Friday, September 2, 2016

No Such Thing as a Carb Deficiency (Gedgaudas, 2016).

Next on my hit-list of AHS2016 videos, Nora Gedgaudas explains that we are designed to burn fat, not carbs, and that there is no requirement for daily carb intake. Thus, she speculates, we should be more like the Inuit who enjoyed perfect health eating mainly fat. "There is not glycogen in the meat," she stresses with a nervous laugh (thinking of Free The Animal, no doubt).

Resident genius "Wilbur" said yesterday in a comment:

When a person rejects conventional wisdom and lets the second brain think for itself, then THAT PERSON develops a healthy diet for THAT PERSON. I can't understand why people project their diets as the one. There is no one diet (Wilbur, 2016). 

And, with that, let's listen to Nora's plan...

tl/dr - You do not need to eat a single carb. Ever. If you like carbs...it implies ill health. Every human should be eating a ketogenic, high fat diet.


Is There One Universally Foundational Human Diet?






Nora G's AHS2016 Video
 Anti-potato?

Nora is a proponent of eating a low-carb, no starch, keto-Paleo diet. Why her hatred of potatoes?  Well, from a podcast with Primal Body-Primal Mind, she relates:

Potatoes, too, are in the nightshade family. And there are an awful lot of people who  experience very uncomfortable arthritic symptoms and other reactions to nightshades.  And by the way, I happen to be one of them. I actually had a chronic appendicitis problem until the day I figured out that my appendicitis attacks were occurring in tandem  with meals that contained potatoes. And when I eliminated potatoes completely and  totally from my diet, I never had another appendicitis attack ever. And so nightshades  can have a real variety of affects on people. And cooking does not fix it. It just doesnʼt.

In her video, she gives an anatomy lesson:

Humans have a hydrochloric acid-based digestive system...not fermentative-based. 

Really?  Nothing special at all in our large intestines, then?  But further:

Fat is meant to be our primary fuel. It's even-burning, clean, and safe...like solar energy.

It really amazed me what she left out of her speech, but insinuated there's a new book due in January to further clarify what she wrote in her 2011, "Primal Body, Primal Mind: Beyond the Paleo Diet for Total Health and a Longer Life." This new book is scheduled for release in January 2017, and can be pre-ordered here: Primal Fat Burner: Live Longer, Slow Aging, Super-Power Your Brain, and Save Your Life with a High-Fat, Low-Carb Paleo Diet.

Something tells me there will not be a lot of potato recipes in this book, haha. But if ketogenic diets are something you are interested in, no doubt this book will be filled with the science behind keto Paleo diets. Just be prepared, it will be a one-sided argument.

Indeed, Nora G. has painted herself tightly into a corner where she cannot be seen to even give a hint that some "carbs" might be OK, good, even. Or that whole grains might make an OK diet even better.

Popular nutritionist Nora Gedguadas returns with advice that may sound counterintuitive: Eat fat to burn fat. In her new book, Primal Fat Burner, she explains the benefits and science behind a ketogenic (or fat-burning) diet, which switches your metabolism from a dependence on sugar to running on healthy fats. As Gedgaudas reveals, numerous studies in recent years refute the long-promoted anti-saturated fat and anti-cholesterol agenda. Now, Gedgaudas explains the science that fat isn't a “no-no” but rather a “yes-yes”—if you know the right kinds of fats to eat. In her accessible, enjoyable style, she also lays out a practical meal plan with recipes. When you follow a ketogenic diet, you consume fewer calories overall!

We are to believe that to lose weight, we need to consume fewer calories, and the best way to do this is via a ketogenic diet. OK, so why all the BS about how dangerous carbs are?  Is it about calories or carbs?  What is she hiding under that blanket?

Jump to 33:25. A young man introduces himself as an Ankylosing Spondylitis sufferer. He said that after 10 months on Nora's diet, he had bone pain. Then switched to Perfect Health Diet with more starches, and it made him "feel better."

Nora could have said, "Great job, listening to your body!" Instead she chastised the man for including carbs, when instead he should "dig deep" and find out what is wrong with him that carbs are covering up! Really.


As for me...I'm going to go and eat a couple pounds of mashed potatoes.  Appendix be damned. You do what's right for you!

Too harsh?
Later!
Tim

43 comments:

  1. In my opinion the low-carb craze is fueled by the anecdotal experiences of a couple of individuals who seem to do better on a low-carb high-fat diet. I am happy for them that they feel great with this approach, but I think pressing this method upon others is unwise.

    Personally I tried keto, I tried "moderate carb" aka: 100-200 grams. For me, it just does not work at all. I feel very low on energy with this approach. If I were to tell this to these people they'd say "eat more fat!", or, "it's transition period", yet I was eating 3500+ kcal a day and tried it for a few months, it did not matter.

    Another problem with scientific research stating all the "benefits" is that you are both comparing apples to oranges (different people) and that you exclude 99% of possible other contributing factors. We need to accept that we just cannot comprehend, map and translate everything about life in numbers and data and then generalize it to everyone. Some "numbers" showing a certain thing in a blood test does not even come close to a proper picture of wellbeing. How many people have you not read on the internet that felt miserable yet were being told by doctors "their blood values looks normal".

    I think if people would just dump all the "reasons" and scientific "ideas" on why a certain thing is good or bad, and just eat foods that we have eaten for thousands of years which make you feel good and give you energy they would be a lot better off rather than trying to find the "perfect diet". I believe there is a reason we evolved with taste buds and intuition.

    I've tried a lot of different dietary approaches, yet I feel the best when I consume a good amount of whole-grain breads with butter and raw milk. The fear of grains and gluten and bread seems to be something recent. I cannot find any complaints towards these items in books/articles before the 1980s. To the contrary, a lot of people from the 1900s seem to be very fond of whole grain breads. Of course these breads are vastly different from supermarket breads. They reffer to non-GMO sourdough breads from stone-ground whole grains. I think the people who have a problem with grains most likely have consumed a lot of improperly prepared grains in the past, which caused them to develop an allergic reaction to this food particle as the body did not know how to deal with it, it seems possible to me, but who knows.

    ,Yannel

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    1. Ugh. Do you know how many times I've heard people say, "I've tried keto, but..." Heck, I tried it, too. Why? Because all of these seemingly knowledgeable people speak so highly of the benefits of a ketogenic diet.

      I think a ketogenic diet needs to be medically supervised and only for certain conditions, like epilepsy. From what I have been reading, the cancer connection with keto is totally overblown, and it can make cancer worse.

      A low-GI diet, focusing on slowly digested carbs, ie. NOT white flour, sugars, etc... Is a perfectly acceptable manipulation of "carbs." To limit all carbs and starch, especially just to get into a near-ketotic state is just plain bad advice when given to the average, otherwise healthy, overweight person.

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    2. Why do these people say fat is a main energy source? I've eaten a lot of wild caught/killed animals and all had very small amounts of fat.Wild food is very low in fat compared to domestic meat.Even chicken the supposedly lean and 'healthy' meat has far higher fat content than even 20 years ago,most of that as pufa.
      Have these people been reared to believe domestic fatty shop meat is the norm?

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    3. I've wondered the same! Although my understanding is that some animals, such as bears and squirrels, become very fatty in the Fall. Therein might lie evolutionary differences in our guts that might make some people -like me - become healthier by eating animal fat. I'm not high fat, but I need it.

      Also, to your point, my understanding is that it was usually the organs that were prized. It's hard to find those in regular stores.

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    4. Nora, and many others, note that hunter-gatherers seek out the fattiest pieces of meat and fat is a prized possession. This is because, as Dave says, fat is a rarity in nature. Unless you kill a whale or a seal, most animals just are not covered in fat. Bears are well-known for a thick layer of fat, but most animals just have small pockets of fat around their body, and seasonal changes.

      I think it is important that we eat fat, I worry about all the zero/low-fat vegans. But what's wrong with balance? Sheesh.

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    5. Of course fat is not the main or preferred energy source, it is a BACKUP energy source, that is why we have virtually unlimited storage capacity! because the human condition had always been that of an occasional feast in an otherwise low'ish caloric diet. So fat as a backup was very important to compensate for the lack of adequate dietary energy input. I don't understand why people don't understand that.

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    6. We can use fat, protein, and carbs as "fuel" and we get certain nutrients from each. I never understood the arguments that one source was preferred over the others.

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    7. Exactly, our body will happily use whatever fuel we ingest! It will prioritize one type over another based on storage capacity in the presence of several fuel types though (ethanol 1st, then amino acids 2nd, then glucose, and then fat). Fat is last in this hierarchy not because our body does not like it, it actually does! but because it can be stored efficiently in normally functioning adipose tissue while say glucose or amino acids are used.

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    8. From personal experience, I've been wondering something: Assuming good gut health and that a person listens to their gut, what if CICO doesn't really matter?

      Here's what I don't understand. I eat, as far as I can tell, about the same calories every day. I don't know how to explain it, but 99.9% of my meals are similar in terms the basic carb, protein, and fat profiles. But my CO varies tremendously. When I walk, I walk about 8-10 miles per day. I'll do this every day for weeks. Then, especially when my kid is home all day for vacation, I'll do no walking for several weeks. Estimates of CO put that at 800-1000 calories difference. That's about a pound of ground beef. Even if it's half that, it's a pint of ice cream. No way what I'm eating changes that much.

      Yet my weight has been constant for almost 3 years. When I say constant, I mean I weigh 165 and most mornings I weigh just that. Sometimes I'll weigh 166 or 164. I even thought the scale might be broken so,I bought another. They agree. A few times I've gotten to 168, but that's when I eat meals that are heavily salted during travel.

      As Terri said in another context, the gut is amazingly complex. It has lots of mechanisms to control how much energy is absorbed from food. It can speed up or slow down digestion. Lots of ways. If the gut is healthy and listened to, maybe it doesn't matter?

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    9. I think people should no more have to worry about their weight than they do their blood sugar or blood pressure. These are all supposed to be automatically adjusted.

      The body has many mechanisms for burning fat outside of normal activity. Brown fat and uncoupling proteins can burn fat independent of the body's need for fat, they just produce waste heat. Our metabolism should ramp up and down depending on food intake, light cycles, etc. But obviously the system is broken in a large majority of people on planet Earth.

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    10. What kind of approach do you use Wilbur to communicate with your gut? Do you listen to what foods you crave for example? Or how does it work?

      I remember when I abstained from dairy for a few months to see how it would affect me, I actually started dreaming about drinking milk. Are these the kind of signals I should be looking for or is it something else entirely?

      ,Yannel

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    11. I'm speaking for myself here because I'm all I know. A craving is a sign for me that I am desperate for whatever food it is. I spent some time with friends at their house and they are very low saturated fat. When I left, I was desperate for animal fat. It went away right after I ate some.

      But for me that's extreme. On a daily basis, it's more of an internal scan. I think about a particular food. An example would be at today's farmers market. I looked at a bunch of White Russian kale and sort of asked myself if I want it. Then there is this sort of happy feeling that comes up, sort of in my gut. Then I know I want it. I don't need it now, but certainly in the next day or so. I do this with everything I eat. If I want it, I eat it. I never eat anything I don't want, except in rare instances.

      This requires a healthy gut I think. Because it used to be that quesadillas, cookies, chips, candy, and ice cream made me happy. It was a similar feeling if that helps. But they don't now. We have them all over the house and in 3 years I have not eaten a single one of those. It's not will power. I just don't want them. My wants have changed to good foods.

      It works in reverse too. I'll feel an aversion to certain foods. That's a signal that I shouldn't eat it. For example, at the market, I buy a wonderful sausage. I know I will want it sometime. But they are always trying to give me free samples of it cooked. I can't eat any because I feel something in my gut. I don't want it now. Think of a food that disgusts you: if you feel something in your gut, that's it.

      Good luck!

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    13. Oops, I eat ice cream, but the good kind with good milk, no additives, and no preservatives. But never the bad stuff!

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    14. Thank you for your reply Wilbur, such a first-hand description is really helpful for me!

      I actually tried it just now and I think I understand exactly what type of feeling you're talking about.
      When I think of salmon, (which I actually really dislike for an unknown reason), I noticed my eyebrows started to frown and I got a very mild nauseaous feeling in my stomach.
      Then when I thought of an orange (which I really like) I got a bit of a tickling feeling in my stomach and I got the tendency to start wiggling my toes somehow.

      I suppose my gut isn't in that bad of a shape then, since I don't crave anything like sweets / coca cola etc. Probably this is due to the fact that I've been eating healthy for a few years already.

      I've been incorporating raw potato starch into my diet since a few days, I do not really notice a difference, maybe a tiny bit. My digestion seems just a tad better on it.
      Since 2 days I have added 5 gram of inulin-FOS to the mix. This really gave me a huge reaction noticeable. I got this severe hunger from it, I probably ate over 4000 calories yesterday (which is ok for me, since I am low on weight and 6'7 height). I even woke up in the middle of the night with a ferocious hunger for bread with butter and orange juice, very weird. I never had anything like that before.
      I also notice that my bowel feels a bit more sour. It is definately noticeable. I wonder if this is my pH value actually changing. I've had a too alkaline bowel since a few months when I had a stool sample tested (7.2, when its supposed to be 6.0-6.8).

      What kind of ice cream do you eat? Is it made at home or do you buy it somewhere?

      Does anyone here have any experience with Prescript-Assist Soil Based probiotic? I read on a webpage (freetheanimal) that some people don't notice that much from potato starch due to them missing certain soil bacteria. I wonder if I should give this probiotic a try. I've been eating a lot of fermented vegetables for months but perhaps this prescript-assist contains different bacteria.

      ,Yannel

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    15. I've tried Prescript Assist before, didn't notice much benefit. I didn't take them with potato starch though.

      According to Art Ayers, the bacteria in Prescript Assist don't grow in the gut, they are transients, but may provide temporary benefits.

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  2. Sounds a little militant and dogmatic. On the HCL based digestive system versus the fermentative, her belief is definitely problematic. Mucous production is stoked by bacteria to protectively line the gut. "Back pressure" is created by the bacteria and their gases in the ICV region, which then feeds back and forward to help regulate GI movement. And so on. Oh, the system is so amazingly complex and integrated.

    Did you enjoy any of the Ancestral Health talks? Or are they all so hard core?

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    1. Glad you agree. I was afraid I'd ruffle some feathers critiquing Nora, lol. AMAZINGLY COMPLEX...understatement of the year.

      I listened to 4 or 5 of the AHS talks, mostly ones that focused on gut health. I was un-impressed, generally. These people are discussing the things we were talking about 5 years ago in regards to gut testing, specific microbes, prebiotics, fibers, etc... It's like its just now catching on, 4 years past its prime.

      Did you know gut bacteria outnumber us 10 to 1!

      We need Akkermansia to thrive!

      Get a gut test to see what bacteria you have before you do anything!

      Dr. Ruscio gave a really well-grounded discussion on microbes, gut testing, and pro/pre-biotics. It was apparent that he has been following the science and updating his thinking along with the rest of us:

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69ePHDbbNoQ


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    2. Yes, he made a lot of sense. i was interested to learn that the long term harm from a course of abx was not as bad for and older person as for a very young one.

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    3. Cool, then! I'll try to make a time to watch the video you link since you think it's worthwhile.---I noticed your referral to ank spond today, which I'd mentioned yesterday as a reason that some people may do well low-carb. Interesting to note a patient (person) say they feel better with addition of carbs, although PHD isn't particularly high carb that I remember.

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  3. I think Wilburs comment is spot on. He has said very similar things in the past and I must admit when I first heard it I was skeptical at best. However when ever I 'force' food because its 'what I should be eating' my health doesn't appear as robust. After a little IF today I really fancy some oats with my berries - so that's what I'll be eating!

    On the whole keto thing even Mr Bulletproof exec acknowledges long periods of ketosis doesn't appear to work for many. His trial of months of HFLC, resulted in many gut issues for him.

    It appears the fat vs carbs debate isn't clear cut or definable - especially not what fits everyone. My thoughts anyway

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    1. I fully agree. It pays to shop around and try different things.

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  4. I tried Keto - just like most people that have been involved with health and diet. I lost weight, had minor stomach pains (which I assumed was OK or just normal), and was borderline constipated.

    I have swung to the opposite side,added tons of taters, beans, and grains......I lost weight, had zero stomach issues and now poop like a racehorse. Please 'fix' me Nora!!!

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  5. Fortunately, Stephen Guyenet was there to deliver the antidote to the ridiculous babbling of this nonsensical woman!

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    1. He gave a good talk, but I'm still not sold that "calories" are the marker we need to track. To me, it's like saying that "gallons" are what make a car run. Calories of what? Put 10 gallons of water in your car and see how far you make it, lol. "Calorie" is just a unit of measure.

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    2. Well, it is obvious he was referring to calories from foods :D

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    3. I should add that when I say foods, I am not saying that one can eat 2000 kcal of sugar and be done for the day. This is not food. Same with say chocolate (even though a little better than pure sugar), or olive oil. I mean foods :)

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    4. lol, yes, I suppose. I'm just saying that calorie counting as a dietary strategy rarely succeeds, unless people start choosing better food than McDonalds. I find it incredibly difficult to estimate calorie intake on a daily basis, and setting a target for calories almost always means you will exceed that target. Calorie counts are notoriously wrong.

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    5. Calorie counts are notoriously wrong.
      I don't think they are wrong, rather I think they are inaccurate (and therefore pretty useless) because it pre-supposes that you know how many calories you have to ingest to create a deficit in a given 24 hours. Which means that you're supposed to know not only your CI from food labels or tracing device based on reference DBs (which are notoriously misleading) but your Co as well, which without being 24h in a measurement room to that effect is quite hard to predict. Even the RMR can't be predicted. Equations exist based on age, gender, weight, etc, but are based on statistical data, which means you could be a big outlier ...

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    6. What I mean by "wrong" is inaccurate, so we agree. And I am talking just about the calories that foods are labeled with. They are ball-park figures at best. And one would have to weigh every scrap they eat and hope their food is representative of the food used to produce the calorie content info.

      And CO...exactly. Changes by the minute.

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    7. You need to be quite obsessive in order to weigh and record everything consumed in order to lose weight. I've done it in order to lose pregnancy weight. Still have my food diary. Meticulous and obsessive and dull diet wise. But it worked. Second time I did Pritikin with the super low fat %.

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  6. Also, she completely mangled Dr Price's information in order to make her case.

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    1. I thought the same thing. I've always been a fan of WAP. It's funny she made a big point that WAP could find no "vegan" societies. True, as people will eat what they can get their hands on in a survival situation. But how many ketogenic societies did he find? NONE. Not even the Inuit, because they are genetically incapable of ketosis, Ooops.

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    2. Elliebelly, I had the same thought about Dr Price's work as I was reading this. Nora sounds very adamant. Reminds me of the days when psyciatry was searching for one theoretical framework. So many theories, and so many people yelling in their articles: "mine is the right way" or "this theory is the only one that works". Finally, therapists began to realize that the therapy that works the best is the one that works with the patient in front of them. Patients didn't have to try to fit into their therapist's conceptual framework. The therapist was called upon to know enough about the different frameworks and modalities and to be a good enough assessor to use the best therapy for the patient in front of him/her. There is no one answer as there is no human that is exactly the same. The real advances will be made when we know enough to tailor the diet to the individual, not the other way around. (Unfortunately in psychiatry, the battle now is with the insurance companies who have "chosen" brief therapy as the model and damn the patient!)

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  7. I,ve been reading the warrior diet by Voegtlin. It,s from 1975. I found it somewhere for free on the internet. Fascinating reading on how human gut evolved. Puts nora to shame.

    Jo tB

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    1. The Warrior Diet is interesting. Once-a-day meals. Works for some people very well, for others not. I have never read the book, just about the diet.

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    2. Didn't Voegtlin do the Stone Age diet?

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    3. Gabriella, you're right. Voegtlin wrote the Stone Age Diet.

      Jo tB

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  8. Score one for the grains - this time, oats

    http://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/8/9/549/htm

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    1. Lynn, did you read the material in detail? The people eating 100 grams of oats per day lost less than 1 kg over 1 year. Their hbA1c was still in the high 7s. Not good. Not saying here that oats can't be part of a type 2 diabetic diet but that study was mehhh.

      Type 2 diabetics need to do something way more serious. The BMI was high and for Asians it was obese and stayed obese. BMI for Asians is different than for people of European ancestry. BMI 25 for Asians is already obese because they have so little skeletal muscle mass. They need to be at 22. The study subjects were above 27.

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    2. Thanks for the link Lynn - I'm seeing others talking about this study, too. I'll answer in a new blog post!

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