Lectin Lesson 5 Resistant Starch is a High Fat Diet - Ask the Gorillas!

February 26, 2018 

References: Steven Gundry's Plant Paradox, Journal NutritionJ. Internal MedNature


 Once upon a time our diet was very similar to gorillas. Say some 10 million years ago, and prior. We ate leaves, in Africa. Only 8 million years ago did we diverge from chimpanzees and only 2 million years ago did our brains start getting bigger in response to eating meat. We had learned to run long distance, which made us the most successful hunter in Africa. But our guts were still used to eating leaves, and designed to do so.  Even today's modern "Stone Age People", the Hazda, eat some hundreds of raw plants on a daily basis. 


 What happens on eating plants? Leaves are very dense, high fiber foods. Gorillas eat about 16 pounds a day, in today's gorilla. The gorilla can't digest those leaves, but their gut biome can. The bacteria in their gut break down the leaves and convert the cell walls of those plants into tiny, short chain fatty acids. Net effect, the gorilla's diet becomes 70% fat, ideal food for brain and nerve cells. What looks like a high fiber, low fat diet turns into a high fat diet when the gut biome is properly nourished and contributes like it was designed to. 


Now, let's make a pivot and see if we can find anyone on this planet who eats a high fiber, high fat diet. We end up with a unique society in remote New Guinea called the Kitavans. A Swedish Researcher, Lindeberg, did a study on the Kitavans who eat virtually no western food, 70% carb, and 20% fat and have absolutely no obesity, no heart disease, no diabetes and live into their 90s, while smoking. Imagine that! How do they do that? They eat a ton of resistant starches in the form of taro, coconut, fruit and fish. 


We find much the same from Tokolau, another remote Polynesian Island with no western food: just mostly coconuts and fish. The key is that idea of resistant starches. These are "carbs" that don't act like most carbs. They don't get digested in the small bowel where modern refined carbs are digested. In the process of cooking their molecular shape is changed.  They are passed on through to the lower gut where they are ideal foods for your gut bacteria. Your colonic biome goes nuts with happiness and digests them down into short chain fatty acids instead of making them into distinct molecules of glucose, turning what looks like carbs into fat. This is the same hat trick the gorilla does in their gut. 


Not only that, with all that food, the bacteria make a thick coat of mucus in your gut and you make a much more effective barrier to absorbing those dangerous lectins and LPSs fats that turn on inflammation - so you make a better natural barrier. Resistant starches reverse the damage of red meat. Now, many resistant starch foods are high lectin foods: boiled and cooled potatoes, rice - cooked and cooled, beans and oats. Gundry acknowledges this and advises you eat green bananas. Not ripe ones where the carbs are sweet and absorbed, but green where they are still resistant. 


 Turn on the lens of resistant starches and suddenly long lived societies around the world come into focus. They all have the same features in common. Their diets show high fiber diets of resistant starches, which their colonic biome turns into short chain fatty acids. Their brains get high fat intake. On Okinawa, the fiber is in the form of yams. Sardinians and Cretans eat high fat in the form of olive oil. Seventh Day Adventists are vegetarian, but eat about 60% fat from olives and peanuts. The Mediterranean diet goes straight for the olive oil, making an approximate high fat diet. We know your brain does better eating fat. It just has to be the right fat. And having your colon make it for you appears to be the right concept. Thank you, gorillas. 


 WWW.What will work for me. Gundry is turning our dietary concepts on its head. But data is data. The Kitavans make for a unique example. Ditto from Tokolau Island(70% of diet from coconut). There is rice being developed on Okinawa that is particularly resistant. I'm curious if I can find it. I'm not taking up smoking. But will I eat a bit of rice now? Yes, if it has been cooked and then cooled down. Raw banana, well, I'll try one.   


 Pop Quiz

  1. Gorillas eat a high fat diet? T or F                      Answer: False, they eat a resistant starch diet that is turned into high fat in their gut
  2. We can find examples of high fat diets all around the world. Name some.               Answer: Sardinians, Tokolau, Crete, Loma Linda Adventists.
  3. Resistant Starches do what?                          Answer: Get through your small bowel undigested and give ideal food to your colonic biome where they make small fatty acids, ideal brain food.
  4. Folks eating high carb diets are in trouble for diabetes? T or F                   Answer: Stupid question because there is no nuance. Eat a pizza and the high glycemic wheat crust and fatty cheese and meat will instantly turn on weight gain. Eat a high carb diet of taro root and raw bananas, and you get no weight gain.
  5. If you smoke, you can get away with it? T or F                            Answer: True, if you move to Kitava and eat raw bananas and taro root. Otherwise you just die sooner.
     

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