Ray Peat Diet / Protocol Name?

[pboy]

lol, I don't like upsetting people but I know the intention decides the karma, and my intention whether people can tell is from as much pure love as I can hold and exude...but I know life is a harsh challenge that requires courage and much wakefulness to not be in a suffering state, so I guess my words come across as lighting a fire or penetrating, but I guess its all how people interpret it. Id never say anything that was just mean for no reason, I just state the truth in a bold way and let it stand...the only way people wont suffer, while in a body here in this life on this earth, is to be courageous and strong and use your senses and wakeful mind. I had to learn this...solace and comfort are nice but don't translate to lasting benefit...I didn't design this world or its mechanics, im just someone who has through getting thrown through hell has realized how it is, and how narrow the window is to actually be as close to a heavenly person who isn't suffering as possible, and have the earth in the most harmony and peace and conducive to non suffering as possible. I don't have patience...I don't think its something that's a virtue, I think we should all aspire to be as good as possible and the harmony of everything as good as possible...right now!

If people knew me or interacted with me in real life first hand they'd probably think differently

Im not directing my comments and particular people and for some reason people come out of no where and take things I wrote personally and exaggerate big time, like using words as 'my way' or 'superior' which I never use. I swear I am being objective from what ive directly experienced...life is not easy and a cakewalk, to not suffer, and to be healthy and happy...its incredibly hard and you have to operate with poise, grace, courage, and voice, and more...within an apparently pretty narrow window

its bad for your thyroid to hold things in and water things down or not be FULLY honest, with yourself especially, but also with others

people are like...society is like, the cells in a body. If any part is injured or suffering, it throws out stress signals, even through light and vibration, and it affects the whole body. It makes me sad every day when I go in public and see mass stress sickness suffering and pollution, and so im as dedicated as possible to doing some healing as fast as possible...just maintaining my own health is a near all day challenge as it is

 

[narouz]

Maybe we should call it Ray Peat's Diet. In the sense of the foods that Ray Peat regularly eats.

Actually, this would be a cool reference point.

There are quite a few specific glimpses into his diet, by he himself.
People over time tend to occasionally ask him things like
hey, dr. Peat...what did you have to eat today?
He has given some specific replies,
notably here on this forum.

 

[Philomath]

Dr. Peat refers to certain foods as "famine foods", grains being one example. I think he structures his foods by nutritional value and affordability. He's mentioned before that he chooses Orange juice because it's cheaper than buying the equivalent amount of fruit.

Top level (preferred & most costly): gelatinous meat, dairy, liver, shellfish , fresh fruit
Middle level: Any top level food plus starches like potatoes, masa harina, rice, oats - as long as they are cooked properly and include a fat. Possibly warm water fish too.
Bottom level: (survival food & affordable) - grains, cold water fish, legumes, most plants and vegetables.

Yes, you have to be creative and diligent to eat from the top two levels. However, it only seems restrictive when you're used to eating from the bottom level.
How many of us wouldn't sell our soul for tasty bread, or a cracker made of foods from level one or two?

Phil-
Without getting into a full-blown critique...
I've thought a little about some tiered way of articulating a Peat diet/s.
I think something like that might work.

Just looking at what you've sketched out there,
a few things pop into my head:
1. I'm not sure the top level is gonna have to be the most expensive.
2. "gelatinous meat" in that top level: I see why you note that,
but it gets complicated when trying to accurately convey appropriate proportions.
If there are loopholes, they will be exploited.
You will see folks eating 16oz roast lamb shoulder for breakfast,
16oz chuck pot roast for lunch,
then finishing off with 16oz lamb shanks for supper,
and calling it a beautiful "Optimal Peat Diet" day well done!
3. similar problem with shellfish unless proportions articulated
4. the fruits, unless one lives in a tropical paradise, prove more problematic
than might meat the eye.
So many fruits don't meet the Peat Test because of starchiness, pectininess, unripeness,
or just plain wrongness (avocadoes).

This wasn't meant to be a precise definition of the Peat diet... Just my thoughts on why it seems restrictive and expensive. And yes, the cost to maintain this food lifestyle can be expensive. Especially where I live which is about as far away from farms, the ocean and fruit trees as you can get!

 

[narouz]

This wasn't meant to be a precise definition of the Peat diet... Just my thoughts on why it seems restrictive and expensive. And yes, the cost to maintain this food lifestyle can be expensive. Especially where I live which is about as far away from farms, the ocean and fruit trees as you can get!

I understand, Phil.
But you had some good notions there.

I have no doubt it is expensive to feed a family high quality Peatish foods.
I confess that is a niche I haven't thought about--
especially if tiny kids are involved.

But at least when it is adults we're talking about,
I personally am not just assuming
that the best Peat diet will automatically be the most expensive.
Off the top of my head I can imagine how it well could be, though. :)

 

[4peatssake]

I think if anything, Peat endeavors to make recommendations that make it easier for more people to access the best foods available to them. It's a daunting task given the horrific state of the planet's food supplies, however. At one time, one could more easily get fresh farm eggs, cheese, and milk.

The context for him to involve himself in nutritional advice was to reach as many people as possible and help them.

DR: Within your nutritional suggestions, there's a simplicity in them that doesn't force people to drive 2 hours to get raw milk. Is being rescued from a complicated and potentially burdensome lifestyle toward a simpler approach part of healing?

RP: Bucky Fuller’s idea of doing more with less has always appealed to me. When I started Blake College, the idea was for students to learn what they needed to know, by centering on their own questions, and even “poor students” quickly realized that learning could be central to their lives; their internal resources were more fruitful than being guided by authoritative professors in billion dollar universities. I had read Adelle Davis’s books in the ‘50s, and in Mexico I had the opportunity to see how a dime’s worth of vitamin could do what the best hospitals were failing to do. The US Dept. of State believed it was inappropriate for draft age men to be in a college outside the US, if the college didn’t have a pro-war ideology, so they arranged to have the school closed, and that left me free to concentrate on biological issues. Much of my early nutrition investigation was how to get good nutrition at minimal expense, so that poor people could improve their energy and learning ability. The process of cooking corn in lime was discovered long ago, to get more nutrition with less expense. Getting ketoacids from potatoes is a similarly economical solution, that opens opportunities by improving functions while reducing expenses. Milk, rather than meat, is another ecological/economical alternative, that improves health, wealth, and longevity...

...Making an effort to learn how to use techniques of food, hormones, light, activity, etc., is similar to the effort needed to work with a psychologist, and the effort itself is part of the therapy—-the particular orientation of the psychotherapist isn’t what’s therapeutic, it’s the ability to participate in meaningful interactions, that is, the ability to provide a situation in which the person can practice being human. When people start thinking about the things in their life that can be changed, they are exercising aspects of their organism that had been atrophied by being in an authoritarian culture. Authoritarians talk about protocols, but the only valid ‘protocol’ would be something like ‘perceive, think, act.

Saying the diet is expensive and restrictive given one's particular conditions is one thing, but in general I think his recommendations can be adapted without great hardship or difficulty. Any restriction one would do to themselves and context is everything of course.

I think saying "the Peat diet is expensive and restricting" is not an accurate representation of the man and his work.

There is just no escaping doing your own work on the road to one's best possible health. And in today's world, that is far from optimal.

DR: Is optimal health from a cellular metabolic perspective achievable in today's society with the lack of availability of optimal foods and with all the toxins and pollution in the environment?

RP: If optimal means the best possible under bad circumstances, yes, otherwise, no. Optimal health requires optimal food, and a change of society...

...Eating good food can alter your consciousness; so can thinking about how we’re going to get it.

 

[Blossom]

:1 :1 :1

 

[narouz]

I mean--dreaming--
it's possible to imagine some billionaire
getting into Peat.
Moving to some tropical, unpolluted place.
Creating a big organic farm with great soil techniques.
Growing perfect Peat fruits.
Perfect Peat milk cows.
Etc.

Hard to deny that unlimited money wouldn't help.

At the same time,
it's possible for many to put together a pretty high-level Peat diet
without having a lot of money.
It might be boring, but...

If you could get good milk and orange juice,
a little liver and seafood and eggs...
that would be pretty low cost foundation.

 

[narouz]

Philo-
On my view--and yours I guess?--
that the low amounts of starch advisable on an optimal Peat diet
would tend to make the diet feel restrictive to most,
I've compiled a brief compendium of sources/quotes by Peat
on the topic.

Look at it this way:
How many times,
in interviews,
or in replies to emails,
or in his written work...

...How many times have you heard/read Peat say something like:
"Yeah, I think you need to work more starch into your diet"...? :)

(Note also,
in many of the Peat quotes below,
how Peat himself does not shrink from the use of the word
"diet.")

-------

From the KMUD interview of February 15th.
KMUD: Weight Gain, Foamy Urine, Fats, Light Therapy, Dreams, -- 2-15-2013
http://www.raypeatforum.com/forum/download/file.php?id=312

The questioner is the KMUD co-host, Sarah Murray.
Go to the 48 minute mark of the interview:

SM: "I guess what you're saying is 400 calories from orange juice
is not comparative to 400 calories from potatoes or rice."

Ray Peat: "...uh, definitely not. It [the orange juice] stimulates your metabolism and suppresses
the stress hormones."

SM: "Whereas 400 calories from baked potato and rice would increase your stress hormones
and suppress your metabolism?"

RP: "Yeah. And then there's the matter of the starch particles, that if you don't have some saturated fat
with them some of the starch particles can set up a whole pattern of stress and injury by entering
the blood stream."

-------

"I think the basic anti-aging diet is also the best diet for prevention and treatment of diabetes, scleroderma, and the various "connective tissue diseases." This would emphasize high protein, low unsaturated fats, low iron, and high antioxidant consumption, with a moderate or low starch consumption. In practice, this means that a major part of the diet should be milk, cheese, eggs, shellfish, fruits and coconut oil, with vitamin E and salt as the safest supplements. It should be remembered that amino acids, especially in eggs, stimulate insulin secretion, and that this can cause hypoglycemia, which in turn causes cortisol secretion. Eating fruit (or other carbohydrate), coconut oil, and salt at the same meal will decrease this effect of the protein. Magnesium carbonate and epsom salts can also be useful and safe supplements, except when the synthetic material causes an allergic bowel reaction."

--Dr. Ray Peat
"Diabetes, Scleroderma, Oils and Hormones"
http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/diabetes.shtml

-------

Ray Peat in
Diabetes, Scleroderma, Oils and Hormones
http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/diabetes.shtml


"The starch-based diet, emphasizing grains, beans, nuts, and vegetables, has been promoted with a variety of justifications. When people are urged to reduce their fat and sugar consumption, they are told to eat more starch. Starch stimulates the appetite, promotes fat synthesis by stimulating insulin secretion, and sometimes increases the growth of bacteria that produce toxins. It is often associated with allergens, and according to Gerhard Volkheimer, whole starch grains can be "persorbed" from the intestine directly into the blood stream where they may block arterioles, causing widely distributed nests of cell-death. I have heard dietitians urge the use of "complex carbohydrates" (starch) instead of sugar. In the first physiology lab I took, we fed rats a large blob of moist cornstarch with a stomach tube, and then after waiting a few minutes, were told to dissect the rat to find out "how far the starch had gone." In such a short time, we were surprised to find that not a trace of the starch could be found. The professor's purpose was to impress us with the rapidity with which starch is digested and absorbed. Various studies have demonstrated that starch (composed of pure glucose) raises blood glucose more quickly than sucrose (half fructose, half glucose) does. The sudden increase of blood glucose is sometimes thought to contribute to the development of diabetes, but if it does, it is probably mediated by fat metabolism and the hormones other than just insulin."

-------

Ray Peat wrote:
"There isn't anything wrong with a high carbohydrate diet, and even a high starch diet isn't necessarily incompatible with good health, but when better foods are available they should be used instead of starches."

R. Peat, Glycemia, Starch, and Sugar in Context

-------

"Per calorie, sugar is less fattening than starch, partly because it stimulates less insulin, and, when it's used with a good diet, because it increases the activity of thyroid hormone.."--Ray Peat from http://www.dannyroddy.com/main/2011/12/ ... tandi.html

-------

"Starch and glucose efficiently stimulate insulin secretion, and that accelerates the disposition of glucose, activating its conversion to glycogen and fat, as well as its oxidation. Fructose inhibits the stimulation of insulin by glucose, so this means that eating ordinary sugar, sucrose (a disaccharide, consisting of glucose and fructose), in place of starch, will reduce the tendency to store fat."--Ray Peat, "Glycemia, Starch, and Sugar in Context”

-------

"Any carbohydrate...that is not sugar can potentially feed bacteria [in the intestines] that produce toxins and cause systemic stress."

-Dr. Ray Peat: Glycemia, Starch and SUGAR in Context!
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/eastwesthe ... in-context
(Go to approximately the 29 minute mark of the interview.)

-------

Focusing in on potatoes (around the 46 minute point)
Peat says that "potatoes are almost unique among the plant materials":

"The liquid part of the potato, in between the starch grains...
has the equivalent of amino acids, besides some proteins.
These are the keto acids, which can be used by the brain and heart
as a substitute for sugar or fatty acids and are really an ideal
anti-stress fuel and can instantly turn into amino acids as needed.
And so, apart from the starch, the potato is an amazing food."

Dr. Ray Peat: Glycemia, Starch and SUGAR in Context!
by Josh & Jeanne Rubin
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/eastwesthe ... in-context

-------

from Dr. Peat:

"In an old experiment, a rat was tube-fed ten grams of corn-starch paste, and then anesthetized. Ten minutes after the massive tube feeding, the professor told the students to find how far the starch had moved along the alimentary canal. No trace of the white paste could be found, demonstrating the speed with which starch can be digested and absorbed. The very rapid rise of blood sugar stimulates massive release of insulin, and rapidly converts much of the carbohydrate into fat.

It was this sort of experiment that led to the concept of "glycemic index," that ranks foods according to their ability to raise the blood sugar. David Jenkins, in 1981, knew enough about the old studies of starch digestion to realize that the dietitians had created a dangerous cult around the “complex carbohydrates,” and he did a series of measurements that showed that starch is more “glycemic” than sucrose. But he simply used the amount of increase in blood glucose during the first two hours after ingesting the food sample, compared to that following ingestion of pure glucose, for the comparison, neglecting the physiologically complex facts, all of the processes involved in causing a certain amount of glucose to be present in the blood during a certain time. (Even the taste of sweetness, without swallowing anything, can stimulate the release of glucagon, which raises blood sugar.)"

R. Peat, Glycemia, Starch, and Sugar in Context

-------

-The interview "Sugar Part 1" with the Herb Doctors:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/22195338/Kmud_SugarI_kmud_100917_190000fritalk.mp3

Go to about the 19:00 or 20:00 mark for some fairly damning views from Peat on starches
as a source of carbohydrates/sugars.

Also, more generally, a very thorough discussion on the basics of sugars and carbohydrates, healthy and unhealthy.

 

[Blossom]

Great quotes narouz!

 

[Jennifer]

What confuses me is Ray wrote this about insulin in his bone density article:

"Avoiding fluoridated water and the polyunsaturated oils, and drinking two quarts of milk daily (which will provide only 66 grams of protein), and using some other nutrient-rich foods such as eggs and fruits, are probably the basic things to protect the bones. For vitamins, especially K, occasional liver can be helpful. Meats, fruits, leaves, and coffee are rich in magnesium.
Some people have argued that the acidity of urine produced by eating meat causes calcium loss. However, a high protein diet also improves the absorption of calcium by the intestine. Another overlooked function of dietary protein is that it stimulates insulin secretion, and insulin is anabolic for bone.[28]

The same diet that protects against osteoporosis, i.e., plenty of protein and calcium, etc., also protects against kidney stones and other abnormal calcificatons."

http://raypeat.com/articles/aging/bonedensity.shtml

So insulin is anabolic for bone (a good thing), but starch's insulin stimulating effect is bad? Or does the issue with starch (besides particle size) come down to how quickly and/or how much insulin is released and fruit and non-starchy protein sources don't stimulate insulin as rapidly and/or as much as starch does? That insulin serves many beneficial metabolic processes in the body such as bone development, but too much released and/or too quickly, like when starch is eaten, is the main issue?

 

[narouz]

Jenn-
Hate to recycle a popular (but oft-misused!) saying here, but
the confusion may be rooted in the context.

The article you note focuses on bone density...not overall health.
So...that may be good to consider.

The thing about Peat, to me, in this regard:
one can scratch about in PeatDom,
cherry-pick certain quotes,
and use those relatively isolated quotes
to support whatever agenda one might have.
(please don't misconstrue--I'm not implying that you do this!)

So...I think it is important to employ good scholarship.
That sounds horribly boring and tight-assed, I know!
But it is the best word I can come up with the describe it.
What I mean by "good scholarship"
is just doing good, thorough, accurate research
and not hanging one's hat on isolated quotes.
Rather, see the overall pattern.

With regard to starches for example,
one can cite the couple of times Peat loses his mind (kidding, but...he does get carried away I think )
and calls potatoes "almost a perfect food."
Voila! A Peat diet centered around potatoes!
However, if one weighs and balances all the many things Peat says about starch
I don't see how one could reasonably argue
that a potato-centered diet is optimal
if one has better Peatian foods available.

 

[pboy]

he basically says the only starches are ok are the ones sprouted, or live in the case of roots but still he doesn't recommend root starches really...the idea is the resistant starch and soluble fibers are fermentable and lead to overall stress and hormone imbalances. The few starch sources that have little to no resistant starch or fermentable fibers that are actually soaked sprouted or whatever would be corn masa and if you soaked white rice yourself. And even then, the persorption is an issue, so you have to eat them with fat to avoid that. And even then, they are just pretty lackluster or imbalanced nutritionally, so its sort of a waste of time. I think he only eats a little corn masa prepared in like sweet desserts, so its only a minor part of them and they have cream to go along

potatoes might be very nutritious, but they have the resistant starch which isn't ideal...but Peat directs his advice to the masses, especially poor people, and he knows...and takes into account various situations, so comparatively potatoes are better than beans or grains, wheat, ect, for example. They aren't ideal but are better than a lot of other things...and the high quality protein is a plus for them

as hard as this is to accept for people, and as stringent as it may seem...its just what the research and his experience probably has told him...and I concur

and I agree with what such saturation said which I thought was hilarious, that it may seem restrictive to avoid starches...but what they do to you is restrictive!

 

[Jennifer]

Thanks guys for your answers.

I'm not concerned with starch in terms of having a hard time avoiding it since I personally don't eat starch, I'm just trying to wrap my head around why insulin is bad in the context of starch, but good in the context of bone health.

To answer this:

"The article you note focuses on bone density...not overall health.
So...that may be good to consider."

With the systemic complications that arise once someone fractures due to osteoporosis, there's a reason why many elderly die after breaking a hip, I see bone health as one sign of one's overall health and how their system is functioning as a whole. To me, if any part of your body is degenerating, you overall health isn't functioning at its best.

I completely agree with you, narouz, about context and not hanging one's hat on any one particular quote, your example about the potato highlights this perfectly, but Ray also said this in the article:

"I think there are several reasons for avoiding x-ray tests of bone density, besides the simple one that everyone should eat a bone-protective diet, regardless of the present density of their bones."

So he feels everyone should eat a bone-protective diet regardless of the present density of their bones. So that's why I asked the question. I'm trying to employ good scholarship. I'm having a hard time understanding the reasoning behind insulin being bad when stimulated by starch, but good for bone health. How do we keep bone healthy if we should avoid stimulating something (insulin) that is protective to it? Again, is insulin's beneficialness dependent on how slowly it is stimulated and/or how much of it is released at one time?

 

[narouz]

Jenn-
Yes, I see your point.
The short answer is:
I don't know.

There are many health issues I tend to worry about,
but bone density is not one of them
(though maybe it should be! :) )
I think we tend to inform ourselves better about the issues close to our hearts.

Overall with Peat
I haven't noticed an either/or thing going on
with regard to bone health and/or overall health.
The KMUD interview "Calcium and Phosphate" (think that's the title)
talks about bones and calcium a lot as I recall.
Seems like the principles he suggests for good bones
coincide with his general recommendations for good health.

 

[Green]

I think if anything, Peat endeavors to make recommendations that make it easier for more people to access the best foods available to them. It's a daunting task given the horrific state of the planet's food supplies, however. At one time, one could more easily get fresh farm eggs, cheese, and milk.

The context for him to involve himself in nutritional advice was to reach as many people as possible and help them.

DR: Within your nutritional suggestions, there's a simplicity in them that doesn't force people to drive 2 hours to get raw milk. Is being rescued from a complicated and potentially burdensome lifestyle toward a simpler approach part of healing?

RP: Bucky Fuller’s idea of doing more with less has always appealed to me. When I started Blake College, the idea was for students to learn what they needed to know, by centering on their own questions, and even “poor students” quickly realized that learning could be central to their lives; their internal resources were more fruitful than being guided by authoritative professors in billion dollar universities. I had read Adelle Davis’s books in the ‘50s, and in Mexico I had the opportunity to see how a dime’s worth of vitamin could do what the best hospitals were failing to do. The US Dept. of State believed it was inappropriate for draft age men to be in a college outside the US, if the college didn’t have a pro-war ideology, so they arranged to have the school closed, and that left me free to concentrate on biological issues. Much of my early nutrition investigation was how to get good nutrition at minimal expense, so that poor people could improve their energy and learning ability. The process of cooking corn in lime was discovered long ago, to get more nutrition with less expense. Getting ketoacids from potatoes is a similarly economical solution, that opens opportunities by improving functions while reducing expenses. Milk, rather than meat, is another ecological/economical alternative, that improves health, wealth, and longevity...

...Making an effort to learn how to use techniques of food, hormones, light, activity, etc., is similar to the effort needed to work with a psychologist, and the effort itself is part of the therapy—-the particular orientation of the psychotherapist isn’t what’s therapeutic, it’s the ability to participate in meaningful interactions, that is, the ability to provide a situation in which the person can practice being human. When people start thinking about the things in their life that can be changed, they are exercising aspects of their organism that had been atrophied by being in an authoritarian culture. Authoritarians talk about protocols, but the only valid ‘protocol’ would be something like ‘perceive, think, act.

Saying the diet is expensive and restrictive given one's particular conditions is one thing, but in general I think his recommendations can be adapted without great hardship or difficulty. Any restriction one would do to themselves and context is everything of course.

I think saying "the Peat diet is expensive and restricting" is not an accurate representation of the man and his work.

There is just no escaping doing your own work on the road to one's best possible health. And in today's world, that is far from optimal.

DR: Is optimal health from a cellular metabolic perspective achievable in today's society with the lack of availability of optimal foods and with all the toxins and pollution in the environment?

RP: If optimal means the best possible under bad circumstances, yes, otherwise, no. Optimal health requires optimal food, and a change of society...

...Eating good food can alter your consciousness; so can thinking about how we’re going to get it.

"And the people under the sky were also very much the same—everywhere, all over the world, hundreds of thousands of millions of people just like this, people ignorant of one another’s existence, held apart by walls of hatred and lies, and yet almost exactly the same—people who had never learned to think but who were storing up in their hearts and bellies and muscles the power that would one day overturn the world. If there was hope, it lay in the proles!" -George Orwell, 1984

 

[narouz]

Great quotes narouz!

thanks, Blossom!

 

[Jennifer]

The KMUD interview "Calcium and Phosphate" (think that's the title)
talks about bones and calcium a lot as I recall.
Seems like the principles he suggests for good bones
coincide with his general recommendations for good health.

Perfect! I'll listen to that interview. Thank you, narouz! :)

 

[narouz]

The KMUD interview "Calcium and Phosphate" (think that's the title)
talks about bones and calcium a lot as I recall.
Seems like the principles he suggests for good bones
coincide with his general recommendations for good health.

Perfect! I'll listen to that interview. Thank you, narouz! :)

Yeah, it's one of my favs!

 

[cantstoppeating]

I'd like to close this discussion and finalise the name for what we're doing:

Peating

It's action orientated, descriptive and succinct.

Peating is about increasing the metabolism, commonly measured by pulse and temp, using recommended foods like OJ, milk, coffee, liver, oysters, carrots, coconut oil. Other foods can be used as long as they a) do no harm and b) aid in the increase or maintenance of a high metabolism.

 

[narouz]

I'd like to close this discussion and finalise the name for what we're doing:

Peating

It's action orientated, descriptive and succinct.

Peating is about increasing the metabolism, commonly measured by pulse and temp, using recommended foods like OJ, milk, coffee, liver, oysters, carrots, coconut oil. Other foods can be used as long as they a) do no harm and b) aid in the increase or maintenance of a high metabolism.

Will you let Charlie and the mods stay
or will you be letting them go?