I didn’t need to look far and wide to find the usual hysterics over this post: How Eating Heaps of Safe Starches Cured My “Diabetes”. It’s good enough, though. Hate still = passion, and I prefer a mix of both just to keep things real.
Nowadays, I only just skim that kinda stuff, looking for something actually helpful—maybe a valid criticism I can correct—that goes beyond the very boring “Richard is such an asshole” stuff. Kinda duh, really. This is news? I know of no other way to get valuable information across effectively, overcoming the background noise that’s everywhere, now. Some people seem to think I don’t love being seen as ‘his royal highness, the asshole,’ perhaps unfamiliar with the 10 year history of 4,000 posts here, where being asshole in noise as best I can be—so as to avoid John Doe vomiting on me for general banality (bonus to the 1st commenter who gets the ref)—has always been paramount; accepting, even embracing the “adverse” consequences.
It’s almost embarrassing to see people anguish over my choices as they do, as though I ever saw what I do differently, or wrung hands over how other fingers might type! in reaction. I simply have the self trust to do it my way, daily. Sorry if some lack the confidence to trust in themselves as much as I trust in me, 53 years and running. Not sorry if that bugs the living shit out of some. That part I love, actually. Here.
99% of human problems boil down to an absence of self trust, combined with an obsessive compulsion to seek the approval of the very ones who’ll suck the life and joy out of you. It’s a recipe for failure and unhappiness. Detect it. Dump it. Let them fend for themselves. Hope they starve to death for the attention in the demolition they always seek, as building values is not their forte; that requires talent and conscience.
Yea, I wrote that, so it’s true. Trust me.
…I’m not seeing a lot of numbers in these elsewhere places, in the context of normal or improved glucose regulation—nor any other thing, really. Just sour, dripping resentment—high perturbation (rhymes with masturbation) that the project Tim and I started, and Dr. Grace joined, has gained so much traction all over the place. And now, Mark Sisson has a Definitive Guide to Resistant Starch. I’m betting that Mark doesn’t make a Definitive Guide until he’s certain it’s something that merits permanence as a part of the diet, or Primal-styled health.
I posted numbers, a lot of background, and I think the logic flow makes some sense:
- A way better gut biome (prebiotics and probiotics) helps a lot and affords other benefits that have been tossed around by LOTS of people.
- Safe starches that have been prepared to maximize prebiotics help a lot. Exercise metabolic response, or go with a limp-dick metabolism. Your choice.
- Together, they’re synergistic. That should be no surprise. Right, Grace (link removed)?
- The numbers don’t lie.
Perhaps it’s a trust issue, so next time, I’ll have to eat my 80g starchy meal in front of a USA Today, on video, then show my postprandial glucose numbers with the time & date of the meter visible. Because, some of the stuff I see out there, I have to conclude that it’s from people who simply think I’m lying, and their assessment of my untrustworthiness is so profound that they don’t seem to care about looking like fucktards when it becomes clear and obvious they’re wrong, which of course they are. The numbers are the numbers, and it means something. News flash: I and my wife both had unacceptably high fasting and post-meal glucose readings, caused by chronic glucose starvation, and adding in lots of starches fixed it right up. That’s the truth, those are the numbers, and I’m an asshole for rubbing it in faces. You really have to love it. OTOH, they’re on safe ground in that what they type with their fingers! will never be seen by anyone but the Richard haters. It’s got to be in the hundreds, by now. Don’t worry, I’m working on it and we’ll get those numbers up there to more respectable levels.
…So, I’m just seeing squirming and temper tantrums, because why else would anyone care?
- Do I care that some people (and lots and lots of very young people) do great on LC? No. I did fabulous myself in 1991, at exactly 30 years old, first time I tried Atkins. Quickly dropped 10-15 pounds, heartburn went away, etc. Bee’s knees. It’s like “Ha, I have found the secret!”
- Do I laf at 20-somethings who scoff at people like us, with 20-30+ years more dietary and metabolic experience? Of course I laf, because in this context, they’re adorably ignorant and it’s a bit reminiscently sweet, if you ask me on a good day. Hell, I used to be way smarter and more knowledgeable about everything at 30, the last 23 years being a downward spiral of increasing levels of ignorance on all fronts. At this rate, by the time I check out, I’ll think I don’t really know anything at all.
- I’ve not only my own experience, but that of my wife, other family members, hundreds upon hundreds of blog commenters in over 90 posts on resistant starch with about 10,000 comments; and even, various forums where people are figuring this all out on their own—including ulcerative colitis and a bunch of other stuff. This has grown far beyond Free the Animal, now, and I see everything. The Launch was over with almost a year ago, and it is more popular than ever.
- It’s not going away. Plus, it’s just delicious how it so puts the 24/7/365 very low-carb and ketogenic catechism peddlers in bunched panties under short pants.
Sure, a relatively small percentage of people have had some adverse issues with RS—especially autoimmune from leaky guts in the first place—but many tweaked that with the unique, soild-based probiotics and reported back with improvements, just as predicted by Dr. Grace (link removed)—someone with actual clinical experience, not just fingers that type! Now, the probiotics are actually sold out in some places. Reports coming in daily, mostly positive.
…The very first post on resistant starch was over 90 posts ago, April 24, 2013, with a prophetic title: Prepare for the “Resistant Starch” Assimilation; Resistance is Futile [emphasis added]. See, I actually did lots of homework on this with Tim, prior to sticking my neck out—while admonishing him that he’d better be right. It’s naturally going better than according to plan and I simply intend to keep at it. The numbers tell the story, and it’s a way to live in a natural, fed mode of being, rather than an unnatural, simulated starvation mode in chronic VLC or ketogenic fad dieting, typing LOLS with their fingers! at people who point out that even the Inuit were never producing ketones above the normal.
…my post was targeted at the low carb gurus and promoters who wrote books, websites and articles claiming that the Inuit and other carnivorous cultures were ketogenic. I have three different studies here (one from 1928, one from 1936 and one from 1972) and in each case, there were no ketones in any of the Inuits’ blood. None. Zip. Nada.
In 1972 they even used the fancy “strip paper technique, which is sensitive to concentrations of 1 mg/100 ml or greater and all serums were negative” for ketones. (The only time ketones were ever found in the Inuit was when they fasted).
How did these low carb fanatics miss this? How did they dismiss it? And why didn’t they investigate it further? Why did they bastardize what these cultures actually did (eating raw, fresh animals)? Think of how many people went low carb and got sick because of those misleading suggestions.
So, if you want to eat low carb, great! Do it. But, don’t go around telling people that the Inuit were a ketogenic culture. Don’t go around telling people that homo erectus didn’t eat carbs. The evidence just isn’t there to support those statements when you consider what these cultures were actually doing.
You have websites [that] want people to believe that carnivorous hunters were always ketogenic. What [they] don’t seem to understand, or don’t want people to know, is those carnivorous hunters who chased down animals and slit their prey’s throats would plunge their fists into the carcass of their kills and pull out the glycemic equivalent of a giant cupcake…and eat it as quickly as they could.
All I’m here to say is that the ancestral-based justification of permanent ketosis is complete bullshit. That has nothing to do with the efficacy of LC, for those who absolutely need it.
Chronic VLC and ketogenic dieting as somehow ideally healthy for most people is utter bullshit and hurts many people, documented about anywhere you care to look, with actual stories. That it’s not actually harmful for most people—especially as they get older—is also utter bullshit. Sorry, but some fat loss—until you stall—isn’t worth any of the problems I had, my wife had, and that I’ve seen reported thousands of times over more that five years at this Paleo blogging gig. And I was a big LC advocate way back too. I’m betting that I and a couple of human collaborators, and 100 trillion micro-friends are not going to let me down; and that most folks will gradually take a very different view of VLC and ketogenic dieting, not even close to the panacea pitched. I’ve been doubling down on this bet for over a year—even before RS, when I saw what The Potato Hack did for stuck LCers—all while others have been shorting me.
Chronic VLC and ketogenic dieting ought come with a huge warning label and ought only be performed under medical supervision, kinda like chemotherapy. OTOH, probably 100g of starchy carbs will be fine for a lot of folks. Just look at all the health benefits from eating 100-200g of starches daily, on Paul Jaminet’s Perfect Health Diet. Seriously, do take a look at the list of conditions. They might ring a bell as exactly the stuff reported in the comments of this blog all the time, resulting from years of chronic VLC and ketogenic dieting where elsewhere, these sorts of complaints were always met with the same answer: your carbs aren’t low enough! Or, the most laghably ridiculous one of all: oh, you have the ‘low-carb flu’ hahaha!
Or, stuff like this comment that came in just a few minutes ago, a daily occurence mutiple times, on multiple of the 90 posts going all the way back.
DeeNH // Mar 27, 2014 at 13:46
I just want to report that I read AnimalPharm’s superb 7-part series on how to cure SIBO (link removed) back in the Nov/Dec 2013 time frame where the details of how-to RS, etc. were nicely laid out. And then I found great reading here on freetheanimal. In early February I finally started twice daily doses of Organic PS + ORAC green powder + psyllium + Primal Defense to awesome results (thank you). Fasting blood glucose finally dipped from above 100-120 to 80-90 and SIBO/IBS symptoms almost vanished (excretion almost back to normal). Great to know you are working on a book together now. I will purchase it for sure. [emphasis added]
I think that due to the popularity of VLC—combined with the marketing hype and willingness to cherry pick everything that tends to support it—while finding fault with any study that has other findings—it’s going to fuck up a lot of young people. Unfortunately, many, especially women, won’t realize it for a long time—and maybe not until it’s too late. Unlike the popular low carb proponents, I could no longer stand to see stories of problems over stories of problems, blithely repeating over and over, “well, carbohydrate drives insulin drives fat storage. You need to lower your carbs even more. And, you need to get a blood ketone monitor to make absolutely certain your carbs are low enough and your ‘nutritional’ ketones, high enough.”
I’m an asshole, but with a conscience.
Adding in the range of 100-200g daily of safe starches while eating otherwise very nicely (paleo/primal), it’s my bet that this is going to help the most people and minimize the individual need to try endlessly to tweak every little thing.
…Because, you know, when you go out in nature, all you’re seeing is animals tweaking their diets.
marie 
Diane 
tatertot 
>>”All I’m here to say is that the ancestral-based justification of permanent ketosis is complete bullshit. That has nothing to do with the efficacy of LC, for those who absolutely need it.” <<
Of course ketosis has biochemical and physiological uses.
It’s the chronic or permanent state that’s a problem, just like at the other extreme a chronic or permanent high-sugar diet is a long-term problem. We cripple ourselves, reduce our options, if we stick to one metabolic pathway all the time. That’s doesn’t allow the building of resilience.
From my little perspective eating mostly traditionally since childhood with what are now called ‘moderate’ levels of starches and with traditional fasting, I figure that exercising both pathways is exercise, that is, it produces long-term beneficial changes you can tap into under different circumstances.
Those benefits come with both types of metabolism: from ready insulin response, healthy mucosa, thyroid and other effects (enhanced by moderate starch, a mostly glucose-based metabolism), to hunger-resistane, greater mitochondrial efficiency and perhaps SRT1/apoptosis and other effects (enhanced by fasting/ketosis).
There there are all the gut biome diversity benefits….
It’s really nice not having to tweak and it’s also nice not having to worry about what daily life or travel or an accident might throw at you. Resilience.
…and it would be even nicer if I remembered to close the bold around “is” exercise :)
What would be nice is if people just left the fancy stuff to me, so as to not detract from the visual aesthetic of the post. :)
Marie, you closed a bold tag with an italics tag. Not sure, but I think that’s pretty far up on the list of unforgivable.
Groan! Is there no place for the blind author in your Metaphysics? :D
Hi! Marie!
Marie.
C’est psycho épistémologique, plutôt et en outre.
Kate, Hi! So nice when we both pop in at the same time :)
I kinda like bean salad for a good RS food. See this : freetheanimal.com/2014/03/heard-first-update.html#comment-571937
Now that I would eat! But I can feel my gut bloat just thinking about it. I am interested in your RS and alcohol experiment. Did you get really drunk for us to find out if it works?
Not yet, but for you I will make this supreme sacrifice…. :D
I did get tipsy on 3 drinks the other night, which is still better than my usual “one and she’s laughing”, so would indicate a long-term gut biome effect.
I had not had any pre-drink of PS in water – which seems to agree with the idea that tolerance is even better if the PS is ingested 30′-1hr beforehand like on St.Paddy’s weekend (when I was demonstrably coordinated and could use arithmetic/checkout chart after 5 drinks).
And soak and rinse those beans, even for 4 hours if you’re really nervous, black-eyed don’t need as much as others (eg. giant/broad beans – best to leave those overnight).
Then I’ve got a surprise for you : once they nourish a healthy colony, you may be able to just rinse and eat the canned ones, if you want, they really are the weakest of the ‘bloaters’.
Of course, if antibiotics kill off many of the good bugs at some point, you’d start over with the soaking.
That’s how it’s always worked for me, family etc….which doesn’t mean it has to for anyone else, that’s a heck of a diverse biome we’ve all got, not to mention pathologies like SIBO, candida etc. and relative numbers aren’t constant even in a single person.
But I guess at least we can share the possibilities with each other, things that have worked/are working. And those that don’t – just as useful.
Marie, went out today and bought the fixings for the black eye pea salad. They are now soaking. But I got hungry. Been pigging out on ham and artichoke hearts (that was for the lamb, okra stew….). Good thing I bought two tins of artichoke hearts and at least a 1 pound hunk of ham. Oh lawdie! There’s always tomorrow…. Love artichoke hearts…….mmmm. I must have been switched at birth. ;)
Feeding the bifidos.
Can drop those artichokes right in that salad (if there were any left!), so good vinegary.
Plus, you’re likely feeding the l.ontarientis, oh sister from another mister ;)
Data doesn’t lie. Data is just data. How we interpret it or whether we ignore it is another matter.
After 5 years of LC I had to admit that my blood sugars were getting worse. I had to be more and more rigid in order to avoid a blood sugar spike – one piece of sweet fruit was too much by January. That shouldn’t be the case. I put on weight after every work out (blood sugars went really high). Now 3 months on PS I have put on weight though my fears about needing a new wardrobe are so far unfounded – though I’m at my upper limit.
As one with AI (RA & AS) I am one who has to tweak what I’m doing. Yes I got flares in the early stages and when that is acute I feel really miserable and question what I was doing. But I know what I was doing before (lowish carb paleo) wasn’t working and intuitively RS felt right. Then my rational mind looked at it. Modern medicine didn’t have any answer other than more and more drugs. Logic told me the closer I came to eating close to nature – meat and veges, herbs and spices had to be closer to the healing journey than anything else I could come up with. So I am continuing to trial it.
I have obviously had more issues than many, but such is life. I would strongly recommend that if someone in my situation can easily have their gut biome analysed then do it – then get someone like Dr Grace to review it and make recommendations (she doesn’t charge much to do it by email). And do take the probiotics Richard, Tim and Grace recommend if you can get them. It is more difficult if you live on the other side of the world as I do and you have to do things by intuition and guesswork and the getting of the probiotics is a logistical nightmare and I’ve so far only got one of them to me. Two more are in the US postal system.
Interestingly when I started taking the potato starch at the beginning of January my greatest problems were in the upper gut, just under my rib cage. Now 3 months later I have pain and cramping in my low pelvis. The pain moved down my abdomen, then up my abdomen, then back down again. (Down the small intestines, then up and around the large?) The story I tell myself is that I’m pushing problems down and it won’t be long before I don’t have any distension, bloating or cramps. But what I’m really looking forward to is improving my physical strength that so many of you are reporting.
Harriet, for AI problems you may want to drop the potato starch (nightshade) in favor of green bananas or plantain flour. My joints did not like the addition of potato starch. I have had much more success with adding frozen green banana to my kombucha based smoothie. Best of luck in healing your gut.
Ok, I admit. I have been a nay sayer on this RS thing. I tried it, but was not religious about it and nothing happened. I did not enjoy spooning potato starch in a glass of water and gagging it down. I am/was a VLC advocate because it worked for me before menopause. But now it isn’t working. I can just imagine the damage going on in my 56year old body. So..I give in. I will try again. I just don’t want to supplement. I want real food. If it is supposed to be the next best thing since sliced bread, why can’t I just eat it? Cold rice? Bar boiled what ever? Green bananas? Really? There has to be a real food way.
Kate:
freetheanimal.com/2013/12/resistant-primer-newbies.html
Lots of real food. i do it all the time. Best thing so far, other than fucking fried rice which is crack because I live in Japan 5 years and make killer fried rice, is baked and cooled potatoes, cubed, wok fried in red palm oil.
I put it in my homemade kombucha with a double dose of the Amazing Grass chocolate greens. Even my three year old likes it
Oh, by the way…I think deep down, you do care….or you wouldn’t be so pissed off at the Paleo trolls dissing your hard work. You would have just said “I don’t give a shit” Rush Limbaugh of the blogosphere really has a heart.
“deep down”
Deep down? Ha.
Yup. You show your warmth and caring by the shirts you buy.
You owe me.
Hugs and Kisses,
Matt Stone
— How bout we talk about you being in my MLM downline now, Richie?
Is Matt doing MLM?
Fart Wars. Revenge of the Starch.
should be the title of your USA Today 80g carb expose.
I wouldn’t miss one of your posts. Great information and great fun.
Thx!
Thought it’d be nice to enter the fray with a bonus — Se7en
Bingo, Ron. That bit, as Morgan and Brad are reading Kevin’s journals is just gold to me.
I agree. That one comes as close as I’ve seen, where at the end of a movie, the bad guy blows away the good guy and walks away laughing. Great film. Nice reference.
You people are evil. I’ve been trying to forget that movie for nearly 20 years.
D’accord Richard, “psycho épistémologique” par excellence.
Thanks for that last line. Killer.
Nikoley haters in the hundreds you say? My estimate is that Nikoley haters number tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands. And that, Richard, is why we love you!
I have a question. Are the VLC BG numbers relevant to a persons BG numbers on the SAD diet?
I have never intentionally been VLC, though I’m sure at times I am. Anyone living in my area (New England) as a hunter gatherer would have a hard time coming up with any significant amount of carbohydrates for many months. Those hunter gatherers would have had high BG numbers during the winter. Would this make them inherently unhealthy? I don’t know. I have always viewed the whole VLC thing as an interesting survival mechanism but maybe there is more to it on a seasonal basis.
I have been doing the RS thing since the middle of December along with my homemade kefir and assorted fermented vegetables and feel pretty good overall. No hate here, more of a loathing:)
Arthur:
When you actually look into it, there’s lots of stuff available in the north, in winter. This is all fantasy cooked up to justify eating nothing but grilled steaks.
BTW, do ruminants turn to carnivore in the winter up north?
Arthur
Also, I think it’s great to go into ketosis briefly, just like it’s good to get your heart rate up to max, briefly.
That’s why I think a nice diet of plenty of good starches, clean Paleo, with an IF tossed in ever week or two (lunch to dinner next day is what I like, making it a true 24 fast) is going to be the sweet spot for a lot of people. Good for hormesis and autophagy and when well fed with a robust metabolism, I don’t see the IF causing problems. And also, unless fat loss is the goal, IF ought not be about under eating, but about crowding 7 days of nutrition into 6 days of eating.
Sure, the ruminants ate the plant’s cellulose above ground, humans ate the plant’s starch/storage organs found below ground. Then there’s nuts and berries etc. as well as the glycogen in very fresh kills.
What I’ve always wondered though is : how do we know that the earliest northern fossils aren’t from hominids who died-off in the winter? There’s evidence of human ‘migratory’ behavior in other areas already. So perhaps at first there would be seasonal small migrations to the deepest north, but those earlier hominids turned around and went back south or died if they became stranded.
Until humans first started storing nuts and tubers.
In other words, unlike warm places where humans ate the variable but visible food sources year-round and later started to store foods (and then later preserve), the north could have been first settled by people who already were at the food storage stage?
If so, northern humans may never have been entirely dependent on what was freshly available in the winter. By the time westerners studied the Inuit or Laplanders/Sami, they of course had developed both storage and preservation/fermentation methods that gave them ‘carbs’ in the winter (not the paleo-fantasy that has frustrated people).
It’s just a thought and for all I know it was settled some time ago. I’ve looked but no luck. If anyone has come across an anthropological reference or two that addresses this, I’d be grateful :)
Richard, I certainly agree with that idea of the sweet spot, thank you for spelling it out.
It frustrates me to see bizarre and very very emotional criticisms of this whole RS/fermentable fiber/good starches work, by people who keep trying to paint it as “LOTS of CARBZ! No Ketosis, EVER!”
It’s not lots, for one, and it’s not any old carbz – nature kinda took care of our BG by packaging the ‘good starches’ with RS or soluble/fermentable fiber (apart from the classic cellulose/ non-fermentable fiber that maybe has some mechanical effects, if that).
Plus, not only is ketosis not disturbed at all, it is actually promoted by straight RS/SCFA production.
Right there you hand them a tool that helps even those who choose or who need to stay in ketosis.
All the while feeding a diverse, healthy biome, which gives an immediate immunity boost, emotional stability (neurotransmitters), resilience to dietary variation/weight vacillation, lower BG and/or better BG control when needed, Healing of gut lining…… apart from the middle/old-age resistance to colon cancer.
For crying out loud…!
Marie – I saw a study once that showed the earliest human fossils found up north were all adorned with sunglasses and flip-flops, so I guess your theory is wrong.
Tim
Sacre bleu! So that’s where the Tarahumara came from, chasing down the Yeti in flip-flops, across the Bering straight.
Marie, it’s the emotional instability: the bad bacteria have taken over. Mind control to maintain status quo.
marie~
GOD I LOVE UR PHRASE “Sure, the ruminants ate the plant’s cellulose above ground, humans ate the plant’s starch/storage organs found below ground.” Then we ate the ruminants!!
If the earliest hominins died off in the winters, at least they sure probably tried hard — look how long the common roots/tubers can be stored in ice/cold storage?? I’m shocked actually.
catsfork.com/CatsKitchen/root-vegetables-about/
The widest variety of root vegetables I ever saw was when I visited Sevastopol (then USSR, then Ukraine, now Russia :) in 1990. Cooked and pickled in every conceivable way.
Those people know how to store calories for the cold, lean, and even worse times.
Grace, you always get it :) Yeah, that’s why the ones who were storers would be the ones who gave rise to these amazing northern food preservation traditions.
There’s only so much your atlatl can do for you when it’s -40C with the windchill factor and you can’t see your hand for the snow blowing around.
No game is gonna be out there either, in the Yukon or the Siberian tundra. For weeks at a time.
So really, who cares if they knew how to get to the snow-covered plants and buried tubers or if it was a barren moon-scape in the winter, it’s the bloody winter and they wouldn’t survive without stored foods. That means stored summer plant foods just as well.
I think.
But then, the wind was howling again today and we expect more snow tomorrow, winter does not want to let go of western New York and I’m not amused…
PS> that site you linked is brilliant for cooking or preparing the roots, tubers and veggies too ! Quite apart from the cold storage section, where I relished this :”There are many passive methods for cold storage of veggies; the simplest being a hole in the ground, covered with straw.” :)
” the simplest being a hole in the ground, covered with straw.” :)”
Poor man’s root cellar.
My dad, bro & I built a root cellar, once. Dug an 8x8x8 hole, framed it, sheathed it in 3/4″ plywood on the outside and covered that in tar paper, then filled it it and put a good mount of dirt on top (there was a vent of course).
Yep, constant low 60s all year round.
We do that here . The old timey name for it is ” the clamp”
I work in a large urban library and the best part, of course, is the stories I hear from the diverse population I serve. I’ve gotten really into Sandor Katz and fermentation recently and had a great discussion with a hearty octogenerian patron who survived the Russian winters as a boy in WW2 on nothing but potatoes and sauerkraut. He claims he was never healthier, and he still adores sauerkraut and potatoes.
Reference seems like the line from Kevin Spacey’s journal in the movie Seven, where he is describing vomiting on someone.
Yep John, but someone was already first. :)
!!! I did a ctrl f for Seven! My new ctrl f “se7en” has found what I did not previously.
never in history of man have humans deprived themselves of AVAILABLE carbs
oh the carbs are available now alright. = worldwide obesity epidemic.
“= worldwide obesity epidemic”
Nonsense. Carbs have always been available and in fact, because of their relative cheapness compared to animals, fish and poultry they have been staples for all modern societies for thousands of years now.
The obesity epidemic is the result of eating too many calories, much of it in liquid form, as well as crap industrial food, overuse of antibiotics, destroying gut health and with it, the proper absorption of food, vitamin synthesis and gut-brain signaling.
Carbs, per se, have less than fuck all to do with the obesity epidemic.
This.
Plus too-frequent snacking (liquid or otherwise—including lots of “convenience foods”, “protein” shakes, and “sports supplements”).