Ray Peat - Starch and Obesity

Warning all Vietnamese people!  Ray Peat says that people in countries that eat a lot of full-fat dairy products are lean, and that starch is more fattening than sugar and seems like the reason for the rising obesity rate in the United States.  Put the rice down, and swap it out with Haagen Dazs ice cream or else you guys are gonna get fat! 

Sorry, but I had to go there.  I visited Vietnam in my mid-20's and remember a group of young guys in their early 20's in some sort of Navy or something cruising up to the beach I was hanging out on one day.  The boys jumped off the boat and started running around tackling each other in their Speedos and other weird things that only someone who has traveled to Vietnam could grasp the true strangeness of.  Anyway, even though I was 5'9", 175 pounds soaking wet, several of the boys ran up to me, asked me how old I was, and started pinching the 1-inch of extra fat around my abdomen and laughing.  They of course played with my arm hair too, which seems almost like a pasttime of Vietnamese citizens in the presence of an apelike foreigner like myself. 

Anyway, the point of the story is that, even though I was lean by American standards, and didn't consider myself fat at all, I was still fat enough for these boys to look at it like it was some kind of novelty - like they had never seen a guy my age with a body fat percentage above 10%.  And I must say, during that trip I did not see a single male with a waist that appeared larger than mine, which was somewhere between 33 and 34 inches at the time.  This was typical of every rice-based culture I have ever had the opportunity to see (I have visited 7 Asian countries), with the exception of Japan - where at least you did see an occasional overweight person.   

With that, we will resume our starch vs. sugar conversation and breakdown or Ray Peat's article Glycemia, Starch, and Sugar in Context. 

"More important than the physiological vacuity of a simple glycemic measurement was the ideology within which the whole issue developed, namely, the idea that diabetes (conceived as chronic hyperglycemia) is caused by eating too much sugar, i.e., chronic hyperglycemia the illness is caused by the recurrent hyperglycemia of sugar gluttony. The experiments of Bernardo Houssay (1947 Nobel laureate) in the 1940s, in which sugar and coconut oil protected against diabetes, followed by Randle's demonstration of the antagonism between fats and glucose assimilation, and the growing recognition that polyunsaturated fatty acids cause insulin resistance and damage the pancreas, have made it clear that the dietetic obsession with sugar in relation to diabetes has been a dangerous diversion that has retarded the understanding of degenerative metabolic diseases."


Peat is getting onto something with this passage. Perhaps the 2nd largest pseudoscientific sasquatch of them all (behind the belief that eating saturated fat and cholesterol is the cause of heart disease), is that eating carbohydrate somehow causes insulin resistance, metabolic syndrome, and type 2 diabetes after the insulin mechanism “wears out” from repeated carbohydrate ingestion – sugar in particular. It doesn’t. In fact, fat competes and interferes with glucose’s journey out of the bloodstream and into cells, which is why the hormone cortisol, which dumps fatty acids into the blood, is such a powerful root cause of insulin resistance as Peat goes on to discuss.

"Starch and glucose efficiently stimulate insulin secretion, and that accelerates the disposition of glucose, activating its conversion to glycogen and fat, as well as its oxidation. Fructose inhibits the stimulation of insulin by glucose, so this means that eating ordinary sugar, sucrose (a disaccharide, consisting of glucose and fructose), in place of starch, will reduce the tendency to store fat. Eating “complex carbohydrates,” rather than sugars, is a reasonable way to promote obesity. Eating starch, by increasing insulin and lowering the blood sugar, stimulates the appetite, causing a person to eat more, so the effect on fat production becomes much larger than when equal amounts of sugar and starch are eaten. The obesity itself then becomes an additional physiological factor; the fat cells create something analogous to an inflammatory state. There isn't anything wrong with a high carbohydrate diet, and even a high starch diet isn't necessarily incompatible with good health, but when better foods are available they should be used instead of starches. For example, fruits have many advantages over grains, besides the difference between sugar and starch. Bread and pasta consumption are strongly associated with the occurrence of diabetes, fruit consumption has a strong inverse association."

I have no idea what planet Peat was on when he wrote this paragraph. It makes absolutely no sense and is totally incongruent with reality. The meal that produces the most postprandial insulin is a high-starch, low-fat meal. Interestingly, a high-starch, low-fat diet, during overfeeding, has been shown to be the least fattening – corresponding with the higher insulin levels.  http://www.ajcn.org/content/62/1/19.full.pdf+html At the same calorie levels, the subjects with the lowest insulin levels (because they were eating more calories as fat and thus not spiking insulin as high) stored more fat, had less of an increase in thermogenesis (heat production), and less of an increase in lean body mass.

A rise in insulin causing more fat storage? This just doesn’t make sense. It should cause more muscle storage and less fat storage, as insulin, if anything, is the primary anabolic muscle storage hormone. Insulin does not cause carbohydrates to be converted to fat, and the little bit of carbohydrate that may be converted to fat is a very inefficient process compared to storing fat that you ingest as fat that is already pre-packaged and ready to find its home in adipose tissue.

Increasing insulin makes a person eat more? This really pisses me off. That’s like saying that stapling someone’s stomach makes them eat more, as both stapling your stomach and insulin are known to have an anti-hunger effect. Sure, inject insulin into someone without carbohydrate being ingested along with it, and they will get super hungry from blood glucose dropping to dangerous levels – appetite is stimulated because it’s a better option for the body than dying. But the normal rise and fall of insulin and blood sugar levels to baseline (not below baseline as is commonly seen in hypoglycemia after sugar ingestion) in response to eating is not something that should be construed as appetite-promoting.

Of course, this is only a glimpse of the frustration I have with this myopic view of one isolated and rather insignificant variable. It ignores the more complex science of satiety, which doesn’t have much to do with how much insulin you produce after eating a meal, and a lot more to do with the palatability of the food, water content, fiber content, chewing time, particle size, and countless other factors that affect the dopaminergic system and beyond – including even lighting, social setting, food texture, salt content, packaging, and so on. One biggie that Peat doesn’t account for is the appetite stimulation caused by sweetness, which fructose has the most of in the carbohydrate realm. Starch is not sweet. What, are we gonna call shit fattening if we find out it triggers a greater rise in insulin upon ingestion vs. an isocaloric amount of apple pie a la mode?

One really needs to look at the whole picture. A person who is susceptible to fat gain (which I propose is, in many cases, a person who eats out of addiction to satisfy reward centers in the brain vs. eating strictly to satisfy physiological appetite) can easily get fat eating to appetite of a diet containing lots of burgers, pizza, pork ribs, soda, beer, ice cream, chicken wings, French fries, chocolate, peanut butter, apple juice, milkshakes, bread, pasta, and potato chips because this diet as a whole promotes greater calorie consumption without much of a corresponding rise in metabolic rate or drop in appetite. Even I, with an average rectal temperature during the day of around 100 degrees F can gain fat rapidly eating a diet like that, because my calorie consumption goes to the stratosphere and I even feel MORE hungry than I do eating 2,000 fewer calories of less stimulating foods (I even start to get major hunger pangs in the late evening when I do that consistently for a week or longer).

"Although pure fructose and sucrose produce less glycemia than glucose and starch do, the different effects of fruits and grains on health can't be reduced to their effects on blood sugar."

Ah, finally talking some sense here!

"After decades of “education” to promote eating starchy foods, obesity is a bigger problem than ever, and more people are dying of diabetes than previously. The age-specific incidence of most cancers is increasing, too, and there is evidence that starch, such as pasta, contributes to breast cancer, and possibly other types of cancer."

Oh yeah, there's a lot of scientific integrity in that paragraph. You know we all followed the dietician’s advice to the letter. Oh wait, the biggest changes in the diet in recent times are an increase in sugar, poultry, and vegetable oil intake – which displaced the mostly wheat, corn, and potato-based diet of the United States prior to that. But even that is probably less significant than the fact that we started eating more food at restaurants and less at home, we saw the introduction of powerful flavor enhancers like MSG, aspartame, “natural flavors,” “artificial flavors,” and the increased sweetness of high fructose corn syrup – not to mention the general increase in the sophistication of the food scientists who have had several more “decades” to perfect their craft at making “products” more interesting than old-fashioned food.

"The epidemiology would appear to suggest that complex carbohydrates cause diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. If the glycemic index is viewed in terms of the theory that hyperglycemia, by way of “glucotoxicity,” causes the destruction of proteins by glycation, which is seen in diabetes and old age, that might seem simple and obvious."

True, unless you turn the epidemiological data right-side-up and see that the eaters of starch-based diets all over the world – particularly Asians and Africans, have far lower rates of diabetes, heart disease, and most cancers – especially those living in the greatest isolation from food “products.”

"But there are many reasons to question that theory."

I wouldn’t consider it a valid theory at all anymore, especially when people eating starch-based diets have far lower levels of fasting and postprandial glucose levels – showing clearly that such a diet, when looked at as a whole, lowers “glucotoxicity” and glycation. Meanwhile, real practicing doctors like Terry Shintani and John McDougall are lowering glucose levels, including overcoming type 2 diabetes, with starch-based diets (note, I’m sure a fruit-based diet could perform just as well).

Anyway, that’s enough for the sugar vs. starch masturdebate. There are advantages and disadvantages to all forms of carbohydrates. What is probably the most useful to you as an individual looking to improve your health is finding which type of carbohydrate triggers the greatest heat production – keeping fingers and toes warm in between meals and body temperature elevated, and seems to yield the greatest amount of health benefits. But even this is usually a mixed bag. Displacing tons of starch with fruit and juice, for me, has had many health positives – everything from increases in vasodilation, energy levels, exercise recovery, heat production, breathing, and, shockingly, a complete elimination of tooth pain. But it has also given me more pimples on my back and gums that bleed more easily. Even in my mouth it has had both a positive and a negative effect! Ha!  A blend of plenty of starch and sugars seems to be the best fit for me personally, and is the most palatable, socially functional, and economical. 

So play with this for yourself, just don’t play WITH yourself. Actually, see which type of carbohydrate or combination of carbohydrates makes you want to play with yourself the most, and stick with it!
Stay tuned for the next Peat post, as we get into Peat’s more interesting views about sugar and carbon dioxide, the superiority of glucose oxidation, and the role polyunsaturated fat plays in insulin resistance.

Ray Peat - Sugar vs. Starch

I didn’t want to give up on the Ray Peat topic altogether now. There is still a lot to be said. In fact, his lengthy article titled “Glycemia, Starch, and Sugar in context” is a perfect article to deconstruct. It is full of many of Peat’s main philosophies about stress hormones, blood sugar regulation, metabolism, gelatin, polyunsaturated fat – you name it. It’s all there in that article. And it’s the perfect article to examine because some of it is great, and some of it is downright silly. It’s a great blend. In fact, it will probably take many posts to break this single article down – but once we are through most of you will have a pretty good idea about Ray Peat, and also will be left, hopefully, with a balanced view of him as a researcher (which is something few can claim – most either think he is a total wacko or is like the Messiah of nutrition).

I will not put every paragraph in the article under the microscope, but we will start with a few that I have selected to discuss and keep the conversation going for a while. In so doing, hopefully we’ll get somewhere. Begin! (spoken in the tone of the original Mortal Kombat video game).

“Judging by present and past statements of the American Dietetic Association, I think some kind of institutional brain defect might account for their recommendations. Although the dietetic association now feebly acknowledges that sugars don't raise the blood sugar more quickly than starches do, they can't get away from their absurd old recommendations, which were never scientifically justified: “Eat more starches, such as bread, cereal, and starchy vegetables--6 servings a day or more. Start the day with cold (dry) cereal with nonfat/skim milk or a bagel with one teaspoon of jelly/jam. Put starch center stage--pasta with tomato sauce, baked potato with chili, rice and stir-fried beef and vegetables. Add cooked black beans, corn, or garbanzo beans (chickpeas) to salads or casseroles.”

Peat, in his disdain for mainstream nutrition beliefs, is poking fun at the dietary recommendation to base the diet primarily around starches and not simple sugars. Of course, these recommendations were based on widely held but later discovered-to-be-mistaken beliefs that complex carbohydrates – like grains, potatoes, corn, and beans, digested more slowly than simple sugars comprised of less “complex” molecules. It had been known for ages that these foods generally led to more stable blood glucose levels (measured over a 6-hour time period as opposed to just basing everything off of what happens in the first half hour), and were great preventatives against hypoglycemia unlike the foods listed by early anti-sugar author E.M. Abrahamson (1951) who gave the following prescription for those prone to hypoglycemia, “no sugar, candy, or other sweets, no cake with icing, no pies or other pastry, no ice cream, no honey, no syrup, no grape juice or prune juice. And regrettably, our string of ‘no’s’ includes cocktails, wines, cordials, and beer. Finally, if you have hyperinsulinism, you must avoid caffeine as you would the pest.”

Of course, there are many diseases including hereditary fructose intolerance and various glycogen storage diseases in which starch is a completely safe food to eat, but the ingestion of any of the foods listed by Abrahamson containing simple sugars can cause life-threatening bouts of hypoglycemia. This has nothing to do with the absorption rate of the carbohydrates, and in my experience the absorption rate of the carbohydrates has nothing to do with a food’s ability to trigger hypoglycemia. Quite simply, absorption rate or “glycemic index” of foods or the insulin spike after eating rapidly-absorbed starches has nothing to do with hypoglycemia. Thinking that it does is just another pseudoscientific sasquatch.

Thinking that such recommendations were made due to some brain defect is even more offensive, as many of the mantras of mainstream nutrition are based on the pioneering work of Denis Burkitt, Hugh Trowell, T.L. Cleave, and others who spent time in Africa gathering hard data on the rates, or absence I should say, of many cancers, heart disease, diabetes, obesity, constipation, hemorrhoids, varicose veins, appendicitis, diverticulosis, and many others on diets built around starchy agricultural staples – notably whole grains, corn, root vegetables, and the like. It’s not like these beliefs were pulled out of thin air as part of some government propaganda machine. And as Burkitt witnessed, the more food that was displaced with whole grains and tubers, the lower the fasting glucose level of the population.

"The Dietetic Association's association with General Mills, the breakfast cereal empire, (and Kellog, Nabisco, and many other food industry giants) might have something to do with their starchy opinions. Starch-grain embolisms can cause brain damage, but major money can also make people say stupid things."

These food companies make more money the more high-fructose corn syrup and vegetable oil they manage to squeeze into the food, as these are generally much cheaper calories than those in villainous grains or potatoes (although they are still plenty cheap). More importantly, the more fat and extra sweet HFCS in the product, the more of it consumers buy and eat because sugar – particularly high-fructose corn syrup because it is sweeter, and fat, are more stimulating than starch, generally-speaking (although there are plenty of people that get more riled up about chips, Cheez-its, and baguettes than sugar-laden sweets). To think that such companies are behind some massive scheme to steer people towards vile corn and potatoes and away from wholesome simple sugar is comical to put it lightly.

"In an old experiment, a rat was tube-fed ten grams of corn-starch paste, and then anesthetized. Ten minutes after the massive tube feeding, the professor told the students to find how far the starch had moved along the alimentary canal. No trace of the white paste could be found, demonstrating the speed with which starch can be digested and absorbed. The very rapid rise of blood sugar stimulates massive release of insulin, and rapidly converts much of the carbohydrate into fat."

I smell more sasquatch here. In fact, the smell is so strong the John Lithgow is outside my window shouting the name “Harry” over and over. Jack Black and Kyle Gass are here with a bottle of aerosol Trap B Gone and are setting up a drumset as we speak. Sasquatch’s “drumming is kickass” they tell me.


Insulin converting carbohydrate into fat? That’s not how insulin works at all. In fact, a solid debunking took place a couple months back at http://www.carbsanity.blogspot.com/ in which it was shown that the body is in negative fat balance (burning more fat than storing) during postprandial insulin spikes – like the kind you get after having some good old corn starch. On top of that, the easiest carbohydrate to convert to fat has been shown time and time and time and time and time again to be the one that travels to the liver and is digested most slowly. It’s called fructose. Not only does the presence of fat make fat storage easier, if fructose is converted to fat in the liver (which it can be under certain circumstances) it increases insulin resistance, which can lead to increased fat storage (insulin lowers appetite and increases metabolic rate, so becoming unresponsive to the hormone has a tendency to increase appetite and reduce metabolic rate).

Insulin is also intricately tied to leptin, the master hormone of managing the calories in/calories out equation. Surges in insulin cause surges in leptin, which lowers appetite and increases the metabolic rate. Stating that making insulin rise leads to becoming fat is a complete misrepresentation of the bigger picture. In fact, starch-based diets usually lower appetite dramatically, and many starchy foods like potatoes and oats are known to satisfy the appetite on fewer calories than just about any foods known (higher “satiety index”).

Speaking of corn starch specifically, this has actually been used successfully by Francine Kauffman of the American Diabetes Association in the prevention of early morning hypoglycemia in diabetics – more evidence that absorption rate is not the prime determinant of whether or not a particular carbohydrate goes on to trigger hypoglycemia and general blood glucose dysregulation.

Anyway, don’t get the wrong idea here. I’ve been eating simple sugars in favor of starches myself for many months now and have noticed some apparent benefits. Many seem to do better with sugars than starches for keeping hands and feet warm, producing more energy, getting better sleep – probably due to enhanced liver glycogen storage, and so forth. Many fare better from a digestive standpoint on fruit, juice, and sugar than more complex carbohydrate molecules. Some even report a lowering of appetite on sugar vs. starches, especially with the consumption of whole fruits which, like most starchy staples, are very high satiety index foods. Fruit is also generally more nutritious and hypoallergenic.

So be open to either, or a combination of the two. It’s up to everyone to experiment for themselves to see what the relative benefits and drawbacks of the two basic types of carbohydrates are. But the point here is to shoot down Peat’s wacky and erroneous biochemical justification of the outright superiority of sugar over starch. There is not a clear cut right or wrong carbohydrate, and the mainstream belief that “complex” carbohydrates are superior to simple sugars is not the result of a governmental or agribusiness conspiracy.

In the next episode, we will continue looking closer at Ray’s cookie-cutter and false portrayal of insulin as being a hormone that, if driven up, will drive blood sugar down and cause hypoglycemia. Don’t worry, Ray’s got some tremendous gems in this article as well, as he is one of the few that actually does have some understanding of type 2 diabetes, realizes that it is a shortage, not a surplus of glucose at the cellular level, and so on.

For more discussion on the sugar and starch issue, read this free book on how to raise your metabolism.