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jc3737 posted:
Heretic,What if any any problems do you see with the starches in the Mcdougall diet vs fewer starches in the Fuhrman diet.
heretk responded:
What I will say here is based on my observations and is not a 100% scientific statement.

I. Starch

Starch breaks down to glucose. We do digest starch very well and metabolize in form of glucose to energy or convert to fat and store it. Starchy food as the main source of calories in a diet does not seem to be a problem as long as:

1. Your metabolism is not damaged, i.e you are not insulin resistant

2. You do not overeat. (In my personal experience it is a lot easier to overeat on a starch-based diet than on a high animal fat low carb diet!)

3. You do not consume it with comparable amounts of fat by calories. Our bodies do not handle lots of calories comming simultaneously in form of glucose and fat. Most likely this is an issue with the cellular mitochondria but not 100% sure why.

4. Do not consume most of it from the wheat family of plants (that is also durum, einkorn, emmer and spelt).

II. Fuhrman & low starch plant based diet

If you subtract most starchy produce out of your diet, what you are going to replace it with? Protein-rich plants or oily plants?

In either case you are going to navigate on an uncharted territory. However, if one does not do very well on a starch based diet and doesn't want to eat paleo etc for dogmatic reasons, then Fuhrman is probably less bad than McD.

Few common plant produce are high in protein, and rich enough to sustain you as the significant source of calories. If you subtract starchy plants, the remaining choice is basically between beans and seeds.

a) Beans.

Good luck. There are commonly known digestive problems with beans based diets. There are also some less-known issues with beans. Some children tend to develop stunted growth symptom on a high bean diet. When I was a kid, a nutritionist nurse in my primary school advised everyone to eat balanced food but do not eat too much beans while we are growing, only in moderation due to growth concerns. Talk to Mexicans. This issue should be better researched to find out the exact reasons.

b) Seeds.

We need balanced variety of fatty acids in our food. Time after time various studies found that replacing butter fat and animal fat with bottled vegetable oils or margarines to make such fats the only fats consumed to the exclusion of butter, worsened the health markers of the patients. If you are going to postulate that extracted polyunsaturated seeds oil is harmful but the same oil contained in the raw seeds is not then you have to explain why. It would skew your fatty acids composition away from mono-unsaturated and saturated, way towards the omega-6 polyunsaturated fat.

Granted there are many studies showing that an addition of a smaller amount of nuts (almonds, wallnuts etc) to one's diet may improve health but it is one thing adding some nuts to a mixed diet, another thing is making seeds the only source of dietary fat and consuming a lot of that fat. It is a big stretch! It requires a big leap of faith to believe that polyunsaturated seeds oil, while providing you with an equivalent amount of calories as in a starch based diet or as in the animal fat based diet, would not cause other long term health problems. May be not may be yes. Show me the data.

JC, I think it may make a big difference if I who consume 120-200g of animal fat a day (since 1999) ingest some of that fat (for example a quarter) out of nuts and seeds by eating more of them, versus you who consume very little of animal fat, take almost all of your fat from seeds.
If you want to consume comparable amounts of calories out of protein, fat and carbohydrates, (for example 600:600:800) to the total of 2000, (similar to Zone diet), then you would have to eat about 150g of nuts or seeds a day (assume 50% fat). If you wanted 600:800:600 then you would need almost 200g of nuts or seeds.Day after day.I am not sure about you but I could not eat more than a handful of nuts for more than a couple of days in a row. 200g of peeled wallnuts is the size of a 500ml plastic yogurt container.
heretk replied to heretk's response:
Oh, and on the topics of polyunsaturated fats, just posted:

NASH on ketogenic diet (by Hyperlipid)

(HASH = non-alcoholic steatohepatitis, a liver disease)
jc3737 replied to heretk's response:
My 1 hr blood glucose is a good bit higher on the McDougall diet than the Fuhrman diet but the fasting blood glucose is actually lower when I eat more starches(McDougall).On the Fuhrman diet I substitute nuts for rice and potatoes and my one hr goes down but my FBG goes up and so does my A1C.

Very confusing.
jc3737 replied to jc3737's response:
I just found this which suggest that 1 hr is important.What do you think?

Postprandial plasma glucose is an independent risk factor for increased carotid intima-media thickness in non-diabetic individuals. Hanefeld M , Koehler C , Schaper F , Fuecker K , Henkel E , Temelkova-Kurktschiev T . SourceInstitute and Outpatient Department of Clinical Metabolic Research, University Clinic C.G. Carus, Technical University of Dresden, Germany.
AbstractPostprandial (pp) hyperglycemia--frequently associated with an increase in cardiovascular risk factors--may be damaging for the endothelium. So far, little information exists how glucose, insulin and lipids may affect atherosclerosis in the pp state. Therefore, we evaluated the relationship of pp hyperglycemia, insulin secretion and coronary risk factors to intima-media thickness (IMT) in a non-diabetic risk population. In 403 subjects (147 males, 256 females), aged 40-70 years, in the majority relatives of index cases with type 2 diabetes--a 75 g oral glucose tolerance test was performed together with measurement of insulin fractions, various risk factors and IMT of the common carotid artery. We found a continuous rise of 2h pp insulin fractions along the quintiles of 2h pp plasma glucose. A significant increase of body mass index, waist to hip ratio, triglycerides and decrease of HDL-cholesterol was observed in the top quintile of 2h pp plasma glucose (8.24 > or = pp plasma glucose < 11.1 mmol/l). Albuminuria was significantly enhanced in the 5th quintile. In parallel, IMT was significantly increased in the 5th quintile versus the bottom quintile of 2 h and maximal glucose (range 11.7-15.3 mmol/l) postprandially. After age and sex adjustment pp glucose and C-peptide, total cholesterol, triglycerides and HDL-cholesterol but not fasting plasma glucose were significantly correlated to IMT. In multivariate analysis age, male sex, pp plasma glucose, total and HDL-cholesterol were found to be independent risk factors for increased IMT. In conclusion, our data in a non-diabetic European risk population show that the two top quintiles of pp plasma glucose are associated with a clustering of standard risk factors. Corresponding to this clustering of risk factors IMT was significantly increased in the top quintile of 2 h and maximal pp plasma glucose. These data show that pp hyperglycemia may exert a noxious impact on the arterial wall together with a cluster of anomalies typical for the metabolic syndrome"
jc3737 replied to jc3737's response:
The 2 hr looks to be more critical than the fasting levels?

Should I eat more nuts and fewer starches or is this a strech given this resaerch?

"Glucose tolerance and mortality: comparison of WHO and American Diabetes Association diagnostic criteria. The DECODE study group. European Diabetes Epidemiology Group. Diabetes Epidemiology: Collaborative analysis Of Diagnostic criteria in Europe. [No authors listed> Abstract BACKGROUND: The American Diabetes Association (ADA) recommend that fasting glucose alone with the oral glucose tolerance test should be used to diagnose diabetes mellitus. We assessed mortality associated with the ADA fasting-glucose criteria compared with the WHO 2 h post-challenge glucose criteria.
jc3737 replied to jc3737's response:
Heretic,Your take on all this.
heretk replied to jc3737's response:
On a high starch diet, your fasting BG will be slightly lower than on a moderate carb diet because there is higher fasting insulin level.

On a low carb diet your fasting BG may be even still slightly higher than on a moderate carb diet because your fasting insulin level and your average insulin levels will be lower. Higher does not mean dangerously high, we are talking here about /-5% or /-10% relative differences. A dangerously high glucose means 70% or -40% from the normal (typically considered to be about 100mg/dl).

As a qualitative illustration only , the difference between 3 dietary cases ar this:

Case 1: high carb healthy person

Case 2: high carb metabolic disorder
FBG=L (in some cases VL ), PPBG=H , FI=H , PPI=VH [br>

Case 3: high carb diabetes t2

Case 4: medium carb healthy person


Case 5: medium carb metabolic disorder

FBG=N , PPBG=H , FI=H , PPI=H [br>

Case 6: medium carb diabetes t2

Case 7: low carb healthy person


Case 8: low carb metabolic disorder

FBG=N, PPBG=N, FI=H-, PPI=H- [br>

Case 9: low carb diabetes t2
FBG=H-, PPBG=H-, FI=H-, PPI=H- [br>
VL = very low, dangerously low
L = means slightly below normal but within healthy limits
N = means normal level (100mg/dl or 5.5mmol/l)
H = slightly above normal but within healthy limits
VH = very high, dangerously high
= rising trend
- = falling trend
FBG=Fasting Blood Glucose
PPBG=Post-Prandial Blood Glucose

FI=Fasting Insulin Level (serum)
PPI= Post-Prandial Insulin Level (serum)


Have a look at Hyperlipid blog . Peter did a test once by going high carb for a few days and documented his BG result. Jimmy Moore of did similar test (very well done and documented!) a few months ago. Find those articles by searching the blogs.

Stan (Heretic)
heretk replied to heretk's response:
Formatting goblins ate my pluses, have to correct it:

... /-5% or /-10% relative differences. A dangerously high glucose means 70% or -40%

Should read:

... plus or minus 5% or plus or minus 10% relative differences. A dangerously high glucose means plus 70% or minus 40%

heretk replied to heretk's response:
I reformatted and corrected the table above, linked here .
jc3737 replied to heretk's response:

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