In advance of tomorrow’s publishing of important, meticulously tracked results using potato starch to control blood glucose in various circumstances including ketosis, I thought I’d pump something out quickly on what’s been going on.
Fist up.
Konstantin Monastyrsky’s guest post at Mark’s Daily Apple: Dietary Fiber Is Bad for Sex – That’s the Only Claim About It That Isn’t a Myth. Suffice to say that other than discounting the CW that we should be seeking out all kinds of fiber roughage for health (Translation: Please Buy My Product), which I agree with, the post is really a mess and I guess it’s left to me to say that Konstantin is weird and has an unhealthy obsession with excrement (not to mention other “analities”). There, I said it.
The comment thread is pretty wild, especially given Mark’s balanced way of doing things. I have a couple comments there. Pretty tame, though. I’m a guest, I know my place.
Today, Mark follows up with his own post: Dear Mark: What’s the Deal with Fiber? Not much to see in comments as of this writing, but here’s what Tatertot Tim submitted as a critique.
Yep, to deny that our gut flora need proper care and feeding puts one in the dark ages.
The only problem I have with your post, Mark, are the terms ‘soluble’ and ‘insoluble’ as descriptors for ‘fermentable’ and ‘non-fermentable’. There is soluble fiber that are non-fermentable, and insoluble fiber that are fermentable. Also, some soluble, fermentable fiber is targeted more by pathogenic bacteria.
If we look at the FODMAPs, some of them are good ‘gut-bug’ food, and some are not.
Better descriptors for fiber recommendations would probably be ‘bifidogenic’, ‘butyrogenic’, or just ‘prebiotic’ fiber. These terms all relate to how beneficial gut microbes react to the food source.
Termed as I described, it would be clearer to see that the most important fibers probably are inulin, pectin, oligosaccharides, gums, mucins, and resistant starch.
Your recommendation of: “stuff like raw onion and garlic, leeks, jerusalem artichokes, dandelion greens, raw plantains and green bananas” gets us inulin and resistant starch. I’d like to give a shout-out here for properly prepared (fermented) legumes, raw potato and tapioca starch, parboiled / converted rice, and a daily apple. See: Friendly Bacteria Love the Humble Apple.
Mark is a disciplined blogger, unlike me…who blogs on a whim 80-90% of the time. While he never explicitly feeds controversy and strife for the pure exercise in it as I sometimes do, he nonetheless entertains and provides a forum for it: so long as it’s on point and reasonable. I can’t argue with that. In his words.
Last week’s guest post from Konstantin Monastyrsky, author of Fiber Menace, generated a lively, boisterous, and at times combative comment section. I use these descriptors in the best sense possible, mind you; debate is healthy and necessary, even – nay, especially – if it’s impassioned.
Good for Mark. Someone out there needs to tend to the anchor. I’m happy to go adrift now & then, because as a former ship driver, I know I can always call in the tugs if I can’t get the plant to hot iron fast enough.
Next up. A Comment from Michelle.
I have had the same morning fasting issues as Tater and Clem – in that they were high, often at 122. Unlike them, they would stay that way and wouldn’t fall until I ate something – or maybe I couldn’t hold out long enough for them to fall naturally. I’ve been eating 1/2 a green banana or some cold black bean noodles here and there there the past couple of weeks, not trying to get any daily minimum amount of RS and not even eating it daily, just experimenting with adding a little bit. My morning fasting numbers for the past two weeks have consistently been 91 or lower with some mornings in the 80s. What is really remarkable is that I am eating more carbs (mostly sweet potatoes, yams and apples – being apple season). My post-meal numbers have been awesome too. I don’t know if it’s the increased carbs (a la Jamient’s PHD) or the bit of RS that’s doing it. I also seem to be able to go longer between meals. What I’m really interested in is if these numbers continue, what my next A1c result will be – I’m hoping it too will be lower.
I discovered a great Asian market that has what they call ‘cooking bananas’ – these are really, really green bananas – the ones that suck the moisture out of your mouth. Keeping them in the fridge to slow ripening as someone mentioned is working great. I can only manage to eat maybe 1/2 at a time, if that. The market also has green plantains (really green) and I will try making plantain chips.
I discovered a black bean pasta (ingredients: organic black beans, water) that I cooked then cooled. I’ve been eating it as a cold Mexican salad with salsa, avocado, olives, taco-seasoned beef but they’d be tasty as a pasta replacement in anything. I haven’t eaten beans in almost two years since I started paleo and am enjoying this. I may even make some hummus.
Richard – Chris Kresser talks about RS and mentioned your blog posts in his lastest podcast: RHR: What Are the Hidden Costs of Modern Hygiene?
Yes; Chris Kresser. He’s made himself a trusted darling of the “alternative health” side of paleo in my view (those are enthusiast quotes, not scare quotes). Job very well done and I recommend him to any and all without a second thought. I still recall when he first emailed me way back with his series on GERD that I blogged about (search his place). It was a pleasure to meet and chat with him at AHS12, back in the presenters room as he, I, and Denise Minger were putting on final touches for our presentations.
He emailed me recently about my RS series and encouraged me to keep it going.
Tatertot Tim followed up on that comment.
I’d like to see if Judy could repeat the results with just kefir or just potato starch. At any rate, I think with some people, something is happening while they sleep that causes high morning FBG.
I used to have FBG of 130′s while on LC paleo. Switching to Perfect Health Diet levels of carbs brought it down to 110′s, and adding RS to the mix has brought it down to the 85-95 range. Back when I had the high FBG, I’d wake every night at 3am and be wide awake for an hour or so before falling asleep til alarm went off at 6. That never happens now.
I just have lots of RS foods and a scoop of potato or tapioca starch a couple times a week with meals. FBG is always 85-95.
In Judy’s report, I don’t know what’s happening, but agree it will be a false FBG in the morning, still, I’d bet if she is getting her A1C checked regularly it will be lower–and that’s really what matters.
Back when I had high FBG, it would be 135 or so upon waking, then while still fasting, it would drop about 5-10pts an hour until I ate at noon when it would usually be around 100. Now, if I check upon waking, it’s like 88, then hourly checks only show +/- 2-3 pts. –very stable.
So, regardless of what is happening with Judy, I think it shows that RS has an impact on BG.
You may note that I’m very stalwart in this. That’s because I know a lot more than I’ve even blogged about. Me, wife, family, emails I get and many, many comments in the many posts that all signal the same thing. Carbs from RS sources (rice & beans mostly, often eaten cold, which I’ve acquired a taste for) and supplemental RS via potato starch, tapioca starch, plantain flour give me/we/us way better glucose control, both post-prandial and fasting. The numbers don’t lie.
In short, I’m right. I know it unequivocally, and all the LC Gurus are just going to have to suck it up, eventually. I trust they will. And I don’t give a shit about getting credit, and neither does Tatertot Tim. I really want people to try this and use it if it works for them. Fast forward: If you go back to the early posts, it was a lot about measuring out supplemental RS and such. No need. I very intermittently dump a hearing teaspoon in stuff and stir it in now & then. No more measuring. No idea how much I’m getting daily. Some, most days, different times & circumstances. That’s it.
The only complaints are as Paleophil adequately addressed in his comment recently.
Despite the backlash against your RS experiments, I’ve yet to see a single person report that they tried RS, followed your and Tatertot’s tips on it, measured their blood glucose, and experienced no lowering in fasting or post-prandial BG (the small number of negative reports I’ve seen have involved taste, fartage, or sleep, with no mention of BG). Did I miss it somewhere?
Yep, lowering is the norm. Adept folks ought to really note something right off. We’re talking about “evil” starch and we have yet to see a report I’m aware of—in hundreds of emails and comments—where anyone’s BG got worse. I repeat: it’s starch. And, I reiterate: well over a hundred of my readers have been experimenting with this. You would think that at least one person with adverse BG as a result of chowing down on carb sources that contain RS would want to set my world on fire, right?
Crickets.
But that’s a good thing. We’re dealing with largely honest people. Given that, I expect that most will be on board soon enough. Combined with what we’re learning about our gut bacteria, this is an idea whose time has come. This ought to raise at least an eyebrow with staunch defenders of a “healthy low carb lifestyle,” which in every version I have ever seen, eschews all starch and makes no distinctions whatsoever. I’m calling them out right here: you are ignorant. I’ll go a step further. To the extent you ignore your ignorance and don’t correct it in the face of compelling facts, is the extent to which you can henceforth be dismissed as dishonest. How’s that?
So, for any LCers who want to get on the honest side of things, here’s a post with links to all the previous posts, including a couple with just a salt shake of the hundreds of studies over 30 years that have heretofore been ignored by the entire LC community because of, near as I can tell, a single word that erroneously means only one thing to them which is even incorrect on that basis and I think Paul Jaminet would back me up on that.
I just might end up having to make LCers my basic enemy. It seems increasingly religious to me and they seem increasingly unwilling to deal with any new information that does not include eating more fat. And that’s a shame, because I think LC is a great therapeutic tool. It is, however, simply not a “healthy lifestyle” for most humans, and manifestly so.
OTOH, Real Food always is.
Ash Simmonds 
Judi 
Brad 
tatertot
The fibre/fiber thing has given me the shits no end for many years.
I’m an unapolagetic carnivore, and when someone sees me eating a 2lb steak without bread or veggies ( ) they ask about my poo functions – wtf?
I’m wondering if with enough delusion and obsession I could become the next Evelyn – FiberSane… :p
Have collected a bunch of fiber-sane resources and will continue to do so here: http://highsteaks.com/forum/whatever/fiber-not-good-you-198.0.html
Hey all, I’m the “Judy” mentioned in the above post. I can give you a brief summation of my stats and why I decided to experiment a little with the RS. I am a thin type 2 – 134 lbs, 5’6″ – well-controlled with an A1C of 5.5. I use a Primal diet to manage my blood sugar, but the first morning glucose has always been higher than I would like. And to make it even more complicated, around mid-October my morning sugar will go up to around 115-117 and over the winter will be higher than it is in the summer. July and August my morning sugar will be 95-100, sometimes a little lower.
Many diabetics deal with the Dawn Phenomenon, which is an exaggerated release of glucose from the liver around dawn – hence the name. I have experimented with Extend bars in the past and had some success lowering my first morning reading. They are supposed to supply a steady release of energy for stable blood sugar. I would take a couple of bites around 3-4 o’clock to try and avoid that release of glucose. The ingredients are somewhat sketchy and I was reluctant to use them for any length of time. In my case, my morning sugar keeps rising until I eat breakfast, which is also common to many diabetics.
That is when I came across Peter Attia’s use of Superstarch and it seemed like a healthier alternative. The one thing I didn’t like was the price. So here I am experimenting with potato starch in the same fashion to see if my body will get the signal of “incoming energy” and forestall that morning burst of glucose. I added a little full fat kefir to the mix to slow down the digestion of the PS. I have already tested the potato starch in the middle of the day to see if it spikes my blood sugar. It doesn’t – not even a little! I may try adding more PS into my diet at various times of the day to see if it will lower my morning sugar even more. (slowly – I have to be around people!) Especially as we approach October and the typical rise I know is coming. It would be awesome to avoid that!
Hi, Judi! Thanks for clarifying. I imagine you aren’t out to prove anything and don’t care what anybody says when you are happy with your BG in the morning. It seems to me there are still some unexplainable causes of the dawning phenomenon and also symogyi effect, neither seemed to completely explain what I was seeing, and eating a bit of RS in the middle of the night shouldn’t have much effect on either condition, but you have shown it does.
One of my earliest intentions of highlighting RS in foods and raw starches was so that people might choose to experiment with them after seeing the science for themselves. It just irks me to no end seeing big corporations turning a huge profit when they know all along there is a cheap alternative.
Good luck!
Judi,
good for you, your approach is very practical. Can’t tell whether it’s the RS in potato starch or whether it’s the kefir’s lactose and protein (preventing hypoglycemia and a dawn glucogenesis spike to correct it) that’s taking care of your ‘dawn effect’, but that’s easy enough for you to test if you want to, knowing it’s worth it since something is clearly working.
With your timing, it can be both, because the RS has a known ‘second meal effect’ as well as a long term effect. It works that way for me.
So for what it’s worth, that also means it shouldn’t matter if you’re taking RS at 4 am or at some other time, which might be more convenient as well as getting you that extra help you want in the winter!
Ugh, typo (I’m on my phone) :”… that also means it mightnot matter if you’re taking RS at 4am…..”
(the dawn effect itself can depend on several things).
Richard, your last sentence reads like an opinion, and if you want people to believe it, you should give some evidence. Maybe you already did this in past posts. I haven’t seen them, but I’m a fairly new reader here. I personally am not convinced that a “LC” diet is necessarily unhealthy. But how many grams are we talking about?… 75-100? below 75? Below 30 (ketogenic)?
Well said, Marie! I have checked my blood sugar at various times during the night and I don’t seem to have lows. One thing about diabetics – we are like snowflakes, everyone is different and what might work for one person may not work for the next. You have to be willing to experiment and find what works. It could be that what I’m doing now will not go the distance and that’s why I may work on getting more RS starch in at other times as well. I am doing other things to heal and nourish the gut – gelatin, fermented foods, and probiotics. Gelatin is amazing – it has greatly reduced my arthritis pain.
Thanks again to Tatertot for all your hard work and research – this is a gold mine of valuable information.
My last sentence is that real food is always a healthy lifestyle. That’s a-priori (you don’t even need to get up off the couch to know it’s true). If you mean the last sentence of my penultimate paragraph, yea, kind of an opinion and my support for it is not only have people been upping their ‘carbs’ a bit with RS to the tune of 10, 15, 30g per day, but they are also finding that upping carbs via beans, rice, potatoes is actually improving overall BG. That’s what all these posts are about, and the comments, and the few I’ve highlighted in posts of their own.
Sure, you make a resonable point about how to define LC. I think that a reasonable definition might be 50-100g is LC, under 50 is VLC. There’s no question it’s doable and there’s no question it can be and excellent, even best therapeutic measure for some. But I simply don’t buy it anymore as a “health lifestyle” as some kind of ideal. I just don’t.
Unless you are an athlete or very active, what are the health benefits of eating more than say 150g/day of carbs?
To whom, Brad? Additionally, what are the benefits of being an athlete?
The simple fact of the matter is that so far as we know, raw carb gram intake does not correlate with longevity, unless it’s inveserse, as all the longest lived populations get more than 150g per day. I’m beginning to suspect that in conjunction with the proper gut-feeding, prebiotic fibers and RS (I do not consider RS a fiber, anymore than regular starch is a fiber) that a higher carb level, say 200ish, might just be in the most optimal range, given it all comes from real foods and not processed foods.
In one respect, this is a laugh to me. I’m on the publishers lists and get every single new Paleo book that comes out. Two of them on Saturday.
Guess what literally half of them are?
Paleo treats and indulgences. That speaks volumes to me. People close off their minds to 200-300g of carbs from potatoes, rice, properly soaked beans——but lets have an endless supply of “paleo” brownies, cream puffs, cakes, pies, and the list goes on.
I’m not fooled.
I hasten to add. I am getting emails and comments from people who are actually trying it, and finding that way upping their carbs, along with RS, is lowering their post prandial and fasting BG numbers.
But, go ahead and don’t see for yourself. You can argue from ignorance (or fear) all you like, as long as you like.
Ash, Richard’s series is about resistant starch, not all “fibre/fiber/dietary fiber,” which includes other things. Both Richard and Tatertot have explained this umpteen times.
Richard, I don’t think you need to make LCers your enemy. Let’s not forget that Paul Jaminet is a LCer as compared to most Americans and his hypothesized optimal avg carb intake for most people of 25% is only 5% more than Dr. Rosedale’s 20% (yes, the “safe starches” debate at the Ancestral Health Symposium was over a measly difference of 5% in carbs!). One can eat RS-rich foods and “safe starches” and still be LC overall.
Plus, if one considers the macronutrients of the end products produced by foods (like Barry Groves did http://www.second-opinions.co.uk/should-all-animals-eat-a-high-fat-low-carb-diet.html#.Ui5uC8Yqjp0), instead of the foods themselves, then your diet is potentially lower carb and higher fat with RS in it, since RS is converted into ketogenic short chain fatty acids.
Thus, RS is not like what people normally think of as “fiber” at all, nor what people normally think of as starch or carbs. It’s more like (mostly) fat. Who here thinks that ketogenic short chain fats are a “menace”?
I’m still waiting for the first bad BG measurement from someone testing RS. 🙂 I can still get BG spikes if I overdo carb consumption, but my overall FBG and post-prandial BG numbers are running lower, like other folks are reporting.
As Judy pointed out, even prominent LC advocate Peter Attia is promoting a RS-containing product called Superstarch. If RS does work, then I see it as a win-win. Starch advocates can say they’re ingesting starch and fat advocates can say they’re running on fat.
It’s clearly possible to overdue it on the RS, of course, which excess fartage is a helpful signal for. Plus, if the benefits of RS are hormetic, as is sometimes hypothesized for ketosis in general (http://www.archevore.com/panu-weblog/2011/2/7/thoughts-on-ketosis-ii.html), then there would be an upper point of consumption or length of time on the hormetic U or J curve at which they start to become excessive and harmful.
BTW, I am very carb sensitive and actually don’t tolerate the much vaunted kefir well (the only dairy foods I so far tolerate quite well are butter and raw sheep cheese), and I actually tolerate RS better than kefir. So for a carb-sensitive VLCer like me, RS is a nice option.
Being on the other side of the earth I am quite happy to see the rectal end view of life first.
The colon/large intestine and its bacterial symbionts have been around for, lets guess, 400+ million years in various species from sea animals to land animals. Just recently, like about 2 million years ago, one of these animal forms , apparently worked out how to use fire, with an effect to chemically tear / alter the sheath around starch granules ; thereby monumentally , making alterable, the balancing point between nutrient types entering the portal vein system via the small intestine versus the large intestine.
From these types of discussions that Richard is making possible, we are just starting to give the role of the colon a little respect and appreciation for its biochemical production capability to the organism. I thank Tatertot for opening my eyes and making me go back to my old paleontology textbooks.
paleophil,
“Starch advocates can say they’re ingesting starch and fat advocates can say they’re running on fat.”
+1! 🙂
Meanwhile, have you checked to se if you get a BG spike if you take 4 tbsp potato starch while you’re ‘overdoing’ those carbs? (and roughly how many readily available carbs mean you’ve overdone it)
@john
Love your comment. Something about someone going as wide scope as possible, integrating everything knowable, that just gives me a smile and gets my heart beating.
@paleophil,
I’ll get to yours after the game, or tomorrow..
When it comes to eating low carb, I will be forever thankful that I came across this approach as it quickly reversed my well-advanced metabolic syndrome and it led me to paleo. Following CW advice did nothing for me except to dig me deeper into reliance on meds to control just about every health marker there is.
As soon as I cut out all the carbs I could easily identify (sugar, flour, grain, potatoes, rice, etc..) and only ate minimal carbs found in veggies and a few other foods, I lost a ton of weight and was off all 5 or 6 different meds within 6 months. In the years following this success, I continued to eat VLC/LC Paleo, but had a few new problems–BG crept up, sleep was crappy, fingers/toes got cold easily, I’d be very sore after a hard workout, and my weight would have wild swings if I ate ‘off-plan’.
These problems led me to Paul J’s PHD and the notion of safe starches and resistant starch. I now eat between 100-200g of carbs per day, but I don’t count them at all–I just make sure to eat a starch with each meal mostly, or not…a potato with lunch, maybe. Beans and rice at dinner often. Acorn squash is nice. Stuff like that. It does seem the sweet spot is between 100-200g/day as this is an amount easy to hit just eating a couple hearty servings of starchy veg and I’ve heard the brain requires 130g or so per day before it needs to start making carbs in the liver.
Remember Atkins? His deal was you were supposed to go full-keto then add in carbs a bit at a time until you were eating 100-200g/day, but nobody ever gets that far–they stall and get back to induction/keto. I don’t think I’ve ever met an Atkins type who says they eat over 100g of carbs.
So, I guess what I’m trying to say is low carb is great for escaping CW and SAD and reversing metabolic syndrome and some other nutrition based conditions, but as a long-term plan that is treated like a religion, it just doesn’t cut it. I say if people are doing great on a LC platform, then do it until it isn’t doing great, but the answer probably isn’t lower carbs.
Richard, what populations are those? Are they ones with predominately manual labor jobs and lower average salaries? I agree many Paleo eaters are kidding themselves, esp with all those treats made with coconut oil, almond flour/butter. But after getting sufficient gut critter food, I don’t see what one would gain by eating a lot more carbs that are relatively low in nutrients. Personally, I have more energy and feel bettter when I’m eating a lot more fat than carbs. But I realize that there are just as many people that experience the opposite.
If you guys can figure out a plan where I can eat 200g of carbs and still be relatively lean, I’ll jump on it. So far the only time in the past 3 years, since I got off SAD, I’ve ever had any reasonable looking ab’s is when I was eating low carb, IF’ing, and lifting hard. Now I’m not saying ab’s are the end-all be-all or that it should be everyone’s focus/goal. But this is also when I feel my best, have the most energy, etc. I just feel healthier when I’m leaner. And I’m too lazy to weigh food, count calories or grams…so maybe that’s also why high fat and IF works better for me. Hard to eat too much when you only eat once or twice per day. Btw, that’s also why it would be hard for me to ea 200g of carbs in one or two meals.
tatertot,
do you happen to know if there’s a study anywhere looking at the consumption of antibiotics versus rates of diabetes and obesity, preferably across a few countries?
Correlation doesn’t mean causation of course, but I’m thinking ‘backwards’ from all the info you’ve gathered that shows how important a healthy gut microbiome is to our metabolism, not to mention to the rest of our health. Antibiotics easily and reliably knock our gut microbes out of whack (C.difficile is an example) and I’m pretty sure we’ve been getting more of them in the west in the last 40years or so and the rest of the world is following. Then there’s the way CAFO animals are doused with them too, affecting most food.
Together with the lack of prebiotics in general, like RS, and lack of fermented foods in the typical processed food SAD, well…..the gut could be the root cause, not the ratio of any macro-nutrients.
That’s not to say that changing the C-F-P ratio won’t help. It clearly does, by treating downstream effects like insulin resistance, but knowing the root cause would be good because treating it should help permanently and be preventive too?
Richard,
Let me put it another way. Let’s say I eat each day, 1 apple, 1 onion, 3 tbs raw starch, 1 cup parboiled rice, 1 cup lentils, and 2 tbs blackstrap (just for the minerals). Now I don’t know how many carbs that is, but lets say it’s around 100. So I just fed my gut critters and refilled my glycogen stores. What would I gain by eating another 100 grams of carbs versus some meat, butter, or other nutrient dense food?
Marie – I can’t recall studies like that, but I’d bet that the US leads in antibiotics and health problems. Norm Robillard just a wrote a good piece on that issue this week:
Brad – I think you are overthinking it a bit. If where you want to be in life is best accomplished by eating less carbs than most people, and you are healthy and not forcing it, then just roll with the flow. It’s when the LC’ers start getting all philosophical and preachy that I have a problem with them.
I think you are smart to think about gut microbes and eat some raw starch, but nobody is saying you have to eat a certain level of carbs–or else.
When I was LC’ing it, if I’d have sushi or a couple brownies, my weight would shoot up 5-10 pounds in a couple days. “I can’t handle carbs!” I’d say. I got down to my leanest adult weight last year low carbing to 159. I liked the way I looked but felt bad and there was no way that weight was sustainable. I decided to start in with the starches a la PHD and just see what would happen with my weight. What happened was I went from 165 to 175 and have stayed there now for about 8 months–I can over eat or undereat, but I haven’t counted calories or carbs and my weight just stays at 175 +/- 2 pounds. I don’t have any flab, feel great, eat what I want. I stick to two meals a day generally and don’t snack, the only vestiges of paleo that remain in my diet are avoidance of sugar, flour, and vegetable oil.
Truthfully, I feel like “I’m there” in regards to having the diet thing figured out for me. If you can say that, then don’t change a thing.
Brad,
you wouldn’t gain anything given your list, don’t be like that. That’s not the point that was made.
Most people will get the requisite amounts of prebiotics from veggies and their probiotics from fermented veggies or dairy. In other words, “Given it all comes from real foods and not processed foods” .
The amount of carbs then adds up. Is it 200gms? May well be. Maybe it’s 150-200gms. That’s sure more than VLC or even what most consider to be LC.
BTW, for shits and giggles, calculated the carbs in that list you wrote. Also, because I have insomnia tonight 🙂
Didn’t even count the ‘cheat’ of 3 tbsp of resistant starch (because it’s not attached to it’s naturally occurring regular starch and it doesn’t digest like a carb).
(1 med apple : 25 gms, 1 cup cooked white rice : 44 gms, 1 cup cooked lentils : 40gms, 1 med onion : 11gms, 2 tbsp blackstrap molasses : 25gms) Total = 149gms.
Now if you got the equivalent amount of RS in 3 tbsp from it’s natural plant sources as well, you’d be even higher in carbs, eh?
Is this the better way to eat rice.
I boil regular white rice while I’m making dinner.
I let the rice cool and then put it in the refrigerator.
I eat the cold rice in morning.
@Marie- Wow, really? 149g? I would have guessed 250. I’ve tried a few times to tally up the carbs I eat in a day, with just potato and rice it’s pretty straightforward, but then I eat something like those stupid fig/apricot bars I recently learned about, a bowl of homemade ice cream, a hunk of cheese broken off a bigger hunk, a couple carrots from the garden, a handful of nuts….without weighing it out, it’s so impossible to calculate. I use PHD method to eyeball it to try to get a pound of starch, a pound of veggies, and a pound of meat a day–that makes life so much simpler and it gives a built in error factor so you aren’t eating the exact same macros every single day.
@Los – I think what works really good for potatoes and rice, cook up a big batch and eat some hot right away, put the leftovers in the fridge (or freezer if you made a whole bunch) then eat some of the leftovers cold, some warmed up.
If you were strictly after resistant starch, I would recommend cooking the rice, freezing it for several days, then thaw it out and eat it cold. For potatoes, roast or bake them, then chill to at least 40 deg F or even freeze them to maximize RS.
In the big picture, though, if all of your RS is coming from rice and potatoes, even eaten cold, it’s hard to get enough in a day. A pound of potato or rice, eaten cold, is 5-10g max, about half of what you should be shooting for. A pound of cold rice is hard to eat, in my opinion! But, if you eat rice on a regular basis, by all means eat as much as you like cold.
@tater
I’m rather new to RS and am slowly making my way through the many posts and comments. Have you ever described what you eat in a typical day? Do you eat much meat and fat in addition to the carbs and vegetables you eat? I’m a 49-year-old woman who has lost 85 lbs on a paleo-ish diet (I.e., by avoiding processed foods, especially flour, sugar, artificial anything, and vegetable oils). I still have about 30 lbs to lose, but I have lost only 5 lbs in the last year. I’m wondering if RS could help me get the rest of the weight off. I’ve eaten moderate carb and lower carb, but my weight won’t budge.
A couple of questions if you don’t mind:
Why aren’t canned beans as good a source as beans made from scratch? I spend a little extra for organic, bpa-free, if that matters. Also, if some of the carbs of cooked and cooled rice and potatoes are rendered indigestible, the calories are reduced. Any idea by how much per, say, a half cup serving?
Without becoming completely self-obsessed, I’m trying my best to eat and exercise for optimum health. Admittedly, I am not hard into the whole bio-hacking thing, though. I’m looking forward to reading the new book. I hope it will contain lots of practical advice on how to incorporate RS into an already clean diet.
Hi, Mary – Are you and I the only two people in the world not watching football today?
My diet is easy — Perfect Health Diet + beans and heavy on RS type foods with a bit of supplemental potato starch most days. Lots of fermented foods, nearly every day. I rarely snack. usually 2 meals a day (lunch and dinner).
I don’t like canned beans because they are not fermented before hand. I think beans are made extremely healthy when soaked for 12-48 hours at room temperature. This causes a large growth of lactobacillus to degrade most of the anti-nutrients and make vitamins and minerals more available. Lots of studies to back this up. Just cooking beans is not enough, IMO.
I don’t count calories, but generally you can count all RS as 2 calories of fat per gram. For instance, 100 grams of cooked and cooled potatoes has roughly 5g of RS. Subtract 5g from total carbs, and add it back in as 10g of fat. Make sense? But really, the fat isn’t yours to digest, it’s your gut bugs fat to eat, so I wouldn’t count it at all. As far as I’m concerned, counting calories is not worth the trouble.
Find a diet that you can maintain on, with about 20-40g of RS in it along with ample starch and carbs, say 100-200g/day, then tweak it based on hunger and weight gain/loss. It’s tough. You shouldn’t have to starve yourself, but counting calories usually ensures you will hit a target. Not counting makes you more intuitive to your hunger and usually keeps you at a deficit. Just learning to maintain is half the battle. Lots go into losing weight, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach, especially from a man to a woman, lol.
Sounds like you are committed. Find a good exercise program that challenges you and stick with it. Get a good dose of RS daily, take a good probiotic and eat plenty of fermented food. Don’t kill yourself to lose weight. Get healthy, work out medical issues, and see what happens while eating things that keep you full.
Good luck!
tatertot,
ya, I hear you. Chocolate ice cream is my occasional downfall – and it doesn’t matter/has no effect because I stick to my ‘natural’ diet (copying mom’s cooking) most of the time and I find I’m very stable in carbs and very weight stable. Not to mention ridiculously healthy. Metabolic gumby, eh? 😉
As for the calculation, I went with the very specific quantities given, just for the illustration.
Brad
You’re making a mistake in attributing nutritional density to plain fat (coconut oil, butter, take your pick). It’s energy dense, not nutritionally dense in terms of vitamins and minerals. In a sense, fat is to the LCer what sugar water is the the SAD eater. Comparing someone getting 50% of energy from fat to someone getting 50% from carb sources like potatoes and beans, it’s the latter that’s getting more vitamins and minerals, provided the other half has good amounts of nutritionally dense food like meat, fish, fowl, shellfish, eggs, complete dairy.
@Tater, I’m totally with you on your viewpoint. My weight stays right around 170-172 lbs when I’m lifting or not (just slightly worse distribution like now when I’m recouping from an injury). I can easily drop down to 165 or so by cutting carbs to very low (<70g) but it takes effort versus very little to be at my normal 170ish, and it's highly likely that my gut critters and hence MY health takes a hit. Perhaps also some less than ideal quantities of minerals as well. I agree the "LC'ers" as a group tend to have an emotionally induced brain-block about all things carby, and I thank you Animals for driving home what I now know to be true, and in retrospect just seems obvious, that with carbs as with damn near everything else…
they are not all the same.
This is the main point that needs to be repeated endlessly until the no-carby's finally decide to take off the blinders and embrace reality.
@Richard,
I think you may be a bit guilty of a similar line of thinking regarding fats – kinda lumping them together as a group and generalizing about them due to their high caloric content. There is a huge difference between the nutrient makeup of various fats – this I’m sure you know. What I interpret from your statement, and I’ve seen this viewpoint from many others, is the thinking that (vitamins & minerals) to a larger extent, and phytonutrients/anti-oxidants to a lesser extent, are the primary, most important, if not only things that constitute “nutrients”, setting aside proteins. I think this thinking is too limited. To exclude the importance of (fatty acids) from the label of “nutrients” is just wrong, since it has been shown in lots of studies how important these are to life – ie, rats starved of certain fats quickly suffer negative health and often death. No need to talk about EFA’s here because everyone here knows what they are. Simply put, I don’t think it’s accurate to say that foods like grass fed butter, pastured lard, and red palm oil, are not nutrient dense. They are not *mineral* dense food, that I can agree with. Also stating the obvious, you can’t ignore the calories in them, but they tend to be somewhat self limiting due to the increased satiety, in my experience, but yeah you can still over-eat them.
And about the fats, again stating what is obvious to many readers here… there is also the synergistic effect that fats have in creating other important things inside the body. This is a kinda side effect, apart from the fats’ direct nutrient content. Chris Masterjohn has written a lot about this on the WAPF site. From just a quick search…
http://www.westonaprice.org/fat-soluble-activators/nutritional-adjuncts-to-the-fat-soluble-vitamins
I enjoy how you present your ideas about RS, getting to the heart of the matter without any regard for conventional mucking about…I think it was Mr. Tit-wank K. West whom expressed this as “It gets the people going!”
Perusing the USDA’s Nutritional Database and recalling Matt Lalonde’s talk on nutrient density I’m left with the picture of animal foods having a higher nutritional density per gram compared to vegetable foods (on average). Am I wrong in thinking your reply to Brad essentially negates this?
You seem to have observed/discovered/clarified a strong plasma blood glucose regulation technique by purposely including RS intake in ones diet (seemingly contradicting the ‘all & any carbs = BAD dogma).
So I guess I have a naive question: will the fall in blood glucose you observe with RS intake also be accompanied by the myriad of other improvements that tend to follow suit (as typically observed in the paleo/primal-sphere of N=1’s) such as : weight loss, acne resolution, improved sleep/energy levels etc.. ?
Thanks!
@Raphael,
It’s important to realize the difference between nutrient density by weight versus by calories as well as which “nutrients” you are including or excluding. That Lalonde talk skews the data, perhaps intentionally, towards animal foods but it still does not support the idea that fatty animal foods are nutrient light.
And if you use only the USDA DB to define “nutrients” you will not be getting the whole picture. I don’t think it takes into consideration things like RS and the differing efficacy, bioavailability/absorption of different forms of a certain nutrients. For example different types of the “same” vitamin like Vitamin-E (tocopherols and tocotrienols) and their differing effects in vivo. It also often just looks at “nutrients” in isolation and does not address the synergistic effect that nutrients have on each other. It’s a good place to start however.
@Brad
Your point is well taken (density in terms of weight rather than per kcal). I don’t think he skewed the data (as that’d imply intentional data manipulation and/or omission fit a preconceived notion) as he was very transparent with his methods and limitations concerning the data itself.
[Concerning the USDA DB] Yes, nutrient content of foods is not the whole story about what our body should do or does with those nutrients..BUT we are not knowledgeable enough at present to accurately quantify the various effects we are starting to observe and explain, such as nutrient absorption and efficiency of use in the presence of differing fat/carb/protein ratios) – I’d say looking at nutrient content of foods when trying to optimise ones diet is a solid START.
@Raphael – “So I guess I have a naive question: will the fall in blood glucose you observe with RS intake also be accompanied by the myriad of other improvements that tend to follow suit (as typically observed in the paleo/primal-sphere of N=1′s) such as : weight loss, acne resolution, improved sleep/energy levels etc.. ?”
I look at getting adequate RS and other prebiotics as a way to even the field. Every day new studies come out on the importance of gut flora and it’s implications to health and mental well-being, but there are relatively few people actually doing anything about it. I saw a commercial on TV last night for a probiotic supplement, the actress in the ad says, ‘did you know 80% of your immune system is controlled by organisms living in your intestines?’
The focus on probiotics is great, but I really think it needs to shift towards prebiotics. I would never make the claim that increased RS leads to weight loss or anything for that matter–but I do think it fine tunes your intestines and gut flora–just one more piece of the puzzle for health.
Brad – Another component to LC is the individual’s health status. I applaud anyone who can overcome serious medical conditions using LC, and it does work wonders. My experience was as a mid-40’s male, eating the SAD his whole life, getting unhealthier by the day and trying to get better with drugs and CW advice from overweight doctors and nurses.
Long-term LC may be needed by some folks who just can’t seem to find any other way to keep their weight stable and remain healthy–itsthewooo springs to mind. The impact of gut flora on long-term ketogenic and LC dieters remains a mystery.
@Tatertot
Doesn’t a diet ‘a la’ Primal Blueprint (‘loads’ of veggies, some starches & fruit) already contain a pretty complete (aka sufficient) mix of prebiotics (and probiotics for that matter)? I can see someone needing to ‘shift [focus] towards prebiotics’ only if they were following a SAD diet or poorly implementing a paleo/primal/ancestral one)…
That fiber is effective at reducing the GI of some foods when consumed simultaneously (all else being equal) is widely accepted in conventional wisdom and in the paleo/primal/ancestral spheres (seems to me at least) – are we now saying that that we’ve potentially elucidated a mechanism based on changes in gut flora (and presumably some specific species or families thereof) capable of explaining those previous observations? Or are we describing a completely different observation I’m just too dumb to glean? 🙂
@Brad
I think you are missing my point. Real food carb sources (potatoes, tubers, legumes, starchy veggies, some fruits & berries) have more and varied nutrition (vitamins, minerals, phyto nutrients) than refined or isolated fat (butter, lard, ghee, coconut oil, palm oil, olive oil, etc). It’s interesting to me that in the LC and to some extent Paleo world, refining out sugars from food, or juicing is no-no, but refine and spoon down or drizzle all the added fat you like.
I’m advocating primarily getting your starch, sugar and fat from Real Food sources. Nothing wrong with a little of the added stuff to cook in, dress a salad, etc. But people go hog wild and ignore the fact that storing dietary fat is like 24% more metabolically efficient than is converting glucose to fat and storing that. Similarly, nothing wrong with a tsp of sugar in your coffee, or, for that matter, modest amounts of juice. Remember, if you’re old enough, the 4 oz juice glasses when you were a kid. Nothing in the world wrong with a 4 oz serving of OJ with your breakfast.
All I’m saying is that eating a variety of meat, fish, fowl, shellfish, whole dairy, vegetables, starchy vegetables and fruit, and getting your fat PRIMARILY from the food and getting your starch PRIMARILY from the food and getting your sugars PRIMARILY from the food is probably the optimal way to go nutritionally. Depending in individual tastes and preferences, one is probably going to find themselves in the following ranges:
Protein: 15-25%
Fat: 25-40%
Carb: 25-40%
Mr. Example eats a diet of predominantly meats (predominantly fatty), fish, a little raw dairy, fruit a few x a week, starches every now and then and of course, veggies x2 or x3 a day (grain and legume free though).
Does he seem to be getting ‘enough’ RS starch?
Or is his diet pretty good, but could be improved by ‘promoting’ starches (listed by Richard Nikoley) to the level of his veggie consumption? (essentially making space for more starch by reducing some of the veggies)
@Raphael – I think that Mark Sisson and Paul Jaminet will both say that eating as they describe will provide one with all the pro- and prebiotics one needs to thrive.
I think differently. I think their plans are a good start, and adequate for long-term good health, but more indepth looks at the role of prebiotics on proper gut function, and evidence from our ancestors petrified poop, shows that our gut microbes evolved on a diet high in fermentable fiber (prebiotics) and that about 20g per day is needed to optimize the growth of beneficial microbes and keep pathogenic types at bay.
A Primal Blueprint Big Ass Salad, or a Perfect Health Diet day with one pound of veggies, depending on food choices, could net someone about 5g max in prebiotics.
Take a look at this paper: http://naldc.nal.usda.gov/download/34692/PDF
It shows the average intakes of inulin and oligofructose (the main non-RS prebiotics) for SAD eaters in the mid-90’s. The average intake was about 5g–with 70% of that coming from wheat products!
The advice of the 80’s and 90’s to ‘eat more fiber’ really did nothing to increase our intake of prebiotic fermentable fiber, but led to the inclusion of all types of filler fibers in bakery treats and snacks–to make them ‘healthy’ snacks.
So, when you adopt a paleo style diet, whether PHD or Primal Blueprint, you take away grains and replace them with more veggies, but at a deficit of overall prebiotic fibers. Then we demonized legumes, potatoes, rice, and starchy fruits like bananas and plantains which takes away any hope of resistant starch for prebiotics.
What I am proposing, is that a healthier way of eating can be had by continuing with the Big Ass Salads, but also add in known RS sources: beans, bananas, plantains, potatoes, rice, as desired, and a bit of raw starch if you are slacking in the real food compartment or just want to up the ante a bit.
I’m going to repost that on Mark’s Daily Apple’s latest fiber blog with a few changes!
Taterot,
“the only vestiges of paleo that remain in my diet are avoidance of sugar, flour, and vegetable oil.”
You should perhaps make the above comment you made part of your signature/name line.
This is the central message to to me about all of this (caveat being that you are not all metabolically fucked up, then more drastic approaches are needed)
That is it for me also.
Simple! the way life is supposed to be.
Marc
One more thing…
I believe the villification of bananas is part to blame on mr. Art Devaney.
Most that have been around for a while (I started in 05) hung on his every word back than as he was one of the few resources at the time. He made it clear how he felt about nanas.
Marc
@Richard, I get what you’re saying and I agree for the most part. Whole foods are the way to go. Whole, preferably unpasturized milk over butter and cheese, olives over olive oil, etc. Some of these whole foods are not always available though, unfortunately, while the more concentrated forms are – eg., red palm oil versus palm fruit, coconut oil versus coconuts. And while I would agree in the general sense that the “more and varied nutrition” the better, this is like saying that all “nutrients” are equally good or equally necessary which is not the case in either carby plant sources or fatty animal sources and this relative importance of “nutrients” as well as their density in foods is what that Matt LaLonde “nutrient density” presentation is all about. Sorry, don’t have the link handy right now.
I do not believe that potatoes, rice, and many if not most other starchy foods, and to a lesser extent lentils and beans, are high in vitamins, minerals, and phyto nutrients on a per weight or per calorie basis. But I do acknowledge their benefits via small amounts of nutrients they have and their benefit to gut flora. Hence I do include some of them in my diet, I just don’t eat a lot of them.
If you believe a “more and varied” approach applies to carb eating you probably would apply the same logic go fat eating, no? Meaning, one should strive to eat a variety of different types of fat – beef fat, milk fat, pork fat, fish fat, palm fat, olive fat, etc. This is extremely difficult to do with only (whole) foods. Eg., nobody is going to eat palm fruit straight off the tree even if it was available (though maybe they should!) or press their own red palm oil. So the best we can do is seek out other sources as minimally processed/filtered as possible.
I’ve often had the thought that there is a correlation between the ease and speed that a food spoils and it’s overall nutritional quality. The longer the shelf life the less nutrients and the worse for you health and vice-versa. Hence things like fresh fish, fresh red meat, raw milk, fruits and vegetables, etc… Why this is I don’t know exactly… the enzymes in the food that is more “alive”? Perhaps besides the enzymes the other bacteria in/on the food that spoils easy that you are also ingesting versus the (sterilized) man made foods that are void of these enzymes and bacteria and hence a long shelf life.
@Brad
I saw Matt’s presentation live and chatted with him after. These are post I had done prior to seeing his presentation.
https://freetheanimal.com/2011/04/nutrition-density-challenge-fruit-vs-beef-liver.html
https://freetheanimal.com/2012/07/grains-vegetarians-vegans-and-nutritional-density.html
That later one was a draft for a chapter in V2.0 of my book, substantially revamped and improved with better graphs in the published version.
My point stands. Isolated fat, no matter from what source is pretty nutritionally poor. Great energy source per gram, though. Same with sugar, so we ought strive to get these things from food so we get the whole nutrition.
The reason for varied nutrition from food is precisely because we DON’T know. I’m now highly skeptical of any diet that cuts out any sources of real foods—and I don’t consider bird food (grains) to be real food for humans.
@Richard, if I and other readers are to gain something from your knowledge and opinion that isolated fats, no matter the source, are nutritionally poor, then please, I’d like to hear your analysis/rebuttal of the many claims to the contrary by Masterjohn on the WAPF site. I have an open mind, but I have to be convinced and so far the evidence I have seen puts my belief at this time, firmly on the other side. I’m not trying to be argumentative but I think your readers deserve more than just a stated opinion. Where’s the evidence and science you are basing your opinion on? Maybe this should be a separate thread so not to drag this one off track. I’m picking only butter at the moment, but prob the same logic applies to lard and red palm oil, if not others.
Btw Richard, since you claim that “we don’t know” what’s most important for health in nutrition, how can you make some broad brush claim about fatty acids, even filtered/isolated ones, are not important nutrients and beneficial even outside their whole food sources? I don’t see how YOU can know, this.
OK, now I’m being a bit argumentative. But it’s all in the search for THE truth. A complicated matter. Cut me some slack.