Raymond Peat. An even more scientific approach?

Hi everyoe,

I have been reading a lot on these forums regarding nutrition recently and it seems that a Paleo style template is the common recommended approach to Nutrition (but avoiding low carbs) which is sensible for a trained athlete.

I am always learning as many others are and for some time now I have been delving into the world for Raymond Peats research and im going to say it - The fear of fructose from fruit sources in higher doses, in the absence of PUFAs (Avoiding them as much as possible) and Grains, is arguably, largely unsubstantiated.

I had been following PHD style eating for some time and had no real issues BUT have now been using a Ray Peat approach for a while and am thriving.

The guy has decades of research behind him and he backs every single thing he says with tens if not hundreds of studies and it is very difficult to find fault with it. A while back he was famously asked to give a speech on some of his views and backed up what he said with hundreds of pieces of peer reviewed research clearly showing how they all proved what he was saying.

Paul jaminet (Who is respect massively) recently had an online discussion with Danny Roddy regarding the subject of Ray Peats recommendations which makes for good reading! It also left the arguments against Ray Peats research and beliefs unconvincingly answered.

I am not going to go into the science behind it as its substantial and all available, but for those who enjoy continued learning I suggest you take a look at raymond Peats site and Danny Roddys.

Im summary, and this sounds controversial:

High sugar from plenty of fruit (Sucrose has 50/50 GLucose and Fructose), lots of dairy (Milk cheese etc), liver, seafood, orange juice, coffee, sea salt etc.

Also, interestingly I don't really understand the Paleo avoidance of milk as I am yet to see good research that has been done under conditions where grains and PUFAs have also been stricly avoided. As always correlation doesnt mean causation. So if anyone has any good peer reviewed studies that show an issue with milk under those conditions I would be keen to read it.

Some may brush this guy off but I am certain it would be very unwise to underestimate the intricate understanding this man has of the human system, its relationship with food and the incredibly complex way every nutrient we consume interacts with everything else under various conditions. He looks at the system from cell level where many others do not.

I am in no way saying his approach is perfect but it is compelling.

I do not have a PHD but have been studying nutrition for a very long time in my own time and I am very keen to hear the opinions of others in the know.

"Once we accept that knowledge is tentative, and that we are probably going to improve our knowledge in important ways when we learn more about the world, we are less likely to reject new information that conflicts with our present ideas." Ray Peat, PhD

Cheers,

Martin

I don't buy into it, plain and simple. I believe his points about fructose not being death and n3 PUFAs not being "cure-all", but that's where it stops. Evolution and Peats arguments don't go well hand in hand, and after all I'm still a believer in an evolutionary perspective...

Evolutionary perspectice

Throughout human evolution do you think that humans would have prioritised eating vegetables before eating high energy fruit? I have no evidence I know BUT that is what doesn't marry well with evolution, survival, and just doesn't make sense.... Not only was the discovery of fire necessary but the intelligence to use it to cook with was necessary before starchy foods were consumed. For a large part of human history they consumed only simple sugars/carbohydrates.

Remember, in relation to fruit you are not just eating pure fructose.

Eating more of a certain food stuff is no less evolutionary than a Paleo approach - Its just the case that now in the western world of abundance we have those foods available to fulfill certain nutritional needs without supplementation.

From what you have just said I don't imagine you have actually read much of why he advocates what he does and the evidence backing it up....

Though it's not quite to this extent, deriving universal conclusions from studies reminds me of finding deeper messages in the Bible - there are just so many passages and nuances you can often find in it whatever you wish. The Cochrane organization does a good job at rating the studies and giving creedence to those that have more weight than others.

I'm not familar with Raymond Peat or clear from what you are saying what he believes. Something like it's ok to eat sugar (a little, some, a lot?) and drink milk? That doesn't seem controversial to me, especially for an athetlic population.

Fructose isn't the devil, lactose (glucose + galactose) isn't either.

Emby said:

Evolutionary perspectice

?

Throughout human evolution do you think that humans would have prioritised eating vegetables before eating high energy fruit? I have no evidence I know BUT that is what doesn't marry well with evolution, survival, and just doesn't make sense.... Not only was the discovery of fire necessary but the intelligence to use it to cook with was necessary before starchy foods were consumed. For a large part of human history they consumed only simple sugars/carbohydrates.

Remember, in relation to fruit you are not just eating pure fructose.

Eating more of a certain food stuff is no less evolutionary than a Paleo approach - Its just the case that now in the western world of abundance we have those foods available to fulfill certain nutritional needs without supplementation.

From what you have just said I don't imagine you have actually read much of why he advocates what he does and the evidence backing it up....

Go live on a continent and tell me how much of the year you can actually get fruit off of trees, relying solely on what grows in the regions you have access to by foot travel, and you will have a much clearer view of a true evolutionary perspective.

If you're in a very, very lush non-tropical region you can get fruits a few months out of the year, perhaps up to 6 if you're lucky. I'm sure there are places you can get certain fruits in spurts several times throughout the year, like tropical environments.

It's also important to try and eat as much fruit as you can for one day, and see how you feel. It is literally just about impossible to get more than 30-40% of your calories from fruit. You just have to eat too much, and your stomach won't enjoy having that much fruit. I always have trouble eating more than 7-8 medium sized pieces per day, I just end up not wanting it.

Most fruit also has an enormous amount of other compounds, like fiber, that slow the rate of release of energy quite a bit. The major issue with fructose is the rate at which it is introduced to the system. That's why sucrose is dramatically less harmful than HFCS or that f-ing agave nectar that is marketed everywhere. 70% fructose in that stuff, which is why it is low GI and also potentially very dangerous.

High sugar is a relative term, and I recently heard that we're capable of safely processing up to 50g of fructose per day (assuming it's fairly well spread out during the day) which means you'd easily be able to eat 7-8 medium fruits with absolutely no problems. That's a lot of fruit, and if it's a lower fructose/sucrose fruit then you'd be able to eat more with no issues at all.

Furthermore, the slight excess shouldn't be a big issue unless it continues indefinitely, and in real life that is confined to one continent (nearly all of human history, if anyone was wondering) this simply doesn't happen! You will always have at least a few weeks between heavy crops, even in tropical regions, and in the majority of the world you have 6-9 months with no major fructose sources available. In short, true natural eating cycles simply can not have consistent high levels of fructose from natural sources, and this ends up being a built-in safeguard that we no longer have thanks to Fed-Ex and all the large carriers that deliver fruit around the world

Not blaming them, of course, just saying that we are no longer subject to the basic parameters of human existence, and that it is probably a good idea to go through at least 4 weeks every 2-3 months where you just don't have all that much fruit. Some, but not a huge amount. All by itself, assuming you're only getting fruit fructose and whatever trace amounts are in vegetables, this will protect you to a large, large degree from any possible ill effects of long term overconsumption.

Remember, low-level excesses have to exist chronically to cause significant health issues. By maintaining a zero-sum environment you can have regular low-level excesses and not hurt yourself in the long run, and typical single-climate crop cycles are a good model to go by. Eat when things should be available, and it is hard to go terribly far wrong. Just don't be crazy and limit yourself to potatoes in the winter. It is possible to go too far with this as well.

In short, the basic idea isn't crazy, but some common sense and true historical parameters should be taken into consideration.

Took a look at Ray's website and it's not very accessible, which probably results from having

a PHD in biology and/or physiology. I don't really get a sense of what he believes except that

he believes the general maintstream opinion is generally not right.

It would probably take another PHD to review his work and say where he's right and where he's wrong, and it often gets to be a matter of interpretation.

Emby said:

Evolutionary perspectice

?

From what you have just said I don't imagine you have actually read much of why he advocates what he does and the evidence backing it up....

Do I believe that people would chose fruit over veggies? Of course. That DOES NOT justify a diet full of orange juice or milk with extra sucrose or eggshell calcium or aspirin (which has been shown to cause a leaky gut).

Orthodox paleo was a step in the right direction, but far from the perfect diet. As I said, Ray Peat has a few good points, but his overall diet doesn't cut it. For example anyone involved the slightest in evolution knows omega-3s are essential for forming a healthy brain, but peat believes they are harmful...hmm.

Razz said:

Emby said:

Evolutionary perspectice

?

From what you have just said I don't imagine you have actually read much of why he advocates what he does and the evidence backing it up....

Do I believe that people would chose fruit over veggies? Of course. That DOES NOT justify a diet full of orange juice or milk with extra sucrose or eggshell calcium or aspirin (which has been shown to cause a leaky gut).

Orthodox paleo was a step in the right direction, but far from the perfect diet. As I said, Ray Peat has a few good points, but his overall diet doesn't cut it. For example anyone involved the slightest in evolution knows omega-3s are essential for forming a healthy brain, but peat believes they are harmful...hmm.

That's what I mean. He seems to be a contrarian. Another one I read was he recommends 100g of gelatin a day for inflammatory conditions, and that muscle protein also can be damaging (not for kidney related reasons). It's probably

test tube stuff that can't be extended to real life.

To be fair, certain amino acids seem to have anti-inflammatory effects. I wish I was super rich so that I could look for this stuff and do more research myself all the time without needing to study or work!

Other amino acids seem to have inflammatory effects, so this is a complicated thing to try and approach when looking at a somewhat complete protein source.

Joshua Naterman said:

To be fair, certain amino acids seem to have anti-inflammatory effects. I wish I was super rich so that I could look for this stuff and do more research myself all the time without needing to study or work!

When I get rich you'll be the first researcher to get my funding!

Rik de Kort said:

Joshua Naterman said:

To be fair, certain amino acids seem to have anti-inflammatory effects. I wish I was super rich so that I could look for this stuff and do more research myself all the time without needing to study or work!

When I get rich you'll be the first researcher to get my funding!

I accept!

Actually I think his point with just muscle protein being "dangerous" has some merit. I'm not saying I agree with dangerous, but he does put attention to the lack of certain amino acids in just the muscle meat. Weston a price foundation also puts a lot of stress on the fact that muscle meat is far from the most nutrient dense parts, and that collagenous types of meat aswell as organ meats should be consumed. Still from there and to the people that live off of sugared milk, orange juice and gelatin...it's a long way

Razz said:

Actually I think his point with just muscle protein being "dangerous" has some merit. I'm not saying I agree with dangerous, but he does put attention to the lack of certain amino acids in just the muscle meat. Weston a price foundation also puts a lot of stress on the fact that muscle meat is far from the most nutrient dense parts, and that collagenous types of meat aswell as organ meats should be consumed. Still from there and to the people that live off of sugared milk, orange juice and gelatin...it's a long way

Organ meats from healthy animals are awesome. They don't always taste super amazing, but they are definitely a good idea to have in your diet 1-2x per week.

For some reason I have always enjoyed eating cartilage and tendons, to the chagrin of many people. It just seems to feel good. *shrug* I figure it's part of the animal and it isn't made of poison... why shouldn't I eat it?

Also don't forget bone broths for some other amino acids

Joshua Naterman said:

Razz said:

Actually I think his point with just muscle protein being "dangerous" has some merit. I'm not saying I agree with dangerous, but he does put attention to the lack of certain amino acids in just the muscle meat. Weston a price foundation also puts a lot of stress on the fact that muscle meat is far from the most nutrient dense parts, and that collagenous types of meat aswell as organ meats should be consumed. Still from there and to the people that live off of sugared milk, orange juice and gelatin...it's a long way

Organ meats from healthy animals are awesome. They don't always taste super amazing, but they are definitely a good idea to have in your diet 1-2x per week.

For some reason I have always enjoyed eating cartilage and tendons, to the chagrin of many people. It just seems to feel good. *shrug* I figure it's part of the animal and it isn't made of poison... why shouldn't I eat it?

I'm also the same with the cartilage and bones. Cow feet soup, though haven't touched pig ears!

It could be that some AA are more inflammatory because they doing something productive, like exercise is inflammatory.

However whether there is any real downsides because of the natural bodily protections in the

antioxidant system is my question. I have information from the gelatin association that it's feasible to

substitute 20% gelatin for complete protein and maintain the protein's quality. Don't know if that's scentific

or marketing but protein bar manufacturers often do it!

He talks about muscle meat due to high tytrophan being anti thyroid. I think the levels of phosphate are quite high too which is why he favors organ meat (low tytrophan, low phosphate) with high vitamin A essential for anabolic hormone production. He is all about controlling stress hormones and promoting anabolic hormones. Dannyroddy.com makes sense of his research.

Remember, just because its unorthodox doesnt mean 1. It doesnt work and 2. It causes harm in any way. I fact I have seen many posts from people who have reversed a whole plethora of inflamatory diseases with bloodwork to back it up.

If you start diving into the forums for people who follow this approach you will realise that its worth investigating and understanding if only for your own learning! Yes it might not be for you but, as I said before you cannot dismiss him and his vast detailed knowledge of his subject.

Razz said:

Emby said:

Evolutionary perspectice

?

From what you have just said I don't imagine you have actually read much of why he advocates what he does and the evidence backing it up....

Do I believe that people would chose fruit over veggies? Of course. That DOES NOT justify a diet full of orange juice or milk with extra sucrose or eggshell calcium or aspirin (which has been shown to cause a leaky gut).

Orthodox paleo was a step in the right direction, but far from the perfect diet. As I said, Ray Peat has a few good points, but his overall diet doesn't cut it. For example anyone involved the slightest in evolution knows omega-3s are essential for forming a healthy brain, but peat believes they are harmful...hmm.

What you have said there is based on misunderstandings of his work. Its well worth the time reading dannyroddys site (who has tidied it all up into a decent format.

Just for clarity, its not test tube stuff that cant be extended to real life :-)

He has been helping individuals for decades in a consultancy roll, much like Chris kresser et al.

Mark Sisson recently reduced his muscle meat intake which resulted in a big iimprovement for him after ray peats recommendation.

This blog is worth a read http://www.andrewkimblog.com/2012/08/fr ... h.html?m=1

Emby said:

Just for clarity, its not test tube stuff that cant be extended to real life :-)

He has been helping individuals for decades in a consultancy roll, much like Chris kresser et al.

Mark Sisson recently reduced his muscle meat intake which resulted in a big iimprovement for him after ray peats recommendation.

This blog is worth a read http://www.andrewkimblog.com/2012/08/fr ... h.html?m=1

Yeah a paleo guy who ate mostly protein if not calories from meat benefited from a reduction. Surprise

Just saying from what I've seen it's largely beyond scientific proof - a guy who says it helped doesn't exactly consitute proof.

But I agree he knows a lot ....

What I know is that is needed to create both seretonin and melatonin and is essential for protein biosynthesis. A diet deficient in it will have less than optimum muscle protein biosynthesis. Excess can also be catabolized and lead to both ketones and glucose end products.

Just read the blog.

The persorption issue is pretty neat, and speaks strongly against the raw vegan practice of eating raw starches.

The fructose conclusions are flawed, largely because like many chronic health issues it takes a long time for damage to show up.

Example: Smoking. If you look at older research, a 5 year analysis of smokers shows no difference in cancer risk. Neither does an 8 year study, or a 10 year study (though this is typically the threshold point for clinical significance many chronic disease states for whatever reason). However, by the 15 year mark or so, you start seeing significant differences and by 30 years you see an enormous difference in cancer prevalence.

You can't conclude jack from a 6 week study on fructose, or a 1 year, or a 5 year study when you're talking about chronic health effects.

Having said that, there's only one thing that will determine whether a fructose load causes uric acid problems or not: Rate of entry into the system. Sucrose, by nature, has to be broken down by enzymes and is much slower to enter the system than free fructose. This is why some people will develop gout-like symptoms when consuming lots of HFCS but not when consuming the same amount of fructose from sucrose.

So, it does become important to determine rate of fructose release. Grapes are by far the fastest. Citrus fruits are very slow and apples are moderate but have more sucrose than fructose. In other words, by and large it is hard to hurt yourself with fruits. It is also very difficult to get enough carbs from fruits from a performance perspective.

Of course liver glycogen store levels also matter, because it is the primary determinant of the rate at which fructose is processed down alternate pathways (not conversion to glucose), which is the primary issue we want to look out for. Again, this is typically a long term problem for nearly everyone who consumes a bit too much fructose and will not show up in studies less than 10 years, but probably 15-20 years is more appropriate.

There will almost certainly be a point at which maximum performance becomes detrimental to lifespan, but probably not to long-term health during that shortened lifespan if appropriate dietary methods are used.

Finally, I hope everyone knows that you need gut bacteria to stay alive, not to mention alive + healthy. Don't be a fool and intentionally starve them or destroy them. I am not suggesting that the blog said you should do this, simply pointing out that it is easy to assume (from the way the blog stated gut bacteria counts in starch vs fruit diets) that gut bacteria are bad. They are not. There are certainly unfavorable ratios, but we don't know enough about that to say much of anything yet. That is a rapidly developing area of science.

Hi Joshua,

It is worth spending the days/weeks it would take to read through all of ray peats articles at raypeat.com and reading the articles at dannyroddy.com/articles/

A poster on the perfect health diet recently wrote this

The Peat diet eats nutrient dense foods like OJ(go look up the nutrients if you think its just fructose and water), eggs, milk, whole animal meat, other truly ripe tropical type fruits like sapodilla, coffee, cocoa, very well cooked greens/starches, salt/baking-soda and a little bit of sucrose to round out the diet so we get enough sugar.

But if your Peat diet is low in nutrients and you add too much sugar you will start to become nutrient deficient starting in stuff like biotin,B6,copper that’s why we aren’t just pounding Mexican Cokes all day. My diet(which contains pure sucrose) is more nutrient dense than most in the world and I would wager it’s more nutrient dense than every Perfect Health dieters’ food intake.

You act like this study(http://www.nature.com/ijo/journal/v21/n ... 0494a.html) is the smoking gun on fructose’s toxicity and that “a high-carb sucrose-based diet [is] rather stressful for the bodyâ€.

You can add organ meats, seafood/shellfish and bone broth soups etc to that list. Paul Jaminet even states that that is what his diet looks like less the additional sucrose. Not as far from a "Paleo" approach as some believe. The addition of sucrose, salt/bicarbonate of soda, coffee, asprin with vitamin K, beef gelatin are all for the purpose of targeting specific issues/symptoms in certain situations, all very individual. Someone said in an earlier post "asprin causes leaky gut" but as always that generalised statement is made completely out of context.

The approach promotes testing, changing something then retesting until you find what works for you. Bloodwork, heart rate, temperature and many other symptoms whether negative of positive can be used. A very healthy approach to nutrition and finding what works for the individual.

Its also worth reading the comments section on the thread as there are some other very good points made:

http://perfecthealthdiet.com/2012/02/hi ... /#comments

Many are taking this view on nutrition completely out of context.

Here is to continued learning.

Nothing is more paleo than eating what grows on trees.

Nothing is less paleo than eating what grows on trees out of season.

All of this is getting tiresome. Fructose toxicity is both dose-dependent and rate-of-release dependent.

Nutrient density is great, but don't try and sell me some bullcrap about store-bought orange juice. If you're juicing your own oranges then fine, but everything you buy is pasteurized and that inactivates an enormous amount of nutrients, and really does turn it into sugar water + added vitamin C.

Use your head for a moment: Why do they have to add vitamin C to orange juice if ONE ORANGE has enough vitamin C for the day? Have you ever used real 2.5" oranges to make OJ from scratch? It takes 4-6 oranges to make 8 oz of OJ if they are juicy. When you use real oranges that glass has like 400-600% of your vitamin C for the day. Imagine drinking 3 glasses... that's 12-18 real oranges a day, but without the pulp. No naringen, no fiber, etc. That's way too much vitamin C and way too many oranges for a day.

This is why I get upset with a lot of people in the nutrition world: They take sound concepts and try to fit unsound foods into them. They also UNEMPOWER people, because what you just typed and quoted is expensive, time consuming AND requires access to products that are not available in every city. Perhaps they're in some small markets that exist in various ethnic sectors but come on... it is basically being implied that no one will be healthy unless they have access to exotic tropical fruits.

We are all well aware that if you have lots of plant matter in your diet, from a variety of sources, and get your sugars from fruits you will be supremely healthy. No one here has ever argued against that to my knowledge.

We are also well aware that ANYTHING can be done to excess. Having said that, 8-10 pieces of fruit is around 1000 calories and that's nearly half of all the calories that normal sized people need in the day. Even for me, that's 30-33% on a normal day. It isn't super easy to eat that much fruit either. Now, if you're eating 20-30 pieces of fruit, which will happen rather quickly if you make your own juices and consume any real quantity of them, you can absolutely put yourself in a position of excess.

The trick is that you need a lot of different fruits to get good nutrient exposure. You can't just have 4 bananas, 4 apples and two oranges and expect the same results as eating 2 kiwis, an orange, 4-5 medium strawberries (counts as 1 fruit), a half-cup of blueberries, 2 apples, a banana, a plum and a star fruit.

You like the difference there?

1) White + orange

2) White, orange, blue, purple, red, yellow, and green?

That's just a practical example.

Same goes for veggies. You can't just live on asparagus and sweet potatoes and expect to be as healthy as if you get a wide, wide variety of foods.

As long as you're running through the rainbow in terms of natural food colors you expose your body to, and severely limit the exposure to processed stuff (including pasteurized OJ from real oranges) you will pretty much be unable to damage yourself nutritionally.

Unfortunately that... costs $$$$$ these days unless you are smart+lucky and buy bulk fruits and veggies wholesale and have a way to keep them. Most people have $$ to $$$ and very little time or space for such things.

Perfection is out of reach due to time and money constraints for many people, but they can certainly do very well. Going through the rainbow twice a month instead of 3-4 times per week is totally ok!

You do what you can, and let the rest be as it must be.

For practical use, the best thing to do is to steam and bake large quantities of mixed veggies of as many different colors as is practical and store them frozen and refridgerators, so that you have large cook days 2-4x per month. That way you can minimally damage the food while cooking it to ensure safety (steaming only reduces micronutrient value by ~10% if done properly, which is an issue for people who use automatic steamers and cook broccoli for 20 minutes instead of 6-8).

orange sweet potato, purple potato (sweet or not) and other tubers can be cut into 1cm thick slices that steam relatively quickly (about 10 minutes in my experience).

Most other veggies should be steamed for 6-10 minutes, while leafy greens are probably better off in the steam for 4-6 minutes.

If you buy large bags of frozen veggies, which is amazingly cheap and healthy, your best bet is to use a large pot with a steamer flower insert. Let it start steaming strongly and then dump in as many veggies as will fit. 14 minutes later they are all cooked but not ruined. That's straight from the freezer.