.
Or was that a joke? I don't know around here with the comments any more, it's really confusing.
Good to have you back JT!
I wonder if early humans diet was actually pinbally- not by choice but because they had no choice. Since they had to just eat whatever was available seasonally, whatever they could find, gather, scavenge, hunt down, pick, dig up, depending on the season…
Seems they would maybe eat all or mostly meat one day or however long it lasted. Then maybe fruit and vegetation or nuts or whatever other days??
Maybe our bodies are better equipped to adapt to a constantly changing diet than we may think??
don't forget the (t)weed , for magical benefits
Lorelei,
That's great that you got tested and figured out what was really going on! This is why I have been urging everyone to do appropriate testing before treatment. I think it is a good idea to get tested again after being on the supplementation for a while to make sure it is working. Some people do not convert preg to dhea that well, so you may need to ask your doc about that if you don't get the results you want after a while. You might also be interested in transdermal forms.
Anonymous,
It works best for me when I have the lengua tacos with the coke!
Not a Newbie,
Thanks!
I think that early humans would have had variety that fluxuated over periods of time, but nothing like the modern diet pinballing. humans have also been preserving and storing foods for a very long time now, and this would provide consistency. Also, we can see the modern HGs and even wild animals can have diets that are fairly consistent.
It is also important that we don't use the flawed paleo logic of thinking that something is good just because grock did it.
JT:
I think the real story here is that Matt is sort of 'gas lighting' his fans. Meaning, it's true that he is eating fruit and sugar and feeling fine, it's true that some studies and Ray Peat for one, agree on the sweet stuff etc. BUT I think that The Stoney one just is trying to free our minds/mouths/tummies to ETFF!!!!!!
My two cents.
btw, FWIW ETFF is my creation and as we are all adults, I am sure you can all figure out what the 'F' stands for :)
Not a Newbie:
Thanks for not hating me for being a dumb ass. I never texted when I started on Facebook so the crazy codes meant zilch to me.
xoox
deb
JT,
Do you notice any difference in either energy, well being, weight lifting etc… when you eat whole foods compared to "junk" food?
Also, I'm trying to remember right but I think you mentioned that you only eat about 12 oz of red meat a day which is definitely low protein in bodybuilding standards but just recently Ive lowered my protein intake and increased my starch to compensate and my lifts haven't been negatively affected.
Deb,
No, that is not what is going on here. Like is said above, if Matt was just telling people that it is OK to have some sugar in their diet and not worry about it, then I would agree and think it is a good thing. This is NOT what is going on! It is just another orthorexic fixation with another food. The whole post is about why a high sugar diet is best. I struggle with these ortho issues too, i am conscious of it now and this allows me to spot it when i see it.
rosenfeltc,
My definition of whole foods is different from most here who have a WAPF perspective. I don't eat much processed junk foods. People at my work think I am a health freak because I always bring the same meals and I never eat the junk foods that are around. 90% of all my meals are the same: rice, lean meats, and maybe some veggies once a day.
I was experimenting with a lower protein diet, but i feel and function best with about 1 gram per pound of LBM. I actually think i do best when I eat 1 to 1 ratio of protein to carbs, and maintain a low cal diet with intermittent spikes.
@ JT- Those are all good points and I don't disagree with any of them. But I don't see their significance to the points I made. Also, saying "nothing like the modern diet pinballing" is quite subjective. But I would think the early day diet would have fluctuated more and probably to even more extremes. And that's just generally speaking. I wasn't referring to any mythical characters or paleo logic- which I too think is flawed.
As far as modern day preservation of food providing more consistency in modern day diet- true and I don't disagree. But my point about adapting to a constantly changing diet was about the body being equipped to adapt- just as the body adapted to a more consistent diet as well- which could be partly to blame for the modern day health decline?? Just pondering aloud.
@ Deb- ETFF! I love it! And I do it! :)
Jannis and Collden,
You can e-mail me so we can exchange/review some studies if you want. Mine is on my profile.
Jannis, I haven't seen anything I can remember that shows sucrose leading to hyperglycemia. My concern is mostly about increased fasting insulin and increased liver trigs. I don't know why sucrose and saturated fat would be bad–it just sticks out in my mind that a balanced intake leads to typical metabolic problems while a high sucrose diet or high fat diet doesn't, which I think is weird. Rat/mice studies have limitations, but human studies are usually poorly done in that the diets are never something I'd consider–margarines, odd oils, iron-rich refined grains, etc. My biochem/physiology isn't advanced enough to make an original idea in that regard, but just from what I've read and experienced, I lean toward starch.
What I meant by "the body adapted to a more consistent diet as well- which could be partly to blame for the modern day health decline??":
I wonder if the more consistency and food combining of the modern day diet is what has- at least in part- caused our health decline and obesity. Combining the same foods as in four course meals every day- rather than eating one food at a time like the way early humans likely ate because they had little choice or such luxury(?) as four course meals. I wonder whether combining foods into meals didn't confuse the internal processes and thus over time throw things out of whack. Again just pondering aloud.
JT,
Thanks for your answers, I just have one more question for ya, do you feel that your diet is deficient in calcium at all? Or if not, where do you get your calcium? and do you take any supplements? I'm just wondering how accurate the rda really is
Ok JT I get your point . For me switching up foods is ok but there is no magic biullet that will cure my leukemia or my hormonal issues. I try to avoid Pufas glutenAnd most processed foods . Occasional treats? Yes. Binge eating no. Taking it for what it is, a way to learn .
Deb
@ Lorelei – Hawaii: Having normal cortisol and low DHEA is not always what it seems and can still indicate pretty severe adrenal fatigue see here http://www.chronicfatigue.org/ASI%204.html
It seems at one stage DHEA drops while Cortisol bounces back to a normal range. Anyway its a pretty complicated topic to say the least and it is hard to tell from labs what exactly is going on. Probably best to go with how you feel.
@ JT: Did you take any standard supplements during your recovery from Adrenal Fatigue? things like Magnesium and B-Vits….. Also just how bad were your cortisol levels when you were tested?
Hi Not-a-Newbie,
for what its worth, I agree the body is very adaptable. Incredibly so.
Then (early times) and now, and no doubt far into the future.
But in some instances pertaining to humans of today, particularly those with the wherewithal, it is thinking that is creating a need, a 'problem', thats not actually there.
For want of a better word, a 'neurosis'.
Chopping and changing foods and protocols, depending on a particular health theory, esteemed commentator, study, finding, etc, can be an example of this.
And the underlying driver of this is fear. (of getting fat, of sickness or possible sickness, of death, of how one is viewed by others, etc, etc.)
And the above comment is not directed at you Deb (as you commented above,) JT, or anyone else here at all, but rather just, generally.
My waist has gained 6 inches in 2 years from eating to appetite. Please can someone reassure me it's going to stop? Gained over 30lbs and now back to heaviest I've weighed in the past. What's the most people have gained?
hey JT,
can you give us an small guide of JT eating? Are you eating no grains except of rice?? And what kind of rice is it white or brown rice?
Thanks in advance!
http://jn.nutrition.org/content/136/3/582.full
The more I look at this study, the more interesting it becomes. First, it shows that lifelong consumption of sucrose, even as more than half of your daily calorie intake, doesn't seem to lead to any adrenal or metabolic breakdown as evidenced by the superb glycemia and insulin levels of the sucrose-fed mice. This was otherwise what worried me the most about the human study Jannis posted.
Second, energy intake was considerably lower on the high-butter low-carb diet, but weight and fat mass was greatly increased, entirely consistent with the research showing that low carb intake reduces thyroid activity. Starch seemed to stimulate the metabolism even more than sucrose though, as the starch-fed rats ate more food but had slightly lower fat mass.
Third, the sucrose-fed rats had the smallest liver weights at the end of their life, implying that their vast sugar intake did not produce any tendency towards fatty liver as some people believe.
Fourth, visceral fat deposits of the sugar-fed rats was equal to those fed starch, and much less compared with the high-butter fed rats. Though I'm not sure there ever was any good evidence that sucrose caused increased visceral fat.
Does anyone know of any other really long-term controlled studies on sucrose intake?
"In some ways, rats never really mature, since they keep growing for nearly their whole lifespan. Their growth stops just a short time before they die, which is usually around the age of two or three years. (At this age, rats' cells still retain approximately the same high water content seen in the cells of a two year-old child.) " ray peat
rats have babies metabolisms! who knew. what seems to work fine when you are young often doesn't when you get old. something to keep in mind when reading all these rat studies.
Maybe this awesome, non-biased organization can provide us some info:
http://www.sugar.org/
Actually, no joke, they have a good list of beverages sweetened with sugar, not corn syrup:
http://www.sugar.org/sugar-based-producs/beverages.html
This has me thinking of the seasonality of our foods. During the Spring, we increase our greens. As Summer chugs along, fruit becomes abundant so we pig out on berries. Fall hits and it's sweet potatoes and gourds. Come winter time, it's meats, cheeses, root vegetables and anything else that stores well.
High sugar vs. high fat? Yes and no to both. Depends on the season. What luck, though, that there is so much sugar when we need it for being active! And our winter foods will keep us from going stir crazy because we are okay with sitting inside, practicing our guitars (or playing board games).
@ J.R.- Very good points. Yes I agree that wherewithal is part of it. We humans seem to have gotten ourselves in a pickle (pun definitely intended)- thinking that we can outsmart nature. Like preserving and modifying foods and expecting those foods to nourish our bodies as they do in their natural forms. And then being stumped as to why our bodies get out of whack. Too smart for our own good??
I also believe the psychological aspect plays a huge part in the *perceived* (self-inflicted?) problem. And I believe that chronic stresses- both mental and physical stresses- play another huge part in it.
Also I think extracted and concentrated forms of foods- fats(like butter and oils), carbs(like flour), sugars(like table sugar), and so on- can mess with our natural internal processes. Not so much in small amounts- but especially consumed in excessive amounts relative to the rest of the diet.
@ terpol- Great observation and great point.
Collden,
That study is way biased! The fat group is getting about half the micronutrient content as the others! The protein content of the fat group was 13.5% vs 27% for starch and 22% for sucrose. The simple fact that the fat group has higher trigs should raise an immediate red flag, as it's pretty much certain that low carb intakes reduce them.
Also, 10% less food and 37% heavier–7.5x as much subcutaneous fat??? Only a nutritionist would think saturated fat is that bad. There are lots of ketogenic diet studies that have results way different–is it the 20% carbs or 13.5% protein or 60% sat fat–to me, none of that should be a problem.
If you buy into the materials and methods here, the only conclusion you can draw is that saturated fat is unhealthy…
@ what Colld?n said in last post- Interesting observations. I would like to know more too. But I don't know if I would ever be convinced that I could learn any truths about humans from rats.
I would like to see studies comparing long-term intakes with humans- if anyone can point out any.
Not a newbie,
Humans can adapt to a huge variety of diets, my whole point is that there probably is no "optimal" diet that is good for everyone all the time. I prefer to just find what works for the individual and stick with it. Again, it is based on what works, not what is theorized about.
Deb,
From what you write, it seems you have a healthy realistic relationship to food and diet.
Rosenfelt,
I am not worried about calcium. I take some supps occasionally. Half of a multivitamin, iodine, magnesium. The peatists may freak, but i have recently started tAking a powdered greens drink lately and I have noticed feeling good from that, and I have actually started taking some high epa fish oil. I never would have taken these things before because of Peat, but I have had good results.
Chris,
I didn't really take any vitamins when I was rehabin the adrenal issues. I did take some Ayurvedic herbs, but i don't know what all was in them because a doc mixed them for me and the description was written in Hindi.
Sylvester,
My diet is flexible, I just try to eat some carbs ( usually starch) and protein (usually lean meats or fish) 3-6 times a day. I eat all starch source, but I usually avoid potatoes, sweet, potatos and yam because they make me feel sick. My usual starch sources that I feel good on are all kinds of rice, bread, oatmeal, and pasta.
Jane,
If what you are doing is not working, why do you keep doing it? You probably keep getting the same results you have been getting if you keep doing it. My advice is to consult with a real professional that has experience working with people in your situation.
If you post a your stats and food log here, maybe some of us can offer some insight.
Thanks JT,
got another questions if you don't mind:
1. What is your macronutrient ratio about in per cent?
2. Are you eating to apetite?
3. Height weight and bf %?
4. Pasta whole (weat)?
5. Rice brown or white?
6. Consuming milk products?
7. Consuming low/non PUFA?
8. What kinds of fat do you consume, olive oil too?
9. Are you active in some sports?
10. Eating pork too? Waht about eggs?
Thanks again :)
@ JT- Agreed. I'm also not saying there is some perfect diet- that the cavemen hold the secrets to. I agree- go with what works. And I value your input (and others here).
But it's interesting to observe that what and how earlier humans ate (even only a couple generations back) *worked* for them- as in they didn't have the compromised health and obesity epidemics that we modern humans have. That's not theory- it's history- from which I feel we can learn a lot.
Reinventing wheels so to speak hasn't always been such a good thing- that pickle I mentioned. But instead of admitting maybe we made a mistake or that we may have been wrong- and go back to the wheels that worked fine (weren't broken)- we keep over-analyzing what went wrong (cause we couldn't possibly have been wrong, right?)- and we keep trying to solve it with more reinventing instead?? Like a rat on a wheel- will never go backwards- cause he thinks forward is the only way- so he keeps running forward and getting nowhere.
Anyway, I like the KISS approach myself. It works quite well for me. And the *if it ain't broke don't fix it* approach has also worked very well in my experience :)
Oh and just for you Deb-
KISS = "Keep It Simple Stupid"
You know I had to do it. Love ya! :)
not a newbie; I do know that one! KISS!
I figured as much ;)
Thanks JT I try ;-)
Seems we need a blog from you with all your stats/ideas !
Guest post? Matt?
John
Yes, the high-fat diet did seem to be lower in protein and micronutrients than the other two diets, that was pretty clumsy of them. Even so I think its interesting that they gained so much more fat despite eating considerably less than the other groups, regardless of whether it was the higher fat or lower micronutrients or protein.
The starch and sucrose diets are still comparable and it's clear that a high lifelong intake of sucrose of as much as 60% of total calories was not damaging their metabolism, it didn't cause fatty liver, it didn't make their visceral fat mass grow, and they still had better glycemia, insulin and insulin sensitivity than starch-fed mice.
JT said…
"Whenever I ate it my body temperature would drop rapidly and I would feel very agitated and weak. For years I had bad reactions to fruit, but would try to force myself to eat it because of Peat's advice. Then I went to spend a month on a tropical island last year and ate lots of the local fruit there and felt good. Then I came back to the U.S. and tried to keep eating fruit, but couldn't tolerate the fruit here.
But, I wasn't eating only fruit. I still ate 3 meals a day of starch, protein, and veggies. And I didn't notice anything magical from the fruit."
JT,
Someone else may have already asked these questions, I haven't read the rest of the comments yet. But did you mean that you ate 3 meals a day of starch, protein, and veggies in addition to fruit while you were on the tropical island as well as in the US? If not how and what did you eat while on the island? And did you eat fruit alone or mixed into, or just before/after your meals in US and on island? Also which fruits did you eat on the island? Which island? And did the same fruits give you issues in the US? Did you eat other fruits in the US that wouldn't be available on the island? And if so do you think it's possible that the non-tropical fruits are what caused problems? Rather than all fruit in general? Did you notice any differences in fruits?
Sorry for the 20 questions lol. Thanks for sharing your experiences. very interesting.
"Matt,
I appreciate your willingness to modify your beliefs and experiment with different things. But, how many 180 degree health beliefs are you going to go through" – JT
Hopefully he never stops going through and challenging them. Its in fact very healthy… as its freeing from food obsessions and fears and narrow-minded beliefs and theories. And hopefully he and others will eventually come to the realizations that obsessing over avoiding all PUFAs even occurring in natural foods still in their natural state… is well unhealthy.
Sylvester,
Yes, i eat all kinds of wheat and rice. I don't eggs because they make me sick. The only added fat I use is ghee, but if somebody makes something with olive oil I'll eat it. I usually eat low fat anyways. Im 6 ft 190 about 10-12% bf now and I eat to appetite, but when I diet to get lean then I am extremely hungry all the time. I lift weights about 90 minutes a day.
Kat,
I think I can say yes to all your questions above. I tried to eat the same foods here in the same combos and it was not the same.
ABC,
Please see my statement to Deb above. I have already addressed your claims.
JT,
Just to clarify I wasn't directing that AT you just spring boarding off what you said a message to Matt and others who still think the should avoid all PUFAs no matter the origin.
ABC,
My bad, you had a good point. I misinterpreted and thought you were making the claim that Matt is just telling people to free themselves from their food obsessions.
JT,
I thought so and I understand. I know you are used to having to defend your comments here. But I respect that you stand behind them when you feel you're right and that you admit when you may have been wrong. You often make good points.
Thanks JT,
what about milk products like cheese/yoghurt or milk?
And are you eating pork?
How much animal protein do you consume per day?
Thanks again!
Sylvester,
the only milk products i tolerate very well are ghee and peptopro. Both are extremely refined foods, so this is probably why i can tolerate them. i will occasionally have cheese if it is on pizza or something like that.
I don't eat much pork. i just have an aversion to pig in general, but not for any good reason.
I try to get in about 24 oz of meat a day. but, i am being pretty relaxed right now and i only weigh my food occasionally.
Matt
I agree. Funniest video. LOL !
The raw food cult.
Take care,
Raz
What does everyone suggest for loose teeth? I wish I could grow some back!
I think Joey Lott’s book is a good place to start. http://amzn.to/1qPBlKg