Fantastic Health Benefits of Butyrate

[goodsamaritan]

Inger, this is off topic, but do you include fat in your high meat?  And what animal meat do you make high meat?

Is your raw animal quality FAT always fresh?  Or you keep it fresh by freezing?  Or it can just stay refrigerated for 1 or 2 weeks?

[sabertooth]

I believe Inger is right.

RS can be more trouble than its worth, especially for the more carnivorous ones among us.

The gut flora that feeds on RS is not compatible with the bacteria that thrives on raw flesh.

Personally high meat works better than anything else to optimize my digestion.
...
GS.
I use to make all lean high meat.... until I got a wild hair and cut up some fatty connective tissue that connected the liver to the torso and high meat with it.

It turned out good, and the rancid fat is fine so long as it is eating in small amounts,

I like my primary fat to be as fresh as possible, and will keep it frozen.

 I now also let my fatty meat dry age under a fan. The fat will melt slightly giving it a wonderful flavor. As long as the room temp is cool and there is constant airflow the fatty chunks of meat can sit on the  rack for well over a week without getting rancid.

 

[goodsamaritan]

Thanks Sabertooth,

My notes into eating these raw starches I now incorporate into my diet.

Jicama / Singkamas is traditionally eaten raw with some salt or something salty like raw fermented fish or raw fermented tiny shrimp we Filipinos traditionally call "bagoong".   During Singkamas season it is everywhere and too cheap. 

Yacon is imported from elsewhere but now planted in the Philippines so it is local.  Usually sold in organic shops.  Very juicy, very delicious raw.  Just remove the skin.  When refrigerated cold it is very refreshing.  My wife buys this regularly and we serve during breakfast sometimes.

[Ioanna]

high meat doesn't work for me, but aged does.  i've found i'm highly sensitive to high histamine foods, which explains why fermented things make me extremely ill in compared to the fresh form, including dairy and high meat.

i'd rather eat high meat, but rs works much better for me. my gi tract is very happy with it. with more than a very small portion of high meat i will have return of gi symptoms.

whatever gives you right bm's… eat that one

[sabertooth]

Note regarding the diference in reaction.

Ioanna

When using highmeat I wont eat any other carb containing foods with it at all, and it could be that highmeat doesnt mix well with something else you are eating. Gut ecology is a very personalized balancing act and so its hard to generalize across the board, but for me personally I can not mix fibrous foods with highmeat, or else I will have bad reactions as well.

I believe that Fermented RS is at odds with highmeat when mixed together. The bacterial cultures just arnt very compatible, This is just a theory and I would like anyone who can in fact eat a moderate amount of highmeat along with RS foods without any issue to speak up and share your story.

Im sure that there are people who can indeed handle both, because after all some humans are like possums and can eat anything, but for many people recovering from chronic digestive insufficiency I think mixing RS and highmeat may cause issues

[LePatron7]

I believe that Fermented RS is at odds with highmeat when mixed together. The bacterial cultures just arnt very compatible, This is just a theory and I would like anyone who can in fact eat a moderate amount of highmeat along with RS foods without any issue to speak up and share your story.

A lot of meats are sprayed with anti bacterial agents after being slaughtered to kill bacteria per USDA standards. Doesn't that sort of destroy the starter bacteria that would naturally be present on the meat? Maybe that's a reason why some of us don't do so well on high meat.

[Projectile Vomit]

I would like anyone who can in fact eat a moderate amount of highmeat along with RS foods without any issue to speak up and share your story...

I can handle high meat with resistant starch, as long as the RS is fermented (or fermenting). It's very common for me to eat high liver with a few mouthfuls of fermented vegetables, which have a fair amount of resistant starch.

I think DaBoss88 might be onto something regarding the spray. I generally use organs that I've gathered by helping friends slaughter live animals (steer, sheep) or from hunting, so these organs have never been through an inspected slaughter house or packing plant. They always ferment nicely (high meat is fermented meat, as near as I can tell), and the bacterial colonies seem to do fine in my belly when mixed with the bacterial ecology common to fermented plant foods.

[Ioanna]

i only just in these recent months started experimenting with resistant starches. i have all this time (2+ year-ish) been eating meats and animal fats. the first year was pretty much entirely that, and then i kept trying to introduce new foods with some hits and several misses along the way.  i've tried high meat on several occasions when carbs weren't even in my dietary repertoire, probably with the very occasional exception of raw honey. it was the same every time. a little bit of high meat would be ok. a little bit more, and i'm not so well.  fresh raw dairy is fine.  kefir is an absolute disaster! i could never understand why until now.

unlike eric, i CANNOT eat fermented RS.  i cannot eat fermented anything! 

i like daboss' thinking, but my experience doesn't support that theory. although not doing well with high meat, i for some reason i do very well with aged meat. something must be different, the bacteria may be different.

[LePatron7]

i like daboss' thinking, but my experience doesn't support that theory. although not doing well with high meat, i for some reason i do very well with aged meat. something must be different, the bacteria may be different.

There's also the possibility of ferments not doing so well because they need an aerobic environment, and realistically a large portion of any jar of high meat will be virtually unexposed to air. That's been my experience when putting the recommended 1/4-1/2 jar. Even circulating the meat once or twice daily, only a small portion of the meat is exposed to air. I wonder what it would be like if it was hung as it would be to make aged meat, only in conditions that would make high meat (ie. the temperature).

[Projectile Vomit]

There's also the possibility of ferments not doing so well because they need an aerobic environment, and realistically a large portion of any jar of high meat will be virtually unexposed to air...

Not true. Fermentation requires an anaerobic environment. Meat aged in an aerobic environment will be aged, but not fermented. When I make 'high' meat, I fill a jar 90% full and only open the lid often enough to prevent the jar from exploding as bacteria release gases as they ferment the sugars in the meat. This ends up being frequently early on, maybe every few days, but less frequently later, maybe once every 10 days. After a few months, I don't have to open the jar but once each month.

Those who make 'high' meat in an aerobic environment might be making something nutritionally useful, but they aren't fermenting their meat. When the Inuit made high meat by burying large animals and returning months later to eat the organs, they weren't making their 'high' meat aerobically. The internal organs and much of the muscle meat spent more of their time anaerobic than aerobic.

[PaleoPhil]

i've had good results with rs myself, so not knocking it in the least bit, but what say you to this
http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/metabolism/resistant-starch/

I linked to the same article early in this thread. I took it seriously at first, as you can tell by my early posts in this thread, but there wasn't a lot of evidence in it, and I noticed at least one error, IIRC, so I did some more looking and found loads and loads of evidence suggesting that resistant starch is beneficial and explaining how it works and that it has been a part of the human and pre-human diet for millions of years. I'm so glad I didn't stop looking after reading that article.

Dr. Eades eventually candidly acknowledged in a polite response to Richard Nikoley: "I don’t really know anything about resistant starch," in the comments at http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/gerdacid-reflux/gerd-treat-low-high-carb-diet and said he'll take another look at RS when he has the time.

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There aren't many wild foods sold in American markets today. Are bananas, potatoes and beans any less descended from wild foods than other popular market foods? Broccoli isn't wild and didn't exist in its current form 10,000 years ago--should I avoid it because of that? I do think it makes sense to try to eat some wild foods, like Inger does, and I do eat some. And as always I'm not telling anyone what to eat, just sharing what I've learned and my experience, FWIW.

I find I do better by including more RS myself, but I'm not big on evangelizing the skeptical, as I think it's best to try something from a place of knowledge, confidence and positivity, rather than uncertainty, doubt or fear. Good luck to everyone with whatever path you each take.

Raw jicama, singkamas, sauerkraut and kimchi are sources of inulin, rather than RS. Other inulin sources include onion, dandelion root, burdock root, leeks, and asparagus. Some raw RS sources are raw green plantains and raw plantain starch, raw green bananas and raw banana starch, raw young fingerling potatoes (yes, I've found some of them to be palatable with so far no noticeable negative effects) and raw potato starch, raw fermented garbanzo beans and raw GB flour. I'm not sure how raw the bagged flours aside from potato starch are, but I at least haven't noticed any problems from any of them, whereas very-ripe plantains and bananas (rich in glucose) give me major problems. Glucose sensitivity seems to be one of my biggest problems. It took quite a while for me to narrow that down, because most of the focus in the Paleo world is on fructose or starch as the problems (especially fructose), with glucose often being regarded as safer (such as by Paul Jaminet) and with fructose targeted as a "Neolithic Agent of Disease." For me it's the opposite, glucose appears to be much more of a problem for me than fructose, at least in the short-term.

One of the key aspects of RS I wasn't aware of early on, is that colon bacteria continue to generate butyrate from it long after one has finished eating the RS, so that I get steady, clear energy from it throughout the day and it also helps one to sleep through the night (as the brain doesn't run out of energy and signal the body to wake up to get more), though that wasn't a significant problem for me, and improves sleep quality. The beneficial bacteria are like little butyrate factories that can run 24 hours a day. With butter and other animal fats, the available butyrate is less long-lasting.

Inulin and RS are similar but quite different. I didn't get as much benefit from inulin-rich foods as I got from RS, though I think my stomach digestion improved a little bit with raw sauerkraut and I still eat that and other inulin-rich foods. Who knows, maybe I'll learn about a better way to utilize inulin therapeutically in the future, like a raw inulin powder or try again to make my own sauerkraut or something like that. I did also try inulin tablets in the past and didn't notice any benefits from those, though I didn't test my BG at the time, and I didn't have a glucometer then. I may test that some day in the future for comparison.

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I've never noticed any of the food combining problems that other folks talk about. Maybe I'm lucky that way.

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Iguana explained in the past that the protein portion of meats is what ferments, while the fats do not. In the example of raw fermented fish oil, the protein is fermented in order to separate and preserve the oil. Some say that antioxidants in properly fermented animal foods like raw fermented cod liver oil prevent the fats from going rancid. I posted what I found on that in a discussion of RFCLO. The RFCLO only went rancid on me once when there wasn't much left and I left it out of the fridge too long in unusually warm summer weather. Of course, it's hard for most Americans to understand the difference between fermented and rancid, which both sound "rotten" to many, but I certainly could taste the difference. I've decided that I haven't noticed significant enough benefits from RFCLO to justify the cost, and people with pyroluria symptoms reportedly tend to produce omega 3 too easily and accumulate too much, so I doubt I'll buy any more of it. I did come to like the strong fish taste, though even that mellowed with time and got a bit boring.

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Eric's correct that probiotic microbes that can make it to your colon require a (mostly) anaerobic environment, because the colon is mostly anaerobic. A former member here who is quite experienced and knowledgeable in fermentation named Satya set me straight on this. I don't know where Aajonus got his ideas on "high meat." They don't match anything I've seen reported regarding traditional Eskimo or Scandinavian practices or by Satya.

The meat I processed using Aajonus' recommended "high meat" method with relatively frequent airing out did get broken down into fluid eventually. My best guess is that this was due to mostly aerobic bacteria, but highly aerobic bacteria cannot survive in the colon for long, if they manage to make it that far.

[Ioanna]

I linked to the same article early in this thread.

         

sorry!   

[Joy2012]

Here are the top foods listed high in butyric acid. You can see why it was named after butter.

Foods High in Butyric acid
http://wholefoodcatalog.info/nutrient/butyric_acid/foods/high/

Foods High in Butyric acid (per 100g edible portion)
Fermented butter
2900 mg
Unsalted butter
2700 mg
Salted butter
2700 mg
Cream(milk fat)
1500 mg
Whipping cream(milk fat)
1200 mg
Natural cheese(cheddar)
1100 mg
Natural cheese(cream)
1100 mg
Natural cheese(emmental)
1100 mg
Natural cheese(gouda)
970 mg
Coffee whitener(powder, milk fat)
950 mg
Whole milk powder
940 mg
Process cheese
900 mg
Cheese spread
840 mg
Natural cheese(edam)
810 mg
Natural cheese(camambert)
780 mg
Natural cheese(blue)
760 mg
Butter cake
730 mg
Natural cheese(parmesan)
730 mg
Cream(milk and vegetable fat)
730 mg
Whipping cream(milk and vegetable fat)
620 mg
Coffee whitener(liquid, milk fat)
540 mg
Biscuit(soft)
440 mg
Ice cream(high fat)
370 mg
Ice milk
360 mg
Coffee whitener(liquid, milk and vegetable fat)
270 mg
Evaporated whole milk
260 mg
Ice cream(regular)
250 mg
Condensed whole milk, sweetened
220 mg
Butterscotch
210 mg
Bavarian cream
180 mg

So, taking into consideration the health benefits of butyrate in cheese and cream,  how do you rate the health value of (1) batch pasteurized, non-homogenized, grass-fed, organic whipping cream (sold in grocery) and  (2) truly raw pasture-raised cow cheese (say, gruyere style) from small farms? 

[PaleoPhil]

I don't know. I'd test the foods myself like I normally do. Given my past experience, I'd guess I'd probably handle the raw cheese better.

FYI: Tatertot Tim reported that he suspects that Bob's tapioca flour is processed with too much heat to contain much RS. The evidence is strong that their unmodified potato starch contains plenty of RS, so that's a safer choice.

[sabertooth]

Eric

 I am curious as to exactly what fermented RS vegetables you consume.... perhaps all RS vegetables are not the same

By fermenting your meat and eating fermented vegetables you may have built up a very unique combination of G.I. flora which allows you to tolerate food combinations that many others here cannot?

I would also want to know more about how the Inuit traditionally made highmeat,
Does anyone have any good info regarding this?

[PaleoPhil]

From what I recall, the Inuit buried their raw meat http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igunaq, so that it was largely anaerobic (though not 100% so), rather than aerobic.

Plus, tradtional Eskimos liked raw (or nearly so) wild tubers!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eskimo_potato
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shubenacadie,_Nova_Scotia

[PaleoPhil]

The first hit that the search I provided earlier in the thread is this summary of info on resistant starch:

http://freetheanimal.com/tag/resistant-starch

There's plenty of evidence suggesting that all the fermentable fibers are beneficial and different. It doesn't make sense to avoid one of them just because it has the scary word "starch" in it, especially given that it appears to be the most beneficial of all.

"RESISTANT STARCH are DNA shaped carbs. ... The energetics and molecular shapes are extraordinary. ... it is ... what sets it apart from ordinary fiber NSP and obviously glucose/fructose/FODMAPs and our own endogenously produced fucose which we make on the tips of our microvilli for the microcritters to graze on when food is lacking"

The oligosacs prebiotics are NOTHING IN COMPARISON to double helices of amylose+amylopectin. And our co-evolved dirt based creatures that live in our gut know that. They ride these dirt-covered tubers and whole grains as spores or live bacteria, traverse protected like nomads on their camels or horses across the harsh desert terrain (pH2, gastric acid, pepsin, trypsin, enzyme breakdown, harsh bile acids, detergents threaten), then finally arrive to the large intestines which lacking in oxygen like the moon however it is teaming with their desert tribes, synbionts, many lifeforms and co-feeders, grazing grounds, water and lush food everywhere…. After feasting, they go back to the soil, their home returning to their dirt tribes and land of roots, shoots, moist dirt until the next generation’s journey. It’s a circle, no?

Resistant Starch - A Review
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1541-4337.2006.tb00076.x/pdf

It’s a food science article with great visual diagrams.

- Dr. B.G., http://freetheanimal.com/2013/12/dramatic-resistant-success.html#comment-546907

[goodsamaritan]

Can we rename this thread?

"Fantastic Health Benefits of Butyrate"

to

"Fantastic Health Benefits of Butyrate / Resistant Starch" ?

[PaleoPhil]

I don't see why not. I don't think Muhammad would mind.

[Hanna]

Here's an interesting study that finds cooking to have a "negligible effect" on the nutritional value of Hadza tubers:
One of the possible reasons given for briefly roasting tubers posited in this study was "faster peeling," which matches what was reported in a science documentary about Bushmen years ago. A Bushman was asked if they briefly roast tubers for taste or digestibility and he said no, that it was just to make them easier to peel and that they often eat them raw.

The study used a machine that simulates human digestion and it confirmed that the brief cooking that the Hadza used doesn't do much to the nutritional value of the food, contrary to Wrangham's hypothesis about cooking tubers being of major nutritional importance.

Very interesting!

[van]

Phil,  still don't see the difference between what's labeled or tested as RS and any undigested unresistant starch or sugar that makes it to the colon?  Any clues or direct understanding would be appreciated. 

[PaleoPhil]

Hi Van,

The unique shape (and size and structure) of resistant starches that I mentioned above is one difference. Here is more info on it.

Resistant starch granules have a fractal surface and porous structure and apparently have higher fractal dimensions than more easily digested starches:

Structure and enzymatic resistivity of debranched high temperature?pressure treated high-amylose corn starch

Fractal Structure of Deformed Potato Starch and Its Sorption Characteristics - ResearchGate

Fractal dimension and rheological properties of cereal starches
http://www.old.international-agrophysics.org/en/issues.html?stan=detail&vol=25&numer=3&paper=936&i=7

A fractal analysis approach for predicting starch retrogradation from X-ray diffractograms - Utrilla-Coello - 2013 - Starch - St[]rke - Wiley Online Library

The unique shape, size and structure of RS apparently makes it a better food than other prebiotics for certain beneficial bacteria, whereas the most harmful bacteria latch onto it but can't digest it, and thus are carried harmlessly out with the poop. Thus, it is also anti-infective and in a sense a detoxifier.

[PaleoPhil]

It turns out that there are lots of starchy foods that are edible raw and would qualify as "raw Paleo" by most definitions, despite the popular urban legend that there aren't. Most of them probably contain significant amounts of resistant starch. Unfortunately, many of them are not commonly sold in the northern USA. Here are some more examples:

Tigernuts

Tigernuts are sedge tubers rich in starch and edible raw, so they may contain resistant starch. They are used in a popular raw drink in Spain called horchata de chufa: http://spanishfood.about.com/od/spanishfoodfaqs/f/horcatadechufa.htm

Tiger Nuts Milk (Kunun Aya or Horchata de Chufas)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyperus_esculentus

Tiger Nut
http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/tiger_nut

These are not nuts, but the dried, shrivelled, brown tubers of a plant. They have a chewy texture and a sweet, nutty flavour reminiscent of coconut. They are grown in China and various African countries, and their size ranges from small to extra-large. They are very popular in Spain, where they’re known as chufa.

Buyer's guide
Buy tiger nuts from health food shops, delis, food halls, Spanish, Chinese or African grocers, old-fashioned confectioners, or even shops selling fishing equipment (tiger nuts are also used as fishing bait).

According to some scientists, tigernuts may have been an important part of the Stone Age raw Paleo diet:

Ancient human ancestor 'Nutcracker Man' lived on tiger nuts
Science 09 Jan 14
http://www.ox.ac.uk/media/news_stories/2014/140109_1.html

An Oxford University study has concluded that our ancient ancestors who lived in East Africa between 2.4 million and 1.4 million years ago survived mainly on a diet of tiger nuts.

Tiger nuts are edible grass bulbs still eaten in parts of the world today.

The study, published in the journal PLOS One, also suggests that these early hominins may have sought additional nourishment from fruits and invertebrates such as worms and grasshoppers.

...

Dr Macho, from the School of Archaeology at Oxford University, said: 'I believe that the theory – that 'Nutcracker Man' lived on large amounts of tiger nuts – helps settle the debate about what our early human ancestor ate. On the basis of recent isotope results, these hominins appear to have survived on a diet of C4 foods, which suggests grasses and sedges. Yet these are not high quality foods. What this research tells us is that hominins were selective about the part of the grass that they ate, choosing the grass bulbs at the base of the grass blade as the mainstay of their diet.

'Tiger nuts, still sold in health food shops as well as being widely used for grinding down and baking in many countries, would be relatively easy to find. They also provided a good source of nourishment for a medium-sized hominin with a large brain. This is why these hominins were able to survive for around one million years because they could successfully forage – even through periods of climatic change.'

Lucuma fruit

Someone speculated that lucuma fruit may also contain RS, as it is starchy (http://www.lucuma.com/lucumafruit.asp). It is edible raw and is used as a sweetener by rawists.

Among the fruits studied the highest IF [insoluble fiber] content was found in lucuma, palo variety
Fibra dietaria en variedades peruanas de frutas, tubérculos, cereales y leguminosas
Rev. Soc. Quím. Perú v.74 n.1 Lima ene./mar. 2008
http://www.scielo.org.pe/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1810-634X2008000100006

Fresh vs Dry Lucuma Fruit - 100% natural fruit raw food sweetener

Chinese Water Chestnut

Tigernuts are related to Chinese water chestnuts, and CWC are known to contain RS: http://journals.ohiolink.edu/ejc/search.cgi?q=keywords:%22Chinese%20water%20chestnut%20starch%20gels%22

They are also edible raw, though there is a concern about parasitic flukes: http://morselsandmusings.blogspot.com/2007/02/chinese-new-year-pork-festival.html

Breadfruit

It turns out that even breadfruit, which is a wildly popular starchy fruit in Caribbean nations in cooked form, is edible raw:

How to Eat Breadfruit RAW and uncooked UluIt seems that once it becomes common to cook a food like breadfruit or plantains or even meat, people start assuming that it has to be cooked, even if there's no evidence for this.

And it also contains RS:

Fermentation by amylolytic lactic acid bacteria and consequences for starch digestibility of plantain, breadfruit, and sweet potato flours.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22860595

BTW, this guy in the vids, John Kohler, is one of the most reasonable and knowledgeable raw vegan diet promoters on the Internet. He's not at all like the notorious Durianrider or Freelee (who aren't even close to fully raw any more, yet are hypocritically more antagonistic towards people who aren't raw vegans than most true raw vegans). So if you want to learn about plant foods that are edible raw, I recommend his vids highly.

[PaleoPhil]

@GS
I like jicama now. I found that the key was to choose smaller ones, which are more sweet and juicy, less bitter and tough. Plus, I seem to like them better since increasing resistant starch in my diet, though I don't know why and that could be coincidence. Who knows, maybe my gut bacteria are influencing what tastes good to me.

Being able to add jicama, rich in oligofructose and inulin, to my diet is probably a good thing, since ingesting a variety of types of prebiotics is supposed to improve the gut biome more than eating mainly one or two types. I was already eating some foods that contain oligofructose and inulin, but I find it easy to eat a substantial amount of jicama, so I figure it has probably helped increase my overall intake.

[Chris]

There's also the possibility of ferments not doing so well because they need an aerobic environment, and realistically a large portion of any jar of high meat will be virtually unexposed to air.  I wonder what it would be like if it was hung as it would be to make aged meat, only in conditions that would make high meat (ie. the temperature).

"There's also the possibility of ferments not doing so well because they need an aerobic environment,"  Uh? Nice vocab. lol

"I wonder what it would be like if it was hung as it would be to make aged meat, only in conditions that would make high meat (ie. the temperature). " Oh my GOD! Way to butcher the English language. lol.