Ray Peat: The importance of sugar and the dangers of fat (stress) metabolism

[hotfrog]

I have found carbon dioxide is the most important gas in the human body next to oxygen and it's been known for a long time that the MORE carbon dioxide in the cells, the more oxygen REACHES the cells. Peat is very accurate on this. See the Bohr Effect, and see Buteyko method, and you'll start putting the pieces together.

Peat promotes bag breathing which is a very simple way to increase CO2 levels and therefore oxygen levels. There are also things that will inhibit the destruction of CO2 and therefore raise CO2 levels in the body. Acetazolamide is one, and thiamine (vitamin B1) is another (fully natural and easy to use, 500mg to 1500mg per day over a few weeks is quite effective.)

 

[Gaby]

Anyway, I got the book to find more information about it.

I'm not sure if I'm happy to read this book ("Eat Wheat: A Scientific and Clinically-Proven Approach to Safely Bringing Wheat and Dairy Back Into Your Diet" by John Douillard). He has hundreds of references and he is basically saying that from an evolutionary point of view, the body should be more able to digest wheat than meat.

He points to digestive problems, an unhealthy lymphatic system, environmental toxicity and processed foods as the main culprits of gluten intolerance. He recommends slippery elm tea, marshmallow root tea, turmeric and other herbs to improve digestion.

He also recommends apple cider vinegar. I decided to try around 3 tablespoons along my zinc supplement. For the first time zinc didn't gave me a stomach ache. I knew that lack of stomach acidity has been a problem for some time now, but now I know it can be handled inexpensively. HCl and digestive enzymes never eased my zinc intolerance. But a shot of apple cider vinegar did it.

I don't know what to make of the book. I only just started reading it, but it seems to rewrite a lot of the research shared in this forum. It would be good if more people could read it to share views and see if the references stand to scrutiny.

 

[Laura]

I don't know what to make of the book. I only just started reading it, but it seems to rewrite a lot of the research shared in this forum. It would be good if more people could read it to share views and see if the references stand to scrutiny.

Well, we all know that when Big Pharma and Big Agra are threatened, they have the ways and means to fight back with tons of "studies." One would have to take every single study and take it apart and even then, you can't be sure because we have witnessed SO MUCH corrupt science. SOTT has dozens of articles about that archived.

The bottom line here is that we can clearly see an AGENDA driving this: that should make literally every word suspect.

 

[Keyhole]

Anyway, I got the book to find more information about it.

I'm not sure if I'm happy to read this book ("Eat Wheat: A Scientific and Clinically-Proven Approach to Safely Bringing Wheat and Dairy Back Into Your Diet" by John Douillard). He has hundreds of references and he is basically saying that from an evolutionary point of view, the body should be more able to digest wheat than meat.

He points to digestive problems, an unhealthy lymphatic system, environmental toxicity and processed foods as the main culprits of gluten intolerance. He recommends slippery elm tea, marshmallow root tea, turmeric and other herbs to improve digestion.

He also recommends apple cider vinegar. I decided to try around 3 tablespoons along my zinc supplement. For the first time zinc didn't gave me a stomach ache. I knew that lack of stomach acidity has been a problem for some time now, but now I know it can be handled inexpensively. HCl and digestive enzymes never eased my zinc intolerance. But a shot of apple cider vinegar did it.

I don't know what to make of the book. I only just started reading it, but it seems to rewrite a lot of the research shared in this forum. It would be good if more people could read it to share views and see if the references stand to scrutiny.

Yeah apple cider vinegar always works for me too, yet no amount of enzymes or HCL ever could do the job. Still doesn't address the original issue of having low stomach acid in the first place, but is a convenient temporary fix. I will buy the book, but not sure when I will manage to read it though since I am busy with revision and assignments etc and have already have a couple I am still reading.

On the wheat topic, I can imagine that this guy actually has a point. I doesn't make sense to me that a natural food that we have been consuming for thousands of years is to blame for all of man's ills. If gluten was really all that bad, then humanity might not have made it as far as this. I tend to think that if a person has a well-functioning system, then they can consume most foods (note: this means real FOOD, not artificially processed trash we have nowadays like veg oils etc) without becoming chronically ill. If the mechanics are working correctly, then it should theoretically be able to deal with naturally occurring proteins like casein and gluten. It is a systems issue though. That's why the Functional approach is useful, because instead of externalising the issue, it is more focused on correcting the imbalances in the system.

Personally, I think that circadian disruption, EMF and artificial light, excess PUFA, environmental toxicity, fake foods, and one's emotional state ( and how all of these factors influence each individual at a mitochondrial and genetic level ) are the major determinants in staying healthy. It seems futile to blame a food we've been eating for thousands of years. The issue seems bigger than food.

 

[hlat]

I doesn't make sense to me that a natural food that we have been consuming for thousands of years is to blame for all of man's ills.
...
It seems futile to blame a food we've been eating for thousands of years. The issue seems bigger than food.

I think it would be logical to say that modern wheat created by the Rockefeller Foundation and Norman Borlaug and others in the 1950s and 1960s is significantly different than predesessor wheat. After genetic backcrossing (crossing a hybrid and subsequent generations with a recurrent parent), dwarfing, and other manipulation, I would say that modern wheat is not a natural food.

 

[Laura]

One thing to consider: I read a LOT of archaeological site reports and one thing that is notable is that the archaeologists can always tell the hunters from the agriculturalists by the state of their health as read from bones etc. It was noted very early by archaeologists/paleontologists that agriculture brought tooth decay, many diseases, and shortening of the lifespan. So I don't think I would suggest that it is in anyway good for anybody when it is so notable in the historical record how bad it was.

Agriculture also brought with it storage of resources and thus control of them and thus War for control.

https://www.sott.net/article/144687-Origins-of-Agriculture-Did-Civilization-Arise-to-Deliver-a-Fix

...agriculture, far from being a natural and upward step, in fact led commonly to a lower quality of life.

Hunter-gatherers typically do less work for the same amount of food, are healthier, and are less prone to famine than primitive farmers (Lee & DeVore 1968, Cohen 1977, 1989).

A biological assessment of what has been called the puzzle of agriculture might phrase it in simple ethological terms: why was this behaviour (agriculture) reinforced (and hence selected for) if it was not offering adaptive rewards surpassing those accruing to hunter-gathering or foraging economies?...

Recent discoveries of potentially psychoactive substances in certain agricultural products - cereals and milk - suggest an additional perspective on the adoption of agriculture and the behavioral changes ('civilisation') that followed it. In this paper we review the evidence for the drug-like properties of these foods, and then show how they can help to solve the biological puzzle just described .

https://www.sott.net/article/224119-Jerichos-Tower-Worlds-first-skyscraper-sought-to-intimidate-masses-promote-agriculture

https://www.sott.net/article/224120-Introduction-of-the-Agriculture-Northern-hunters-slowed-down-advance-of-Neolithic-farmers

https://www.sott.net/article/228452-Agriculture-The-Worst-Mistake-In-The-History-Of-The-Human-Race

Now archaeology is demolishing another sacred belief: that human history over the past million years has been a long tale of progress. In particular, recent discoveries suggest that the adoption of agriculture, supposedly our most decisive step toward a better life, was in many ways a catastrophe from which we have never recovered. With agriculture came the gross social and sexual inequality, the disease and despotism, that curse our existence. ...

Usually the only human remains available for study are skeletons, but they permit a surprising number of deductions. To begin with, a skeleton reveals its owner's sex, weight, and approximate age. In the few cases where there are many skeletons, one can construct mortality tables like the ones life insurance companies use to calculate expected life span and risk of death at any given age. Paleopathologists can also calculate growth rates by measuring bones of people of different ages, examine teeth for enamel defects (signs of childhood malnutrition), and recognize scars left on bones by anemia, tuberculosis, leprosy, and other diseases.

One straightforward example of what paleopathologists have learned from skeletons concerns historical changes in height. Skeletons from Greece and Turkey show that the average height of hunter-gatherers toward the end of the ice ages was a generous 5'9" for men, 5'5" for women. With the adoption of agriculture, height crashed, and by 3000 B.C. had reached a low of 5'3" for men ,5' for women. By classical times heights were very slowly on the rise again, but modern Greeks and Turks have still not regained the average height of their distant ancestors.

Another example of paleopathology at work is the study of Indian skeletons from burial mounds in the lllinois and Ohio river valleys. At Dickson Mounds, located near the confluence of the Spoon and lllinois rivers, archaeologists have excavated some 800 skeletons that paint a picture of the health changes that occurred when a hunter-gatherer culture gave way to intensive maize farming around A.D. 1150. Studies by George Armelagos and his colleagues then at the University of Massachusetts show these early farmers paid a price for their new-found livelihood. ...

Besides malnutrition, starvation, and epidemic diseases, farming helped bring another curse upon humanity: deep class divisions. Hunter-gatherers have little or no stored food, and no concentrated food sources, like an orchard or a herd of cows: they live off the wild plants and animals they obtain each day. Therefore, there can be no kings, no class of social parasites who grow fat on food seized from others. Only in a farming population could a healthy, nonproducing elite set itself above the disease-ridden masses. Skeletons from Greek tombs at Mycenae c.1500 B.C. suggest that royals enjoyed a better diet than commoners, since the royal skeletons were two or three inches taller and had better teeth (on average, one instead of six cavities or missing teeth). ...

Thus with the advent of agriculture an elite became better off but most people became worse off. Instead of swallowing the progressivist party line that we chose agriculture because it was good for us, we must ask how we got trapped by it despite its pitfalls. One answer boils down to the adage "Might makes right." Farming could support many more people than hunting, albeit with a poorer quality of life. (Population densities of hunter gatherers are rarely over one person per ten square miles, while farmers average 100 time that.) ...

Hunter-gatherers practiced the most successful and longest lasting lifestyle in human history. In contrast, we're still struggling with the mess into which agriculture has tumbled us, and it's unclear whether we can solve it. Suppose that an archaeologist who had visited us from outer space where trying to explain human history to his fellow spacelings. He might illustrate the results of his digs by a twenty-four hour clock on which one hour represents 100,000 years of real past time. It the history of the human race began at midnight, then we would now be almost at the end of our first day.

We lived as hunter-gatherers for nearly the whole of that day,from midnight through dawn, noon, and sunset. Finally, at 11:54 p.m., we adopted agriculture.

https://www.sott.net/article/229955-Evidence-Shows-the-Advent-of-Agriculture-was-Bad-News-for-our-Health

It seems that the fossil record shows our ancestors 200,000 years ago to be about 10 per cent bigger and taller than we are now. And 20,000-30,000 years ago, our ancestors had brains about 10 per cent bigger than ours are now too.

A shrinking in the size of our bodies and brains happened about 10,000 years ago. What was it that caused this? The answer is our transition from hunter-gathering to a more farming-based existence.

https://www.sott.net/article/229880-The-Devastating-Effects-of-Agriculture-We-re-Getting-Shorter-NOT-Taller-and-Our-Brains-are-Shrinking-So-is-Farming-to-Blame

People have got shorter and our brains have shrunk - and scientists believe farming could be to blame.

Modern humans are about 10 percent smaller and shorter than our hunter-gatherer ancestors, scientists have found, and our brains have fallen in size by the same proportion.

Most of that decline in physical size has occurred since the advent of farming about 10,000 years ago. ...

Although calories were abundant, the vitamins and minerals essential to growth - and which are only gained through a varied diet - may have become less common in people's diets. ...

According to Dr Marta Lahr, co-director of Cambridge University's Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies, when human beings first emerged, around 200,000 years ago, they were tall and muscular.

The earliest human remains yet discovered date back to this time, and were found in Ethiopia.

According to Dr Lahr, these people had cranial features similar to modern humans, but were significantly larger and more robust.

Human fossil evidence over the next 190,000 years is patchy and incomplete, but it shows that humans remained tall and robust even as human culture began to emerge, as shown by the appearance of tools, weapons, needles and even musical instruments.

This size was maintained until about 10,000 years ago - the time of the advent of farming - when many populations began to show reductions in stature - and brain size.

https://www.sott.net/article/244644-How-European-Farmers-Spread-Agriculture-Across-Continent

https://www.sott.net/article/245086-Agriculture-Expanded-as-Farmers-Pressed-North-Not-Because-Hunter-gatherers-Adopted-the-Practice

https://www.sott.net/article/187533-Original-Fall-of-Eden-Agriculture-is-a-profoundly-unnatural-activity-and-the-worst-mistake-in-human-history

To illustrate the malign impact of agriculture, Dr Stock and one of his students, Anne Starling, examined a unique set of skeletons. All 9,000 are from the Nile Valley in Egypt, but they span an extraordinary historical range, from Neolithic hunter-gatherers through to 1500 BC.

The researchers were looking for signs of malnutrition, which are reflected in a person's teeth. Just as tree-rings can indicate the health and age of a tree, so a defect in the layers of enamel called linear enamel hypoplasia (LEH) can indicate whether a person has been ill, or deprived of food for several months.

What Dr Stock and Ms Starling discovered was that 40 per cent of hunter-gatherers who lived 13,000 years ago had LEH. Fast-forward 1,000 years, to when the Egyptians had become farmers, and the figure rose dramatically, to 70 per cent. Originally, the hunter-gatherers were about 5ft 8in, with robust skeletons. Yet once farming began, the average height decreased by four inches. Dr Stock showed me the bones of a man who lived 7,000 years ago, which are so thin and delicate they look as if they might snap.

What caused this reduction in height? One possibility is disease. A paper that Dr Stock is publishing with his Cambridge colleague Dr Andrea Migliano, in a forthcoming issue of Current Anthropology, demonstrates the link: the pair looked at pygmy skeletons from the Andaman Islands, whose body size shrank even more dramatically when they encountered Western colonialists, who brought with them diseases like influenza and syphilis. Hostile tribes who kept their distance from the newcomers actually grew taller during this period.

https://www.sott.net/article/266286-Brush-with-a-comet-swarm-12k-years-ago-gave-rise-to-agriculture-based-civilization

https://www.sott.net/article/289202-Agriculture-began-the-gradual-degradation-of-the-human-species-and-nearly-destroyed-ancient-civilization

https://www.sott.net/article/290483-New-study-reveals-agriculture-has-weakened-human-bones

The difference in bone structure was first noticed by Habiba Chirchir and her fellow researchers at the at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, who were analyzing bones of both primates and humans. Chirchir and her colleagues noticed that the ends of human bones, the portions near joints made of what's called trabecular bone, were less dense and almost spongelike when compared to primate bones.

Chirchir initially estimated that humans developed less weighty bones when they first made their exodus out of Africa. Lighter, less dense bones would make traveling easier, she hypothesized. But further research showed that less hardy bone ends didn't arrive until 12,000 years ago -- much later than she and her colleagues anticipated.

https://www.sott.net/article/320359-Agriculture-and-social-control-Tracing-the-origins-of-violent-and-dysfunctional-human-behavior

From the evolution of homo sapiens until the Neolithic revolution, human beings lived as hunter-gatherers following the seasonal round. During this long period, virtually all activities from hunting and gathering food to a multiplicity of social and cultural activities were simply manifestations of a felt desire to do something functional, meaningful and enjoyable. While some aspects of socialization during this period were undoubtedly designed to control individual behaviour towards what was seen as beneficial for the group, the damage from this was limited for society as a whole (if not for the individual).

However, with the discovery that seeds could be collected, stored, transported, planted and nurtured, settlement became possible. And activities of a different nature, which we now call 'farming', emerged. ....

However, while the Neolithic revolution occurred spontaneously in several parts of the world, some of the Neolithic societies that emerged in Asia, Europe, Central America and South America resorted to increasing degrees of social control in order to achieve a variety of social and economic outcomes, including increased efficiency in food production. Civilizations, which emerged just over five thousand years ago and were characterized by towns or cities, efficient food production allowing a large minority of the community to be engaged in more specialized activities, a centralized bureaucracy and the practice of skilled warfare, were then built on this higher degree of social control.

So how was this social control achieved? The same way that social control is achieved today: by terrorizing children into obedience. If you want control it is better to start when the individual is very young.

And finally, my own observation from a couple of years of reviewing the conditions surrounding the Plague of Justinian and the complete collapse of the Roman Empire and deaths of about 90% of the population is this: apparently, those whose diet was primarily meat based had a greater chance of surviving the plague.

 

[Yas]

Precisely, Laura. Moreover, what about the studies done where they test the intestine reactions to gluten and they've found out that it damages both the healthy and the unhealthy, both the celiac and the person that doesn't have an intolerance? Sayer Ji had had written about this long ago, but I think that other similar studies have been made since then: The Dark Side of Wheat - New Perspectives on Celiac Disease and Wheat Intolerance

I'm not saying that many people may be perfectly well with gluten until they become old and develop some disease, and some may even be very well until an advanced age. It seems that, if gluten damages the intestines no matter how healthy you are, the difference is in the persons ability to detoxify and heal fast enough, and many people have difficulty with detoxifying and healing.

Take the MTHFR information, for example, and the huge percentage of people that have some sort of mutation or polymorphism in that pathway, and how that affects the ability to detoxify and heal.

Also, it depends on the reason people decide to do a diet. Of course, the primary reason might be to be healthy, to heal, etc. But some people also consider gluten to be bad because of its opium-like proteins and what they can do to our brains. Again, some people may be able to handle these proteins better than others, but I personally rather stay on the safe side of not consuming something that can alter my consciousness somehow. Yet, that doesn't mean that I'll be extremely rigid and never ever eat something that has gluten in it, but I rather not turn it into a habit.

Personally, I think that circadian disruption, EMF and artificial light, excess PUFA, environmental toxicity, fake foods, and one's emotional state ( and how all of these factors influence each individual at a mitochondrial and genetic level ) are the major determinants in staying healthy. It seems futile to blame a food we've been eating for thousands of years. The issue seems bigger than food.

Yes, the issue is bigger than just food. But, is it possible to be absolutely free of any of these disrupting factors? I mean, if you live in a city you will be bombarded by EMF, artificial light, environmental toxicity, stress, etc., most of the time. Isn't that the normal condition of people now? So, provided that you can't just move and live a perfect live in the countryside, isn't it better to avoid foods that promote inflammation and that can be problematic? My idea is that the system might be overwhelmed by the factors that you mentioned and others, so why not help it a bit and avoid things that can make it harder to detoxify and heal?

 

[nicklebleu]

I remember one distinct experience I had a few years ago, when I visited a museum in Germany. There was a wooden coffin on display and the sign said "adult coffin from the 17th century". I thought that this was a mistake (having mixed up adult and children, as the coffin was only a bit longer than a meter) and asked one of the curators who happened to work on another display about that. He told me that this wasn't a mistake, but that people in the late middle ages were noticeably smaller, of average height of around 140cm.

I've never forgotten this - I was simply amazed!

So while there might be some truth about gluten not being overly toxic to the body, IF you take the old varieties with a significantly lower gluten content (which nowadays are pretty much unavailable anymore), I'm not going to jump back onto this bandwagon, as going off gluten has been the single most beneficial change in my diet, by far!

 

[Gaby]

One thing to consider: I read a LOT of archaeological site reports and one thing that is notable is that the archaeologists can always tell the hunters from the agriculturalists by the state of their health as read from bones etc. It was noted very early by archaeologists/paleontologists that agriculture brought tooth decay, many diseases, and shortening of the lifespan. So I don't think I would suggest that it is in anyway good for anybody when it is so notable in the historical record how bad it was. [...]

And finally, my own observation from a couple of years of reviewing the conditions surrounding the Plague of Justinian and the complete collapse of the Roman Empire and deaths of about 90% of the population is this: apparently, those whose diet was primarily meat based had a greater chance of surviving the plague.

As far as I can see, people on health research are only focusing on evolutionary studies about this and that. What is sorely missing is the wider perspective which includes the archaeological "medical" record and how people faired with their diet and lifestyle to the various diseases that plagued mankind throughout history.

I remember distinctively reading about the archaelogical record. So I revised all my health material in search for the references. I came empty handed. Later I realized that I didn't read it in any health book. I read it on Secret History years ago! Yes, there are indirect references in the health research, but nothing stated as clearly as above. ADDED: There is a ton of material on SOTT, still, you'll be surprised how little this is mentioned in health books in general.

 

[Laura]

I remember distinctively reading about the archaelogical record. So I revised all my health material in search for the references. I came empty handed. Later I realized that I didn't read it in any health book. I read it on Secret History years ago! Yes, there are indirect references in the health research, but nothing stated as clearly as above. ADDED: There is a ton of material on SOTT, still, you'll be surprised how little this is mentioned in health books in general.

Yup. Not in health books but WELL known to archaeologists who remark on it all the time.

It just occurred to me that this evidence suggests strongly that even the ancient varieties of grains weren't good for anybody.

 

[shellycheval]

Gaby

I don't know what to make of the book. I only just started reading it, but it seems to rewrite a lot of the research shared in this forum. It would be good if more people could read it to share views and see if the references stand to scrutiny.

Laura
Well, we all know that when Big Pharma and Big Agra are threatened, they have the ways and means to fight back with tons of "studies." One would have to take every single study and take it apart and even then, you can't be sure because we have witnessed SO MUCH corrupt science. SOTT has dozens of articles about that archived.

The bottom line here is that we can clearly see an AGENDA driving this: that should make literally every word suspect.

Laura
One thing to consider: I read a LOT of archaeological site reports and one thing that is notable is that the archaeologists can always tell the hunters from the agriculturalists by the state of their health as read from bones etc. It was noted very early by archaeologists/paleontologists that agriculture brought tooth decay, many diseases, and shortening of the lifespan. So I don't think I would suggest that it is in anyway good for anybody when it is so notable in the historical record how bad it was. . . .

I too studied archaeology at university and knew this FACT years before I ever found SOTT and Laura’s work. The record shows that consistently all over the world when humans turn to a predominately grain based diet their health and stature deteriorate.

Laura
Yup. Not in health books but WELL known to archaeologists who remark on it all the time.
It just occurred to me that this evidence suggests strongly that even the ancient varieties of grains weren't good for anybody.

Indeed it does.

Many people who become informed and can afford too are slowly waking up to this fact and changing to lower carb diet. But, the increasing change to a low carb high fat diet is hurting the PTB where it feels it the most: money—it is costing companies invested in carb production; and power—as people wake up from the high carb inflammation induced brain fog and see for themselves the changes for the better in their health in all ways; when they see that high fat low carbs diets promote better health, then they see they have been lied to and they lose credibility in the system that uses EVERYTHING in our environment to control us.

This is a Red Pill alert—remember the Matrix wants you back!

I don’t have to read the book to know that this is a very slick high-powered piece of propaganda being promoted to create doubt in what we KNOW to be healthy for most humans. Think about what we’ve learned about the evolution of the human brain and the shrinking digestive track to facilitate more fuel for brain function . . .

Clearly many people have adapted to survive on predominately plant / grain based diets, but that does not mean that it is best for optimal health.

There is a big difference between SURVIVING and THRIVING!

My personal experience shows this to be true and I am basing my diet decisions on my near miraculous health changes for the better from giving up wheat and dairy.

I am a carb junkie and although I maintain around 40-80 carbs a day as my norm, sometimes I give in and eat more. I almost never knowingly eat more than a speck of wheat, but I do sometimes eat more carbs than I normally do in the form of potatoes, a little rice, and sometimes I will binge and eat a couple of ounces of high fat chocolate and have some fruit. Even though I increase my carb/sugar intake in the form of real food and almost always avoid processed junk, I can feel the difference in energy reduction, inflammation, and weight gain, right away, so it is right back to lower carb for me. The crust and cheese on a pizza will kill me, but I can eat the pepperoni with no side effects!

I’m telling you all this to show that the effects of too much sugar are harmful to me and I will bet my farm, that eating more than a pound of sugar a year is harmful to most people! We have seen the truth here on SOTT and the Forum thanks to the work of Laura and Others—and it shows that sugar is bad!!! Don’t get suckered in to believing anything different—trust the facts of your own personal experience with high fat low carb and do what is right for you but beware.

 

[Cyre2067]

It just seems like a good propaganda piece from my perspective. We know sugar and carbohydrates are the sole fuel for a variety of cancers and that going keto can treat or cure some people. We've known for awhile that burning unsaturated fatty acids contributes to heart disease, so that's nothing new. We also know that many people are sensitive to carbs, including wheat, for a variety of reasons.

I've had a sneaking suspicion that celiac's and gluten sensitivity is a combination of factors, vaccines plus round-up contamination of agricultural products is a recipe for intestinal issues, and that only exacerbates the problem with antinutrients like lectin.

I try to remain open to new information, but when we've done research over years which has slowly and patiently created this picture, I find it very difficult to accept a bunch of 'science' which may or may not be paid shillery. As Laura mentioned earlier, academia is rife with bad science, junk science, and corporate influenced science. With the rising popularity of paleo and keto approaches, it only makes sense that they'd strike back with something of this sort.

I wouldn't get too invested in it and remember what we already learned.

 

[Chad]

[...]

It just occurred to me that this evidence suggests strongly that even the ancient varieties of grains weren't good for anybody.

On the bread issue, it seems long ago they were well aware that you had to ferment bread because without this processing it was difficult to digest. That and the fact that most wheat varieties commercially available are a far cry from their predecessors points to the fact that we consume different grains in a different way. Though i lean toward grains being the lesser of foods nutritionally, however it's processed, as per Laura's comments on the archaeological records, and i also benefited greatly from removing most grains from my diet and switching to fat burning.

There are other posts about fermented bread on the forum but here's one i posted with extracts from a writer in the 10th century to shed light on how they viewed it:

[...]

Writing from Baghdad in the 10th century, Ibn Sayyar al-Warraq, gives his thoughts on the best kinds of bread to eat:

Wheat bread agrees with almost everybody, particular varieties made with a generous amount of yeast and salt and allowed to fully ferment and bake well. Such breads are lighter and digest faster. Jizmazaj (thin bread with tamarisk seeds) and ruqaq (very thin bread) are by comparison less nourishing and digest much faster. Bread baked in malla (pit with hot ashes and stones), tabaq (large flat pan) and any other similar varieties that do not ferment or bake well are hard to digest and cause stomach aches. Only people used to strenuous labor can eat them more often.

That's just a snippet, but the whole article is very interesting; and when mentioning this to a friend from Romania who grew up in a small village, growing their own food and so on, he told me how his mother would always ferment the family loaf - nowadays though, she buys it unfermented from the local supermarket. The article also notes the rich used their bread as a makeshift plate which they may then feed to the dogs. As appears to be the case throughout history, the wealthy would feast on meat while the poor made do with broths and grains, osis.

 

[Keyhole]

Yes, the issue is bigger than just food. But, is it possible to be absolutely free of any of these disrupting factors? I mean, if you live in a city you will be bombarded by EMF, artificial light, environmental toxicity, stress, etc., most of the time. Isn't that the normal condition of people now? So, provided that you can't just move and live a perfect live in the countryside, isn't it better to avoid foods that promote inflammation and that can be problematic? My idea is that the system might be overwhelmed by the factors that you mentioned and others, so why not help it a bit and avoid things that can make it harder to detoxify and heal?

Yeah the above does seem like the most practical way to go about things. I certainly am not going to start consuming gluten, and neither would I recommend anyone else to do so. The onslaught we face these days requires that we be mindful of any potential offenders. Which comes back to the fact that most of the issues associated with gluten and dairy manifest as a secondary effect of deeper pathological conditions like diminished gut integrity. In another time way back in the past when people were not exposed to as many stressors, I don't think that some gluten on occasion would necessarily be problematic. Whether it be due to the glyphosate/pesticides, the genetic hybridisation for increased gluten content, the non-fermentation, or any other reason, gluten has the potential to wreak havoc on the system.

Whether gluten is actually responsible for initiating to problem in the first place is uncertain. Similar for dairy, and I find it really hard to get my head around the whole dairy issue. It is so massively packed full of nutrients, the amino acid profile of milk/cheese is pretty amazing, and people (especially Europeans) have been eating dairy for such a long time. I suspect that if the gut is healthy, a portion of people can thrive on dairy foods... and I will be honest - I hope I am one of those people!! :P

The archaeological data on agricultural societies is fascinating though, and is highly suggestive that we are generally not designed to consume high amounts of grains for any pro-longed period of time (as a primary dietary staple, anyway).

It just seems like a good propaganda piece from my perspective. We know sugar and carbohydrates are the sole fuel for a variety of cancers and that going keto can treat or cure some people. We've known for awhile that burning unsaturated fatty acids contributes to heart disease, so that's nothing new. We also know that many people are sensitive to carbs, including wheat, for a variety of reasons.

Not to divert from the topic too much, but it kinda relates back to the title of the threads.

Cancer cells revert back to the Warburg metabolism (glycolysis) and can only burn sugar in the cytosol because their mitochondria don't function anymore. In other words, they can no longer properly oxidise glucose via TCA and ETC, so they settle for aerobic glycolysis. The problem is not the sugar, the problem is the defective mitochondrial function. Simply depriving the body of dietary sugar doesn't necessarily have any effect on the cellular uptake of glucose, because if cancer cells want glucose --- they can induce the release of catabolic stress hormones to break down muscle tissue and provide adequate sugar via gluconeogenesis. Ketosis works on some occasions, but I am betting that this is not due to the "lack of glucose entering the cell" but actually more to do with some of the detoxification pathways which are upregulated etc.

If cancer was about sugar, then Gerson therapy would not have worked. But the guy's therapeutic diet was mostly sugar in the form of fructose, and his success rate was apparently immense. Similar to other cancer-treating diets that are not paleo, are high sugar, but alike have no grains etc.

 

[Laura]

Similar for dairy, and I find it really hard to get my head around the whole dairy issue. It is so massively packed full of nutrients, the amino acid profile of milk/cheese is pretty amazing, and people (especially Europeans) have been eating dairy for such a long time. I suspect that if the gut is healthy, a portion of people can thrive on dairy foods... and I will be honest - I hope I am one of those people!! :P

Keep in mind what animal milk is designed by nature to do: to grow a baby animal usually to a very big size pretty quick.

No other creature on earth continues to consume milk after weaning than humans - and they consume the products of other species. Kinda sick when you think about it.

Those people who can TOLERATE dairy do so by virtue of a genetic mutation. 75% of the population of the planet can't really digest casein. Think about it: a mutation.