The Tannin Hack!

OK, that's not quite as catchy as "The Potato Hack." 

It turns out that certain eating patterns we naturally gravitate towards can increase the amount of food that bypasses normal digestion, and serves as food for our gut bacteria.

Summer Treat: Honey!

Honey often ends up on dieting "banned" lists. Is honey an evil sugar as so many in the diet industry would have us believe? Vegans do not eat honey, others say it's just nasty "bee puke." Some would even want you to believe that honey is actually worse than pure, white table sugar!

Refined table sugar (sucrose) is processed in our bodies by insulin, which is produced by the pancreas. Honey is about 55 per cent fructose, a fruit sugar that's processed by the liver. Despite the chemical difference, our bodies still react to honey in much same way as it reacts to refined sugar - with a blood-sugar spike.

Summer Eating: Pico de Gallo!

Want an easy way to get more onions, garlic, and tomatoes in ya?  Try Terra Incognita's idea:

Easy Pico de Gallo (makes 2-3 cups)

• 2.5 tomatoes on the vine
• 1/2 onion, diced
• 1/2 jalepeno, de-seeded and diced
• juice from 1/2 lemon
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/4 cup green pepper, diced
• 1/3 cup fresh cilantro, diced
• 1 tsp. apple cider vinegar
• 1 tsp. garlic powder
• salt and pepper to taste

Summer reading: Burgers and fries have nearly killed our ancestral microbiome.

Your homework for the weekend as I work on a new blog post.

Please read:  How the Western Diet Has Derailed Our Evolution, by By Moises Velasquez-Manoff, Nov 2015.

A few teasers:

RS vs. Fiber in Real Food

A funny little abstract to a science article has been going around lately: Effects of total fibre or resistant starch-rich diets within lifestyle intervention in obese prediabetic adults.

It's generally accompanied with the admonishment that "fiber" is "better" than RS. Well, I finally got hold of the full-text, all is not as it seems!

The conclusion, as presented in the abstract:

At the end of the study, RS-rich diet failed to affect glycaemic control in prediabetic obese individuals in contrast to the regular fibre-rich diet, which indicated that fibre profile could be an important determinant of the effect of dietary intervention.

Post moved to www.potatohack.com

New Fiber Study (feat. Raw Potato Starch!)

A great study out of Denmark last week. Nineteen people between 39 and 75, all with metabolic syndrome (high blood pressure, cholesterol, etc.), were given a low-fiber or a high-fiber diet.  Guess what? Those on the high-fiber diet got healthier...the tl/dr (too long/don't read) version is in the conclusion, here:

In conclusion, the results of our study support the hypothesis that high intake of both RS and AX [wheat/rye fiber] is capable of changing the intestinal microbiota and SCFA production in subjects with MetS in contrast with a low-fibre diet (WSD). Most distinctly, Bifidobacterium was clearly enriched by the HCD [High-fiber diet], which was in strong agreement with the increased faecal acetate concentration. Also, dysbiotic changes observed during the WSD [low fiber] emphasise the need for balanced diets, including fiber from various sources.

In other words...We are sorely missing fiber.  What kind and how much is the million dollar question.  But these researchers seem to like Raw Potato Starch, Hi-Maize Corn Starch, and wheat fiber.  Let's discuss.

Potato Starch (RS2), RS4, and Inulin: New Research

See the full article at www.potatohack.com!