Some months ago I got interested in the fact that people were toying with the idea of eating mostly just potatoes for a period of time for weight loss. So I tried it, blogged about it, entertained it for a few weeks, dropped about 13 pounds to verify it works (probably because it's hard to eat enough potatoes to maintain weight). But I just quickly got tired of potatoes. Not so at all with my milk & kefir deal that's into its seventh week, stronger than ever, and now I'm really doing a lot of tweaking of the essential magic of the thing. But details on that are for a different day and newsletter issue.

One thing that cropped up and that's been a new tweak in my milk & kefir escapades: resistant starch. It was a commenter, "Tatertot," who'd done all the yeoman's work on the deal, so I asked him to put it all together for us.

So here's Tatertot.

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Last fall, I was toying around with the Potato Hack and mentioned it on Paul Jaminet's Perfect Health Diet blog. Paul mentioned that part of the effectiveness of the Potato Hack undoubtedly was due to the butyric acid and short-chain fatty acids (SCFA) from the resistant starch in the potatoes.

This got me thinking about resistant starch (RS). I had heard of RS before, but didn't know much about it. I did a few Google searches, and the more I read, the more I liked. There were well-studied correlations between RS intake and colon health, improved cholesterol, better glucose control, weight loss, hunger abatement, and increased vitamin and mineral absorption.

I learned that scientists first 'discovered' RS in the 80's. Since then, numerous studies have been done on the effect of RS in animals and humans. One of the first articles I read on RS was written in 2008. Please read for a quick primer on RS. Done? OK, moving on.

At first, people told me I was wasting my time with RS. Afterall, they said, "RS is nothing more than Type III fiber, right after soluble and insoluble. We got over our obsession about fiber when we got over eating Kashi...It's not that it's bad for you, just not necessary; and, If it's butyrate you want, just eat butter—or put it in your coffee!—it's loaded with the stuff." I almost gave up my quest when I came across Dr. Eades' article bashing RS: He concludes in the article, "This brief discourse should put you off of resistant starch even without knowing what anti-nutrients are (resistant starch is an anti-nutrient), why they’re there and what they do. We’ll save that for a later post." Then there was this great back-and-forth on Mark's Daily Apple.

Luckily, I found tons to support the intake of RS from a number of other sources, so I kept looking.