Raw complex carb options

[Busgrw]

Hi,

I had posted this in the exercise thread but seeing as it is actually related to food and not exercise itself I thought it best placed here so as to get the majority of members thoughts and help.

 I have been a long term believer in the Raw Paleo of eating but for me putting it into practice has been another thing altogether. I might go a couple of months on strict raw but then certain social events will always bring me off track and back to cooked foods and the odd piece of processed junk for a while before I get myself back on track.

The problem I have at the moment is that I am planning to go 100% raw again in January as I prepare for a 6 day endurance event in April and i'm playing around with what foods to eat. If I could flick a switch I would be fully keto-adapted and just eat fatty meat, organs etc and near 100% ZC but as my body is still running off glucose I need the carbs. The thing is I dont want to get the carbs off simple sugars like fruits etc so would rather get complex carbs in.

In a nutshell, any suggestions on what raw complex carbs I can eat? Is Sweet Potato doable? What carbs do others eat raw?

Thanks for the help.

G  Grin

[Josh]

I've been through this train of thought and asked the question and basically no.

Maybe you could accept sweet potato cooked for now?

You would probably need to eat it as far away as possible from raw meat as for me they really don't mix..made myself feel sick that way.

Maybe you could eat raw meat and fat and the upper limit of fruit you can take, say 100g carb from fruit a day, then one day of the week 'carb up' with a cooked tuber meal.

Good luck in the race.

[Busgrw]

I've been through this train of thought and asked the question and basically no.

Maybe you could accept sweet potato cooked for now?

You would probably need to eat it as far away as possible from raw meat as for me they really don't mix..made myself feel sick that way.

Maybe you could eat raw meat and fat and the upper limit of fruit you can take, say 100g carb from fruit a day, then one day of the week 'carb up' with a cooked tuber meal.

Good luck in the race.

Cheers Josh, appreciate the advice. I'm coming round to the same thinking and have been eating cooked potato as the main complex recently so will probably have to keep going that way or use sweet potato and some fruit like you say. Problem is I dont react too well to fruit so will try and get the extra carbs through other veg - carrots, parsnip etc. Nutrition during the race will be a whole different thing and will need to think that one through eventually.

Another idea I have is to just train zero carb as I can usually go a few days before all the gylcogen is used up. Then once my body is crying out for carbs I could carb up with cooked tuber/ raw veg until i've replenished. Hmmm. I'll keep thinking.

Ta

[Iguana]

Maybe you could accept sweet potato cooked for now?

Why cook it? They are very tasty raw, at least the pink ones.

Another idea I have is to just train zero carb as I can usually go a few days before all the gylcogen is used up. Then once my body is crying out for carbs I could carb up with cooked tuber/ raw veg until i've replenished. Hmmm. I'll keep thinking.

Funny how both of you see nutrition on a purely technical side, as if it was just like an engineering matter for things we conceive  and more or less master! Life is much more complex than anything we manufacture with the best of our very limited knowledge and we will never be able to know what exactly happen in the living cells for all the billions of different molecular structures living organisms deal with.

Cheers
Francois

[Busgrw]

Hi Francois,

Thanks for your comments. I've read a good few of your posts and very much appreciate sharing your thoughts.

Why cook it? They are very tasty raw, at least the pink ones.

Maybe I wont then. If they can be eaten raw then i'll try them out 

Funny how both of you see nutrition on a purely technical side, as if it was just like an engineering matter for things we conceive  and more or less master! Life is much more complex than anything we manufacture with the best of our very limited knowledge and we will never be able to know what exactly happen in the living cells for all the billions of different molecular structures living organisms deal with.

How do you see nutrition then? I didn't see myself approaching it techincally, just trying to make sense out of my body and what it needs by listening to it.

[ForTheHunt]

Why cook it? They are very tasty raw, at least the pink ones.

Funny how both of you see nutrition on a purely technical side, as if it was just like an engineering matter for things we conceive  and more or less master! Life is much more complex than anything we manufacture with the best of our very limited knowledge and we will never be able to know what exactly happen in the living cells for all the billions of different molecular structures living organisms deal with.

Cheers
Francois

Because they contain loads of inhibitors and are very tough to digest raw. That's why.

And as far as OP's questions. If you want raw complex carbs, then sprouted beans and grains are your best option. Although I for one don't like it. I cook my 'taters and it gives my loads of energy.

And if we weren't 'supposed' to eat cooked starches, why would our saliva produce amylase?

[TylerDurden]

And if we weren't 'supposed' to eat cooked starches, why would our saliva produce amylase?

  Perhaps we were meant to digest small amounts of raw, not cooked, starches?

[Busgrw]

Because they contain loads of inhibitors and are very tough to digest raw. That's why.

And as far as OP's questions. If you want raw complex carbs, then sprouted beans and grains are your best option. Although I for one don't like it. I cook my 'taters and it gives my loads of energy.

And if we weren't 'supposed' to eat cooked starches, why would our saliva produce amylase?

Not keen on my raw grains or sprouted beans either so will pass on that one. Good point on our saliva producing amylase FTH. Will have to look into that one more as i've never really looked into the detail behind our digestion and what enzymes we produce.

Perhaps we were meant to digest small amounts of raw, not cooked, starches?

Another interesting thought and it annoys me that we cant 100% know the answer as it would make live soooo much easier 

Oh well, my plan is to eat raw on everything except when cooking up my tatties like FTH mentioned above. This way I can hopefully enjoy my raw while avoiding the simple sugar spikes that raw fruit etc gives me. I'll stay this way until after the event then focus on going 100% raw ZC/ VLC.

Thanks

[Iguana]

Hi Francois,

Thanks for your comments. I've read a good few of your posts and very much appreciate sharing your thoughts.

How do you see nutrition then? I didn't see myself approaching it techincally, just trying to make sense out of my body and what it needs by listening to it.

Thanks, glad you’ve read a good few of my posts!

I see nutrition just as our ancestors saw it before they mastered the fire, before the had any knowledge about the basic constituents of food, biochemistry and biology. They didn’t know and didn’t care about weighting their food, about simple and complex carbs, fibers, fats and proteins ratios, keto-adaptation and so on. Like all the animals, they just ate whatever good smelling and tasty stuff they  found - also in part knowing how to find the good food by learning from their parents and others members of their tribe.

Because they contain loads of inhibitors and are very tough to digest raw. That's why.

I eat sweet potatoes quite often and never had the slightest problem to digest it.

[Busgrw]

Thanks, glad you’ve read a good few of my posts!

I see nutrition just as our ancestors saw it before they mastered the fire, before the had any knowledge about the basic constituents of food, biochemistry and biology. They didn’t know and didn’t care about weighting their food, about simple and complex carbs, fibers, fats and proteins ratios, keto-adaptation and so on. Like all the animals, they just ate whatever good smelling and tasty stuff they  found - also in part knowing how to find the good food by learning from their parents and others members of their tribe.

I eat sweet potatoes quite often and never had the slightest problem to digest it.

Francois, thanks again for replying. I 100% agree with your views on nutrition and how one should approach nutrition as our ancestors did but no-one really knows what exactly they had available to them. Yes they were finding good foods but was it predominately meat or tubers or fruit etc or is this what you are trying to say - that it doesn't matter what raw you eat really as long as it is RAW and edible (and tasty) then it should be good for you?

[yuli]

... that it doesn't matter what raw you eat really as long as it is RAW and edible (and tasty) then it should be good for you?

Usually but not always, thee are some slightly poisonous and very deadly plants there that seem edible and even tasty. There has even cases of animals overdosing and becoming ill on certain plants, even wild animals.

[Iguana]

Francois, thanks again for replying. I 100% agree with your views on nutrition and how one should approach nutrition as our ancestors did but no-one really knows what exactly they had available to them. Yes they were finding good foods but was it predominately meat or tubers or fruit etc or is this what you are trying to say - that it doesn't matter what raw you eat really as long as it is RAW and edible (and tasty) then it should be good for you?

Yes, roughly that, but unprocessed and not neolithic such as milk and grain, and of course, not modern such as chocolate and pastry. The art of cooking and spicing just distorts the whole interaction between  the animals (humans included) and their food so that the equation on which all the animals have based there nutrition for billions of years:

Good = good

(meaning what smells and tastes good is good for the animal’s health)

became corrupted:

Good = perhaps bad

(which means something can be tasty but bad for the health)

With cooked, mixed and processed food, the only alternative becomes to try to resort to science and analytical knowledge to know what to eat and how much. This is an inextricable process and even the best expert wildly disagree because apprehending the whole picture of the almost infinitely complex biochemical reactions between the various animal organisms and their nutrients is ways beyond the capabilities of our science and knowledge. Nevertheless, all the nutritionists foolishly try to do exactly that.

But if we place ourselves in a pre-fire Paleolithic nutritional situation by excluding all Neolithic, cooked, processed, mixed and seasoned stuff, we can try to rely on our instinct to know what and how much to eat… and see what happens. Following GCB and others who have experimented it since the 60’s, I’ve tried it also from January 1987 on and I saw that the instinctive regulation works fine.

Good night!
Francois 

[Iguana]

Usually but not always, thee are some slightly poisonous and very deadly plants there that seem edible and even tasty. There has even cases of animals overdosing and becoming ill on certain plants, even wild animals.

Yes, but those cases are extremely rare. It's the exceptions that prove the rule! And in almost all cases it's due to the fact that the animal's environment has been somehow disturbed, transformed or confined by man.

[ForTheHunt]

Thanks, glad you’ve read a good few of my posts!

I see nutrition just as our ancestors saw it before they mastered the fire, before the had any knowledge about the basic constituents of food, biochemistry and biology. They didn’t know and didn’t care about weighting their food, about simple and complex carbs, fibers, fats and proteins ratios, keto-adaptation and so on. Like all the animals, they just ate whatever good smelling and tasty stuff they  found - also in part knowing how to find the good food by learning from their parents and others members of their tribe.

I eat sweet potatoes quite often and never had the slightest problem to digest it.

Sure, if you're eating a small snack of sweet potatoes you wont feel much.

But I eat around 3-4 large sweet potatoes before I go training. I've tried doing that raw many times and my workouts are always a mess. Also sweet potatoes contain protein digestion inhibitors so it will hurt my weight gains.

[PaleoPhil]

  Perhaps we were meant to digest small amounts of raw, not cooked, starches?

It would be useful to have more info on the starches that were eaten raw by hominins before cooking was developed, then people might not jump so readily to the conclusion that we are designed to eat cooked tubers because we have salivary amylase. I think this is one of the crucial unanswered questions re: raw Paleo.

[miles]

On a Ray Mears show he brings a plant expert with him who's never really been anywhere before. Ray mears drops him off in some area with loads of plants and he finds so many kinds of plants that are edible raw, I guess most wouldn't have starch though... In a video I watched of the aborigines they had 2 yams, one was edible raw.

Don't some fruits and nuts have starch in too?

[Hannibal]

But I eat around 3-4 large sweet potatoes before I go training. I've tried doing that raw many times and my workouts are always a mess.

Usually I don't eat anything before the training and everything is very OK.

[Iguana]

Sure, if you're eating a small snack of sweet potatoes you wont feel much.

But I eat around 3-4 large sweet potatoes before I go training. I've tried doing that raw many times and my workouts are always a mess. Also sweet potatoes contain protein digestion inhibitors so it will hurt my weight gains.

Why do you eat before training? Digestion takes some energy which become unavailable to muscular efforts. Many animals rest and even sleep during digestion. If you eat and go biking straight after, you can't go neither fast nor very far. On the contrary, if I go biking with an empty stomach, it's fine: sometimes I could go for the whole day without eating anything. Very hungry at the return home, though!

I eat sometimes  2 or perhaps 3 maximum large sweet potatoes, but then I feel it's enough and I can't eat more. Do you eat them seasoned, mixed or just plain, without cross-eating with something else?

Francois

[Josh]

If you do very hard training, you will hit a wall unless you're very fat adapted. I don't see any way around that. Either you're fully adapted to fat and can get enough energy from that or you have to eat carbs. The energy has to come from somewhere.

[PaleoPhil]

On a Ray Mears show he brings a plant expert with him who's never really been anywhere before. Ray mears drops him off in some area with loads of plants and he finds so many kinds of plants that are edible raw, I guess most wouldn't have starch though... In a video I watched of the aborigines they had 2 yams, one was edible raw.

Yes, I saw that video too. Here it is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwklPPEDbWM&feature=channel
Starting at 2:14 He says that the goodfellow (aka long yam, aka Garrbarda, aka Dioscorea transversa), a traditional food of Australian aborigines, "can be eaten raw." I wonder which African yams that were available during the Stone Age were edible raw?

Don't some fruits and nuts have starch in too?

Yes, but when I looked into this the ones I checked at Nutritiondata didn't have a lot, as I recall. I wonder how much starch there is in the mongongo nut?

Here is some more of what I have found regarding starches in the diet of the ancestors of humans:

"Early Humans Skipped Fruit, Went For Nuts" [and roots, insects and meat]
By Jennifer Viegas
Mon Nov 9, 2009 05:20 AM ET
http://news.discovery.com/human/human-ancestor-diet-nuts.html

Our human ancestors did not eat much fruit, but instead consumed a lot of root vegetables, nuts, insects and some meat, according to a new study.

The findings may help to explain how all humans emerged in the first place, the authors believe.

Early hominid ancestors may have left the trees to take advantage of ground-level foods, a behavioral shift that could have resulted in two of the major defining characteristics of humans: unique teeth and walking on two legs, a mode of locomotion known as bipedalism that is extremely rare elsewhere in the animal kingdom.

....

Based on actual tooth finds, Shimizu produced sophisticated computer models showing multiple external and internal details of the teeth. One determination was immediately clear: Unlike chimpanzees, which are fruit specialists, the hominid couldn't have been much of a fruit-lover.

"Soft fleshy fruits tend to be acidic and do not require high bite forces to be broken down," explained Macho. "The enamel microstructure of A. anamensis indicates that their teeth were not well equipped to cope with acid erosion, but were well adapted to masticate an abrasive and hard diet."

The researchers therefore believe this early human ate nuts, root vegetables, insects -- such as termites -- and some meat. While they think certain flowering plants known as sedges might have been in the diet, Lucy and her relatives were not properly equipped for frequent leaf-chewing.

....

Kimematic parameters inferred from enamel microstruture: new insights into the diet of Australopithecus anamensis
by Gabriele Macho and Daisuke Shimizu
Received 10 March 2009
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhevol.2009.07.004


Analysis of Early Hominins
anthro.palomar.edu/hominid/australo_2.htm

"John Novembre et.al. reported in the October 1, 2007 issue of Nature Genetics that human saliva has significantly more of the enzyme amylase compared to chimpanzees.  Amylase breaks down starches into glucose which can be readily used by the cells of the body.  With more amylase, humans get more useable calories from starchy vegetable foods such as tubers, corms, and bulbs.  The authors suggest that this would have been a distinct advantage for early humans because these foods are readily available.  They believe that natural selection favored additional copies of the gene responsible for amylase production (AMY1) in our early hominin ancestors but not in apes."

Adaptive drool in the gene pool
John Novembre1, Jonathan K Pritchard1 & Graham Coop1
Nature Genetics 39, 1188 - 1190 (2007)
doi:10.1038/ng1007-1188
http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v39/n10/full/ng1007-1188.html

[Hannibal]

If you do very hard training

It depends on what do you mean by that, precisely.

Either you're fully adapted to fat and can get enough energy from that or you have to eat carbs. The energy has to come from somewhere.

That's true.
I eat enough the previous day. It suffices for 1,5-hour training without any problems.
2 months ago I made 500 hindu squats in a row in the morning and then I rode a bike (about 50 km), quite intensely, then half an hour of sun bathing and then a first meal at home.
I eat enough carbs so that muscle glycogen would not be competely depleted.
I'm also fat adapted very well.

[Iguana]

I stopped biking at 21 when I got my first car and I started biking again at 52. I didn't have much training anymore but I went twice around Neuchâtel lake (110 km trip) without having eaten anything those days, just drinking plain water.

[Nation]

Paleophil, very informative post. Thank you!

[PaleoPhil]

You're welcome, Nation. Early on in the [cooked] Paleo movement the tilt was toward fruits, veggies and "lean meats". Recently, the tilt [in the cooked Paleo movement] has been more toward meats with fats and organs and roots, with lots of blog posts and articles about tubers in particular. Since raw roots are not well favored these days, the focus tends to fall to cooked tubers, but us raw Paleos would be more interested in roots that are edible raw, so it's a shame that little is discussed or researched about those. Presumably humans would be better adapted to digesting tubers that are edible raw rather than those that require cooking, but the ones that require cooking have come to dominate agriculture.

[TylerDurden]

I don't agree that tubers are the next big thing in the palaeodiet movement. Tubers are really only an obsession of Wrangham's  that's all.