What about all those healthy high carb low fat people?

#1

I personally am healthier than ever on keto. It has Benjamin Buttoned me and people guess my age much lower than it is usually these days and I am healthier in general.

However, we have all heard how Buddhist monks, Okinawans, and so many other societies live healthier and longer by eating mainly carby plants and low animal products. They are presented as an image of health over and over and the data seems to support this notion.

So, because of this, I always have this itch telling me to eat mostly rice, grain and veggies and to go easy on the fatty animal stuff.

What do we make of this?

(Boston_guy) #2

Those traditional diets were probably fine before HFCS overstuffing adipose and driving insulin levels up all the time…

(Adam Kirby) #3

There are counter-examples of the Masai and Inuit that are very healthy and eat almost exclusively animal-based diets. Bottom line, diets comprised of whole foods lacking in processed crap are probably ok. Not veganism, that is a construct. But any traditional diet. Keep in mind that the high-carb traditional diets are very low in fructose.

The problem is, most people don’t have the luxury of having lived their whole lives eating a traditional diet and are metabolically f’ed. So they need a different approach than someone born before the era of junk food.

Okinawa blue zone diet and trends
(Jordan) #4

I have seen several times recently that the long lived Okinawan diet was low fat and plant based.
But I know I’ve read before how they cooked everything in lard, so I went searching.

(Boston_guy) #5

Wow-

The long-lived, healthy people of Okinawa eat a diet that is heavily based on meat. Mostly pork. Mostly fat pork. The main cooking fat is pork lard. Many foods are fried in pork lard. The Okinawans traditionally do not rely on doctors when they get ill, but on food-based remedies consisting of—pork organs. In fact, pork is so vital to Okinawan culture that Okinawans often refer to their land as the “Island of Pork.”

The real lesson of Okinawan longevity is “Eat fat, live long.”

(Boston_guy) #6

They discussed Okinawa in this episode about PUFA’s from western diet. IIRC, Okinawa went from best to worst in a single generation. And those Centenarians? “unexpectedly, we did not find any vegetarians amongst the centenarians.”

http://breaknutrition.com/episode-23-tucker-goodrich-dishes-bad-fats/

#7

I have not read the article yet but had searched for something similar awhile back because I had heard that the Okinawins eat plenty of pork and fish.

Also, it is believed that part of the reason for their longevity is the forced near starvation they endured during WWII, apparently they had less access to food during the war than other parts of Japan

(Ross) #8

This may support Dr Mike Eades theory that it’s not the carbs alone that make us fat and drive the obesity epidemic, but a combination of higher carbs AND eating toxic vegetable oils. Vegetable oils damage our metabolism.

Chances are these populations eating a traditional diet that happens to be higher carb (but whole food and likely higher fiber) are also using traditional animal fat sources or non-processed real fats (“vegetable oils” of course do not exist in nature).

There are also a few people emerging that were at one point eating keto or paleo who have since broadened out their food selections…such as Angelo Coppola. Clearly he is doing well on his “plant paleo” plan.

image

Of course, he’s not eating toxic vegetable oil.

This strongly suggests to me both that we can heal our metabolisms by eating keto / banting / lchf / paleo / primal (take your pick) and return to eating some whole food real foods that do contain some carbs like you mention in traditional diets.

(Adam Kirby) #9

Sounds about right. It’s the trifecta of poison - refined sugar, processed carbs, and vegetable oils.

#10

In a similar context, how are/were Ornish and Pritikin able to reverse diabetes and heart disease on a HCLF diet? I worried about this a lot when I started keto and lately it does not bother me. There is some thought that insulin needs fat to do its work and without a lot of fat it will not store fat. In theory if you eat a baked potato by itself without any other food it will not turn into fat or spike blood sugar but with a little bit of butter it will.

It seems that a whole food diet of whatever type is fine for healthy people or people that have always eaten that way, however, for people with metabolic issues, the extremes work better and moderation is not ideal or so I have surmised in my reading but I am no expert

(Crow T. Robot) #11

Is that from McDougal? A potato is practically all starch and will definitely turn to glucose and spike your blood sugar and provoke an insulin response. Now, it’s not likely to become body fat by itself, but it will definitely cause you to store any dietary fat that you consume.

Their results are mostly hype and little substance. Ornish had a small uncontrolled trial with many confounding factors besides diet that are rarely mentioned, then he uses those same data to publish multiple papers making it seem like he is repeating his results, when it’s just the same possibly questionable data. Nina Teicholz exposed that guy several times.

That said, if I were to eat a high carb diet (I won’t, but just for argument), I would definitely restrict total fat grams because with all that glucose, excess fat would go straight to storage. So, in that sense, the Ornish/Pritikin diet is an improvement over SAD, and the emphasis on whole foods is also on point.

#12

No, never read or listen to him.

@richard or possibly Adam McNally mentioned it in a podcast, I have no idea which one. I believe it was Richard though and apologies if I am misquoting or taking out of context. The idea is that some fat is necessary to trigger insulin I believe, a potato by itself has no fat

As for the Ornish confounders, I believe they are meditation, exercise and stress reduction. All normal things not involved in diet, lets face it, you can do all the meditation you want but if you eat SAD and are prone to T2 or CAD you will still get it. As for exercise, Peter Attia became pre T2 and overweight while competing in triatholons

#13

@Saphire

Interesting. Where did you read this? Near starvation and presumably malnutrition actually lengthened peoples lives? I’m not saying I don’t believe it, but I want to learn more.

#14

I also wonder how much of this is simply quantity of food and amount of exercise. Could someone eat high carbs and even some junk food but be incredibly active and not overeat which would offset the bad food?

This must be a factor. Look at sedentary people who eat high plant food, high carb, lowish fat and you’ll likely see sickly people. But look at those on the exact same diet that are very active and you’ll likely see healthy people.

Then if we look at a sedentary person who eats way too much of this diet and they will be sickly and morbidly obese. A very active person who eats way too much of this diet will be semi overweight and probably somewhat sickly.

I wonder how this applies to keto people?

Do we have to be super active to be healthy or can we get a modest amount of exercise and our diet will keep us healthy?

Does it all boil down to exercise (of course with some reasonable assumptions in diet, ie: the doughnut and soda only diet cannot be offset by exercise lol!)? Even if one is eating the most healthy diet must they still exercise a great deal to maintain health?

(Richard Morris) #15

The amount of insulin that your pancreas secretes when triggered by glucose (or the amino acids arginine and leucine ) is potentiated by the presence of a lipid signal … of which the most likely candidate is monoacylglycerol (MAG) which is a break down product of triglycerides into free fatty acids.

What this means is the more free fatty acids that your fat cells are releasing into circulation, the more insulin you make when blood glucose goes over it’s threshold. This makes functional sense as one of insulin’s jobs is to keep the lid on your fat cells when there is glucose around (and to get that glucose absorbed by your cells to be used). So when glucose goes up your pancreas tells your fat cells to get the fat out of circulation so we can focus on glucose.

One of the paths of insulin resistance is trying to stuff too much energy into fat cells, eventually they mutiny and they start ignoring insulin and releasing their energy anyway, including MAGs. When the pancreas sees that it makes MORE insulin in response to glucose. And maybe your fat cells go “Oh OK more insulin, then we’ll take that fat” … but eventually that amount of insulin is not enough, and so your pancreas has to make more next time.

Eventually we can’t make enough … and that’s when we are diagnosed diabetic.

Anyway this ability to regulate insulin using fat is a hack. It’s not as easy as just not eating sugar and starch and letting your liver stabilize your glucose (ie: Keto). But it can cure type 2 diabetes like Keto can … its just there are very tiny tolerances … and a high starch zero fat diet is not only unsustainable bit’s liable to be very boring compared to keto.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #16

I’m still bemused by the title of the thread, because I don’t know any “healthy high carb low fat people.” If I did know any, I’d probably still be trying to eat high-carb, low fat myself. As it is, not knowing anyone healthy who eats HCLF gave me the impetus to check out LCHF in the first place.

So I’ll repeat the question, what about all those healthy high-carb, low-fat people?

(Doug) #17

Some people just have not gotten fat, missing out on the metabolic syndrome, visceral fat accumulation, etc., that often accompanies weight gain and obesity. I think that “high carb” may feature a low ratio of fat, and a lower ratio of protein, but the overall intake for such people is not more than where they maintain homeostasis.

Dr. Fung mentioned that in cultures where we often find such people, they tend to eat fewer meals per day, and they are not “grazing” - those Buddhist monks aren’t picking up a Twinkie every half hour. Even if “high carb” they benefit from less insulin spikes and a lower overall insulin level that way.

(Crow T. Robot) #18

Maybe I’m misunderstanding you, but the insulin index of a serving of potato is off the charts. No fat needed.

#19

@PaulL

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/japan-healthiest-people-in-the-world-carbs-high-grain-diet_us_56f08cc4e4b084c6722139ca

That is just one example. There are many other cultures that eat like this and are healthy. It’s pretty common.

(Ernest) #20

We can go on for days on this topic. It will come down to personal choice.
Pick your poison. Mine is Real leaf Lard and whole eggs with extra yolks.