Re: Re: warrior diet question - how long theundereating phase

[Guest guest]

>Do you really think so? I think you may have a point about

>gluten, but that you go too far in playing down the role of

>carbohydrates in insulin resistance. Can you tell more about

>why you say this?

Basically because much of the world lives off carbs, but

does not get diabetic. I'm not saying that is the *healthiest*

lifestyle -- the paleo people were taller and healthier -- but

think of all the Japanese living off white rice, for example. Or

most of Africa living off millet and yams. Or even tapioca,

which is about as nutritionless as white wheat flour.

Most of the world at this point in time is very poor,

and does not have herds of animals running around

so people can live off meat. And people starve a lot,

and they eat LOTS of carbs. They get vitamin deficiencies.

But they don't get diabetes much, until they switch to

a " Western " diet, which is usually defined as " sugar and

white flour " .

Lately more of the research seems to indicate it is the

" white flour " part of the equation that is the most

problematic (I'm not saying sugar is GOOD, mind you,

just that white flour is worse).

>> Currently a lot of people assume carbs cause insulin resistance,

>> but a lot of healthy, non-diabetic, non-overweight, non-insulin-

>> resistant populations live off high-carb diets (as Price reported

>> also).

>

>Which populations are/were these? Did any of them really

>habitually consume as much carbohydrate rich food as the

>developed world does today, and weren't their sources of

>carbohydrates usually of the low-glycemic sort, thus tending

>to prove the carbohydrate/insulin connection?

I tend to think there is a lot more research needs to be done on this.

Yes, they usually eat less. But is that a cause or effect? Think of the

modern Japanese. They don't get a huge amount of exercise in the city,

they eat fried food and white rice. They don't tend to overeat. Why don't

they overeat? It could be because of cultural conditioning, or it could

be that their diet just doesn't promote overeating.

I come at this mainly after a lot of conversations in another group

of people. Folks who give up gluten start eating less, for no particular

reason they know of. My family did too. I make pizza, but with non-gluten

flour. The folks that used to eat a whole pizza, now stop at ONE SLICE.

Why? They claim it tastes the same, but they " get full " faster. Why?

I don't know. I suspect the fact that gluten gloms on to the villi in the upper

intestine messes up the appestat and people eat too much. Which may lead

to insulin resistance.

But gluten by itself, which is a protein, alters the permeability of some

membranes, and causes inflammation and causes the body to attack

itself. THAT could lead to insulin resistance too.

Sugar by itself doesn't seem to have much effect, in my little experiments

here. Give a kid a sugar candy with no gluten in the diet, and the

kid stops after ONE PIECE. This is the same kid that used to gorge.

Again, I don't know why, but it is a lot more complex than just insulin.

The whole thing is devishly hard to test because virtually all carb

sources in the US are full of gluten, or at least enough to mess up

most people.

> Weren't they

>also agricultural people who tended to have to work in the

>fields from dawn to dusk? It's thought that one can better

>tolerate high carbohydrate diets if blood sugar is burned off

>immediately after entry into the blood stream after digestion,

>and if calorie consumption is close to the level of calories

>burned. In other words they were on the calorie counters diet

>by brutal necessity, not choice, and this off-set somewhat

>the deleterious effects of a high-carbohydrate diet.

That is the current theory. But virtally all high-carb diets tested, that

I read, were high-wheat diets. Even the ones done on animals.

OTOH, the macrobiotic folks, who live off brown rice mainly, seem

to be doing a good job of beating cancer and they eat all the brown rice

they want and still lose weight. Sure, brown rice is a lower glycemic

rating than white rice, and I have no doubt that helps, but still, it

is a very high carb diet. I'm not claiming that it is a healthy diet,

but it does not seem to promote diabetes.

> Many

>moderns are in this same vicious cycle, eating loads of pasta,

>bread, fruit and having to spend hours in the gym, jogging,

>running, lifting weights, etc.

That again, is the theory. But not all of those " healthy people " were

or are gym rats or farmers. Actually your average hunter gatherer didn't

have to work all that hard most of the time, and in time past, the elites

didn't work hard either (the Chinese elite were carried around in sedan

chairs and the women had bound feet!).

>> There is a LOT of correlation between white (wheat) flour and

>> insulin resistance, and people who eat more white flour have more

>> diabetes. Further, they can induce T1 diabetes in rats by feeding

>> them pure wheat gluten (the protein part of the wheat, not the

>> starch, as is used a lot in vegetarian " meat " ).

>

>Have you read the article " The Late Role of Grains and Legumes "

>at

<http://www.beyondveg.com/cordain-l/grains-leg/grains-legumes->http://www.beyond\

veg.com/cordain-l/grains-leg/grains-legumes-

>1a.shtml ? I think it supports what you say about grain. Have

>you also seen the mention made of a study at

><http://www.paleodiet.com/cancer.txt>http://www.paleodiet.com/cancer.txt where

it says " . . . Stanislaw

>Tanchou " ....gave the first formula for predicting cancer risk.

>It was based on grain consumption and was found to accurately

>calculate cancer rates in major European cities. The more grain

>consumed, the greater the rate of cancer. " Tanchou's paper was

>delivered to the Paris Medical Society in 1843. He also postulated

>that cancer would likewise never be found in hunter-gatherer

>populations. This began a search among the populations of hunter-

>gatherers known to missionary doctors and explorers. This search

>continued until WWII when the last wild humans were " civilized "

>in the Arctic and Australia. No cases of cancer were ever found

>within these populations, although after they adopted the diet

>of civilization, it became common. " ? This was mentioned in support

>of a low-carbohydrate diet, but could just as easily be used to

>support your contention.

Exactly. No one has really teased the two issues apart. Low-carb has gotten a

lot of press recently, but when you read about a lot of those " primative " folks

their diet isn't very low carb. I've read the papers you mention, they are good.

A lot of what they are saying is being borne out on lab rats.

On the other hand, you have cases like this one village in Africa. They live

off millet, which is high carb. They started getting humanitarian shipments

from the US, which are whole wheat. 18% of the kids came down with bloated

bellies and other signs of severe malnutrition, which turned out to be from

the wheat.

>

>I don't know , but I definitely do believe that different

>populations are genetically predisposed to different levels of

>difficulty with high-carbohydrate diets, as well as to gluten.

>Do you think that Sally Fallon's ideas and methods effectively

>address any of the problems with gluten?

She mentions it, but most of the research has been done since the

book was published. Even since Dangerous Grains was published.

The data has been just kind of building and building and some people

are just waiting for the avalanche, which I expect in the next 3 years.

Most of the people doing the research don't talk to each other much,

they are all in these niche fields, but now with the Internet people

are putting it all together and it makes a really interesting picture!

A lot of the gluten issues ARE genetic, but so far there don't seem

to be any really healthy populations on a high-wheat diet. In the years

since I've been reading about it, there has been an interesting progression

in the ideas of the researchers:

1. Wheat is healthy and everyone should eat a lot of it.

2. Wheat is unhealthy for 1 in 2000 people.

3. Wheat is unhealthy for 1 in 300 people.

4. Wheat is unhealthy for 1 in 100 people.

5. Probably 1 in 5 people shouldn't eat wheat.

6. Gluten in large quantities is probably bad for anyone.

Where will it end up? I don't know. For my own family

we just dropped the stuff, and our health improved dramatically,

though I purposefully did NOT cut carbs (partly as an experiment).

I DO get very sick from small quantities of gluten, though large

quantities of potatoes don't hurt me a bit. Also small quantities

of wheat gluten give me blood sugar issues, but potatoes do not.

Now someone needs to experiment on a bigger group of people ...

-- Heidi