Good or bad

#101

Certain (crunchy, chocolate-y, definitely not full sugar as what is fun in that?) sweets were really difficult to me (well not really, I just compulsively ate them up) especially that they were so extremely rare in my otherwise low-carb times… But we almost never uy and rarely get such things so it wasn’t too bad.

But I always ate very desserts all the time (I mean, for most meals as the last course and in big quantities) on every diet so it’s harder to tempt me with that (unless I get curious and I tend to do that). But bread? That is nice. I can make wonderful carnivore sandwiches, that’s okay, I never was into sandwiches until very low-carb anyway (bread diluted the flavors) but wheat bread (and similar things, we have some very popular traditional bread-like items) is something special, nothing what I have on keto…
I lost my occasional desires towards potatoes after several years on low-carb but bread still has its charm. I never have a NEED, I just eat it up if it’s in front of me because I made it and it’s special, not a normal inferior eggless bread I make for my SO, I am always around that thing and as long as I feed myself properly, I don’t feel anything towards it (and it’s not to my liking so I know I wouldn’t enjoy it nearly as much as my normal food).

And I didn’t like bread so much on high-carb… It became some super delicious wonder later, years after I went low-carb (because my SO stopped his gluten-free years and started to eat bread again so I experimented a lot).

And it’s about bread, not grains. I am not interested nearly as much in mere grains. Bread is special and I suppose the texture has a lot to do with it. Texture means a lot to me but my breads are tasty too.

Fortunately thinking and writing about them helps in my close to carnivore months (January-June now).

(KM) #102

As far as healthy non-keto eaters, my personal hypothesis is that a lot of the need for ongoing vigilant keto stems from the crap we were fed beforehand. From birth, processed carbage, fake fats, chemicals and preservatives, sugar loading, animal products from animals fed that gunk as well, and it may have permanently damaged us.

I believe humans are evolved as omnivorous scavengers. In places at times big on animal foods nose to tail (likely including insects and rodents), at times mostly plants, at times more air than anything. But the modern world contains barely any unadulterated food like that, and for most developed world people, very little ebb and flow.

Perhaps the people who are fine with carbs are (and have been) comparatively sheltered from the barrage of junk most people endure.

(Chuck) #103

Growing up on the farm my first 21 years was grass fed animals, milk, eggs, fruit and garden vegetables. I was introduced to carbs by the military.

#104

It may have a role but it’s surely not the whole picture. For example my SO who is apparently thriving on high-carb (and unable to eat in any other way) had just as a sugar-filled bad diet as I did… He was a fat kid too.
Even I handle carbs much better than many people on this forum. It’s possible I had a better high-carb diet than some (it had sugars galore but could have been so much worse. I always handled sugar way better in the presence of lots of fat…), it surely matters that I changed not so late in my life (though not early enough sigh), there are genetics and other things…

Even my peasant anchestors ate sweet pastries as a pretty normal thing, of course not nearly as often as modern people eat sweets (I got used to sweets in/after nearly every meal as a kid, ouch. I don’t remember any particular limitation)… And they were active, it matters something…

(KM) #105

I didn’t really mean to say that everyone’s metabolic issues started with a “bad childhood”, necessarily, just that before we got around to doing keto, most if not all of us endured years of these unhealthy available foods.

I was responding to someone who specifically asked, “what about healthy people who can eat carbs”, and thinking that perhaps if someone was both raised the way you were, and not introduced to a highly processed carb diet at some point, they might have some protective insurance that would allow them to be healthy without ketosis.

Personally I don’t think unprocessed whole foods with their fiber intact are the enemy, if you are metabolically healthy. I just think very few people are actually metabolically healthy, because of all this junk, and ongoing ketosis is one of the best stopgaps we have once the damage is done.

(Chuck) #106

No I believe it has a lot due to an individual’s DNA, genetic makeup. And because a person looks thin and healthy doesn’t mean they are. One of my cousins was a skinny bean pole but he ate what ever he wanted until he found out he was type 2 diabetic and then found out his internal organs was loaded with fat. He grew up on the farm same as I did, and because he didn’t go in the military ate higher quality food then I did. When I started losing weight the first place I noticed the loss was in my stomach not the external fat but the internal fat. My stomach became softer and less bulging. My cousin died a a young age of heart failure due to his diabetic disease, just like his dad and brother. I hopefully take after my dad’s side of the family with no diabetes and no heart problems. My dad smoked his whole life and died of lung cancer. I have never smoked and thanks to my dad can’t stand being around anyone that smokes.

(KM) #107

Oh, I absolutely don’t think it’s the whole story. It is, truthfully, just a hypothesis. For all I know there is a unifying factor we don’t know about yet. Something in our gut biome, maybe. Some environmental factor. Or just, as you say, a combination of variables, including genetics, stress, and so on as well as diet.

When I say ancestors, I’m thinking of people who lived tens of thousands of years ago, before the available foods had been modified at all by human beings beyond perhaps rudimentary broiling. I know that we’ve only started seeing a dreadful rise in metabolic syndrome in the past 30 years or so, but it’s possible we’ve been headed in the wrong direction for a long time, and the low-fat craze was the tipping point.

(Chuck) #108

I personally don’t believe they truly are healthy. Too many that believe that don’t bother to go to the doctor for check ups until it is too late.

(KM) #109

Definitely also a possibility! I just, as I’m probably beating to death here, think human beings evolved to eat all sorts of things and thrive, it’s what we’ve done to the foods, and to our own bodies as a result that’s the real problem. And theorizing that if there are people who have been eating outside our modern food chain, and remain outside of it, they may be able to eat carbohydrate within that definition - that is, non-modified plant foods - to their hearts content. I’m pretty sure no one can eat Twinkies on a regular basis, no matter how protected they might be!

(Chuck) #110

The problem we weren’t meant to eat all the time, mean so many means and snacks. Way too many don’t give their digestive system time to rest and to completely digest their foods. I was raised to eat twice a day, on the farm we got up and took care of what needed to be done until about 10:30am then ate normally breakfast foods. Then we worked until are 6:00pm or dark and had the even meal. What we ate at the meals was a lot but we worked it off. After the evening meal we still had the farm animals to take care of. Then cleaned up ourselves and went to bed. We ate what we grew, only buying a few things we couldn’t grow.

(KM) #111

And I definitely agree with this, that evolution-wise, and even as recently as 50 years ago, humans likely not only ate less often, they had times of feast and famine, as well as a diet that differed with the seasons. Any or all of those things may play a part in why we are unhealthy now.

I was going back to the question which was posed, which was more like, “why isn’t everyone who doesn’t do keto sick”. And I guess my simplest answer was, “If you haven’t given yourself metabolic disorder with the awful foods we are encouraged to eat in the first place, maybe keto isn’t necessary. Because (oh God here she goes again) once upon a long long time ago, people ate what there was, which might well have been starchy plants, and the human race survived”.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #112

Obesity is blamed for all the chronic diseases that burden modern civilisation, but in the U.S. only 80% of obese people are metabolically ill. And there are about 10 million more metabolically ill people like your cousin (thin on the outside, fat on the inside) than there are metabolically ill fat people. According to the last statistics I’ve seen, anyway; no doubt the situation has gotten worse since they were published.

The problem with blaming obesity for all our illnesses is that people like your cousin think they are fine—until something happens to prove otherwise. And the problem with people’s realising how much their diet has to do with their illnesses is that the pharmaceutical companies can’t charge for eating differently, so there go the top executives’ 80 million dollar bonuses.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #113

The epidemic of Type II diabetes began in the 1860’s, about twenty years after cheap refined sugar and cheap refined flour became part of the food supply. Before then, gout and Type II diabetes were diseases of the rich. But as you point out, the chronic diseases that plague us started to become really widespread after the promulgation of the U.S.dietary guidelines in the early 1980’s, which made fat the enemy and promoted carbohydrates as health foods. Before then, everyone knew that eating sugar, starches, and grains made us fat, but once the fear of saturated fat took hold, all that went out the window.

But the invention of agriculture caused a noticeable decline in human health. Archaeologists can tell, just from looking at the bones at a dig, whether the people were hunter-gatherers or farmers (radioactive isotope analysis confirms this). The farmers’ skeletons show marked signs of degenerative disease. Dr. Michael Eades has a fascinating lecture on this topic, available in multiple incarnations on YouTube (usually titled something along the lines of “Palaeopathology and Chronic Disease”).

(Chuck) #114

Totally agree. My uncle and cousin didn’t go to a doctor until it was too late. And I have been extremely overweight and my blood pressure stayed low normal but it was my blood pressure that caught my attention. Even when I was my heaviest my blood sugar was low normal and my BP was barely high enough to be on the doctor’s radar. It was my acid reflux that got my doctors attention and mine.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #115

As I recall, the advice to eat three large meals a day, plus three snacks, was introduced about twenty years after the guidelines were first published, to help people cope with the constant hunger that results from driving up insulin as the result of excess carb intake. Before the guidelines, it was easier to be satisfied with three meals a day, and no snacks.

(KM) #116

Weston Price also did amazing work analyzing “primitive” diets of more recent indigenous cultures. My take away: the minute we started monkeying with the available natural food supply, we were pushing population growth at the expense of individual health. And we’re basically still doing it.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #117

And unfortunately, we are at the point where society is starting to collapse under its own weight. If people like Georga Ede and Chris Palmer are correct, a lot of our current widespread and increasing mental health problems are the result of insulin resistance in the brain, manifesting itself in various ways. Not to mention that, on the flip side of the coin, the U.S. Department of Defense is now finding that fifty years’ worth of eating according to the dietary guidelines is making an alarming percentage of U.S. military personnel physically unfit to serve.

(Luke) #118

Those people probably burn it off or close to most of the carbs off so that it can’t stay in the body and cause harm? Everyone has met that person that can eat what ever they like and stay fit looking with great health. Keeping in mind that I think anyone that appears this way is most likely eating quite healthy behind the scenes 80% of the time and are quite active.

(Kirk Wolak) #119

Whoa… Slow down. Have you seen America? China is quickly surpassing us with diabetes.

Also, the medical system PREFERS to catch your Diabetes when you are LEAST LIKELY to change your habits. When food is the only friend you have left… LOL.

If you do a KRAFT test, you will find that probably 80% of American Adults are metabolically damaged. The point is that the damage does not require medicine… YET.

And there are people who can drink one beer and put it down. I can. I can drink 1/2 of beer and stop. But 1 of ANYTHING is too many, and 500 is not enough… Of any of my trigger foods.

So, if I maintain a decent weight, never check my real bloodwork, or my BP. Except on the rare occasion I go to the doctors… I have no idea my health. That’s where I believe 80% of this country really is. Granted about 50% are OBESE and I believe something like 40% are diabetic, or pre-diabetic.

We are no where near healthy. The real question is…
Do you want to support the companies that are selling you poison and lying to you, by paying off the ADA (Dietitians, and Diabetics Association) by funding them, but with the “hint” that they talk up “eat everything, moderation of addictive substances is key”, and excluding ANY ONE “food group” is unbalanced and dangerous?

Look, if I could get away with being healthy eating what I crave… I would. But I can’t.
I am at the point of removing Supplements that use Dyes!

So, yes, in an group of people, some will do well enough, regardless what they eat. At least for a while. But Father Time will collect his due eventually.

Finally, like others said. If every now and again, you can tolerate something, great.
But the research for those who still have healing to do… 1 MEAL of carbs can throw their bodies out of ketosis for 3-5 days. (It’s true for me). So imagine the Stupidity of doing that ONCE A WEEK as some suggested to me.

Again, YMMV, and you need to do what works for you. If you have food addictions, issues with binging, etc. Stay clear. I have to avoid artificial sweeteners because they will eventually trigger a binge in me, and they block my level of ketosis…

(Allie) #120

Guy at my work is the same, really skinny, everyone commenting on how “healthy” he’s always been with his banana and satsuma for breakfast every day, and chicken of some sort every lunch. He spent the holiday in hospital with heart issues that resulted in surgery and is still extremely unwell. Outwardly he appeared to be healthy…