Resistant Starch

OK, so after my post of day before yesterday juxtaposing Grace Liu being a normal inquisitive soul with cool ideas vs. whatever it is she’s going on about on her blog, I was watching comments and seeing one after another deleted that inks to her own writing. Duck got one comment to stick.

You know I have a lot of respect for you, but your assertion that raw starches are not ancestral is extremely weak and is in no way supported by the anthropological literature. It’s sloppy.

For instance, using 5 “ancestral” species of bacteria that are inherited from non-starch eating primates as proof that raw starch is not ancestral is a logical fallacy. It’s very misleading.

Humans eat starch. Primates do not. Therefore, raw starch is not ancestral? I’m afraid you will need to do better than that.

It’s well known that USOs are extremely important to human evolution, for millions of years, and it’s more than a little odd that you would try to claim that only “cooked” USOs were eaten when they were perfectly safe to eat raw.

Tiger nuts are just one example of a sedge tuber that has had a close relationship with humans since the dawn of humankind. The tiger nut is safe to eat raw and was one of the first cultivated plants in Ancient Egypt. Even today, kids in Europe snack on raw tiger nuts as candy and the Valencians drink their raw horchata as a medicinal superfood.

Paleo Indians at Mashantucket were shown to have yellow nutsedge (weedy tiger nut) starch all over their tools. To suggest that these sedge tubers, which were perfectly safe to eat raw, were somehow only eaten cooked will require far more assertive evidence than a short poorly-researched paragraph engineered to needle your ex-collaborators.

Not only is there overwhelming evidence showing the importance of sedge consumption by our distant ancestors, but there are plenty of studies showing a variety of different sedge tubers consumed by H. Sapiens.

For instance, here is a study that was published last week!

Nuts for dinner? Cladium mariscus in the Middle Stone Age at Sibudu, South Africa

The Middle Stone Age ended ~50–25,000 years ago. To suggest that sedge tubers were only eaten cooked is like suggesting that pecans were only eaten roasted. It’s preposterous.

As you can see, there are a wide variety of raw sedge tubers besides tiger nuts out there. I hope you don’t plan on trying to discount the raw consumption of every USO that’s ever been classified.

I was interested in the new study. Someone found the full text for me right under a tattered pillow with lots of dog hair stuck to it. The abstract is online.

Nuts for dinner? Cladium mariscus in the Middle Stone Age at Sibudu, South Africa

The sedge, Cladium mariscus, has been identified in Middle Stone Age deposits at the shelter Sibudu, South Africa, where the leaves were used as “bedding” – an informal floor covering for various activities. Cladium mariscus nutlets were recovered from layers 73,000 – 39,000 years old and are likely to have entered the shelter on the plants harvested for bedding. This paper explores the possibility that, in addition to the use of Cladium mariscus leaves for bedding, the nutlets were collected for food. The underground storage organs and nutlets of many sedge species are eaten by contemporary people and they are known to have been eaten in the past at other sites. Nutritional analysis of the nutlets and rhizomes of Cladium mariscus indicates their potential as a food source, notwithstanding the small size of the nutlets. Although there is no evidence for the preparation of Cladium mariscus for consumption at Sibudu, the abundant nutlets produced by the plants, their nutritional value and the ease of harvesting the nutlets indicate that they could have been a useful dietary item. At Sibudu, as early as 70,000 years ago, the complicated mastic recipes for hafting stone tools indicate that the shelter inhabitants possessed advanced pyrotechnological skills and sophisticated knowledge of the chemical properties of materials. It is possible that these abilities were applied to the processing of Cladium mariscus nutlets. Such activities could imply an early example of intensive collection and possible processing of a particular plant food.

Beyond that, I think the dogs would bark if I gave out the full text, so you’ll have to be satisfied with my confirmation bias, unless you know the same dog owner.

INTRODUCTION

Ripe for the picking, would an abundant, easily harvested and nutritious resource have been ignored by people at Sibudu in the Middle Stone Age? The fruits of the sedge, Cladium mariscus (L.) Pohl subsp. jamaicense (Crantz) Kük fulfil these desirable criteria and were available in the uThongathi River, which flows at the base of the steep cliff in which the rock shelter Sibudu is situated. Approximately 12 km down- stream from Sibudu, the uThongathi River reaches the east coast of South Africa and flows into the Indian Ocean. Although Cladium no longer grows near or downstream from Sibudu, it was present in the past (Sievers & Muasya, 2011) and was used for “bedding” – plant material informally laid down on the dusty, stone-littered shelter floor to provide a clean and comfortable surface for a range of activities (Wadley et al., 2011). In this paper I argue that in addition to the use of Cladium leaves for bedding, Cladium nutlets (< 3 mm, single-seeded, indehiscent fruits) were eaten and that even though it is possible to crush and grind the nutlets between one’s teeth, processing of the nutlets at Sibudu is a possible scenario.

So, they ate them, maybe processed them.

The use of Cladium leaves as an informal mattress need not preclude the use of other parts of the plant for other purposes. Sedge nutlets, corms, tubers and rhizomes are widely reported as food in archaeological and ethnographic contexts, in southern Africa and further afield (e.g. Van Wyk & Gericke, 2000; Simpson & Inglis, 2001; Crawford, 2007; Sievers, 2011) and likely were an important dietary item for hominins even in early Pleistocene times (Van der Merwe et al., 2008; Wrangham et al., 2009; Sponheimer et al., 2013). The prolific production of nutlets on individual Cladium inflorescences indicates that the nutlets are an abundant food source and this warrants analysis of their nutritive value; the rhizomes are more difficult to harvest, but their nutrient values provide useful comparative data.

Need I even get into Dental Calculus Reveals Unique Insights into Food Items, Cooking and Plant Processing in Prehistoric Central Sudan?

The evidence extracted from the dental calculus has shown the use of fire, and possibly smoke, in all periods. Cooking on an open fire does not always fully gelatinize starch granules. Variable gelatinization of starch granules following open fire cooking). The Hadza, for example, are known to cook their tubers for a very short time, possibly to facilitate peeling and chewing, while leaving the interior of their food raw [38]. Therefore, despite the raw appearance of the starch granules in the pre-Mesolithic samples, they could have come from food items that had been lightly heated…Some of the ‘char’ observed in the calculus samples may also derive from exposure to fires for non-culinary purposes…In the pre-Mesolithic samples…all these starch granules appear undamaged. In some cases starch granules occurred in groups of two or three, still intact and lodged within remains of the thin cellular wall (Figure 2). This suggests little or no external processing…No diagenetic effects [20] are apparent and the granules display no evidence of any form of processing or heating either in the presence of water (which leads to swelling) or roasting (which leads to drying and cracking); this suggests the plant food may have been ingested raw or after only little heating.

Or, you know, there’s lots of Paleo Brownies to Order ONLINE! Free Shipping!

It is very important to understand that since the beginning of this resistant starch revolution, two people have been pretty humble (Richard and Tim Steele) and one has ceaselessly tried to mount the pedestal of all knowing authority on all things gut (Grace Liu—and even though when you read gut studies, they are often shrouded in more mystery than certitude).

The only thing Tim and I have been really adamant about is that feeding the gut is critical (and RS has a big role to play), and that feeding is probably more important than “weeding.” Those trillions of bugs have well evolved ways of managing an ecosystem we’re only scratching the surface of. We both come down on the side that says: you can’t really figure it out precisely, so feed it, let nature take root and work magic over time. In other words, it’s better to just throw lots of darts than engage in the futility of hitting bullseyes. Grace wants you to believe you can throw lots of Bullseyes; and oh, she’s the single “Goddess” to direct your hand.

Bullsshits.

I quote from Lisa in comments to my Animal Farts 1.0 Supplement Powder With 13 Gut Foods.

…I don’t think I’ve ever posted but wanted to tell you thank you and Tim for your great blogs and how they have benefited me. Resistant starch has made my life so much better. It cured insomnia probably caused by very low carb diet. It also improved my metabolism via better thyroid and adrenal function. I am warmer and have to take less thyroid and have more energy and feel happier. Who wouldn’t feel happier when they increase their sleep from 4-5 hours sleep a night to 7 or 8? I just reread your refining the resistant starch story [Part 2]. I was looking for help because for the last several months I had been reading grace Lius blog regularly. I got sucked into her opinion that raw potato starch is bad and dropped taking it. She seemed like a smart lady and I trusted her. I also didn’t know for some time that you and Tim disagree with her. The first time I caught wind of that was several weeks ago. It was the last time Tim posted over there. Grace was saying he’s messed up because he has bifidus animalis rather than bifidus longum and that it is obvious rps did him bad because he has Nash and gout. Tim seemed pretty peeved and disagreed, don’t remember exactly what he said but seemed to go off in a huff and never posted again. I wasn’t totally sure what to think. I was disappointed cause I love Tims posts but Ive reall liked Graces blog and it has helped me. Some of her recommended probiotics have been really helpful. I told Grace I was really disappointed about dropping rps because it had helped me so much and that I was trying just doing rs3 from food and it wasn’t getting as good results. I told her I thought maybe it was because it was hard for me to get enough rs just from foods to get results for my particular body. I asked her if there were any convenient rs3 powders like rps that someone can quickly easily boost their rs with no matter what is going on how busy they are traveling etc and she said no she doesn’t recommend processed items like that just whole food. I told her but I sleep with rps and I don’t as much without it. She said that she just doesn’t recommend rps because in the long run it cuts off at the knees our ancestral core, was I think the way she put it. You know akkermansia, b longum etc.

[Don’t listen to how you feel in your core. Listen to a Fake Doktor instead. -Ed]

So I’ve believed her and tried it. But gosh darn it I just don’t feel as well. Last week I was traveling and couldn’t eat as well as normal and my sleep had gotten pretty bad by the end of a week and night before last I had a hard time going to sleep and then woke up after 4 hours and couldn’t go back to sleep. Yesterday I was tired and grumpy. So I had had it. I thought I don’t know whether rps will cut my ancestral core off at the knees or not but I know if I take it I’ll sleep! So I took a tbsp with each meal yesterday along with my rs3 whole food and other fibers and last night I went to sleep easily. My head hit pillow and I was out. I slept six hours straight, woke up needing to go to the bathroom and then fell back asleep as soon as head hit pillow again and slept for another 2-3 hours. I woke up feeling rested and great. Yesterday I was thinking that I didn’t know how something could help me so much and be so bad. I Decided to go to his blog and yours to explore rs2 and whether it really does hurt people. I found your post about that and it was very helpful. Now I’ve been reading the refining resistant starch story. I had read it before but I didn’t remember what it said about rs2 being in the traditional foods of numerous people groups. I hope you do go ahead and analyse more of the claims she is making. The info you are providing is helping me get to the truth so I can benefit from rps and not get ripped off from that because of a false idea that the benefits I’m seeing are some kind of short term trick that rps is playing on me only so it can stealthily destroy my most important gut microbes and take me down.

I like grace and I don’t think she is being intentionally malicious [I do. You have no idea how she hates me and will chew up anyone to get to me. -Ed]. What is going on is that she had some problems after starting rps like gerd and weight gain. Somebody convinced her it was the rps causing it. I think it was some guy a lot of people would listen to like some microbiota researcher, maybe the one that she follows saying that the microbes she calls the ancestral core are the holy grail. I don’t remember his name.

It wouldn’t be the first time that someone has gotten convinced of an idea backed by a lot of emotion and then interpreted studies to support their view even when they don’t. I think a lot of times people actually believe they are seeing and interpreting correctly because their filter prevents them from seeing the evidence that contradicts their view.

It really helped me to see that all these people have been eating rs2 for millennia. How could rps be so bad then? And maybe it did cause problems for grace but for me it has seemed to do nothing but good. Or maybe it was just coincidence and rps had nothing to do with problems grace was encountering.

It would be interesting to tackle graces claims that rps is responsible for Tims Nash and gout. I saw in some post where you or Tim clarify that gout was caused by cocoa nibs or some such. I have had gout like symptoms before from having too much Oxalate containing food.

In closing, I appreciate your work.

Don’t expect Tim or I to attempt to prove the negative that RPS didn’t do something bad, any time soon. It’s too ridiculous. Grace doesn’t even have the ethics necessary to actually only reference studies that actually support her statements—rather relying that people won’t actually read them.

To make the motivation of this post explicit: this went up because, and only because, this good person went to “Dr.” Grace sincerely, telling her explicitly that potato starch helped her hugely (sleep, body temp, less thyroid meds), then she stopped taking it it per Grace’s “Goddessness” (typical doG, eh? They have a plan for you) and stuff went to shit again. What does the “Good Doktor” do? Tells her, essentially, that her vision of the perfect gut just doesn’t jive with Lisa’s real results—so suck it in and tough up; after all, we have to discredit Richard and Tim and you must be willing to sacrifice your well being for that cause.

She goes back to using potato starch and regains the well being she’d come accustomed to.

Astounding “malpractice” on the part of Grace. Thankfully, she decided to get herself all fucked up with me, because I will highlight this kind of stuff. I want all y’all having good sleeps and dreams out there, feeling warm & cozy. It’s your life.