On Thu, Oct 28, 2010 at 1:41 AM, barnabywalker
<barnabywalker@gmail.com> wrote:
With all the studying you do, I'm surprised you don't know "why" the high carb white rice works. But hey, not everyone is willing to experiment, as you, growing "flying" chickenfeed. ;-)
LOL! Yeah, I have a VERY tolerant family.
I do have one theory about why this diet works. It has to do with the appestat and food predictivity (I don't know if that's a word, so maybe I made it up).
Rats don't get fat normally, even when you way overfeed them and they don't get any exercise. The food just sits and gets moldy. To do "fat rats" experiments, you need a special breed of rat.
But here is the deal: the rat gets the same rat chow, day after day. The rat knows exactly how much to eat, because it is THE SAME FOOD. If they are given separate foods, the rat eats a bit of this and a bit of that, to get exactly the right carb/fat/protein ratio, and also according to other nutrients it needs. That little rat brain knows what to eat.
However, if you don't feed the rat "real" food ... you give it a protein shake, say ... then the rat can't choose what to eat. In general, it will eat just the right amount of protein shake though, day after day.
If the protein shake doesn't have enough of one nutrient, then the rat might eat too many calories though ... in order to get that nutrient.
And here is the kicker: if you CHANGE the protein shake, then the rat eats too much or too little for a couple of days, until its brain figures out how much to eat. It can't predict, based on taste, what are the contents of the shake.
So with human beings ... in most times and places, people had something we call a "food culture" or a "cuisine". Most families had, say, 10-12 recipes that they cooked a LOT ... roast chicken on Sunday, say, or baked potatoes and steak, or rice and beans. Or whatever. But people's brains knew what was in the food, because it was the same food. And when Mom baked you a cookie ... it was Mom's cookie recipe that she always made, and your brain knew how many to eat.
Also, Mom made meals in such a way that they filled you UP. She didn't want to waste food, or have you whining for more in an hour or two. She probably didn't think about this much, just, tended to make stuff that made you full and happy.
Now, what happens today with food?
First, it's not Mom making it. It's some food company. And that food company is not at all interested in filling you UP. They want you to eat LOTS. And they do tests to see: how many cookies will people eat? They tend to choose the recipes where testers eat LOTS of cookies. I don't really blame MSG here: I think it's more the case that Mom used lots of eggs and some butter and milk and such so Mom's cookies had plenty of nutrients and protein (because again: she wanted you to be full). Cookie companies don't use those ingredients so much: they are expensive, and also, they fill people up, so people don't eat so many of them.
Second, your brain can't predict what is in the food. The food companies are all different, and they change their recipes whenever they feel like it. Two snack bars can look and taste alike and be wildly different in calorie content. It's even worse with stuff like hamburgers and fries.
So your average Asian meal consists of rice, plus some toppings for the rice. You can eat more rice, or less rice. More toppings, or less toppings. Usually there is a choice of toppings at each meal.
What happens? First, your body knows what "rice" is. It can predict the calorie content really easily. It knows exactly how much of it to eat. Second, you can change the meal content according to what you NEED to eat, rather than according to "serving size".
So when I say my family tends to eat "one chicken thigh" worth of chicken ... it's not because that's what I tell them to eat. That is just my observation. I serve vegies, rice, meat, sauces. They eat what they feel like eating. If I cook one huge yummy steak per person ... they still only eat part of one steak. And they only eat about a cup of rice. It's actually pretty consistent. But sometimes my daughter will just pig out and eat a huge amount of one thing. She stays pretty much the same weight always.
Also, "gelatinized" starches act differently in your body than "dry" starches. I'm not sure what all the differences are, but part of it is bacteriological. If you feed a horse dry oats, too many of them, the horse will die. The bacteria overgrow and the horse gets acidosis. But, horses race faster if they get more oats, so they do "extruded" oats, where the oats are gelatinized, kind of like oat spaghetti. Those don't kill the horse.
Steamed rice is gelatinized. Rice crackers are not. So eating steamed rice with a meal makes sense to me.
I think I'll have to go back to a more controlled experiment of white rice and salmon, being sure that white rice is the only source of carbs. It doesn't make sense that high carbs of white rice would be good, but it hasn't at first glance logically made sense that Fats are good for us, either.
You might want to stick in some good greens too, and a garlic/ginger/whatever sauce. You body wants the stuff that is in greens too, I think.
Thanks for the reports on your experiments, I'm going back to read more of your blog.
I hope it doesn't warp your mind too badly :-)
Barnaby
