The Potato Diet....criticisms and metabolic theory page 13

[Paysan]

The graph showed insulin response relative to baseline, not blood glucose levels. The reason that your blood sugars shot up was due to digestion and absorption, and the reason they started to come down was precisely because you had a surge in insulin which caused increased uptake of blood glucose by peripheral tissues.

-PK

I stand corrected. I went back and examined the graph again, and noticed something else interesting. Except for the thin non-diabetics, whose insulin levels peaked at one hour, the rest continued their rise for some time afterward. Now, either this indicates I keep company with the skinnies (I don't usually), or there's more to my pattern yet to be revealed. I'll check it again shortly, but hope hubby doesn't scream about the dollar per strip cost.;-)

[pklopp]

No one is going to develop kwashiokor on a week or 2 of potatoes. A lot of fruitarians live on fruit for months and even years without problems yet most fruit is much lower in protein than potatoes.

I don't recall saying that a two week stint of all potatoes was tantamount to kwashiorkor. I did say the diet represented incipient kwashiorkor where incipient means "beginning to come into being." That suggests the existence of a continuum where each additional day on the diet is one additional step away from normal and one additional step closer to being protein deficient, i.e. "leads to the condition"

The argument is that a protein deficient diet is not a healthy diet, whether it is advocated by a potato devotee, fruitarian, or raw food vegan. The corollary to the argument is that if your miraculous weightloss is due largely to protein losses, then you may actually be gaining relative fat mass, i.e. you are losing protein at a faster rate than you are losing fat.

Of course, no underlying mechanism for how this dietary intervention might work has been proposed, so for all intents and purposes it is essentially magic.

-PK

[gopintos]

miraculous weight loss technique

I dont know why those words like miracle, magic, etc have to even be used. No one believes that it is the cure all to obesity, even if they off-handedly might have said it worked like magic or some flippant remark we all make like that, well some of us anyways. Although anytime I lose a pound, I do feel like it is a miracle and I feel like maybe I could walk on water next.

[paleo-bunny]

But the potato diet is not protein deficient. You appear to have missed this point pklopp.

[Paleobird]

I don't recall saying that a two week stint of all potatoes was tantamount to kwashiorkor. I did say the diet represented incipient kwashiorkor where incipient means "beginning to come into being." That suggests the existence of a continuum where each additional day on the diet is one additional step away from normal and one additional step closer to being protein deficient, i.e. "leads to the condition"

The argument is that a protein deficient diet is not a healthy diet, whether it is advocated by a potato devotee, fruitarian, or raw food vegan. The corollary to the argument is that if your miraculous weightloss is due largely to protein losses, then you may actually be gaining relative fat mass, i.e. you are losing protein at a faster rate than you are losing fat.

Of course, no underlying mechanism for how this dietary intervention might work has been proposed, so for all intents and purposes it is essentially magic.

-PK

Exactly. But if people are willing to sacrifice their muscles and organs just to see the numbers move on the scale, then that's their choice. Personally, I'm having steak for dinner tonight. I've got a second one if you want to come over PK.

[gopintos]

The argument is that a protein deficient diet is not a healthy diet, whether it is advocated by a potato devotee, fruitarian, or raw food vegan. The corollary to the argument is that if your miraculous weightloss is due largely to protein losses, then you may actually be gaining relative fat mass, i.e. you are losing protein at a faster rate than you are losing fat.

I dont mean to beat a dead horse, but I will anyways I guess, cuz this just sounds like you could have also inserted the word fasting in there, unless you mean that fasters are more evolved than the primal tator eater in that a faster is more intelligently developed and is more aware of self preservation and continuing the species by knowing when to say when and a tator eater would just eat himself to death with tators.

[Terry H]

Personally, I'm having steak for dinner tonight. I've got a second one if you want to come over PK.



Bond....James Bond.

[Paysan]

...

Of course, no underlying mechanism for how this dietary intervention might work has been proposed, so for all intents and purposes it is essentially magic.

-PK

Isn't that why we're experimenting with this? Magic is just science that hasn't been discovered yet. Satiety comes in as number one explanation. Full people don't feel the need to eat after they've eaten enough. Dull and boring comes in a close second. What's the third one? How about watching the inches decrease motivating one to keep going just one more day, or watching pounds fall off and stay off for someone pursuing an otherwise healthy diet ? OK, if your n=1 is similar to most here, you gotta start where we do - with extra adipose tissue! Skinnies need not torture themselves to debunk our "magic."

[pklopp]

Exactly. But if people are willing to sacrifice their muscles and organs just to see the numbers move on the scale, then that's their choice. Personally, I'm having steak for dinner tonight. I've got a second one if you want to come over PK.

San Diego? I hear the weather is perfect out there... I don't think I could make it in time for dinner!

-PK

[pklopp]

I dont mean to beat a dead horse, but I will anyways I guess, cuz this just sounds like you could have also inserted the word fasting in there, unless you mean that fasters are more evolved than the primal tator eater in that a faster is more intelligently developed and is more aware of self preservation and continuing the species by knowing when to say when and a tator eater would just eat himself to death with tators.

If you recall, you made this point before and I pointed out that the effect of fasting on insulin is the precise opposite of what eating a potato only diet would do. So, as Kipling might say ... "fasting is fasting and potato feasting is potato feasting, and never the twain shall meet."

Unless you want to argue that insulin has no bearing on your metabolism.

-PK