One thing I got from reading "The Saccharine Disease" is the importance of potato skins. Eating the skins with potatoes apparently has a few benefits. First, it adds fiber which lowers the glycemic index. Second, the skin appears to be a source of additional vitamins.
Honestly, I had never thought about this before. But I have been eating whole potatoes with the skins lately, and it has been pretty neat. Adding some oil to a hot potato makes for a tasty food choice.
I have been adding in more (Paleo) carbs to help with the muscle-building, and it has definitely made a difference. I don't count carbs or anything, so I don't know the before-and-after differences. But whatever my previous carb intake was, it was hard to even maintain weight even though I was eating a ton more fat.
Just by adding more carbs via additional potatoes and sweet potatoes, it has made the difference in terms of weight maintenance/weight gain. Apparently, I'm not the only this has happened to. Here's a quote by low-carb researcher Jeff Volek:
"If you are trying to gain weight," writes Volek in the November 2001 issue of Muscular Development magazine, "my experience is that it is very difficult to prevent weight loss, let alone gain weight, on a strict ketogenic diet."
My simple way of thinking about this is that glucose storage is a higher priority for the body than is amino acid storage (muscle). If you have insufficient glucose available, the body is less likely to build muscle. If glucose stores are full, then the body can move on to building muscle. I've seen bodybuilders refer to this as carbs being "protein-sparing".
I am trying to upgrade my limited cooking skills, so of course, I've turned to ancient ways. From what I've read, hunter-gatherers engaged in a lot of "slow cooking" - putting meat and vegetables into a stone oven of sorts.
I dug up our own crockpot this weekend, and I am giving it a go. I've got some chicken and vegetables in today, so we'll see how it turns out later. At the very least, it is a simple way to cook. You just put everything in and push the button.
How many more reasons are needed to consume honey (a seasonal favorite of hunter-gatherers)? I've seen a ton of different studies on this, all showing a wide variety of benefit from eating honey.
Here's an older link that shows how honey may help fight cancer. If everyone just substituted honey for their normal sugar intake, the world would be a much healthier place.
Here's a link to a study that was published last year. The study found that higher carb consumption, and particularly higher refined-carb consumption, led to lower HDL cholesterol ("good" cholesterol) levels. Triglyceride levels were positively corrleated with carb intake, as expected.
Just another reason to limit refined carbs...
Low-carb diets have definitely picked up steam the last few years. Certainly, many people have benefited from them, and research shows they are as effective and often more effective than traditional low-fat diets.
But I wonder, given my last couple posts about cycles, if low-carb diets have some structural flaws. What I'm thinking is that a combination of moderate (Paleo) carb days combined with intermittent fasting is better than a continual low-carb approach. This way you get to truly cycle out the glucose supply of the body, and then resupply it with an influx of carbs.
I think low-carb diets show many benefits because they partially mimic intermittent fasting. Low-carb diets lower insulin levels, but the fastest way to lower insulin levels is just to simply not eat anything (intermittent fasting).
I've also found that low-carb diets aren't quick enough for my tastes in resupplying glucose after a fast or a hard workout. With a low-carb diet, it seems to take days to get the glucose levels back up. And while this may be great for fat-burning, I don't think it helps muscle-building. It doesn't help my mood either, and so lately I have been taking more carbs in during the post-workout window.
Recently, I've been looking into how different sugars affect the body. In the course of this, I realize that I have been consistently eating fruit almost every day for some time now. Yet in ancient times, fruits would only be available during specific seasons. And so I wonder if continual fruit consumption has any detrimental effects.
All this might be splitting hairs to some degree. For the average person switching from junk carbs to fruit carbs would be highly beneficial. But I do wonder if it's best to consume fruit intermittently, in accordance with the seasons.
The fructose in fruit is digested differently than the glucose that comes from other carbs. Perhaps it may be of use to give this metabolic pathway a rest every now and then. At some point this year, I will try a week of no fruit just to see what happens.
Here's a problem I've been thinking about quite a bit. For the sake of argument, let's assume that if a person avoids refined carbs, they will lose weight and their health will improve. So what kinds of tools are needed to do this?
First, I think it would be better to phrase it in the positive than the negative. In other words, saying "don't eat refined carbs" probably isn't the route to go. Instead, you would want a person to focus on eating healthier foods more than avoiding bad foods.
Second, social support always comes up big when looking at behavioral change. This may be more important for women as compared to men.
Beyond this, I have some other thoughts but nothing concrete. It's something I will be looking into more in the near future. If anyone out there has any other ideas, please feel free to share.
One of the things I found amazing about the refined carbs study is how high carbohydrate consumption has been in the U.S. For example, the study shows that in 1909, the average carb consumption was 500 grams per day. And what was the rate of diabetes and obesity back then? Very low. The paper goes on to show that this was because the carbohydrates that were consumed were mostly unrefined.
This evidence shows that a diet high in unrefined carbs combined with a high activity level avoids at least avoids two major health problems, obesity and diabetes. Whether such a diet is optimal for total health, including cancer risk and other issues, is subject to debate. But the idea that low-carb diets are necessary for avoiding obesity and diabetes is simply not true based on historical evidence.
Back in the 1960s, when "Man the Hunter" was published, researchers thought a Paleo diet was 65% plant food and 35% animal food. When Cordain did his analysis in 2000, the proportions were flipped to 35% plant food and 65% animal food. As science improves, there will likely be more refinement to the estimates of what hunter-gatherers ate.
But in the meantime, this research should be more of a guide than a bible. The idea is to find a diet that works and improves health, not create one that meets a theoretical standard. Basically, any combination of fruits, vegetables, and meats is superior to the modern crop of diets. The exact balance between these food groups is less important the overall concept. Individual experimentation is key in designing a personal diet after understanding the general Paleo framework.
