Post: #1

My entire blogging "career" has been a quest for truth in a wide variety of topics in all the primary areas of life as a human being on this planet.

One of the most passionate and controversial topics is, as we all know, about diet and nutrition.

In the beginning, before I turned to teh Interwebz in the quest for self-improvement, I followed the conventional mainstream semi-vegetarian, low fat, high grain, "food pyramid" styled diet, and got fatter and sicker over the course of my entire 20's.

Then I discovered "low carb," then the Weston Price Foundation and finally "paleo."

I've tried a lot of the different things, adopted and incorporated some things, discarded others and have continuously evolved my approach to diet and nutrition every step of the way.

I've reached a stage where I thought I've found the perfect balance of cooking and eating nutrient dense foods and avoiding modern, processed junk FEED, to fuel my active lifestyle (manual labor work, regular martial arts training) as I get older (turned 40 this past year).

But every now and then, I always come across an idea that looks to be a paradigm shift. A real game changer, and I give it a try and see if it works for my situation.

Boiling bones to make soups, stocks and reductions for cooking, cooking with coconut oil with cast iron cookware was another paradigm shift. Then I discovered juicing via RVF (Thanks Mike!!!). After several years of eating fresh, organic, natural foods, plenty of fermented dairy and veggies, and lots of good fats like grass-fed dairy and meat, coconut oil, macadamia nut oil, fresh fish, free range eggs, and a variety of fruits, and now juicing veggies I used to never eat (like kale and beets) has got my digestion, health and energy levels the best they've been my entire life.

I've been comfortable, healthy and enjoying life now for awhile, and have actually stopped regularly reading up the various health/nutrition/paleo blogs I used to read on a daily basis.

Lately I've been noticing Richard Nikolay over at Free the Animal (one of the OG early adopters of "paleo" in the heyday of the paleo-sphere's emergence) posting a lot about "Resistant Starch" in my blog feed headlines, but I never bothered to click over and see what it was all about. I'd started to assume I've got this whole diet and nutrition thing all figured out.

I should have known better.

There is always something new to learn, and guys like Richard are relentless in his quest to find ways to improve on health and well being. So I finally clicked over today to see what this constant headlines about "Resistant Starch" were all about.

http://freetheanimal.com/2013/12/resista...wbies.html

Quote:The benefits most commonly touted are: lowered fasting BG, BG blunting, better sleep, increased energy, well being and calm, mental clarity, vivid dreams, curing of chronic constipation and infrequency, soft stools, satiation with gentle hunger, and increased body temperature (I think I got them all...let me know if I missed any).

The problems most commonly reported are: flatulence and headache. Most have reported having flatulence, but for most it diminishes over time. It seems most prominent when taken with food and least when taken in water on an empty stomach. Taken with beans can be a hilarious experience if you're up for it. For some, going periods of 2-3 days now & then without supplementing seems to help get beyond it. Headaches have only been reported by a handful of people. One or two reported intestinal distress, but I chalk that up to oversensitivity to flatulence.

Most of the studies use 30g of potato starch, which is 4 tablespoons. Above 60g will probably pass on through. Many have begun with 1TBS per day, and increased up to 4 each week. However, dose, frequency, how it's administered (with food, kefir, yogurt—cool or warm—or just water by itself) is something each person has to experiment and figure out for themselves.

All I can say is wow. This may be yet another game changer. I've spent the past few hours reading all 45+ posts of his on the topic, as well as a large number of the PubMed articles linked in support of the idea that Resistant Starch is THE key to feeding the good bacteria in your gut, and all sorts of health benefits can be realized if you add enough resistant starch into your daily intake over time.

Apparently Resistant Starch does not get digested in your stomach, but passes through to your big intestine, where the beneficial gut bacteria consumes it, and in the process produces a lot of Short Chain Fatty Acids that are vital for your bodies various processes. Over time, the good bacterias thrive off of the regular feeding of Resistant Starches, while the "Bad" bacteria gets crowded out.

Richard's got me convinced...I'm gonna go to the store tomorrow and buy me some Potato Starch and give this a try.

A lot of people like to denigrate things like this as "fads" and "gimmicks."

But I don't see what's the harm in giving this a try, and see if I can improve even more on my current state of health and nutritional consumption...and you don't even have to do anything other than drink about 4 Tbsp a day of potato starch. The stuff is cheap, it sounds very easy, and I don't see the harm in giving it a good try out. Hell, I may even just stir it into some fresh kale/beets/carrots/ginger/lime juice and just combine the two "bio-hacks" in a single drink! According to everything I've read over at Richard's blog, the worst that can happen is some excessive farting for the first week or so as your gut bacteria composition changes.

I'll post my results here as I experience them. Anyone else interested in giving this a try? If so, please, post your experiences about it here.

Post: #2

Do you always do this? Also wouldn't potato starch be present in sufficient quantities in potatoes?

Post: #3

I've seen this one discussed a lot on Mark Sisson's forum.

I use potato starch all the time as a thickener for sauces but I probably never ingested a large enough amount at once to notice an effect.

Green bananas are supposedly good for this, too.

Post: #4

Haven't even started...like I wrote, today was the first time I started reading up on it over at Free the Animal.

But based on what I read, the answer to your question is "it depends." Resistant Starch in potatoes is related to temperature - in other words, if you cook your potatos and eat it hot, the resistant starch is broken down and converts into a simple starch...which as anyone versed in "low carb dieting" knows, causes blood sugar spikes and it never makes it past your stomach to the intestines where the bacteria that thrives on it can make use of it.

But apparently cooking potatoes, or rice, or other resistant starch foods and then refrigerating it allows it gelatinize and reformulate into a resistant starch again. Another good source of RS he points out is fried rice that has been allowed to cool, then refrigerated, then either eating it cold or reheating it. Apparently chilling then reheating creates a different form of RS that doesn't breakdown on a reheat.

Anyhow, many of the articles found in the link to his blog I provided in the OP discusses getting Resistant Starch from regular foods....but it seems like 4 Tbsps of potato starch (STARCH...not potato flour!) is the best way to get the necessary amount of RS in your diet without eating 6 raw potatos or plantains, or 2 whole cups of cooked then chilled rice.

I'm pretty sure I do get some RS in my regular diet...but nowhere near the amount that's supposed to give you the benefits he and many others have noted after taking the starch for a few weeks.

I intend to find out ASAP...

Post: #5

Quote:"I use potato starch as a thickener for sauces but I probably never ingested a large enough amount to notice an effect."

This is one of those things Nikolay re-iterated over and over again...heating up the potato starch converts the RS into a simple starch. You have to consume your RS cold...or at least chilled than reheated. Rather then try and rearrange the comfortable pattern of cooking and eating I've become accustomed to, I figure it's just easier to drink the 4 Tbsp. of potato starch a day and see if it works for me like all the other folks weighing in with their anecdotal experiences with it.

Post: #6

But if anyone is curious, he does offer a link to a comprehensive list of foods that contain Resistant Starch here:

http://freetheanimal.com/2013/08/resista...lania.html

Also note:

Quote:Some of the highest sources in food is cooked and cooled rice (parboiled is the highest, also lowest GI by far), cooked and cooled beans (prepare by traditional 24hr+ soaking), and cooked and cooled white potatoes. Sweet potatoes have almost no RS. Cooking and cooling forms RS3, a retrograde RS that remains intact when the food is reheated. Fried rice from out of the fridge is ideal for an RS food source.

Post: #7

By the way, gotta mention Free the Animal regular commenter, "TaterTot," he's the guy that really got Richard started on this, and he has posted a shit load of links to pubmed articles on research that appears to back up all the positive results so many of the FTA commenters have claimed.

And if anyone is diabetic or borderline, supposedly RS helps regulate Blood Glucose, even if you do happen to eat high glycemic index foods...

Quote:Per number 2, your BG won't rise no matter how much isolated RS you consume (such as the potato starch). Moreover, it will significantly blunt spikes from other foods, a "second meal effect" that persists for hours, even into the next day. Regular consumption lowers both fasting BG and blunts spikes from other foods eaten anytime, so dose timing is unimportant if taken regularly. This blunting is most profound on a normal carb intake.

Some anecdotal testimonies from diabetics who constantly monitor their BG and how various foods affect it, seems to make a case that Resistant Starch may actually CURE diabetes...

I'm always weary and leary of people that promote a single substance as a panacea, but reading all those posts and supporting articles over at FTA has got me convinced the idea may have some serious merit, and it really does look like a potential game changer in terms of diet and health.

Post: #8

Very interesting. Please keep this thread updated with your observations. As you say, maybe it will or won't do anything, but it's certainly easy to try and see what actually happens.

Post: #9

Resistant starch is in corn and in beans too.

One of the best benefits of it is that it speeds up the burning of stored fat too.

Everyone should get more of it in their diet.

Post: #10

Most likely, the latest dietary "Sugar Pill".

Post: #11

In layman's terms, what are you gaining by ingesting 4 tablespoons of potato starch?

Faster weight loss, or just a fix to low carb discomfort?

Post: #12

Hey Keoni,

I'll chime in here.

I also stumbled about resistant start about two months ago via another blog (selfhacked.com), but really started learning it from freetheanimal.com

My succinct background: I also was on SAD most of my life, went vegetarian for a bit, then WPF (loved it, but gained too much weight), then Slow Carb Diet (actually easy to do, but annoying if you're social), then BulletProof Diet with Carb Back-Loading.

The last one, pardon my French, fucked me up real good: after about nine months I had major thyroid and breathing problems even though I got a six pack. My energy levels plummeted, I was cranky all the time, my joints hurt, I couldn't recover from exercise, I was having major blood-sugar issues, and I developed cancer (skin cancer that I've since have removed and am now cancer-free). I now know what an 80-year-old feels like.

Long story short, BulletProof Diet with the BulletProofCoffee really did me in for a number. I'm suspecting now it's because I basically did not ingest any resistant start ("RS") for over nine months. My gut flora in my colon were really suffering, causing all sort of health issues. This is just anecdotal, but once I stopped eating BulletProof and just ate normal starch and lots of fruit, the symptoms disappeared (after about two months). Unfortunately I've put on two inches on my waist now, but obviously that trade-off is well worth it.

The guy at selfhacked.com, who's consulted me, has a way to get a minimum of 20grams of RS via your diet. Once you've crossed the 20-gram threshold do all the health benefits kick in.

It looks like Richard/tatertottim over at Free the Animal have figured out a hack to get the minimum 20grams. You just have to ingest at least 3tbsps (36 grams) of unmodified potato starch. It has to be ingested below 150 degrees Fahrenheit, otherwise the resistant starch disappears. And it's potato starch, unmodified, not potato flour.

This way one person could still do low-carb or very-low-carb, achieve all of the fat loss, but still get the resistant starch that will keep your body functioning properly.

This is likely the reason why I was totally fine on Tim Ferriss' Slow Carb Diet, because its foundation revolves around eating legumes, primarly lentils or beans, which are chock-full of resistant starch.

I've been supplementing about 3tbsps of potato starch for the last week. My mood has been fine, and blood sugar for the most part feels normal. Digestion has improved. My dreams have become much more vivid.

Nothing much to write home about, but I suspect it'll become crucial if I go low-carb again.

Post: #13

Interesting stuff. Is there enough carbs in it to interfere with keto?

I love re-fried brown rice. If this is now good for me rather than ready to knock me out of ketosis, count me in.

Post: #14

(12-23-2013 02:04 PM)roberto Wrote:  Interesting stuff. Is there enough carbs in it to interfere with keto?

I love re-fried brown rice. If this is now good for me rather than ready to knock me out of ketosis, count me in.

Resistant starch passes right through the small intestine and is ingested by gut flora in the large intestine, hence the word "resistant". None of the starch actually enters your bloodstream as glucose.

The author over at Free the Animal has kept stressing this point as people from a very-low-carb website attacked him about RS knocking you out of ketosis.

Give it a shot. Do you have those ketosis strips/sticks? Put the re-fried brown rice in the fridge overnight and eat it the next day cold. Some of the starch will have retrograded to RS. See if eating it knocks you out of ketosis.

Apparently Uncle Ben's rice, which is parboiled, has the most RS for any rice brand.

Post: #15

From an evolutionary perspective, how would paleolithic man get resistant starch? Eating raw potatoes and unripe bananas? Eating starchier plantains and corn (try Peruvian corn sometimes, much more starchy and less sweet than American corn)? I'm suspicious when it comes to eating deracinated ingredients like potato starch - though I suppose coconut oil or olive oil isn't much different.

Trying to figure out how to incorporate it into my diet. As it is I eat potatoes or sweet potatoes daily. I feel like I don't do well without at least 0.5-1 lb of starch a day. From what you're saying, I could replace potatoes with some resistant starch - and make up the macronutrient and micronutrient gap with more vegetables, protein and fats.

Post: #16

Thanks for chiming in with your experience, Rachacha.

I'm curious to see how much of the conversion drawbacks (bad gas) I experience, as when I take a look at the foods I regularly eat, I know am getting at least some RS on a regular basis. I'm also fairly certain my gut bacteria health is in really good shape - nutrient dense diet, lots of fermented foods, etc. I've had zero digestive problems for years now, and awesome immunity. Like, the last several times my wife came home from work with a cold or even a bad case of the flu, I never came down with any symptoms, despite living and sleeping in close proximity to her.

But perhaps I don't know yet that overall health could be even better than it is now. One of the things I eat on a regular basis is Jasmine rice.

I'll often cook a pot for dinner, and leave the rest out in the rice cooker overnight and the following day, eat it cold with breakfast....and the next dinner. I'll often have 2-3 servings of cold rice with my meals before running out and cooking another pot to last for the next few days.

I haven't refrigerated it, but it does get cold and hard, so I'm wondering if it's retrograded to RS just from natural cooling down over 12-24 hours at room temp.

Post: #17

Quote:From an evolutionary perspective, how would paleolithic man get resistant starch?

Apparently, cooking/heating up starches, than allowing them to cool is one of the best ways to get RS in your diet.

Nikolay and Tatertot have speculated that perhaps paleolithic man would cook tubers at night, than eat it cold the following day.

Another great post from Tatertot I read yesterday, was some linkage he provided to some old accounts of the Irish practice of dropping the potatoes into boiling water for only a few minutes, so the outside of the potato gets cooked, but the inner "heart" of the potato remains raw. This was the preferred way for not only the Irish peasantry, but even the wealthy Irish ate their potatos prepared like that.

It also brought to mind something I learned when I visited Scotland a few years ago. Scottish farmers centuries ago, used to cook their oatmeal and mix it with cream and something else (I forget), then press it into a drawer in an unheated room and let it cool overnight in the Scottish chilly climate, until it turned into a hardened cake. Then they'd cut the cake into squares and take that with them to eat while they labored in the fields.

I would imagine that was a source of RS in their diet as well.

Post: #18

(12-23-2013 03:47 PM)basilransom Wrote:  From an evolutionary perspective, how would paleolithic man get resistant starch? Eating raw potatoes and unripe bananas? Eating starchier plantains and corn (try Peruvian corn sometimes, much more starchy and less sweet than American corn)?

Trying to figure out how to incorporate it into my diet. As it is I eat potatoes or sweet potatoes daily. I feel like I don't do well without at least 0.5-1 lb of starch a day. From what you're saying, I could replace potatoes with potato starch - and make up the micronutrient gap with more vegetables, protein and fats.

Or you could just cook the potatoes and eat them cold the next day. Sweet potatoes apparently have very little RS, so that wouldn't work. Go to the Free the Animal website to learn which starches have RS and which don't.

I'm completely speculating at this point, but since obtaining meat from hunting was likely an irregular occurrence, hunter/gatherers would have to supplement their diet with plenty of tubers, which would likely fill you up the most and provide you the calories you need. Naturally they'd gather nuts, fruit, seeds, vegetables, etc., but tubers likely provided the most bang-for-your-effort if there were no easy kills.

The guys over at Free the Animal were commenting on how cattails have an insane amount of edible starch; I guess they were ingested in the not-too-distant past by Indians, settlers, etc. I had no idea, but there are off-the-grid types who detail how to eat them here.

Other more well-known tubers are:

- Maca
- Arrowroot
- Jicama
- Turnips/rutabaga
- Cassava
- Yams/Potatoes
- Taro
- Artichokes
- Chinese water chestnut
- Green plantains have a shit-ton of RS. Cut them up, fry them, and eat them like chips to get all that RS.

I suspect all of the abovementioned contain RS. It is well-documented that all of them have been used by indigenous peoples for thousands of years.

Cutting out foods that have RS, like I did for nine months, may have deleterious effects on your health. It did for me, but my physiology may differ from yours.

Post: #19

It might work nicely if you add the starch to a sauce after its heated up awhile and cooled down slightly (at least under 150*f) That way you can get even more RS and eat it more pleasantly than straight up starch. I have to see if it will effect my IBD.

Post: #20

(12-23-2013 02:16 PM)PUA_Rachacha Wrote:  

(12-23-2013 02:04 PM)roberto Wrote:  Interesting stuff. Is there enough carbs in it to interfere with keto?

I love re-fried brown rice. If this is now good for me rather than ready to knock me out of ketosis, count me in.

Resistant starch passes right through the small intestine and is ingested by gut flora in the large intestine, hence the word "resistant". None of the starch actually enters your bloodstream as glucose.

The author over at Free the Animal has kept stressing this point as people from a very-low-carb website attacked him about RS knocking you out of ketosis.

Give it a shot. Do you have those ketosis strips/sticks? Put the re-fried brown rice in the fridge overnight and eat it the next day cold. Some of the starch will have retrograded to RS. See if eating it knocks you out of ketosis.

Apparently Uncle Ben's rice, which is parboiled, has the most RS for any rice brand.

According to the spreadsheet from freetheanimal, cooked and cooled polished rice has 3.44 grams of RS per 100g. So you'd need to eat almost a kilo to get 30g of RS. That's a) not possible for me! and b) will knock you out lof ketosis for sure, regardless of whether some of it is now RS! Or am I missing something?

Post: #21

In the reigon of Africa where I'm from we eat Casava cold after it's been par boiled. We would eat it as a snack/filler with coconuts and almonds.

This RS stuff is new to me but it makes sense. I remember a health good store owner telling me about pro-biotics and stressing the need for pre-biotics. Saying that the new fad/trend ignores the fact that your guy flora needs good present before any new biotics/flore are introduced.

If your worried about gas/farts then just work to make sure your gas does not smell. If you pass clean air all day then it's not an issue, supposedly the sign of elite health is that your bowels and farts won't smell all that much as that means your flora are eating everything and being efficient in breaking down foods.

A step to minimize the smell of your gas/farts is to use liquid chlorophyll which is a dense plant extract. Here is the sheet on it:

/thread-15022.html

Post: #22

Potato starch is aka Farina - plenty for sale on Ebay. I guess RS is effectively the same as inulin or fructo-oligosaccharides in terms of prebiotics.

I took a few grams of inulin a day for maybe 2 months and after a couple of weeks my farts didn't smell at all. I don't remember any other health effects, but maybe wasn't on it long enough.

Farina is cheap, so maybe worth a go. Thanks OP for the info.

Post: #23

OP: Thanks for starting this thread. I am curious about this resistance starch topic, as well, and recently I had been thinking about the topic too at least that it makes sense that likely we need to maintain some carbohydrytes in our diets to feed our good bacteria – and a question comes from how we may balance such good effects and which foods will allow for the feeding of the good bacteria but NOT causing us to have some of the negative effects of too many carbohydrates in our diet – blood sugar spikes and inflammation and other negative modern day complications that come from too many carbohydrates.
Some of my dietary practice background is similar to yours, although I claim to really only have been progressing towards low carb lifestyle since about mid-to late 2011, and since that time, increasingly eliminating carbohydrates and increasingly adding more and more fats into my weekly routine, such as coconut oil, cod liver oil, bacon and eggs, and red meat with fat (though, so far, I do NOT believe in paying premium prices for grass fed meat).

I think that I understand that the resistance starch theory is that the resistant starches pass more readily through our system without raising our blood sugar levels, but feed the good bacteria that are needed in our gut.

In recent years, I have been inclined towards attempting to get my nutrients from whole foods rather than supplements and rather than eating any processed products. When I read through the resistant starch articles, they really seem to be promoting potato starch rather than other kinds of resistant starch. The list of whole foods with resistant starch contained therein show quantities of resistance starch that are quite small – meaning that a guy would have to eat a whole hell of a lot of carbohydrates from those whole foods in order to get the RS benefits. In that regard, in my view, the negative effects from the quantity of carbohydrates would offset the benefits from the small amount of RS contained therein.
In that regard, it seems like the potato starch is the main solution that is being proposed, under this theory, and I have my doubts about having to take a processed food rather than a whole food… but for the sake of science, I may be willing to attempt it...
I am curious about the effects, and whether it does anything? I am thinking that I may need to go to the store and buy some of the potato starch to see if anything happens to ingest about 4 tablespoons or 30 grams a day. I could put it in a drink, I suppose – or make some kind of snack or soup or gravy…

Actually, regarding the discussion of farting as a side effect, I haven’t had farting problems for years, after I cut back on my carbohydrates. These days it is rare that I have gas, unlike in my prior carb days. I am NOT sure what to think about the stinky versus non-stinky fart theories that were espoused, but it does seem that farting is more abundant when eating carbohydrates – and I suppose the potato starch has a similar effect.

(12-24-2013 10:30 AM)roberto Wrote:  

(12-23-2013 02:16 PM)PUA_Rachacha Wrote:  

(12-23-2013 02:04 PM)roberto Wrote:  Interesting stuff. Is there enough carbs in it to interfere with keto?

I love re-fried brown rice. If this is now good for me rather than ready to knock me out of ketosis, count me in.

Resistant starch passes right through the small intestine and is ingested by gut flora in the large intestine, hence the word "resistant". None of the starch actually enters your bloodstream as glucose.

The author over at Free the Animal has kept stressing this point as people from a very-low-carb website attacked him about RS knocking you out of ketosis.

Give it a shot. Do you have those ketosis strips/sticks? Put the re-fried brown rice in the fridge overnight and eat it the next day cold. Some of the starch will have retrograded to RS. See if eating it knocks you out of ketosis.

Apparently Uncle Ben's rice, which is parboiled, has the most RS for any rice brand.

According to the spreadsheet from freetheanimal, cooked and cooled polished rice has 3.44 grams of RS per 100g. So you'd need to eat almost a kilo to get 30g of RS. That's a) not possible for me! and b) will knock you out lof ketosis for sure, regardless of whether some of it is now RS! Or am I missing something?

Roberto, my reading of of this resistance starch matter is that you are going to get knocked out of Ketosis by attempting to get RS from any whole foods, but if you take the potato starch directly (or by making it with some kind of food or drink), then you can eat as much as you want up to 8 tablespoons a day the body will metabolize and it will NOT affect your blood sugar, and in essence, it will help to put a guy in ketosis if he is having troubles getting into ketosis, for whatever reason.

Accordingly, if you value ketosis, then potato starch seems to be the best way to accomplish and maintain such ketosis.

Post: #24

Ok, after reading about some of the issues a lot of folks have had when they started eating RS, I decided to start slowly to avoid the reports of really bad gas and bloating and for some, either constipation or excessive bowel movements. So far, I've been mixing 2 tbsps of potato starch in with a bowl of plain, organic, full fat greek yogurt and eating that every day on an empty stomach for the past week.

Like I wrote earlier, I think my general diet already has regular consumption of RS, and I do have a pretty good immune system (indicating a healthy gut biome), so I'm not surprised I didn't have any of the reported issues as of yet.

Haven't noticed anything different so far either positive or negative except perhaps a more deep, restive sleep. Haven't experienced the bloating, gas or headaches others have reported. Starting tomorrow, I'm going to up the dosage to 4 tbsps and see what happens.

Post: #25

I'm always in state. I'm not the smartest guy but when I eat "clean" food (good source of protein, lost of veggies, bit of fruit or not and a handful of nuts. My mind is SO sharp and quick. Let me know if you got any questions. Got a few books and other sources that you might be interested in [: