Replying to several others here, including this one. (Short version: use fat and starchy/tuberous food to have sustainable/stable blood sugar levels).
There is no way
to turn any carbohydrate into "significant amounts of glucose in a
healthy way" unless you are talking about digestion or metabolism of
fat.
One slice of "whole wheat" bread is worse for you than a teaspoon of
sugar (Glycemic load versus Glycemic index), not to mention the wheat
germ agglutinin and other insulin/hormone mimetics that come with the
bread, nor the gut-tearing action of insoluble fiber.
Glycogen is touted as being your energy source, but it is not. How
long can your muscles function on stored glycogen? Do you think humans
would have survived (on an evolutionary timescale) if they'd had to
eat pasta every 6 hours?
In any case, any carbohydrate/starch is converted to a fatty
substance, stored subcutaneously and used as fuel in lean times (even
rabbits and cows do this via rumen fermentation). If you keep eating
carbohydrates, you turn on the "storage-mode" and accumulate
fat. Repeated turning on of storage mode robs your body of
insulin-sensitivity. You become a non-symptomatic diabetic (if you're
lucky you'll skip Type 2 diabetes and go straight to Type 3 --
a.k.a. Alzheimer's disease).
Lastly, your body can easily convert (with hardly any usage of
vitamins and other trace elements) fat into glucose (this process is
done by the liver and is called gluconeogenesis). In contrast,
digesting/utilizing carbohydrate has a high requirement in terms of
vitamins etc., and even if it didn't, eating wheat blocks the
absorption of most of these elements (especially zinc, vitamin C and
calcium).
Your liver does gluconeogenesis because a very few organs in your body
(primarily some regions of the brain) need glucose to function. The
rest work just fine on free fatty acids in your blood (aka
lipids/cholesterol/ketones). In contrast, sugar causes a rise in
triglycerides, which are the molecules used to transport sugar.
While I don't have references right now, most of this can be found
substantiated on pubmed/medline. An easily digestible summary can be
found at http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com
And a disclaimer: a year ago I would have thought all this very
kooky. It is not. I think the news.yc folk can "handle the truth", as
it were, and so I've written this comment. I hope it helps
someone. If you're of an experimentalist bent, you can try it for yourself, it takes less than 2 weeks to adapt.
Yesterday I was on a 24-hour intermittent fast (I didn't expect it to
get so long, I just wasn't hungry) and I was programming no worse at
the end of it ;-) in fact, I'd say that free of sugar-highs I now
program much better and can concentrate more consistently. That implies more self-control, does it not? YMMV.
As I've pointed out before on this site, the people who get the largest ratio of their food from carbohydrates live longer, weigh less and have fewer cardiovascular problems than those who eat more proteins and fats.
It doesn't matter if you're looking at wealthy countries (Japan vs the US), developing countries (China vs Mexico) or poor countries (Kenya vs Guatemala). In each case, the people getting 75% + of their diets from complex carbohydrates are much better off than those who eat a more animal-based diet.
The China study was certainly interesting, far greater caloric intake (and output, presumably), but more than the diversity of plant food I found the lack of processed food very interesting. Processed food implies omega-6 fats in great quantity, hexane/heat-processed oils, soybean and wheat as food substrates, and artificial flavorings (aka soy isoflavones).
The China study was interesting. The rice-eating south and wheat-eating north did about equally well, but the meat-eating upper class did not.
As for that link about Japan, it contains a pretty serious error. My guess is that the authors may have confused the caloric density of dry rice vs prepared rice.
Though fish intake has been pretty stable and the intake of rice has drastically declined in the past generation, people in Japan still get several times more calories from rice than from fish. It's also worth pointing out that as meat consumption has gone up, so have the rates lifestyle diseases. I've lived most my adult life in Taiwan, and the same thing is happening here.
>"there were a number of changes in the Japanese food supply: in 1961, 90% of the caloric supply per capita per day consisted of 90% vegetable products, and 10% animal products. In 2002, the ratio changed to 79% vegetable products, and 21% animal products. Rice appears to have given way to other grains (such as wheat) as well as increased intake in meat products. However, fish products appear to have maintained their standing as a constant in the Japanese food supply.
While the daily total calorie supply increased through much of the 1960s, it then stabilized, and then rose again in the 1980s. The supply of calories from rice declined from over to 1000 calories per capita in the early 1960s, and then declined to 618 calories per person. Calories from fish rose, and then largely stabilized. Fish accounted for just over 173 calories of per capita calorie supply in 2002, rising from 112 calories per capita in 1961."
http://www.japanreview.net/essays_fish_and_rice.htm
My take on it is that we'd all be healthier if we were eating as if we were on WWII-era rations, but few people have the will power to live like that voluntarily. It's much easier to try to convince ourselves we need to eat in a way few of our ancestors could have afforded to.
You sound down on carbohydrate-heavy diets--So, is your recommendation an isocaloric diet, a ketogenic diet, or eating only when you actually feel hungry, and only enough to assuage the hunger?
Carb-diets are not bad per se. Western ones certainly are, as evidenced by Dr. Weston Price, Vilhjalmur Stefansson &c. In my own experience, daily arizona green teas and mochas add up, and are loaded with sugar. So is food at every restaurant, from Denny's to the poshest, including steak.
>So, is your recommendation an isocaloric diet, a ketogenic diet, or eating only when you actually feel hungry, and only enough to assuage the hunger?
Others are better qualified to make recommendations: Dr. Eades and Stephan at wholehealthsource.
My protocol: no omega-6, eat 1/day within 5 hour period, eat if hungry, eat till full, overeat if I feel like it [0]. No wheat at all[1], limit sugar to once/wk.
I est. 1.5-2.5 kcal/meal, but because of tabata/kettle-bells etc. my calorie needs are quite a bit higher, so I'll punt and call it iso-caloric.
It is ketogenic, only because I prefer to eat coppa, proscuitto, butter, cream, yogurt, eggs and cheese, rather than spend time to bake sourdough, soak oats etc. Sugar (honey) and carbs (mostly sauerkraut) 1/wk.
I started intermittent fasting based on an article by Dr. Eades, and stuck with it only because it was really easy to do, and lets me program pretty much from 7am to 8pm (a single meal saves time as well as assoc. post-prandial sleepiness). Also Frederick Burnham-Russell[2] is a big hero of mine, and he IF-ed his way through awesomeness.
Other than the above, I don't consider it a diet in the "dieter" sense at all, although it is very Banting[3].
There is no way to turn any carbohydrate into "significant amounts of glucose in a healthy way" unless you are talking about digestion or metabolism of fat.
One slice of "whole wheat" bread is worse for you than a teaspoon of sugar (Glycemic load versus Glycemic index), not to mention the wheat germ agglutinin and other insulin/hormone mimetics that come with the bread, nor the gut-tearing action of insoluble fiber.
Glycogen is touted as being your energy source, but it is not. How long can your muscles function on stored glycogen? Do you think humans would have survived (on an evolutionary timescale) if they'd had to eat pasta every 6 hours?
In any case, any carbohydrate/starch is converted to a fatty substance, stored subcutaneously and used as fuel in lean times (even rabbits and cows do this via rumen fermentation). If you keep eating carbohydrates, you turn on the "storage-mode" and accumulate fat. Repeated turning on of storage mode robs your body of insulin-sensitivity. You become a non-symptomatic diabetic (if you're lucky you'll skip Type 2 diabetes and go straight to Type 3 -- a.k.a. Alzheimer's disease).
Lastly, your body can easily convert (with hardly any usage of vitamins and other trace elements) fat into glucose (this process is done by the liver and is called gluconeogenesis). In contrast, digesting/utilizing carbohydrate has a high requirement in terms of vitamins etc., and even if it didn't, eating wheat blocks the absorption of most of these elements (especially zinc, vitamin C and calcium).
Your liver does gluconeogenesis because a very few organs in your body (primarily some regions of the brain) need glucose to function. The rest work just fine on free fatty acids in your blood (aka lipids/cholesterol/ketones). In contrast, sugar causes a rise in triglycerides, which are the molecules used to transport sugar.
While I don't have references right now, most of this can be found substantiated on pubmed/medline. An easily digestible summary can be found at http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com
And a disclaimer: a year ago I would have thought all this very kooky. It is not. I think the news.yc folk can "handle the truth", as it were, and so I've written this comment. I hope it helps someone. If you're of an experimentalist bent, you can try it for yourself, it takes less than 2 weeks to adapt.
Yesterday I was on a 24-hour intermittent fast (I didn't expect it to get so long, I just wasn't hungry) and I was programming no worse at the end of it ;-) in fact, I'd say that free of sugar-highs I now program much better and can concentrate more consistently. That implies more self-control, does it not? YMMV.