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“Starches increase the stress hormones, interfering with progesterone and thyroid.” -Ray Peat
For those who follow Ray Peat’s science nothing is more debatable than starches. Too often my elderly friend defends her routine of eating her English muffins every morning and those Club crackers all day long saying how she has eaten grains her whole life and has lived to be a hundred years old. I tell her, while looking at her red elephant ankles and big belly, that grains for the first fifty years of her life were much different than our altered pesticide laden “Frankenwheat” of now. Besides the chromosomes being altered to making the wheat three times bigger than it is suppose to be which the body has trouble figuring out how to find it easy and friendly to deal with, inorganic wheat with it’s pesticides and cheap added vitamins causes even more inflammation in the body…
“Industrially processed grains have most of the nutrients, such as vitamin E, the B vitamins, manganese, magnesium, etc., removed to improve the products’ shelf life and efficiency of processing, and the government required that certain nutrients be added to them as a measure to protect the public’s health, but the supplementation did not reflect the best science even when it was first made law, since food industry lobbyists managed to impose compromises that led to the use of the cheapest chemicals, rather than those that offered the greatest health benefits. For example, studies of processed animal food had demonstrated that the addition of iron (as the highly reactive form, ferrous sulfate, which happens to be cheap and easy to handle) created disease in animals, by destroying vitamins in the food. You should read the label of ingredients and avoid products that contain added iron, when possible.” -Ray Peat
The American food pyramid in those last fifty years was so misguiding suggesting to eat IN ONE DAY 8 to 12 servings of grains a day, and we wonder why Americans are so fat!
“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. For example, fruits have many advantages over grains, besides the difference between sugar and starch. Bread and pasta consumption are strongly associated with the occurrence of diabetes, fruit consumption has a strong inverse association.” -Ray Peat
In my health journey grains have not been helpful to me in any way, and have been just the opposite. I have found sprouted oats to be the lesser evil of all of the grains, but even eating those don’t help me lose weight. The only starch I eat nowadays are the sweeter new potatoes and white sweet potatoes. Both of these have more sugar and far less starch and I boil them rather than bake or fry them to remove even more starch. Ray Peat says starches prepared properly for human consumption and paired with fats is “safe” not “optimal”…
“When starch is well cooked, and eaten with some fat and the essential nutrients, it’s safe, except that it’s more likely than sugar to produce fat, and isn’t as effective for mineral balance.” -Ray Peat
Dr. William David the author of “Wheat Belly” talks about the opioid effect of wheat, gluten and other grains. Grains quiet the brain and I see it in my father every time he has them. He gets quiet and gives up on the day just wanting to sleep. If he eats more he has full blown Alzheimer’s. When he is with me for weeks without grains his memory is normal and he loses a lot of weight. I just feed him fruit and sugar instead.
One of the major keys to the best health of my life at sixty is the avoidance of grains. It is funny to me comparing the American food pyramid to Ray Peat’s food pyramid and think that Ray Peat is the crazy one!
I am vulnerable to that “delicious” component. I would be happy if I could eat cookies and milk or cake and milk twice a day with no consequences. Yipes! In the short term, those things make me feel good–good energy, mental focus, good sleep. But once I start not avoiding these things or, worse, indulging in them, weight gain is inevitable. Then I don’t feel good about myself.
I resign myself to the fact that this will be a lifelong struggle.
I love that phrase of yours, “the Delicious Devil.” I sometimes use it to talk myself out of indulging. It would make a good book title. Hint, hint.
Hi Cari
ever since I ate soil from my garden potato patch I have been able to be very happy eating mostly Sorghum grains, potatoes, beans and vegetarian foods. It feels like taking T3 which I find very odd. I wonder if Dr Peat didn’t consider gut microbes much or something along those lines. Big blind spot in his work really asking for us to have sterile guts when realistically bacteria are everywhere…
I feel just as good doing this now as I did doing the milk, fruit, sugar, coconut oil etc diet… Very late bloomer for my age and I feel like I’m actually developing properly!
Thyroid-Gut-Axis: How Does the Microbiota Influence Thyroid Function?
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7353203/
This article also mentions how iron is important for the thyroid. My goiter is slowly going away as I’m eating more sorghum and millet which are IRON RICH GRAINS. So for people in not so fortunate situations its actually maybe not so bad and maybe its even as good as the more expensive middle class foods?!?
gluten might be pretty bad though. but other grains? theres so many to try. Sorghum bread doesn’t work as it falls apart but sorghum might actually make a nice cake because the flour is so crumbly.
thats just my experience anyways
“Hint hint”, are so funny Lilac! You all have a list of books I should write! I’ll put your request at the top of my list because I really have a lot of real life experiences on this subject. The phrase I always think of when making choices that would have me avoiding the grain choice is “Sin is immediate gratification with long term consequences.” I just swap out the word sin for that starch devil.
I don’t have ANY issues eating anything Quest. I always say I have a gut of steel now. I do avoid insoluble fibrous food and fermented foods like cheeses with unknown strains of bacteria. I replace those with raw milk to add good bacteria. Like I said in the beginning of this post “safe” does not mean “optimal”. With that being said you are young Quest and what you can “get away” with is different than someone twice your age that has been through the medical system’s damage from antibiotics and medications. My father contracted Montezuma’s Revenge in his thirties and went from being an athlete trying out for the Olympics as a diver to having digestive issues and weight gain and now Alzheimer’s issues from starch grains entering his blood stream from his impaired intestines. If I knew now what I didn’t know then I would have avoided commercial grains. I lived on and loved my grains until ten years ago and had a lot of health issues which included stones, migraine headaches, adrenal issues, histamine intolerance, arthritis, pain in my feet, insomnia and weight issues. I have non of those issues now following Ray Peat’s advice and not just some of it.
In essence grains are animal’s food, but our ancestors used them wisely to get through long winters and times when they didn’t have a fresh kill. I feel fine eating properly prepared grains, but I see a difference in my skin tone the day after, with it looking a little ruddy and I do feel a little less energetic the next day as well. I don’t know anything about sorghum as it compares to regular grains.
I get what you are saying Quest about the downside of having a sterile gut, but even Ray Peat said that that is impossible and only happens in a lab or just newborn baby. It is then a question of do you keep the evil and good together battling it out in the gut in large amounts or do you reduce both so it is more of a small battle rather than an outright war?
That is horrifying to hear about your father, my god..
Im not sure about good and evil but I know if you have a diverse gut microbiome it serves the body system for the good and keeps itself in check which means you have a healthy squeaky clean gut and a body humming along metabolically.
Dr Peat did tell us there is many ways to do it after all
funny how I’m doing better doing the opposite of what Dr Peat said and other people will get very sick from it… ill have to see what happens and keep learning
This clip talks about how cancer causing glyphosate, aka Round-Up, is in our conventional oats and oat milk, fast food and other grains and destroys our protective gut bacteria…
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C5UNyrZvNpz/?igsh=MTBlZjE4YzMxOA==
One of my favorite threads by Cari!! Such interesting dialog in that thread which extracts of lot of nuances regarding Dr. Peat’s starch recommendations. I can attest to having struggles with mood, digestion whenever eating grains and potatoes. Although some suggest that’s a reflection of poor gut health, for now I prefer no starch. If I have company and there are potatoes left to use sometimes I’ll boil them and mix with sour cream rather than waste, but I always regret it, lol.
I am happy that my threads at the RPF were that appreciated Ant! I am gradually rebuilding my most popular one over here and adding new ones. A\
As for your potato regrets, are you eating the Russets or the more sugary and less starchy red potatoes? AinmAnseo on the RPF could not tolerate potatoes and I had him switch to the tiny new potatoes and told him boil them and he has no trouble with them at all.
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Cari aka "Rinse & rePeat"