As many of you know, I’m currently at the Ancestral Health Symposium at Harvard University. Yesterday I participated on a panel organized and moderated by Jimmy Moore called “Safe Starches: Are They Essential on an Ancestral Diet?” The panelists were myself and Paul Jaminet on the “pro-starch” side, and Dr. Ron Rosedale and Dr. Cate Shanahan on the “anti-starch” side (though Cate’s position is not quite as cut-and-dry as Ron’s).
I’m giving my talk on iron overload today, so I don’t have a lot of time, but I wanted to at least summarize the “anti-starch” side’s arguments and then list some bullet points of my arguments in favor of starch for those of you who aren’t here. I’m not sure if the panels will be made available after the fact (the talks will be).
Ron and Cate believe that glucose is toxic in any concentration, and it’s just a matter of scale. In fact, Ron is fond of saying that “everyone is diabetic”. Since starch breaks down into glucose, then by definition starch is toxic and should be avoided – by everyone. I’m a little less clear on Cate’s position, but she seemed to argue that glucose raises insulin, and insulin causes problems, so everyone should be on a low-carb diet ranging from 20 – 70 grams of carbohydrate a day, starch included.
My arguments in favor of starch
Let’s define the terms: are we debating whether starch is “safe” in healthy people or people with particular health conditions like diabetes or small-intestine bacterial overgrowth? These are very different conversations. People with hereditary hemochromatosis (a disorder that causes iron overload) should not eat iron-rich foods like liver and mussels; does that mean everyone should avoid these foods? Even if starch/glucose is “toxic” for diabetics, should everyone avoid starch/glucose?
If the argument is that starch is not safe for healthy people, I would say there’s little to no scientific or anthropological evidence to support that idea, and overwhelming evidence opposing it.
There are literally billions of people eating high-starch diets worldwide, and you can find many examples of cultures that consume a large percentage of calories from starch where obesity, metabolic problems and modern, inflammatory disease are rare or nonexistent. These include the Kitava in the Pacific Islands, Tukisenta in the Papa New Guinea Highlands and Okinawans in Japan among others. The Kitavan diet is 69% carb, 21% fat, and 10% protein. The Okinawan diet is even more carb-heavy, at 85% carb, 9% protein and 6% fat. The Tukisenta diet is astonishingly high in carbohydrate: 94.6% according to extensive studies in the 60s and 70s. All of these cultures are fit and lean with low and practically non-existent rates of heart disease and other modern chronic disease.
Amylase is thought to have played a key role in human evolution in allowing humans an alternative to fruit and protein. Compared with primates, humans have many more copies of a gene (AMY1) essential for breaking down calorie-rich starches. The ability to digest starch, along with the discovery of fire and cooking, gave humans a new food source that allowed us to thrive even in marginal environments. Some scientists have even argued that consumption of starch, along with meat, was primarily responsible for the increase in our brain size.
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Dr. Rosedale argues that evolution is optimized for fertility, not longevity, and that starch consumption decreases longevity. The evidence he cites from this come from studies of roundworm, C. Elegans. However, I am not aware of any evidence in humans showing that starch consumption decreases longevity, and some of the longest lived cultures in the world consume large amounts of starch. Okinawans over the age of 65 (who grew up eating a traditional diet) are a prime example. According to a study of the traditional Okinawan diet in 1949, they obtained 85% of calories from starch, mostly from sweet potato. Life expectancy was 86 years for women and 77.6 years for men. Life expectancy at age 65 is the highest in the world, at 24.1 years for females and 18.5 years for males. Finally, the Okinawan population has the highest prevalence of centenarians in the world. This is especially remarkable when you consider that Okinawans did not have access to modern medical care during the 40s & 50s and and higher rates of death due to infections like tuberculosis as a result. If glucose is toxic and promotes short lifespan, how do the Okinawans live so long?
There is no one-size-fits-all approach. The amount of starch (and carbohydrate in general) will depend upon genetic/epigenetic factors (like amylase production), existing health conditions and the volume and intensity of activity – among others.
If the argument is that starch isn’t safe for those with impaired glucose tolerance, I concede that may be true in many cases. However, I’d like to point out that there’s some evidence that suggests starch may be safe in this population as well. For example, low-fat diets also cause fat loss (even without deliberate calorie restriction), though to a lesser extent than low-carb diets. And there are documented cases of people losing significant amounts of weight and improving metabolic parameters by eating nothing but potatoes. For example, Chris Voigt lost 21 pounds over the course of two months by eating only potatoes and not deliberately restricting calories. Furthermore, his fasting glucose decreased by 10 mg/dL (104 to 94 mg/dL), his serum triglycerides dropped by nearly 50%, his HDL cholesterol increased slightly, and his calculated LDL cholesterol dropped by a stunning 41% (142 to 84 mg/dL).
There’s more, but I don’t think it’s necessary to go further. If Drs. Rosedale and Shanahan are going to advise us to avoid an entire class of food that has been eaten for a couple of million years by humans, the burden of proof is on them to tell us why that food isn’t safe. Evidence from roundworm experiments and biochemical/mechanistic speculation is not enough in the face of overwhelming evidence that starch and glucose are safe in the absence of certain existing health conditions.
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I am not sure what to believe to be honest. I am an endurance athlete who ate moderately high carb and low saturated fat for years. I never bonked during a race and was able to see gains in performance into my 40’s. However my body fat was always a little higher than I wanted at 15%. So I read a lot about Paleo and cut out starch with the exception of an occasional sweet potato and took a much more liberal stance of saturated fat. The result was declining performance and lots of palpations. I was never hungry on Paleo but also never satisfied. A pound of bacon somehow doesn’t fuel my body as well as a little rice and chicken. AND my body fat remained constant at 15%. I’ve decided that my old Italian mother is tight…. Everything in moderation and know thyself! There is no one perfect diet for all!! Thanks Chris….you rock.
It took me a year to be adopted to exercising while eating LC diet. At the beginning my performance suffered, but them I noticed an unusual increase in my insurance.
I wanted to use the word “endurance”, not “insurance”, I am sorry.
Their argument is flawed because protein has the potential to raise insulin levels just as much as starches. If you eat something and insulin levels skyrocket and stay elevated for a long time, thats just a sign of insulin resistance, it’s not the foods fault.
True, but as Mike Eades points out, this protein-initiated rise in insulin is compensated for by a concurrent and equivalent rise in glucagon, making the whole issue roughly a wash.
I can also attest to being a female that went too low carb when I started eating a paleo diet, and after about 2 months I went off the deep end big time with cravings that resulted in eating bad food that I would normally never even consider eating. It almost felt like how I imagine binge eaters would feel…like I was doing something I shouldn’t but just couldn’t control myself-kind of scary actually. Anyway, I went back to focusing on eating starches from sweet potatoes, winter squash, white potatoes, and a little corn here & there, following the principles of the Metabolic Effect Diet where you limit your intake to bites-for me that’s 5-10 bites as a mixed burner-and I cannot tell you how big of a difference that has made for me. More sustained energy and mood, and less cravings. I also ditched the paleo ideal that you should be able to go hours upon hours without eating, and am now eating small meals every 2-3 hours, and that has also made a huge difference. I have figured out over several months of being my own ‘detective’ that I don’t tolerate starchy veggies well before 11am, so I stick to fruit, non starchy veggies, and protein/fat, with the starchy veggies later in the day. I highly recommend if you are struggling with paleo to pick up the Metabolic Effect book by the Teta’s b/c it has really helped put everything I’ve learned from paleo into perspective, and has really opened my eyes!
My well-being really improved after I became able to go COMFORTABLY for hours without eating. Such paleo-idea based not on some religious believe , it is a signal that you body is efficient with using fat as an energy source. Probably it is OK to eat every 2 hours during 8 hours of eating window, but eating every 2 hours while not sleeping seems wrong for me. It means being hungry all the time or eating out of boredom..
I eat about a hundred grams of carbs from our gorgeous, organic, home grown spuds every day. I’d feel a right dick getting those 400 calories taking more than my share of our (home grown/killed) beef.
I’m sixty years old and can bike or ski the pants off most people one third my age. Bp spuds
I think some people read “safe starches” to mean unlimited quantities all the time. I eat some starches – potatoes, rice, sweet potatoes, maybe even some corn from time to time – but they make up very little of my overall paleo diet. I still think I end up well under 100 – 150g of carbs most days (when I track) even with some chocolate indulgences. So you don’t have to eat like the Kitavans. Starches do not have to be a staple of your diet to be included in it. The other thing I have noticed just perusing the paleosphere web is that women seem to have more problems with the no-starch paleo design than men. No idea why that is – maybe it is the reason we have always been associated with the “gatherer” portion of the scenario. It would be interesting to research whether there is some hormonal requirement for a few more starches if you are female.
This panel discussion reminded me of a book I read during my time at Duke, ‘The Jungle Effect’. It totally supports your points.
This panel discussion reminded me of a book I read during my time at Duke…’The Jungle Effect’. It totally supports your points.
For healthy individuals I feel certain “Paleo” starches are fine, for an unhealthy individual (disease,cancer, autoimmune) I feel they are best left out. I would prefer a ketogenic way of life to stay healthier.
Hi
Please can you answer my question. All paleo´s people are saying that only when you workout hardly you should or can replenish your glucogen level, but what about people who work hard mentally who use their brain 16 hours daily. I am judge and sometimes I need to focus 8 hours without any break. When I ate paleo no starch or only little I could not focus on my work I cold not pay attention so I add stach like fruits (2-3 pieces daily, local berries apples, but also banana) some butternut squash and raw sheep dairy and sometimes dates (yes I know full of glucose fructose, but they do perfect jobs for brain)….. I eat it every day at least 1meal consist mainly from some kind of starches. I am very skinny and have no problem with weight I do not workout only do walk everyday. So I think my brain utilize all glucose or even more. When I was on paleo with only little starch I felt bad sluggish and could not focus on my job. Can you clarify this. Thanks a lot
@Michaela
my work also demands intense concentration for long time.
but my mind feels clearest when i dont’ eat (semi-fasted state)
i’m pro-safe carb & have been followling Paul Jaminet’s PHD/paleonu diet for about 2 years.
(moderate carb, 20 – 40%, it varies a lot since i normally don’t count, not am i “metabolically challenged”)
initially, my diet was closer to Mar Sissone’s Primal version; (not VLC).
but his version has too much “rabbit food” & coconut (both disagree with my tummy)
so i slowly migrated toward PHD.
despite my being pro-starch, i can’t eat an unlimited starch.
if i over-do it (> 60 gm starch in one sitting), my postprandial BG becomes way way high (> 160 once it was as high as 200).
when my BG is too high, it makes me sluggish (brain & body) & COLD (due to my mild Raynaud)
so too much glucose is bad news.
strange thing is my BG always drops back to < 100 (same as fasting BG) after 4 – 5 hours.
i wonder if there's such thing "pre-pre-diabetic"
anyway, moderate starch seems to work best for me.
regards,
I enjoy the debate about whether starch is fine for gut health, longevity, etc. but this whole [greater] debate is frustrating to me because it’s based on misunderstandings and wishful thinking. The people who are in the “low carb” camp because of metabolic issues, heard the word “safe” before the word “starch” and got all excited, even though it had nothing to do with them.
What’s going to happen when someone with a nut allergy finds an article on making nuts “safe” by soaking them? 😉
I welcome the interchange between paleo, low carb, and traditional/ancestral foods, because of the large overlap and shared interest in health, but people need to think before they eat something new (or old) again.
From the Seattle Times web site: “Chris Voigt, executive director of the Washington State Potato Commission,”
If your job is to promote consumption of potatoes can that be taken as proof that potatoes are good for you?
Dr. Kresser, I do not see any of the studies referenced in your post? Unlike the same debate between Rosedale and Jaminet which was FULL of links to supporting studies.
http://drrosedale.com/blog/2011/11/22/is-the-term-safe-starches-an-oxymoron/
It is a great debate, detailed with rich scientific data and with all the references. It seems that all of these doctors are overall helping the greater good of people and directing health in a much better direction from the SAD diet. Though, the symptoms stated might be as per Rosedale and many others, it is the symtoms of too much protein. Both Rosedale and Shanahan’s patients never had those issues once their patients were properly fat burning.
Where is the documented proof that Chris Voigt ate only potatoes and improved upon his health? If there isn’t any, he’s full of potatoes. And if it is true, what in the world was he eating before??
It’s not that starch is unhealthy – it’s that it is unnecessary and can lead to excess fat gain in many people. And if you work in the fields for 14 hours a day, sure, you can get away with eating a lot of starch.
If I adopted a potato diet for the next 3 months I would gain fat – a lot of it – and my health would suffer greatly. Where did he get his micronutrients from Chris? His BCAAs?
fred-
stephan guyenet posted an interview with Chris Voigt, and then followed up with an interpretation of his results in another blog post:
http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2010/12/interview-with-chris-voigt-of-20.html
http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2010/12/potato-diet-interpretation.html
Yes I saw that thanks. But if you notice he never once asked him if he was telling the truth.
tonia: Carole Deppe discusses Chris Voigt’s diet in a not all that rosy light, though I’m not sure what her source is. She also discusses her heavily potato reliant diet. Regardless of anything else, it’s great potato porn anyway! http://www.caroldeppe.com/ThePotatoBin.html
thanks, steven for the link! (i’ve always enjoyed reading carole deppe- it was potato porn, indeed!).
her experience is much more informative …and relevant. I’ve always thought that citing this particular experiment as an argument “for” starch consumption/the nutritional value of potatoes was extremely limited, and even distracting from any more substantial evidence based in sustainable, healthful diets heavily reliant on starches. actually, i find it pretty counterproductive, especially as it seems he would completely waste away were he to continue on the all-potato diet for a longer period. I wouldn’t exactly call that healthy.
of course, it seems all too common that people who adopt any sort of new diet – be that low-carb, low-fat, vegan, paleo, all-potato etc. for a short period of time experience weight loss and/or improvements in health markers. that seems much more relevant than whether or not potatoes/starch are a healthful staple for a long-term diet. If we want “anti-starch”-ers to take us seriously, it seems we should be looking towards evidence based in reality, such as the experiences of subsistence gardeners.
I realize that glycemic index can be a bit controversial, but i love this paragraph from deppe’s article regardless:
“There is one legitimate nutritional concern about potatoes however. Potatoes have a high glycemic index. We digest them as fast or faster than almost anything, and turn their carbohydrates into pure glucose, blood sugar, the sugar our bodies are designed to run on. A food that is maximally easy to digest and whose carbohydrates are turned almost totally into exactly the form that our bodies can use most easily—shouldn’t this be considered the epitome of excellence in a food? Why are all the foods that are harder to digest or that contain or turn part of their carbohydrate into other less directly useful sugars be considered superior? By this reasoning, a food that is so hard to digest that it provides no food value ever and raises blood sugar not at all should be considered best. (Rocks, anyone? Yum yum!) I prefer to view the high glycemic index of potatoes as proof positive that they are the epitome of excellence in a food.”
tonia: Yeah, I love that quote! I don’t think we need to look to that potato industry guy and his kooky unsustainable potato diet experiment to prove much of anything. That’s just spin. I like Carole Deppe’s perspective as a person who has chosen to be involved in her own subsistence. She can actually grow enough potatoes and corn to survive on with minimal access to land. People who do their hunting and gathering at the grocery store might not always realize the privilege that it is to do so. As someone who butchers the vast majority of their own meat, I can tell you that when you consume mostly meat and animal fat, a 250 pound pig or even a 500 lb cow does not last that long. In my environment it requires many acres and 18 to 24 months to Properly “ripen” every steer and we are not talking about the fattest steer ever. So add to this idea that people who subsisted largely on meat/fat fed a lot of the muscle meat to the dogs in favor of more nutrient dense animal parts in order to get enough nutrition and we are looking at a “paleo” diet very high in meats and fats being an extremely privileged diet. When I was on gaps I was flying through meat at a shocking rate! And mostly muscle meats at that. Fats aren’t so easy to come by in natural environments either. In my experience, lean animals are the rule and fat ones the exception. If there is fat in something else, a seed or nut, people ate it.
Not only did primitives eat starch as it was available in the form of nuts, seeds, grains (grass seeds), roots, rhizomes and tubers, especially here in arid california, but eating starches also allowed people to practice agriculture. What we think of as vegetables have not comprised the majority of crops grown in the past. It is staple crops high in carbohydrates either as sugar or starch that made agricultural communities possible. A good example is corn/beans/squash of American Indian groups. Whether that is viewed as a good thing compared to the hunter gatherer life, is a complex question made difficult to judge by the fact that subsistence lifestyles are largely outside the experience of modern people who haunt the comments section of nutrition blog posts. My point is really that, in this day and age, if we want to work toward taking responsibility for our food supply or work toward a sustainable and equitable food supply, our options are more along the lines of agriculture than not. I feel like it’s a trap for us to look at food from a nutritional perspective only, which is primarily what I see on these nutrition boards and blogs. Eating food from our local environments for ethical and personal reasons is not only not less important than eating a healthy diet, it can be argued that it is more important to a holistic approach to life. More broadly encompassing food values should inform what we eat as much or more than what we have determined or been told is ideal for our health from a theoretical perspective. I just don’t think those ideas are incompatible either. I just am somewhat dismayed by the phenomenon of people feeling really entitled about food– Importing high resource input food and supplements from all over the world and not being able to “survive” without fresh coconut water or fruit all year, or this or that fresh vegetable all year or pasture fed meat etc… All people before the industrial revolution ate what was in season in their area as well as that which could be stored and if we want to continue to eat “well” as industrial society inevitably begins to collapse around us, then we need to look at our options and I’m guessing that non-starch or low carb paleo diets are not going to be a viable option for most people. All this just to say mostly that it is refreshing to read an opinion about food and nutrition from someone who is more involved with food and understands what goes into growing or getting it. Not only that, but someone who uses the energy derived from her food to attain more food rather than expending energy at getting buffed out at the gym on some machine. And she’s over 60! Carole Deppe has mad credibility.
As for glycemic index, natives here in my part of California subsisted largely on starches and sugars. Pinole (ground seed meal, usually toasted) from numerous broad leaved plants, grass seeds and especially acorns, which are lower in protein than wheat and heavy on starch. Then there were bulbs, numerous species were eaten fresh and dried and sugar content was often increased by long cooking. Entire food gathering processing and storing technologies were developed around these foods and they were not minor components of the diet. I have found many of the tools for processing this diet while digging foundations and stuff. A few thousand years of that seemed to work for them, but then we don’t have documented studies of their health status. I’ll bet they outperformed the pants off any modern paleo tweaking Whole Foods shopper though and as pointed out in other comments, there are examples of thriving starch eaters anyhow. Whether starches are the perfect food or not, we have the hardware and software to eat them and our bodies aren’t telling us to eat them because they are poison.
My point in general though is not so much that these indians ate lots of starch and that it was Ok, as that people ate what was in their environment because that was what was available to them. Looking at that fact and the health status when available is probably more informative than basing decisions on speculation about what humans ate during our genesis in a more specific environment (the true nature of which is also somewhat speculative). Same goes for over reliance on biochemistry and diet studies on isolated foods. I can just imagine some hard line anti-carb paleo person having trouble eating dinner with most primitive groups. Like, “here is this awesome root we dug up and it’s full of energy and you don’t want it because why?” They’d probably laugh their asses off or be terribly offended, but then they could be schooled in just why this food is poison.
Just to put these comments in perspective a little , by view is somewhat apocalyptic and I think our choices should be informed by what kind of future we want to see, if any.
tonia, Dude, we should hang out. Maybe eat some potatoes and corn.
This is why true Real Foodism/paleo (with an asterisk)/whatever you want to call it is really revolutionary: it’s not because it escews Coke, it’s because it demands an awareness of the world outside one’s own tiny orbit WHILE inherently and irreversably demanding that that orbit itself changes. I won’t get into my particular circumstance, but let’s just say we’ve made some conscious choices yet are not able to feed ourselves from our own labours and are acutely aware of that, and find the entitled WF shopper has missed the evolutionarily- (which should thus include environmentally-) appropriate point on their way towards bodyfat% goals disguised as health-improvement efforts. Your illustration of a VLCP invited to a HG dinner is spot on. Faced unexpectedly with roasted offal at a dusty roadside stop with half a goat hanging on a hook out front, I had to say ‘I was raised to believe that outsides are higher status than insides, and have a negative association with insides as a result. I’m sorry’. I’m over it now (can I have a do-over?) and I must say that it was intellectual arguments that started that, rather than my respect for an ancient culture’s food wisdom over that of my (impoverished) own. Not to utterly debase the knowledge my culture has – I’ve had some serious facepalm moments in foreign countries in response to their accepted wisdom that just really didn’t check out. Just… think big, live small. Say I.
steven- i’ve been through many phases in my health and nutrition geekdom, though my very first attempts at making the “right” food choices were confounded strictly in ecological reasons (i was once younger and righteouser). it wasn’t until i started growing, gathering, and processing a significant amount of my own food that i was really able to grasp sheer quantity of sustenance it takes to feed a human being in a single year (i feel like i need one of those football field analogies here or something-except on a way larger scale. isn’t that just what your gut bacteria covers after all?). at about 5’3 and 110lbs or so, i’m pretty small and still find myself astounded by how much food i consume. it becomes pretty evident when you stock up on what you think will be WAY more than enough…say blackberries for an entire year, and find the gallons and gallons and gallons of them gone well before next year’s season. like you said, a 250 lb pig or even a 500 lb steer doesn’t last all that long…neither does 1200 lbs of potatoes apparently!– though i imagine the inputs for that quantity of potatoes are conservative compared to the inputs (and acreage) to properly “ripen” a steer. its hard enough for most people (myself included) to plan their grocery shopping list for the week…let alone the entire year. learning the value of food beyond what it can offer from a personal health standpoint has provided me with a *perspective* on food much more in line with that of our ancestors.
you made so many well-articulated (and humorously written) points. i too often feel disconcerted by the disconnect between those who are involved in food growing, and those who are, as you say scanning the health/nutrition blogs, tweaking their whole foods shopping list and seeking the perfect diet for optimum health. it seems to me that there is a place in which human health and well being intersect food subsistence; a place where the “perfect” diet for optimum human health meets the “perfect” diet for optimum ecological health. to me, this means an adjustment in our minds, by rethinking our feelings of entitlement to specific foods, in our bodies, by cultivating the health to be adaptive to the seasons and to our local food ecology, and in our actions, by finding creative ways to have nutrient-dense foods locally and year round through variety selection, intelligent farming/gardening techniques, and creative preservation methods. i am hopeful that others in this health-centered community will become more intimately involved in their food choices, beyond simply buying the “right” superfoods, or saying hello to the guy who grew their kale at the farmer’s market. i think we would all be profoundly affected by cultivating a more tangible relationships with the land that (still) provides us with the resources to grow and gather our own food.
Steven, Lauren & Tonia, THANK YOU for your contributions. I don’t know where to start in agreeing, but as a tiny, tiny example, let’s just say that for someone like me, with no tropical ancestors, how can I even think about *coconut* as an “ancestral” food? 🙂
Lynn: Lauric acid and coconut oil seem to be everyones darling now. It is pretty funny that paleos are so hardcore into a substance that occurs in significant quantity in only a handful of plant species the world over. Lauric acid, oddly, occurs in baynuts which are native to california. Also curious is that bay laurel genes have been genetically engineered into canola to increase the lauric acid content! I guess the evil vegetable oil empire that has sold us the “saturated fats are bad” pill for so long are jumping on the lauric acid train. More ironic that they are putting it into their flagship unsaturated fat.
more on baynuts, with links here… http://paleotechnics.wordpress.com/2012/11/05/baynutting-tips-for-harvesting-storing-and-using-california-bay-nuts/
“Where did he get his micronutrients from Chris? His BCAAs?”
Nobody is advocating a long term potato diet. The point is that his fasting blood sugars went down not up.
Fredrick: they are not significantly goitrogenic unless you eat them raw, which I don’t recommend. You can also mitigate their mildly goitrogenic effect almost completely by ensuring adequate iodine intake.
Thanks for the response Chris.The problem is that my thyroid issues are caused by Hashimotos and as you know,iodine and hashimotos are not good pals.Should I just avoid all the goitrogenic foods?
Thanks for the feed back.My thyroid issues are due to Hashimotos and i guess iodine will be a problem for me.Should I just avoid all the goitrogenic foods?
Is there a real explanation or term for the descriptive word, ‘toxic.’ It seems to be a fad word used to explain something is deadly harmful/poisonous to the body. What is the scientific take on it, please?
I really love sweet potatos but most people tell me that its goitrogenic and since i have thyroid issues,should avoid it like a plague.Can anyone clear for me the air here please.Will really appreciate.
Sweet potatoes are fine. Generally goitrogens would include crucifers and brassicas. The Wiki entry has a list.
I have to go against the grain and disagree with you. I respect Dr. Rosedale a lot and agree with him. Your arguments aren’t very compelling and the biochemistry is on his side as well. A low carb diet decreases your metabolism, which of course, increases your longevity. Also, burning ketones produces less CO2 per calorie than burning glucose.
As for the Okinawans and Kitavans, are we really basing optimal nutrition on a society known for smoking and being small and a group that gets most of its fat from MCTs? Not that there’s anything wrong with MCTs but they clearly allow you to eat more carbs than normal.
Amylase- it’s higher in women’s saliva than men’s, so are we meant to have women chew our potatoes for us? This kind of reasoning proves only that we have continued to evolve towards carb burning, but it’s still not what we have been eating regularly for millions of years.
The question isn’t whether starch is safe to eat, but whether it’s what we are built to eat. It’s about what’s optimal for the long haul.
As for Mr. Voigt, I suspect the monotony of his diet caused calorie restriction. It’s the same trick as sticking to one type of drink when going out. That and there are worse things than potatoes, which he probably partook in previous to his extreme diet.
Suspect you’re right about the monotony causing him to eat fewer calories initially; first he struggled to eat more than 14 spuds/day and lost weight.
>He decided to live on 20 potatoes a day because he needed 2,200 calories a day, and each potato has about 110 calories.
Sam, a calorie-restricted diet would also slow metabolism (and thus increase longevity). Does Dr. Rosedale account for this when claiming there is an advantage to low-carb in reducing metabolism?
We are interested in the Okinawans and Kitavans because they are models of health. They are healthy despite the fact that they smoke. Something else is protecting them; diet is therefore a likely candidate.
Why do you imply that being small indicates poor health? Since you are interested in longevity, you might know that tallness is associated with shorter lifespans.
Why would MCTs allow you to eat more carbohydrates than normal?
You could argue that salivary amylase doesn’t “prove” that we have fully adapted to starch consumption yet. But we’ve already adapted enough to attain pretty amazing health status on starch-based diets. There is existence proof of this in the healthiest populations on the planet. If a low-carb diet really is optimal, why aren’t the Maasai (or any low-carb populations) living longer than, say, the Okinawans?
I seem to be carb sensitive, and eating them increases my appetite for them, I gain weight etc, but total avoidance xeems to trigger all of the cortisol/thyroid stuff. So I find a balance is a starch meal every other day or two. This actually matches the 80/20 rule recommended in the paleo sphere, although they think of it as “legal cheating”, I think for some people it might be exactly the right thing. Even Jimmy Moore has said he had planned cheat days while he lost weight, so he was eating some of this stuff at that time…It is also similar to the type of eating recommended by Ned Kock, and others , I think the idea of cycling the carbs has some merit. but maybe the term should be “safest carbs”, not “safe carbs”, to indicate that they are not necessarily a great choice for everyone.
Whelp, here we are again in another silly debate. It seems all too easy to think ourselves into some strange maze, nose to the ground sniffing after the perfect diet ignoring the obvious by way of example in favor of some strange logic or delving head first into reductionist biochemistry without observing the dynamic behavior of living systems. I’m fairly pro starch right now even though I seem to have some trouble with it and I think the evidence is clear that it can be very healthy. Starchy foods certainly are enjoyable! I’m also not convinced on this “safe starches” thing where everyone is vilifying grains. Besides the Hunza living largely off wheat as Matt Stone pointed out in the rather funny blog post linked below, I’ll bet there are plenty more examples of healthy people getting their deadly starch from deadly non-rice cereal grains and doing pretty well for all that. Anyone have any examples? I’m not saying no one has problems with them, I know I do right now, but I’m inclined to think that there is more something wrong with us that we can’t negotiate them than there is a fundamental problem with them that is impossible for our systems tolerate them. I feel the same way about FODMAPS foods. I think we should be careful not to assume that the fault is with the foods or that there is something fundamentally wrong with us that is not repairable rather than just a dysregulation of some kind. That’s my leaning at this point. I’ll be working toward the goal of being able to thrive on as many diverse foods as I can thank you very much! I have a long way to go, let me tell you. I’d like to thrive on anything at this point, but it certainly won’t be predominantly meat and fat- been there done that, now trying to clean up the mess.
http://180kitchen.wordpress.com/2009/11/11/mccarrison-style-chapati/
This panel discussion reminded me of a book I read during my time at Duke, ‘The Jungle Effect’. It totally supports Kresser’s points.
Chris, I agree with everything you said and I also find the arguments against carbs mostly unconvincing. That said, after many years eating low carb (around 50g/day) I can’t escape the fact that it works better for me, even though that I was never overweight, diabetic or insulin resistant. Starch in the 100g/day range dropped my HDL (as I’ve blogged about) and greatly impaired my exercise recovery. So I’ll continue to experiment with it, but that may just be how I’m wired up.
I was happy on <50 Gms carbs per day for eight months, until T3 hit the wall and Paul Jaminet PHD put me back on track. You all have the best argument as far as I am concerned and I appreciate the attitudes also. 😉 (no T-shirt required)
Giving up all wheat was the main difference for me, then avoiding PUFA n6s, sugar. I did gauge my starch / blood sugar with a meter and think I am now dialed in.
Hi, Catherine. Can you elaborate more on this as I think I went/am going through the same thing. When you say T3 hit the wall, you mean it dropped too low? And how did you get back on track?
Thanks for the comment. I have been struggling with this problem for the last 6-8 months. I am very tired, very depressed and have pretty bad mood swings.