Dear Bob,
Comments for Bob Avery

> I eat lots of raw starch (rice, other grains, yams) with NO pains in the
> belly.

Perhaps your gut has adapted to the presence of large amounts of raw starch by
either increasing amylase secretion in the small intestine or increasing the
numbers and types of bugs in the large intestine.  This happens in lactose
intolerant individuals who continue to drink milk.

(I'm sorry I don't have time to look up the reference that says this but if you
want it I'll dig around for it.)

The type of resistant starch in raw cereals is easier to digest than that in raw
potatoes.  Most people complain of symptoms when they eat raw potatoes or alot
of raw green bananas. John Cummings et al at the Dunn Nutrition Unit have
divided up resistant starch into three types based on their crystallinity.

We need to remember that the food plants we eat today are a long, long way from
the original wild types.  We have consistently bred them for improved
characteristics like size and palatability and perhaps their ease of digestion.

It's interesting that Australian Aboriginals used lots of processing techniques
to rid plants of toxins but they ate a very high protein diet just the same
based on marine and land animals.

Comments for Loren

'The bottom line here is that present day hunter gatherers maintain
quite low serum lipid levels despite high consumptions of animal based
foods'.

The Keys equation does not consider the effect of amount and type of CHOs on
insulin secretion.  Hyperinsulinaemia is turning out to be one of the biggest
independent risk factors for CHD.  High protein diets and low glycaemic index
diets both lower insulinaemia.

Best wishes  Jennie






>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date:    Wed, 30 Apr 1997 08:44:00 PDT
> From:    "Ginsberg, Doug" <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Re: Alpha amylase inhibitors & Detoxifying plant foods
>
> Does anyone know if traditional food preparation techniques such as
> soaking, sprouting, and fermenting  are effective responses to some of
> these plant toxicity issues; and were any of them used by paleolithic
> hunter-gatherers?
> Doug Ginsberg
> [log in to unmask]
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date:    Wed, 30 Apr 1997 10:50:00 -0600
> From:    Loren Cordain <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Re: Cereal starches & dental caries & A question
>
> A good paper showing the epidemiological relationship between cereal
> grain consumption and caries incidence is: (Sreebny LM.  Cereal
> availability and dental caries. Community Dent Oral Epidemiol
> 1983;11:148-55).   The author, Leo Sreebny, did most of the original
> epidemiological work relating sucrose consumption to dental caries.
>
> QUESTION:
>
>         In our group over the last month or so, we have bandied about the
> idea
> of the ancestral macronutrient compositions (i.e. %fat, %protein, % CHO)
> and how they influence health.    Clearly, in the normal western diet
> (~45-50% CHO, 35-40% fat and 10-15% protein) if dietary saturated fats
> are reduced, then total and LDL cholesterol are also reduced.   Keys
> (Keys A et al.  Serum cholesterol response to changes in the diet. IV.
> Particular saturated fatty acids in the diet.  Metabolism
> 1965;14:776-87) has published an equation which has been used
> extensively to predict changes in serum cholesterol from dietary lipids
> and cholesterol.    Others (Mensink et al) more recently,  have
> confirmed Keys' Equation.    In perhaps the most well controlled,
> modern, dietary study of Greenland Eskimos, Bang and Dyerberg (Bang HO,
> Dyerberg J.  Lipid metabolism and ischemic heart disease in greenland
> eskimos.  In: Advances in Nutrition Research, HH Draper (Ed), Vol 3,
> N.Y., Plenum Press, 1980, 1-22.), it has been shown that ischemic heart
> disease is very uncommon in these people (3.5 %  vs 45-50% mortality
> rate in western countries).    The dietary macronutrient content of
> these partially westernized eskimos was (38% CHO, 39%fat and 23%
> protein) whereas the values for the control group of Danish people was
> (47% CHO, 42% fat, and 11%protein).   Mean total cholesterol levels in
> the eskimos (5.03 mmol/liter) was significantly lower than in the Danes
> (6.18 mmol/liter) whereas the TG (0.57 vs 1.23 mmol/liter) and VLDL
> (0.43 vs 1.29 mmol/liter) were much  lower in the eskimos and HDL levels
> were significantly higher (4.00 vs 3.34 mmol/liter).
>         Based upon the Keys et al. equation, the actual difference between
> the
> Eskimos' total cholesterol levels should have been 0.67 mmol/liter,
> whereas in acutality it was 1.15 mmol/liter.   This data suggests that
> the Keys equation may be invalid under circumstances wherein high
> quantities of animal products replace traditionally cereal dominated
> diets.   Possible reasons for this discrepancy include: (1)  higher
> protein levels in the face of lowered CHO may induce different
> lipoprotein transport mechanisms (Wolfe BM.  Potential role of raising
> dietary protein intake for reducing risk of atherosclerosis. Can J
> Cardiol 1995;11:127G-31G) or different polyunsaturated fat (high N3 fats
> and high levels of preformed long chain fats of both N3 and N6 families)
> between the two diets (Nelson GJ et al.  Low fat diets do not lower
> plasma cholesterol levels in healthy men compared to high fat dits with
> similar fatty acid composition at constant caloric intake. Lipids 1995
> 30:969-76).
>         The bottom line here is that present day hunter gatherers maintain
> quite low serum lipid levels despite high consumptions of animal based
> foods.   Comments?
>
>                                         Cordially,
>
>
>                                         Loren Cordain, Ph.D.
>
> ------------------------------
>
> End of PALEODIET Digest - 29 Apr 1997 to 30 Apr 1997