Discussions on potato diets, resistant starch, gut health, prebiotics, probiotics, oil-pulling, cold thermogenesis, and other affairs of plain living...
Tim, love the pig pics! They are noble animals. What do you think of oats as a grain. Do oats raise insulin/glucose? I have put corn which I love, back into my diet. I feel it is a new world food that has nourished people for centuries.
I have been eating oatmeal, either from thick-cut rolled oats or steel-cut "Irish" oats almost every weekend since I wrote this blog a couple weeks ago:
Corn tortillas (the real ones that you put on a hot cast iron pan to heat them up and make them soft or add a bit of fat to make them crunchy, have a low glycemic index. I've tested blood glucose after eating them and it's a 'GO!' They don't raise blood glucose.)
Great article and really insightful analysis as usual. I'm going to look for some of that arabinoxylan.
And I have been eating oatmeal semi-regularly for a long time. It's been the only carb that wouldn't cause me to be hungry soon after. Now, after a year or so of a good resistant starch and probiotic regimen, I can tolerate other carbs (rice, potatoes) much better. But oats still work well.
Tim, what's your feeling about kombucha squash? Along with PS and sweet potato, I eat it daily, and these are my only starchy foods. I eat other vegetables, including fermented, and usually take a probiotic as well. I never see kombucha squash mentioned anywhere, and it's quite starchy, especially the skin it seems. It seems to help my constipation - so it must be fibrous. Just wondering what you think. And - HAPPY THANKSGIVING!
Thanks! I had no idea what kombucha squash was, lol. I still had never heard of Kabocha squash, but looked it up...looks awesome! I eat acorn and other winter squashes often, I'll see if I can find Kabocha.
I was just looking at a couple websites, I doubt they are very starchy, more sugar, but they have tons of great fiber, antioxidants, and other good stuff. The seeds look even better! I think you treat them just like pumpkin seeds, roast and eat.
I just ate pork and potatoes. Double the RS then, right?
I agree with you that it's a shame that people have been mislead into shunning grains. Grains are not bad, it's our various abuses of them that is negative.
Thanks for what you've written on the study. Great read as always. The really scary thing is how bad the Western Diet does, and yet the majority of the population are still eating that crap!
And notice, the Western pig diet was not 'fiber free' by any means! It had about 1/3 the fiber of the normal diets. From what I can best gauge, humans require 30-50g/day of good quality, fermentable fiber. We get 5-10g. If that. Scary!
I've never tried to eat them raw. They are not toxic because pigs were fed squashes in the old days. Let us know how you enjoy raw squash. You could grate it, like a person grates raw beets and put it in salad.
Thanks for the understandable interpretation of the study, Tim. Quinoa is one of the few grains I can tolerate reliably beside oats. I can even eat it cold. Right now I'm getting lots of fiber, but Broken Biome will not hear of resistant starch or anything fermented or probiotic at present. Even a teaspoon of raw honey per day caused a revolt. Anything that even remotely promotes the good guys is summarily dismissed. Looking forward to my uBiome results. Should be another two weeks or so.
I'd love to see good data comparing the mass consue dwarf wheat of today with the ancient varieties... barley, spelt, eikorn, emmer, etc. How does the nutrient content compare as well as fiber and RS? and gluten, phytate, and other anti nutrients.
Hey, Brad - Me, too! I also have been thinking a lot lately that maybe the worst thing about wheat is simply that it has it's fiber removed and that it's never fermented now.
Tim besides the removal of fiber, supposedly, when you grind the grains relative to consumption makes a difference even if not removing the fiber. The whole grain protects some of the nutrients and exposing the internals to oxygen degrades nutrients over time . I read somewhere that the healthfulness of flour go down the longer the time since it was made/ground. This could explain some of the difference between the reports of grain healthfulness - I'm thinking primarily here about Weston Price findings of improved health from FRESHLY ground whole grains - and the negative health effects of eating of foods made from mass produced white and whole wheat flours.
It seems similar in a way to things like mono and poly unsaturated oils that are man made, bottled, and sold. Things like Olive Oil. They oxidize (go rancid) in the production process and over time and depending on storage methods. Even just sitting in a clear glass bottle un-refrigerated. And so, getting fresh cold-processed and recently made oil is the next best thing to eating the original food in it's natural state - the olive.
I think people would be much better off just buying whole wheat groats/berries and grinding them as they need/consume them. I've ground grouts into flour in something as cheap as a $10 coffee grinder, and I'm sure there are inexpensive personal blenders or other devices that would work well.
I've been using oat groats to make a sort of ris-oat-to. Fabulous. Better than rice. Makes for wonderful poops.
Olive oil stored in metal cans in a cool place is good. Some countries containerize it like this. Portuguese olive oil is good like this and some Greek olive oils are also good in this form of storage.
Isn't it true that a strong insulin response immediately following a meal is required to bring the blood sugar down? Isn't that what it is supposed to do? And then, once it has done its job it should retreat to where ever it goes until the next meal calls it into action again. If that is still true then it would seem that this statement is not correct:
"The Wheat Fiber Diet does seem to have some distinct advantages in keeping insulin low in the first two hours after eating, but then there's a very noticeable hump at the 200 minute mark."
My understanding is that, for insulin, lower is not always better. There are times when it needs to be high and times when it needs to be low. Or am I missing something?
Elliebelly - I'm with you. I didn't quite get it, either. But the AX (wheat fiber) diet did definitely create less of an insulin spike...BUT...it also didn't control the glucose very well right after eating.
To me, it looked like the RS diet was better in that regard. The study just said "effected insulin differently" it didn't say one one better or worse. But somehow the word got out that this study shows RS is 'no good' because it "raises insulin." Clearly not the case.
They should have given the pigs a bit of apple cider vinegar..... that would lower the glycemic index and lower the insulin response since it would not be required.
Would pigs eat something that has apple cider vinegar in it?
For a while now, I have been puzzled by the disproportionate attention given to the subject of the effects of food on the 'yin' hormone Insulin while completely ignoring the 'yang' hormone Glucagon. They are two sides of the same coin and both are very obviously affected by a high-carb meal versus a low-carb meal. Both have a direct effect on adipose tissue, lipolysis, general body composition, and probably risks of health problems. The reason for this? I'm guessing it's because of various authors focus on it (insulin), perhaps due to their lack of understanding of Glucagon. Lots of books, blogs, documentaries, and other mass media regurgitation spreading info about insulin and nothing about Glucagon.
In general, I think we need to dig deeper on the science behind the effect of food (primarily carbs) on lipolysis, gluconeogenesis, and Glucagon production. When we better understand Glucagon's role/process, we will better understand Insulin and blood glucose homeostasis.
A big WTF moment for me was learning, not to long ago actually, that many high protein foods spike insulin more than many supposedly fattening high carb foods. So why is something like fish not a "fattening" food then? The hypothesis is because high carb meals shut down Glucagon production, for as much as 5 hours post meal, in addition to spiking Insulin, while a high protein meal only spikes insulin (say for around 2 hours). A high fat meal does neither - spike insulin or shut down Glucagon production. Just a tip of the iceberg. We need more data!.. more studies.
Brad, thanks for the info about glucagon... actually there are as many as 5 hormones contributing to glucose homeostasis - glucagon, insulin, leptin, amylin, ghrelin. As a type 2 diabetic, eating high carb foods will immediately the BG like hell, which means that the signalling mechanism of insulin/glucagon has gone awry, so you will need to take this signalling mechanism as a critical factor. I guess the research study you were referring to was focusing on non-diabetic subject(s) whose signalling mechanism is intact.
Yes, there are quite a few researchers now focusing on glucagon and antidiabetic drugs targeting glucagon - amylin, GLP-1, metreleptin but there are either limited in action, and like many pharma drugs, they come with deleterious side-effects...
Roger Unger is a great researcher w.r.t to glucagon and leptin. He has found that insulin is actually superfluous and that the master key controller seems to be glucagon. Delete glucagon or control it and insulin (which has been falsely regarded as critical factor and a gold standard) becomes unnecessary, superfluous - a cipher. Click the link to read more:
My feeling is that it is leptin that works most powerfully behind the scene and that leptin is the foremost causal factor as it seems to be the one that silently controls glucagon which then exerts its action downsteam on insulin - a multi-causal mechanism with the strongest causal factor located at the head/upstream, not at the tail end, naively presumed by many:
Leptin ---- > Glucagon ----- > Insulin.
On leptin, click this link: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/08/080825175043.htm
Given that insulin a multi-billion dollar industry... :) , the kickbacks from Big Pharma... follow the "money trail" as conventional wisdom and it will all be revealed, so not so much that there is not enough research about glucagon; actually there is plenty on glucagon! Just google it up and see the many professional papers on the subject that focusing on insulin is like barking up the wrong tree. There is even a website devoted to just glucagon alone at this link: www.glucagon.com
Hi Tim. I've read a lot of different things about this question. How much of the starch in raw potato starch (like Bob's Red Mill) is resistant and will not be digested? About 80% of it is starch and 20% water, are those 80% not digested at all? Or is some part of it like eating carbs?
It's hard to say. I see different explanations in different papers. I think it's not worth counting them in your daily counts as anything. Consider them freebies. For your gut bugs!
Hi, Adrian - I really don't have any super-great advice on getting AX from real foods. All I know is that it is found in the bran and outer layers of most grain, including rice. Here's a paper that talks about getting AX from the byproducts of wheat flour processing, so that makes me think that it is removed in many grain processing methods. I'm not sure about rice.
I doubt you could get all of your fiber needs from the AX found in rice, but I do like to point out that removing all grains and rice from you diet also removes some important fibers.
But for me, I like to eat rice regularly. I switch between Jasmine rice and long-grain white, but recently discovered black and red rice in the local health food store.
The black rice actually has a hull on it, so assume it has more fiber than the polished type rice you normally see in stores/restaurants.
When I make rice, I make a whole cooker full (about 16 cups cooked) and divide into bags that I freeze. This will increase the RS3 content and makes it very handy to have cooked rice on hand.
Tim, love the pig pics! They are noble animals. What do you think of oats as a grain. Do oats raise insulin/glucose? I have put corn which I love, back into my diet. I feel it is a new world food that has nourished people for centuries.
ReplyDeleteI have been eating oatmeal, either from thick-cut rolled oats or steel-cut "Irish" oats almost every weekend since I wrote this blog a couple weeks ago:
DeleteOAT BLOG POST
Corn tortillas (the real ones that you put on a hot cast iron pan to heat them up and make them soft or add a bit of fat to make them crunchy, have a low glycemic index. I've tested blood glucose after eating them and it's a 'GO!' They don't raise blood glucose.)
DeleteGreat article and really insightful analysis as usual. I'm going to look for some of that arabinoxylan.
ReplyDeleteAnd I have been eating oatmeal semi-regularly for a long time. It's been the only carb that wouldn't cause me to be hungry soon after. Now, after a year or so of a good resistant starch and probiotic regimen, I can tolerate other carbs (rice, potatoes) much better. But oats still work well.
Tim, what's your feeling about kombucha squash? Along with PS and sweet potato, I eat it daily, and these are my only starchy foods. I eat other vegetables, including fermented, and usually take a probiotic as well. I never see kombucha squash mentioned anywhere, and it's quite starchy, especially the skin it seems. It seems to help my constipation - so it must be fibrous. Just wondering what you think. And - HAPPY THANKSGIVING!
ReplyDeleteWith Kabocha squash, which is extremely sweet, you need to get your glucometer involved to see how it affects you.
DeleteI think you mean kabocha squash
ReplyDeletehttp://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabocha
Yes, I do. Thank you!
DeleteDebbie
Thanks! I had no idea what kombucha squash was, lol. I still had never heard of Kabocha squash, but looked it up...looks awesome! I eat acorn and other winter squashes often, I'll see if I can find Kabocha.
DeleteI was just looking at a couple websites, I doubt they are very starchy, more sugar, but they have tons of great fiber, antioxidants, and other good stuff. The seeds look even better! I think you treat them just like pumpkin seeds, roast and eat.
Thanks - try it - it's really super good (& sweet!)!
DeleteI just ate pork and potatoes. Double the RS then, right?
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that it's a shame that people have been mislead into shunning grains. Grains are not bad, it's our various abuses of them that is negative.
Thanks for what you've written on the study. Great read as always. The really scary thing is how bad the Western Diet does, and yet the majority of the population are still eating that crap!
And notice, the Western pig diet was not 'fiber free' by any means! It had about 1/3 the fiber of the normal diets. From what I can best gauge, humans require 30-50g/day of good quality, fermentable fiber. We get 5-10g. If that. Scary!
DeleteButtercup squash, which is probably more available is a form of Kabocha squash.
DeleteAh - thanks. Are these squashes okay to eat raw?
DeleteI've never tried to eat them raw. They are not toxic because pigs were fed squashes in the old days. Let us know how you enjoy raw squash. You could grate it, like a person grates raw beets and put it in salad.
DeleteThanks for the understandable interpretation of the study, Tim. Quinoa is one of the few grains I can tolerate reliably beside oats. I can even eat it cold. Right now I'm getting lots of fiber, but Broken Biome will not hear of resistant starch or anything fermented or probiotic at present. Even a teaspoon of raw honey per day caused a revolt. Anything that even remotely promotes the good guys is summarily dismissed. Looking forward to my uBiome results. Should be another two weeks or so.
ReplyDeleteI have a sample in as well, hope they hurry!
DeleteI'd love to see good data comparing the mass consue dwarf wheat of today with the ancient varieties... barley, spelt, eikorn, emmer, etc. How does the nutrient content compare as well as fiber and RS? and gluten, phytate, and other anti nutrients.
ReplyDeleteHey, Brad - Me, too! I also have been thinking a lot lately that maybe the worst thing about wheat is simply that it has it's fiber removed and that it's never fermented now.
DeleteAnd that much of the wheat grown today has been sprayed with glyphosate!
Deletehttp://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com/real-reason-for-toxic-wheat-its-not-gluten/#more-18867
Tim besides the removal of fiber, supposedly, when you grind the grains relative to consumption makes a difference even if not removing the fiber. The whole grain protects some of the nutrients and exposing the internals to oxygen degrades nutrients over time . I read somewhere that the healthfulness of flour go down the longer the time since it was made/ground. This could explain some of the difference between the reports of grain healthfulness - I'm thinking primarily here about Weston Price findings of improved health from FRESHLY ground whole grains - and the negative health effects of eating of foods made from mass produced white and whole wheat flours.
DeleteIt seems similar in a way to things like mono and poly unsaturated oils that are man made, bottled, and sold. Things like Olive Oil. They oxidize (go rancid) in the production process and over time and depending on storage methods. Even just sitting in a clear glass bottle un-refrigerated. And so, getting fresh cold-processed and recently made oil is the next best thing to eating the original food in it's natural state - the olive.
DeleteI think people would be much better off just buying whole wheat groats/berries and grinding them as they need/consume them. I've ground grouts into flour in something as cheap as a $10 coffee grinder, and I'm sure there are inexpensive personal blenders or other devices that would work well.
I've been using oat groats to make a sort of ris-oat-to. Fabulous. Better than rice. Makes for wonderful poops.
DeleteOlive oil stored in metal cans in a cool place is good. Some countries containerize it like this. Portuguese olive oil is good like this and some Greek olive oils are also good in this form of storage.
Isn't it true that a strong insulin response immediately following a meal is required to bring the blood sugar down? Isn't that what it is supposed to do? And then, once it has done its job it should retreat to where ever it goes until the next meal calls it into action again. If that is still true then it would seem that this statement is not correct:
ReplyDelete"The Wheat Fiber Diet does seem to have some distinct advantages in keeping insulin low in the first two hours after eating, but then there's a very noticeable hump at the 200 minute mark."
My understanding is that, for insulin, lower is not always better. There are times when it needs to be high and times when it needs to be low. Or am I missing something?
Elliebelly - I'm with you. I didn't quite get it, either. But the AX (wheat fiber) diet did definitely create less of an insulin spike...BUT...it also didn't control the glucose very well right after eating.
DeleteTo me, it looked like the RS diet was better in that regard. The study just said "effected insulin differently" it didn't say one one better or worse. But somehow the word got out that this study shows RS is 'no good' because it "raises insulin." Clearly not the case.
They should have given the pigs a bit of apple cider vinegar..... that would lower the glycemic index and lower the insulin response since it would not be required.
DeleteWould pigs eat something that has apple cider vinegar in it?
I wonder how that would look on an insulin and glucose chart? Maybe the vinegar causes a bugger insulin response and in turn a blunted glucose spike.
DeleteIt seems to me that the goal is more a quicker clearance of the glucose, meaning greater insulin sensitivity.
For a while now, I have been puzzled by the disproportionate attention given to the subject of the effects of food on the 'yin' hormone Insulin while completely ignoring the 'yang' hormone Glucagon. They are two sides of the same coin and both are very obviously affected by a high-carb meal versus a low-carb meal. Both have a direct effect on adipose tissue, lipolysis, general body composition, and probably risks of health problems. The reason for this? I'm guessing it's because of various authors focus on it (insulin), perhaps due to their lack of understanding of Glucagon. Lots of books, blogs, documentaries, and other mass media regurgitation spreading info about insulin and nothing about Glucagon.
DeleteIn general, I think we need to dig deeper on the science behind the effect of food (primarily carbs) on lipolysis, gluconeogenesis, and Glucagon production. When we better understand Glucagon's role/process, we will better understand Insulin and blood glucose homeostasis.
A big WTF moment for me was learning, not to long ago actually, that many high protein foods spike insulin more than many supposedly fattening high carb foods. So why is something like fish not a "fattening" food then? The hypothesis is because high carb meals shut down Glucagon production, for as much as 5 hours post meal, in addition to spiking Insulin, while a high protein meal only spikes insulin (say for around 2 hours). A high fat meal does neither - spike insulin or shut down Glucagon production. Just a tip of the iceberg. We need more data!.. more studies.
DeleteBrad, thanks for the info about glucagon... actually there are as many as 5 hormones contributing to glucose homeostasis - glucagon, insulin, leptin, amylin, ghrelin. As a type 2 diabetic, eating high carb foods will immediately the BG like hell, which means that the signalling mechanism of insulin/glucagon has gone awry, so you will need to take this signalling mechanism as a critical factor. I guess the research study you were referring to was focusing on non-diabetic subject(s) whose signalling mechanism is intact.
DeleteYes, there are quite a few researchers now focusing on glucagon and antidiabetic drugs targeting glucagon - amylin, GLP-1, metreleptin but there are either limited in action, and like many pharma drugs, they come with deleterious side-effects...
Roger Unger is a great researcher w.r.t to glucagon and leptin. He has found that insulin is actually superfluous and that the master key controller seems to be glucagon. Delete glucagon or control it and insulin (which has been falsely regarded as critical factor and a gold standard) becomes unnecessary, superfluous - a cipher. Click the link to read more:
[1] http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/01/110126161835.htm
My feeling is that it is leptin that works most powerfully behind the scene and that leptin is the foremost causal factor as it seems to be the one that silently controls glucagon which then exerts its action downsteam on insulin - a multi-causal mechanism with the strongest causal factor located at the head/upstream, not at the tail end, naively presumed by many:
Leptin ---- > Glucagon ----- > Insulin.
On leptin, click this link:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/08/080825175043.htm
Given that insulin a multi-billion dollar industry... :) , the kickbacks from Big Pharma... follow the "money trail" as conventional wisdom and it will all be revealed, so not so much that there is not enough research about glucagon; actually there is plenty on glucagon! Just google it up and see the many professional papers on the subject that focusing on insulin is like barking up the wrong tree. There is even a website devoted to just glucagon alone at this link: www.glucagon.com
Hi Tim. I've read a lot of different things about this question. How much of the starch in raw potato starch (like Bob's Red Mill) is resistant and will not be digested? About 80% of it is starch and 20% water, are those 80% not digested at all? Or is some part of it like eating carbs?
ReplyDeleteIt's hard to say. I see different explanations in different papers. I think it's not worth counting them in your daily counts as anything. Consider them freebies. For your gut bugs!
DeleteHi Tim, With the rice and the arabinoxylans (AX) what form of rice are you talking about? What's the best preparation methods? Cheers, adrian
ReplyDeleteHi, Adrian - I really don't have any super-great advice on getting AX from real foods. All I know is that it is found in the bran and outer layers of most grain, including rice. Here's a paper that talks about getting AX from the byproducts of wheat flour processing, so that makes me think that it is removed in many grain processing methods. I'm not sure about rice.
DeleteI doubt you could get all of your fiber needs from the AX found in rice, but I do like to point out that removing all grains and rice from you diet also removes some important fibers.
But for me, I like to eat rice regularly. I switch between Jasmine rice and long-grain white, but recently discovered black and red rice in the local health food store.
The black rice actually has a hull on it, so assume it has more fiber than the polished type rice you normally see in stores/restaurants.
When I make rice, I make a whole cooker full (about 16 cups cooked) and divide into bags that I freeze. This will increase the RS3 content and makes it very handy to have cooked rice on hand.
http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/71/5/1123.full