Ray Peat podcast...interesting!

[Aaaaaa]

Yeah, PP, I love those TV shows where those chef guys journey to different countries and eat crazy stuff...like I'm sure they expect the viewers to be like "ewwwwwwwwwwwwwww!" when they're eating brains and fermented meat and bugs, but I'm all like "Oh, YUM, I wanna try some tooooo!!" haha :-P  Speaking of brains, I have my first lamb brain coming in the mail!  It costs $10 for a whole one--is that a decent deal?

Dorothy~
WOW thanks for that info about processed stuff!  Just one more reason I'm glad I never buy that kind of crap/food anymore!!!  I can't believe the things that pass as "food" these days...:-S

I will definitely be making my own OJ with my Champion juicer.  I've heard that the GreenStar ones are even better and get more juice out, but I think they're kinda pricey.  I just catch the pulp that comes out with my hand and put it through a couple more times LOL!

Yeah, the one thing that bothered me was Ray Peat's lack of emphasis on food quality, but on the other hand, he doesn't specifically reccomend low-quality food either.  It might be just a lack of knowledge on his part in that area of nutrition...you know how sometimes people are very either left brained or right brained?  He seems SUPER focused and knowledgeable about how the body works and hormones etc, but not so much about the spiritual, nourishing, traditional aspects of food.  So I use his research for the more technical side of things, you know?

That is also interesting about turbinado sugar.  I wasn't sure if it was actually raw or not, but that makes sense if its processed by a turbine...duh...turbinado LOL just made that connection! ;-)  I think I might actually have some in the cupboard from when I used to make kombucha (I just kept forgetting it and letting my scoby die...bad me!!!). 
I totally share your view on how the way your food was produced/where it came from has an effect on your body--if the animals were happy, and other things sustainable harvested etc, by people who acutally care about what they're doing, that good karma is going to be passed on!

[Dorothy]

I gave away my greenstar Sile. I don't know if they are different now - but back then it was a real pain to put together, take apart and clean and the darn expensive monster cracked!

Whereas just about everyone says - oh my champion - I've had that thing forever and it just never dies. That's the champion for ya.

When I make OJ in my Breville (I know, centrifugal - but oh so easy) I get almost no waste from the oranges. I think it's the centrifugal nature of the thing that makes that OJ taste so thick and yummy. I'm not sure it would come out the same in a "better" juicer because it would remove too much of what I'm trying to leave in - that white pithy part with all the bioflavanoids that help the vitamin c to be absorbed. It makes it stay more of a whole food. In a way - it's what's "bad" about the Breville that has become so "good" for making my juice not be so sugary, thin and separated and hence not as much to my usually whole food prefering self. 

And about Peat - yeah - taking the best parts of all that people have to offer is very wise of you.

[PaleoPhil]

It costs $10 for a whole one--is that a decent deal?

I don't know, sorry.

He seems SUPER focused and knowledgeable about how the body works and hormones etc, but not so much about the spiritual, nourishing, traditional aspects of food.  So I use his research for the more technical side of things, you know?

You might want to also check out Chris Kresser, Mat Lalonde, Robb Wolf and Stephan Guyenet for different opinions on the technical side of things.

Dorothy, good point about raw cane sugar, I don't know why Peat doesn't recommend that. Perhaps he's after just the sucrose, in a reductionist sort of way?

[Aaaaaa]

Oh yes, good suggestions!  I do follow all those other people that you mentioned as well!

[HIT_it_RAW]

I just don't see any benefit for gelatin. Unless, cooking destroys so many nutrients that extra gelatin is somehow needed on a cooked-palaeodiet.

Perhaps it it the methods used to make gelatin from collagen(the raw precursor of gelatin) that give the health benefits. I personally noticed benefits from using bone broths(no more teeth sensitivity etc) but I use it for the magnesium and other minerals hadn't even thought about the gelatin I get along with it until i read some of Peats stuff after reading this thread.

[HIT_it_RAW]

For those whom like their oranges liquid and have juicer issues(or no juicer et all like me) I sometimes just blend a whole(organic) or peeled orance with some carrots and a little water and strain. Absolutely delicious! Generally I don't like high sugar juices like that but they serve me well as a (pre-)workout beverage.

[PaleoPhil]

Can someone please explain this?--raw fresh squeezed orange juice gives me bad throat mucus--more than any other food except pasteurized OJ, even pasteurized milk--but raw fresh squeezed lemon juice does not give me any mucus whatsoever (even if consumed undiluted). I used to think it was the pH of the OJ that caused the issue, but straight lemon juice is even more acidic.

My best current guess is that it's something to do with the sugariness of the OJ, but fermented honey and high quality artisanal mead do not give me this issue at all. I wonder if it's the particular mix or balance of sugars in the OJ or something else entirely? This is one of the biggest unresolved puzzlers for me, though not hugely important, as I can easily avoid OJ. I do notice that fresh-squeezed OJ causes me much less mucus than pasteurized OJ.

On the other hand, I haven't tried fresh OJ in quite a while, so maybe I should test it again.

[Matt51]

I think Ray Peat has a lot of useful information to contribute. If you read articles at his website, raypeat.com, he always lists a lot of valid scientific references. He is a serious scientist. He cites studies which prove, it is not only protein that matters, but the balance of amino acids that matter.

[Aaaaaa]

Yeah, I like that he always has tons of references listed at the ends of his articles.  I know some people say he "uses too many rat studies LOL" but it seems that the studies he does refrence, he looks at very critically to make sure they also apply to humans.  I think in one podcast, he mentions that the reason researchers were able to "prove" estrogen was beneficial was because of something that is specific to rats (since they are nocturnal) that doesn't actually apply to humans!  So its not like he's not aware of the differences between rodents and humans. 

The last 6 days or so, I've been eating a mostly-raw paleo version of Ray Peat's dietary reccomendations, and have been feeling fabulous!  Lots of energy and very positive mindset.  I've been using bison thyroid (raw, of course haha!) for my thyroid supplement, and I have a couple of other hormone supplements he reccomends coming in the mail, so we'll see how that goes.  My temps are still in the 96's and 97's, so no improvement there yet.   So, we'll see...:-)

The one thing I'd like to hear him address is the health of island populations that seem to eat a lot of the omega-3 rich fish, seeing as he's so critical of the unsaturated fatty acids.  Maybe I'll have to ask him that...

[Matt51]

Ray Peat is an endocrinologist, specializing in female hormones. He is the right person to contact for thyroid issues.

[Matt51]

I don't believe he has any complaints about eating fish. He does have a fine article questioning fish oil supplementation - saying it is an experiment being performed on the general population.

[PaleoPhil]

Can someone please explain this?--raw fresh squeezed orange juice gives me bad throat mucus....

No explanations, I guess. How about has anyone else noticed this, especially with pasteurized OJ?

Why couldn't it work equally as well or better if raw Primal versions of these foods were substituted

The last 6 days or so, I've been eating a mostly-raw paleo version of Ray Peat's dietary reccomendations....

Thanks for letting us know that you're putting it to the test, SileIndigo. Please let us know how it goes. What have you been eating so far?

With some minor tweaking, Storm's sample daily diet could easily be converted to something probably acceptable to most cooked-Paleo diet gurus:

16oz coffee
6-8tbs gelatin (great lakes)
1 fresh whole orange
pastured or raw pastured butter
1/2 - 1 can native forest coconut milk
some type of meat usually 8oz
a few raw egg yolks
some heavily cooked yams, potatoes occasionally, or even some rice

And with some more serious tweaking it can be made raw Primal/Paleo:

16oz+ water or sun/air-dried tea
marrow
1 fresh whole orange or other fruit/berries
raw butter or marrow/suet/brains
fresh coconut water or flesh
some type of raw meat usually 8oz
a few raw egg yolks
raw carrots or parsnips

Fatty fish appears to be the biggest disagreement between Peat and Paleo gurus. Here's how someone summarized Peat's view on fatty fish:
"Fatty fish like salmon and herring should be avoided because their fat content is mostly unsaturated; as a general rule, cold blooded animals like fish tend to produce unsaturated fats while warm blooded animals like cows and pigs tend to produce saturated and monounsaturated fats. Cod and sole are good fish, since they have the marine minerals (especially selenium), but low fat content. Tuna is good as protein, but the fat it contains is highly polyunsaturated; eating once a week, especially with homemade coconut mayo should be safe.of course" http://forum.lowcarber.org/showthread.php?t=419742

Based on that commenter and other sources, the main differences between Peat and cooked Paleo appear to be these:
> avoidance of fatty fish like salmon and herring (and fish oil) and preference for lean fish and shellfish
> more positive talk than usual about industrially processed sugar, Coca Cola, tortilla chips fried in coconut oil, popcorn popped on the stove in coconut oil and then salted & buttered, and "occasional" grains like masa harina, oats, and white or brown rice.
> more emphasis on milk (preferably raw) and potatoes and yams than MOST (not all) cooked and raw Paleo/Primal/Traditional diet gurus (and these foods have been growing in popularity in Paleo circles)
> recommends food combining of carbs with proteins

If the above info is correct, the general sense I get is Paleo lite: a less restrictive form of cooked Paleo, except that it also restricts fatty fish. It should appeal to anyone who doesn't want to give up the foods that Ray Peat adds to strict interpretations of cooked Paleo diets, especially milk, sugar, Coca Cola, OJ, coffee and fried tubers and tortilla chips, and doesn't mind giving up fatty fish, which would probably include most Americans.

[cherimoya_kid]

The one thing I'd like to hear him address is the health of island populations that seem to eat a lot of the omega-3 rich fish, seeing as he's so critical of the unsaturated fatty acids.  Maybe I'll have to ask him that...

So you'd ask a lab scientist why something he says is bad happens to work in the real world?  That sounds like a waste of time to me.  If eating fish didn't work then the Eskimos, Samoans, Japanese, etc., would be having health problems from it.  They don't, though.  Also, none of those groups mentions avoiding fatty fish.  In fact, all the groups Dr. Price studied PRIZED animal fats, including fatty fish. 

So, yeah, I'd say 10 minutes of actual field work on traditional food practices is worth about 1000 years of lab science.

Or, to put it another way, if you read and understand Dr. Price's book, you know lots more useful knowledge about nutrition than 99.9% of health professionals. 

Add in what we teach here about raw foods, and you've got a good start toward actually being in the driver's seat regarding your own health.  We certainly don't know EVERYTHING about nutrition here...but we probably know more than any other group you'll ever find. 

Are you familiar with Dr. Price's book? 

[Aaaaaa]

So you'd ask a lab scientist why something he says is bad happens to work in the real world?  That sounds like a waste of time to me.  If eating fish didn't work then the Eskimos, Samoans, Japanese, etc., would be having health problems from it.  They don't, though.  Also, none of those groups mentions avoiding fatty fish.  In fact, all the groups Dr. Price studied PRIZED animal fats, including fatty fish. 

Well, I just mean I'd be curious to hear what he has to say about that; I'm not questioning the fact that those cultures all obviously thrived on eating lots of fatty fish. 

I have read Dr. Price's book, and actually own it--I should really re-read it; I haven't for awhile!  Traditional foods diets are where I originally started, when I got interested in researching healing through diet about 4-5 years ago. 
It just seems to me that sometimes modern people with messed up health need more than just a healthy traditional diet to totally heal, which is why I am interested in Dr. Peat's work.  For instance, some of the people that Dr. Price studied ate grains as a good portion of their diets and were still healthy, but that obviously won't work for a lot of people nowadays.  Dr. Peat's research is very interesting to me because based on what I have learned from him, I am almost 100% sure I'm hypothyroid, and that that is the underlying cause of my MS diagnosis. 

Also, his dietary suggestions, with a raw=paleo slant added, are very very close to what I ended up leaning towards instinctively on my own...sweet fruits, raw dairy, raw honey, raw meat/organs, saturated fats, bone broth.  And supplementing thyroid hormone by eating raw bison thyroid makes me feel A LOT better!

[TylerDurden]

The very fact that those hunter-gatherer tribes ate grains is a clear indication that they weren't all that healthy to begin with. This is one of the many reasons why Price is considered to be just a lame advocate of the Myth of the Noble Savage.

As regards Ray Peat, since he uses highly dubious animal studies mainly, such as that one study involving dogs being fed on fish-oils, he can't be trusted. I mean if that study had involved raw, whole wildcaught fish as a 100 percent of a dog's diet, then it would have had some credibility perhaps, not otherwise.

[aLptHW4k4y]

Agreed with TylerDurden, and further regarding the carrot salad -- I couldn't find any study supporting his claims, only one on rabbits which kinda goes against what he's saying.

[invisible]

Although no one is perfect, I think Ray Peat's suggestions are gold. Essentially he suggests we eat high sugar and high protein, meaning a lot of fruit and a lot of animal products (i.e. paleo foods). I do better on this than I do on a zero carb diet that the Inuit eat. I've never been able to duplicate the Inuit results even when apparently eating the same type of diet. I actually started a Ray Peat diet before I had ever heard of Ray Peat - what I did was just replace all my additional fat with fruit, which is still paleo. Peat's data and research seems to check out with my own experience on very low carb diets so I tend to feel it is legitimate.

[cherimoya_kid]

Also, his dietary suggestions, with a raw=paleo slant added, are very very close to what I ended up leaning towards instinctively on my own...sweet fruits, raw dairy, raw honey, raw meat/organs, saturated fats, bone broth.  And supplementing thyroid hormone by eating raw bison thyroid makes me feel A LOT better!

Yes, and all the traditional tribes prized the thyroid and adrenals.

My point is that guys like Ray Peat are a dime a dozen.  People who are smart enough to see that real-world results with entire populations of people have the most validity of any evidence are much more rare.

[Dorothy]

Phil - about you and the orange juice:

First question - was the orange juice fresh from organic oranges?
Second question - do you get the same reaction from eating an orange?
Third question - have you ever tried blending an orange with just the yellow peel taken off?

That white stuff on the orange has lots of things in it that are necessary to digesting/using the juice properly. I do much better on my breville juiced oranges that leave a lot of the white pith in it. Also, when juicing that way the juice of one orange fills my cup so I'm not getting too much fruit at once which is so easy to do with juicing.

You also have been quite sensitive to carbs for a long time haven't you? Aren't you just starting to be able to eat more carbs? Sounds like another experiment might be in order. My "whole juice" oj is a real treat and makes me feel very good. It would be nice if you had that option.

Also, lemons are simply not as sweet as an orange, so it makes sense that a lemon or lime would have a different reaction. The acidity in the lemon or like is going to be much greater. I love sucking on a lemon or lime after eating a lot (for me) of fat - seems to help a good deal with the digestion of the fat.

[Raw Kyle]

I'd like to interject that there are no publications in the whole of the scientific world that have a Dr. Ray Peat as an author, not even as a junior author (ie an undergrad or grad student/post doc that did the grunt work in a lab). In other words there is no record in the literature of him ever doing an experiment on anything.

I am intrigued by some of his statements and haven't really checked him out enough to have a solid opinion but reading on his website about how "cellular transporters" like the ones for calcium ions are nonsense or invented by biologists to try and explain away something they can't explain seems a bit specious to me. A lot of drugs work on these concepts. I'm not advocating drugs but some drugs do have a physiological effect using these channels, or disabling them. He cites some things in his writings on his site but also says many many things without reference.

[PaleoPhil]

Phil - about you and the orange juice:

First question - was the orange juice fresh from organic oranges?

I think I mentioned already that not-fresh OJ gives me more mucus than fresh, but I still get some from fresh squeezed too, at least I did the last time I tried it.

Second question - do you get the same reaction from eating an orange?

A little, not as much, as I recall.

Third question - have you ever tried blending an orange with just the yellow peel taken off?

Do you mean the outer peel? No, I never tried that.

You also have been quite sensitive to carbs for a long time haven't you?

Yes, as long as I can remember back in my youth I had the same symptoms, though they got worse over time. Because OJ always gave me mucus I assumed it was normal, until I was spitting in the sink one day after a particularly strong flow of mucus from OJ and a friend said that was weird. OJ gives me more mucus than any other food, even pasteurized milk, which a lot of people report mucus from and from which I do get some mucus. The OJ symptoms have improved some since going Paleo and then raw Paleo.

Aren't you just starting to be able to eat more carbs?

It's been some months now. So far the carbs I handle best are raw fermented honey, blackberries, blueberries, raspberries and fresh figs. Not so much strawberries for some odd reason, even organic and even though they are lower in sugar, though I am tolerating them better than in the past and they were never a big problem as long as I don't overdo it. My mother gets rashes from too much strawberries and said maybe it's because strawberries are more acidic, like the OJ, yet I don't have a problem with lemons. Quite a puzzle.

Also, lemons are simply not as sweet as an orange, so it makes sense that a lemon or lime would have a different reaction.

That's what I figured, but then it was surprising when I tolerated moderate amounts of raw fermented honey well (though I do need to limit my intake, but less so than in the past). I think the microbiota in the honey may help me digest it.

[invisible]

Phil, what's a rough breakdown of your daily diet?

[PaleoPhil]

These are probably my current most common foods, in varying amounts, most of them raw, with more fish, carbs and cheese on the weekends and mostly beef and fat during the week:

100% Grassfed beef
Fertile chicken eggs, duck eggs, unfertile free-range eggs
Suet, grassfed
Marrow, grassfed
Lard, from local free-range pigs
Wild yellowfin tuna or salmon, sushi grade
Liver, GF beef
Carrots
Parsnips
Blackberries
Lemons
Real Pickles brand Sauerkraut w/ carroway seeds
Really Raw fermented honey
Raw aged sheep's cheese
Bone broths

[Dorothy]

Do you get a reaction from tomato juice?
If the juice is not fresh you could be having a reaction to additives. Orange juice producers can add all sorts of things to the juice legally now and not have to put it on the label. 

Doctors will make people get rid of acid foods when they have mucous for reasons that don't make much sense to me. If you don't have a reaction to tomato juice, then I highly doubt it has anything to do with the acidity. Doctors don't make you give up lemon juice but do make you give up oranges and tomatoes.

My guess would be that it probably has to do with the extracted sugar content for you. Oranges are just one of those symbiotic food substances that can't be torn apart and be expected to be handled by the body well. The white pith has the bioflavanoids and you are meant to get some of that white pith when you eat a whole orange in order to absorbe nutrients in the juice properly. Oranges juiced normally feel completely different to me than the oranges that I juice in my breville juicer where I get a lot of that white pith. The pith also slows down the absorption of the sugars. Honey is a complex food. Oranges that are more whole are also more complex.

The experiment that I would do on myself if I had your issue would be to make the same amount of  juice from orange, lemon and tomato and dilute it just the same amount if you have to dilute the lemon juice and see how these three affect you now that your tolerance for carbs and sugars has changed. You would have to make the juice yourself to know that there are no additives and that they are organic. Rarely would someone get as much lemon juice in one sitting as one would get orange juice - so that's why you would have to measure. If with freshly made juice of all three you only have a reaction to the OJ only, then I would try juicing oranges with the pith (I use a sharp knife to take off only the outer orange rind) or eating the whole orange attempting to leave on more pith and see how that affects you. If you don't get a problem with the pith included, the problem is that the fruit didn't include all the parts that you are supposed to eat. I love doing those kinds of experiments. 

[PaleoPhil]

"All natural" spaghetti/tomato sauce gives me reflux and upset stomach. I don't remember if it gives me any mucus or not, but I do know it doesn't give me as much as OJ. I don't like tomato juice, so I don't know. I think the sugar in the OJ is one likely factor, plus maybe the acid, plus the less fresh, the more problem, though even fresh-squeezed OJ from an orange gives me some mucus.