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Potato diet community trial

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181–190 of 240 posts

Re: Potato diet community trial

#181

Any X-only diet doesn't seem healthy to me. There is no magical ingredient and we are omnivorous. Sure you can reduce weight with many types of different diets but it doesn't mean it is good for your health. It is better to develop good healthy habits than you can maintain for years and also while socializing and living in family.

We are not omnivores. Humans are obligate hypercarnivores that are capable of scavenging other energy sources for survival. Plenty of animals, both herbivores and carnivores, are capable of eating foods that they were not developed to eat, but that does not mean it's optimal or good for them. Humans only became "omnivores" in the last 30,000 years as a result of agriculture. For several million years prior to that, h…

We have a cecum.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecum

And we can digest plants just fine without having to ferment them.

All those fantastical ideas about how the human body works, they keep cropping up in this kind of thread again and again. Where do they come from, I wonder?

I am really curious. Who comes up with those things?

The other day some guy was saying we can't digest plants. Like, at all. A vegetarian once told me that our teeth and stomach can't deal with meat. Have those people never eaten the things they say we can't eat?

There's clearly a kind of madness in all those diets that starts to become dangerous when it becomes a fad. But I'm still curious: how do they start?

Re: Potato diet community trial

#182
post #94

I haven't seen it mentioned in the post, but it is worth mentioning that (boiled) potatoes have the highest satiety index [1] among common foods. The highest SI score was produced by boiled potatoes (323 +/- 51%) which was seven-fold higher than the lowest SI score of the croissant (47 +/- 17%) [1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7498104/ edit: added (boiled)

Yep. That's why this works. If you limit the palatability (by restricting added salt/fat/seasoning), you get to a point where you simply do not want to eat any more potatoes. And that happens a lot sooner with potatoes vs. other foods due to the high satiety, so you're full and satisfied at a significant caloric deficit.

Re: Potato diet community trial

#184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a big believer in the idea that diet can influence the microbiome but current science does not support the above statements. While diet can induce a shift in the gut microbiota, these changes appear to be temporary. Whether prolonged dietary changes can induce permanent alterations in the gut microbiota is unknown https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6950569/#:~:tex... I am unaware of dietary induced lact…

Anecdote alert here, but I grew up in Northern Europe and had a standard diet absolutely full of dairy. No problems. Then I moved to East Asia for about a year and inadvertently cut out dairy completely (it just wasn't in any food, and I didn't crave it). When I went back on holiday after the first year and reintroduced dairy into my diet it seemed I had developed a serious intolerance to it which took months to slow…

I actually value anecdotal health stuff more than most folks. I just am not at my best and don't really know how to engage with this other than to say "Thanks."

Re: Potato diet community trial

#185
post #107

Potatoes give me heartburn, so that's right out for me. Besides: > Magician Penn Jillette lost over 100 lbs using a strategy that started with two weeks of a potato-only diet, and seems to be keeping it off I know this because Kevin Smith started in a similar way after talking to him, and discussed it on his podcasts; it follows the teaching of some other guy who wrote a book and works as personal dietician. The thin…

In defense of the linked article, they're not saying volunteers should stay on the diet indefinitely -- they say "at least 4 weeks." And all the examples they cite are people doing it for X weeks and then transitioning to a diet that's more varied (but still restricted compared to what they were eating before).

Re: Potato diet community trial

#186
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More like 7lbs for an average man, but that's probably the point. You realistically can only eat something like 4lbs a day (I guess - I haven't tried), and thus you lose weight. If that amount is enough to make you feel full, that would plausibly explain why these people have success with this weight loss strategy. Note that the article recommends refraining from consuming dairy products, albeit without any reasoning…

Dairy products are usually high in fat and cholesterol, and are generally considered to be unhealthy. They are high in calcium, but the absorption rate (how much calcium you actually get from consuming it) is very low, and according to some research it's even negative (as in, it costs your body more calcium to consume dairy than what you get from it). Dairy is also a relatively new addition to our diet, and was exclu…

No post body was provided.

Re: Potato diet community trial

#187
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can gain weight on a diet of "healthy" foods. It's the amount of calories. Being overweight is bad for your health even if you only eat healthy foods.

Sure, but healthy foods contain more nutrients, that’s why they can be called healthy. So fueling your body to excess with a lot of nutrients will lead to a much better functioning body than doing the same with garbage

>fueling your body to excess with a lot of nutrients A commonly held myth about eating is that fueling the body with an excess of (micro)nutrients is healthier than fueling the body with an adequate amount of micro nutrients. It is not healthier, it is exactly the same (and then becomes toxic again in excess!)

And as you know, fueling the body with excess macronutrients is unhealthy. Indeed, eating a diet poor or absent in micronutrients is bad for you, but also quite rare.

Re: Potato diet community trial

#188

This title is fairly disingenuous considering the test subjects are using vitamin supplements to make up for the obvious deficiency. The weight loss bits are just silly. Any sustained caloric deficit will cause one to lose fat, regardless of the source. This just seems to be rediscovering the already well-known fact that complex carbohydrates (which potatoes provide) keep you better satiated than simple carbohydrates…

The purpose of this random Internet trial is to verify or disprove the assertion that this diet is easy to stick to for most people , which would be absolutely massive if true because no weight-loss diet ever has had this property. And it seems to have done very well at that purpose: four weeks later, only about 10% of the cohort were still doing it.

4 weeks is a very, very long time to only eat potatoes. When Penn Jillette tried this, the all-potato phase lasted 2 weeks. I wonder what % of the cohort was still adhering to the diet at the 2-week mark?

Re: Potato diet community trial

#189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can keto meals really be described as "delicious"? I mean, I love the taste of butter, cream, marbled steaks and pork fat, but when you have to consume whipping cream as a beverage it sounds absolutely nauseating.

You could drink water instead.

Sure, but then the same fat has to be consumed in solid form instead.

When kids are put on the diet for epilepsy they make them chug cream and mayonnaise, not exactly my idea of a delicious meal: https://www.epilepsy.com/treatment/dietary-therapies/ketogen...?

Re: Potato diet community trial

#190
post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you eat only potatoes you will only ingest the nutrients found in potatoes so you will risk becoming deficient in all other nutrients, not found in potatoes. I don't know what those are, but for example you'd risk running out of all the stuff that vegans have to take supplements to replenish, like B12, iron, zinc, etc. Anyway the diet described in the article doesn't make any assumption about calories. If you're t…

At that point you are just kinda throwing spaghetti at the wall in an 'anything is possible' kind of sense, neither of those are very parsimonious explanations. Besides the fact the diet isn't asking suggesting anyone not supplement, a vegan diet won't lead to a severe B-12 deficiency in a matter months. But hey there is a non-0% chance you are bang on and the people losing weight when trying to eat 20 potatoes a day…

I don't understand what you're trying to say because the derision in your comment is taking up all the space that would normally be dedicated to clarity.
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