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Potato diet community trial

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Re: Potato diet community trial

#211

Post by BizarroLand »

Arn_Thor wrote: post #146
DoreenMichele wrote: post #117

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…

Most people who are lactose intolerant aren't aware they are lactose intolerant, and many people are lactose intolerant.

Chances are, you are lactose intolerant but you were adjusted to the side effects as being normal until you had a period of your life where you were not dealing with them.

For a lot of people, lactose intolerance makes them a little gassy, or changes their bowel habits. It's practically negligible until they get away from it for a while and experience relief from the symptoms.

If you are lactose intolerant, you should probably try to not trigger that response, or take lactaid supplements when you are going to knowingly eat lactose so that your body has something to digest those sugars. It's a minor adjustment that can make your daily life just a little more bearable.

Re: Potato diet community trial

#212

Post by danShumway »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #198
danShumway wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> appear to be temporary That's a good point to bring up, but I do wonder if this is splitting hairs just a little bit. A shift in your microbiome might be technically temporary while still making things feel very weird for that temporary period -- however long that takes to change. Also keep in mind: > Whether prolonged dietary changes can induce permanent alterations in the gut microbiota is unknown, mainly due to…

I'm not splitting hairs. I'm engaging in conversation to the best of my ability while under the weather, which is generally true of my interactions on HN. My anecdotal experience or understanding is that potato starch is generally good for gut health, that you can nearly live on potatoes alone which is why the Irish Potato Famine was such a big deal -- big families on small plots of land were keeping people alive by…

> I'm not splitting hairs. I'm engaging in conversation to the best of my ability while under the weather, which is generally true of my interactions on HN.

Not sure if my phrasing got this across, but I didn't mean "splitting hairs" as an intentional act or in the sense of spreading division or prompting argument, and I didn't interpret your comment as making a really strong claim in either direction. I just interpreted your comment as public musing, same as what I was doing.

I only meant "splitting hairs" in the sense that a person who runs into temporary lactose-intolerance will still have trouble for the duration of that time period. For whatever it's worth, I didn't interpret your comment as trying to say that temporary changes couldn't exist, or that you were supporting a potato-only diet, or that the OP was lying, or anything like that.

At the end of the day I'm not a doctor, I've got no idea what a potato-only diet will do to someone's microbiome. I'm just posting stuff on the Internet.

Re: Potato diet community trial

#213

Post by BizarroLand »

Mordisquitos wrote: post #92
kuhewa wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing inherently unhealthy about being in a temporary state of negative energy flux (unless you are already underweight or deficient in an essential mineral or something)

That being true, it could well be that a "Potato Only Diet" is effective for weight loss not because of the reduced energy intake, nor because of some subtlety in how our gut or our metabolism deals with an only starch diet for a while, but instead because potatoes lack micronutrient X or inhibit its absorption and a symptom of X deficiency is losing weight. That could be unhealthy. I don't have an opinion either way…

I wonder if it is useful for flushing PFAS and other forever chemicals from the body?

They found that indigestible oils like Olestra served to flush out the chemicals that bonded with oils, so maybe the high fiber potato diet is good for flushing out something else?

Re: Potato diet community trial

#214

Post by BizarroLand »

harpersealtako wrote: post #207
pubby wrote: post #63

My long-running pet theory is that eating a large variety of foods is bad for our gut biome. Between breakfast, lunch, and dinner, our intestinal flora cycles through blooms and die-offs of different bacteria. The blooms interfere with bacteria diversity, while the die-offs create waves of toxins that trigger our immune systems. To give an analogy, it's a bit like an ecology having its climate messed with. Imagine a…

An easy counterpoint is that Japan is a very healthy society with the lowest obesity rate in the developed world, and they actually have a mantra that says "eat 30 different foods every day". Japanese people directly attribute their health to the diversity and variety of their diet.

I thought that traditionally they ate rice as their main food and everything else was more or less a topping for the rice.

Re: Potato diet community trial

#215

Post by bell-cot »

43543523435435 wrote: post #208

https://www.nutritionix.com/food/potato > Calories 161 > Protein 4.3g grams Let's do some math here. 2500 calories of potatoes works out to 2500/161x4.3 = 66.77 grams of protein . If you don't understand immediately why that might be a bit of a problem, then you're probably the target audience for this Dunning-Kruger Diet. Sure, you'll lose fat, along with what little muscle you have, and probably even some bone mine…

I quickly found a few credible sources stating that that was sufficient protein for most people -

https://www.health.harvard.edu/nutrition/when-it-comes-to-pr...

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26630101/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reference_Daily_Intake#Dietary...

Re: Potato diet community trial

#217

Post by easygenes »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #117
keyle wrote: post #18

One word of caution on these "only this diet". Your gut bacteria is a jungle with many species of microbes, trillions of them. They basically fight for territory and some subspecies will die if you stop injecting . So if you are not lactose intolerant and get off lactose for 6-9 months, don't expect that your belly will react well to a glass of milk in a year. I'm all for _reducing_ X and Y. But completely going pola…

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…

Yeah, you need to be able to produce the lactase enzyme yourself to avoid having your gut bacteria be the ones to break down lactose (and thus produce indigestion).

On the idea that your microbiome can take a long time to recover from elimination diets: 1) From a gastrointestinal morphology perspective, we are opportunistic scavengers, so our whole biology is directed around sporadically eating just about anything. 2) I've seen several studies showing that, for the most part, our gut microbiome radically reshapes itself within a matter of days in response to major diet changes.

Re: Potato diet community trial

#218

Post by Smaug123 »

nvrspyx wrote: post #54
Smaug123 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is at least one case where your argument is clearly false: sleep apnea is often directly mechanically caused by bodyweight, causes health problems when untreated, and is strongly associated with being fat and/or muscular.

They never said being overweight is healthy, so this isn't really a counterargument. They're saying losing weight != healthy, which isn't the same thing. Take anorexia or bulimia for example. You could be overweight, but that doesn't mean losing weight from an eating disorder is healthy. Same is true for a diet. Just because you're losing weight from a diet, doesn't mean the diet is healthy for you.

Fine, to be extremely pedantic I'm replying to the assertion "Losing weight doesn't help you stop being unhealthy" which I invented; what they really said was "Losing weight isn't causal to being healthy".

Re: Potato diet community trial

#219

Post by 43543523435435 »

bell-cot wrote: post #215
43543523435435 wrote: post #208

https://www.nutritionix.com/food/potato > Calories 161 > Protein 4.3g grams Let's do some math here. 2500 calories of potatoes works out to 2500/161x4.3 = 66.77 grams of protein . If you don't understand immediately why that might be a bit of a problem, then you're probably the target audience for this Dunning-Kruger Diet. Sure, you'll lose fat, along with what little muscle you have, and probably even some bone mine…

I quickly found a few credible sources stating that that was sufficient protein for most people - https://www.health.harvard.edu/nutrition/when-it-comes-to-pr... https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26630101/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reference_Daily_Intake#Dietary...

> sufficient protein for most people

Your own sources admit uncertainty around adequate intake, and even then, that's just for most people. Most people aren't actively trying to build muscle, or actively trying to lose weight. Ignore the studies demonstrating the benefits of high (upto 2g./kg., or a roughly 1g./lb.) protein diets on body composition at your own peril.

Re: Potato diet community trial

#220

Post by the_only_law »

playworker wrote: post #123
vanderZwan wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds awesome! How does one order a free poster? I don't see an obvious link to click on the website

https://www.roche.com/about/philanthropy/science-education/b...

Now I have to wonder if they're going to be confused following a sudden increase in requests.
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