The starch question
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Peat recommends stuff like white rice and traditional corn, and he really likes potatoes. But also mentioned often that not everybody can handle it
You have to find out for yourself.
I like white rice, really well cooked (at least 2 h).
I absolute die when eating potatoes, which is sad, because I used to like them. Probably I liked them because they make me high on endotoxins. -
I realise most of Peat world dismiss speculating on historic availability of foods, or attempts at paleo diets. But. It seems pretty evident that no population ever relies on sucrose / fructose for its base carbohydrate quota. glucose in the form of starch seems the common link across populations. Peat brough good attention to the risks of poorly processed starch but with a healthy robust digestive system and proper cooking these can be safely mitigated.
well cooked and mashed potatos, well cooked rice, casavva, taro etc all with a saturated fat like cocnut oil or butter and with added salt is the fuel of modern man.
The diet of early industrial Europe was basically salted potato or bread and butter everyday with some meat on the weekend if you could afford it. Maybe not optimal but certainly a good enough foundation.
I guess there are some nuanced discussions if the goal is weight loss, but if one is adopting a very high carb / low fat diet, then this should be glucose based (starch) so as not to overburden the liver.
So yea, kempner proved this out, so do the 2 billion odd east asians living on white rice, a bit of meat, cigarettes and green tea.
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I love to see people bring up Durianrider, the guys is an OG truth teller. But, he absolutely slaves away on the bike and is openly on steroids and TRT. He's also socially deranged. Much respect to him for calling out the anti-sugar world but he's not a good poster boy for a robust species. Hes not that different to every elite endurance athlete, totally wonked HPA axis, over exerted, under muscled. brains atrophied.
[BRAINS OF ENDURANCE ATHLETES](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666337620300238)
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@raytreats 'starch slander'? They're probably just stating facts. Endotoxin plays a large role in this approach so naturally starches should be avoided. Caffeine also increases presorption, so just the importance of caffeine makes it hard to recommend starch.
I've quit starch again after having it once a week or so for a few months (after 2 years of stopping completely) My intestines are still recovering.
Surely they should be limited since social situations require their consumption already.
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@Andreas said in The starch question:
Peat recommends stuff like white rice and traditional corn, and he really likes potatoes. But also mentioned often that not everybody can handle it
Can we not just claim stuff like this about him unless you're directly quoting
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@STH The common link is milk and meat, not starch. Starch was mostly unavailable before agriculture. Nomadic populations like the mongols also didn't eat any significant amount of starch.
If you think that medieval societies were mostly starch based that is also wrong, a lot of sources seem to indicate more meat consumption than bread. https://www.medievalists.net/2020/11/medieval-europeans-meat-consumption/
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@pittybitty said in The starch question:
If you think that medieval societies were mostly starch based that is also wrong, a lot of sources seem to indicate more meat consumption than bread
MORE meat than bread. The logistics of that don't work out. It's crazy. It's also not even remotely what the article - backed up by TWO studies - claims whatsoever. It is saying the urban population of Barcelona ate a lot of meat in a specific year. Do they mention anything about the year? No. Because ignorant Americans wrote it!
Barcelona was UNDER SIEGE in 1462. So you can completely dismiss entirely the sweeping claim that " These statistics reveal that in late medieval Barcelona, people were eating large amounts of meat on average.". How is wartime a good way to define the average consumption? A siege especially. I hope I do not have to go into the factors of why a siege could skew the numbers.
Then it brings up monasteries and aristocrats (?)Are you claiming the feudal system was a hobby? That they burned crops and then slaughtered animals instead? Grains were the main source of calories. The article doesn't even claim the contrary.
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I’m currently working on increasing the diversity of my gut microbiome in order to handle veggies and starch. I think if one can’t tolerate starch at all, he should not eliminate it, but instead work on the gut flora.
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@pittybitty Obviously Meat is our common food throughout all ages.
My point was that once we developed diets richer in carbohydrates, that the source of those carbs has mostly been from glucose (starch) not fructose / sucrose.Its completely false to suggest that "Starch was mostly unavailable before agriculture", roots, tubers, seeds etc were all heavily utilized pre-agriculture for thousands of years. Even pre agricultural fruits had a very high starch content. plenty of the tropical fruits are also high in starch like Mamey Sapote. There are plenty of free living nomadic populations today that still thrive off of high starch diets in the forests of PNG, Central and southern America. This isn't a meat and dairy vs starch debate, the original post was about the dangers of starch.
Thanks for the medieval link, it proved my point nicely. Not that what they ate in medieval Spain really means anything but anyhow, they averaged 300 odd grams of meat per person. that's a large steak / day or about 800-1000kcal depending on how fatty. And where do we think the other 2000 kcal came from? 1kg of bread (starch) and a 1ltr of beer (Maltose (a really short starch or just two glucose)). Even once we had settled down with agriculture we still ate lots of starch, we just also had a bit more fructose from our selectively bred fruits, wine, and beet sugar.
I don't see your point on the Mongols, yes of course there are groups that don't eat starch, Maasai, Inuit, plains Indians etc. I wouldnt argue starch is needed, just that it can be the bassis of a healthy diet without harm or issue if cooked right.
Bonus points for naming the end product of all that lactose in milk?
"During the process of digestion, lactose is broken down in the ratio of 47.37% glucose:52.63% galactose"
So those Mongols drank a whole lot of glucose anyway, same as our starch eating relatives.
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@GreekDemiGod said in The starch question:
I’m currently working on increasing the diversity of my gut microbiome in order to handle veggies and starch. I think if one can’t tolerate starch at all, he should not eliminate it, but instead work on the gut flora.
Ray thought otherwise, and I agree with him. I think you should 100% remove starch to improve gut microbiome. That is working on the gut flora.
Not to mention the lack of fructose in starch! Just not an optimal food. I understand eating it out of necessity, but if we're being serious we cannot pretend it's optimal.
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@CO3 you are not improving nothing by quitting starch. You are however, symptom managing. That I can agree.
But there is no healing taking place by not eating starch for a prolonged period. It did nothing for me, at least.No starch is just another variation of the Carnivore diet, except you’re still eating carbs. But you’re still playing the game of avoidance, if elimination.
Starch may be inferior to fruit, however one should be able to tolerate starch.
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I mean what you're saying is utterly ridiculous. Have you thought this through? 'The game of avoidance'?
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@CO3 You make the genuine mistake of seeing everything through a grain farmer lense. Owning pigs was extremely common for common towns folk (e.g. not farmers) to get rid of food waste, you didn't have to buy extra food for them. Same with hens, those can also sustain themselves on food scraps. Cattle can entirely sustain itself on grass, according to your economical hypothesis nomads would have starved to death because they didn't grow any grains for their cattle to eat. I assume poorer people did eat more bread comparatively, but anyone a bit higher on the hierarchy seems to have eaten more meat than bread.
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@CO3 If you do fine with having no starch, good for you. But most folks who are somewhat physically active, they have to eat starch.
Also, if not living in a warm climate year round, starch becomes a necessity. -
@pittybitty You realize you've just done a complete 180 right?
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@GreekDemiGod Nothing to do with whether it's an optimal food bioenergetically speaking! Coffee wasn't available to us until roughly the 17th century, does that mean it was bad before we had access to it?
I repeat: the difficulty of implementation is not the deciding factor of whether a given substance is healthy or not. It also has nothing to do with whether we ate it at some point in history or any other thing that isn't related to the interaction of the substance with our body, and the environment in which we consume it.
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@CO3 @GreekDemiGod is an idiot and anti-peat on ray peat forum
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I've been focusing on a more Brad Marshall (fireinabottle) diet by mostly subsisting on starch and butter. And I've had better results than following the classic "peaty" foods. I mostly do croissants, potatoes (mashed, diced, baked), asian noodles, etc. I haven't experienced any issues with the endotoxin personally. Digestion is just fine. Personally given me more energy and more consistent temps.
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@Master By classic Peaty foods I assume you mean a diet made up mostly of perfectly ripe organic tropical fruits?
