Kitavians, McDougall, and "What to eat"

By happenstance, I got two emails today, on two different topics. One was a reply about the Kitavian diet. The other was about Dr. McDougall.

I had not heard about Dr. McDougall. He prescribes a diet he calls "The Starch Solution".

http://www.drmcdougall.com/video/starch_solution.html


I agree, obviously, with his point that starch does not make people fat. Rice does in fact start turning into sugar the minute you eat it. And equally obvious: it is not making Asia fat. It's really nice that someone else is saying that!

His other points:

1. You eat to get energy. Energy foods are fat or carbohydrates.

2. Learn to recognize starches. We are seekers of starch, not amino acids or fats, because we are not your basic meat eater. (I disagree with that: our taste buds are darn good at recognizing good fats and proteins).

3. Plant don't grow pathogens. Not really true: yes, the plants get them from animals, but the plants NEED animals to grow, because that is where they get their nitrogen. Plants are a usual vector for parasites.

4. He is very anti any animal foods, not based on a lot of science.

5. You can live on only potatoes. There was a study on this in 1925. Ok, I agree with that, my granddad's family lived mainly on potatoes too. And oats.

6. For most of human history, human beings have gotten most of their calories from starch. I agree with this mostly. Some starchy diets didn't work well, though, esp. where "wheat" was the main starch. However, there have also been some healthy people who did NOT have a starch-based diet, which is why I think it's a bit of a red herring.

7. He doesn't think grains are bad for you, because grains caused civilization to happen. He makes a point that 3 of those are gluten-containing grains. I agree on this point: I think gluten had a LOT to do with "civilization" because gluten changes brain function, makes people more anxious, more likely to create empires. Corn may do something similar. He really doesn't get the "gluten thing".

Um. You heard of Aspergers? There is a pretty clear link between grains and bad health, at this point, and if you don't hear it, you aren't listening. Interestingly, his examples of barley eaters are folks like the Ice Man (murdered) and gladiators (professional fighters) and Alexander the Great. Genghis Khan was into wheat too. There is a fair bit of historical comment about barley and wheat and "fighting energy". Rice eaters are just way too pacifist. The Buddhist monks are into brown rice ... Sumos get wheat or barley noodles, plus meat.

BTW, the potato-eaters did get a big empire. They did fight. What is interesting though, was that most of the spread of their empire was based on religion and politics, not on fighting. The big armies of history ... none of them appear to have been rice-based. People of the time commented on this. Rice eaters are just plain not motivated.

I think this has to do with the amygdala. To fight, you need some anxiety and anger, preferably in a context when no one has, say, actually attacked you. To get an army to attack an village that is just sitting there, the fighting forces need to be nervous about some unseen enemy, or pleasing a god, or just plain angry. Gluten makes this center of the brain more active than it should be. I don't think it's a good thing though: McDougall makes it sound like this is a success of sorts.

8. His take on the Inuit: they were just a small group. Doesn't count.

9. Recent humans make more amylase. We are better at digesting starch than primates.

He makes this kind of logical jump from "historical people got most of their calories from starch" to somehow "we should be vegan". I agree many or most peoples got most of their calories from starch, unless they got most of their calories from fats (in northern countries, mainly). No one got most of their calories from protein, because humans have a very limited amount of protein they can handle. But that doesn't mean "most people were vegan". Human beings, esp. small human beings, can't be vegan. Kids used to breast feed for up to 5 years ... they were not vegans! Also they ate insects, fish, lizards, rats, whatever ... along with their starch. The coprolites show that really clearly. Along with plenty of vegies and starches.

As for fats ... there are plenty of healthy peoples eating fats too. Mostly where the main food source is fish or seals. Or coconuts. Fats and starches seem to be interchangeable, which makes sense. Starches turn into fat, easily.

10. It's not genes, because 3rd and 4th generation Japanese get fat.  OK, I agree there. It's NOT genes. But his take is "They eat less starch". How do you figure that? The intake of protein vs. starch isn't that different for traditional Japanese. What is different is the intake of wheat and beef, mostly. Maybe some other things. Perhaps a lot of it starts with different bacteria based on lack of breast-feeding (formula sets up a babies gut in a very different way, than breast feeding).


How does this diet work in the promoters?

What do I notice about Dr. McDougall? First, he has grey hair, and age spots. Older Japanese don't get these so much. I'm not sure what it is about the vegan diet, but you end up with people who go grey early for some reason. I expect that the age spots might be due to his earlier diet (before he did all this research) and his love of potatoes (high in iron). Anyway, Dr. McDougall is 60? And half grey, half white, and big age spots.

It was interesting to me that the founder of Bastyr and his son, both died of heart attack within a few days.

Dr. Mitchell's youngest son, Noah, also died Tuesday just a few hours before his father, of a similar heart attack, though it seems the deaths were coincidental.
Pizzorno and Dr. Mitchell, along with two others, founded Bastyr University in 1978. At the time, it was the second natural-medicine university in the country in a field that many didn't consider to be a legitimate part of mainstream medicine, Pizzorno said.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003543647_mitchellobit27m.html

Now, the thing is: look at his picture. He was *59*. And white haired! He looks old. His son was a lot younger, and died of a heart attack. These are people eating a vegetarian, probably low-fat, "healthy" diet. And they look a whole lot older than your average Japanese person at the same age. FWIW, I am 56, and not grey at all, yet, nor his my husband, same age. I'm not sure what is going on with this, but the "vegans" I now are often grey at say, age 30. Also losing their hair. Why? I suspect high levels of iron, which causes peroxide production, which bleaches the hair follicles. Not really related to "starch" or "animal protein" directly at all.

===============

Now, what are the features of his "starch based" diet?

http://www.drmcdougall.com/free_4d.html

Forbidden foods:

- Meat, poultry, eggs, fish
- oils (any kind, including veggie oils).
- coconut (?? )
- refined foods, any kind.
- white rice
- white flour
- dairy

So what does that leave you with? Whole wheat, brown rice, roots, legumes, vegies, fruits. The basic menu of a lot of "basic healty" diets. My general take is: you lose the dairy, which causes a lot of problems for some people. You lose the trans fats. You keep barley and wheat, but most people won't eat a lot of the "whole" forms of those. You lose the neu5gc. You lose the iron (because the whole grains block that).

The Kitavians

So here I need to take a seque to my other email. This was about the Kitavian diet. The original blog post is interesting. Kitavians came into the news because of the studies that said "reading too much ruins your eyes". Thing is, Kitavian kids read a LOT, but have great eyesight. So the blog site talks about this some:

http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2008/08/kitava-wrapping-it-up.html

It's a great post: you should read it. But what came today was a bit from an actual Kitavian:

The common food that the Kitava islanders eat to stay alive for the next say are tuberous such as:
Yams (teitu, kuvi, kasiwena, kwanadu, gorina(sweet potato), bisia, taro (uni and viya), including wild and domesticated greens like unonu,gayasu, yakumalasi,beans,nuweta, yakirodi, including fruit from pawpaw, pumpkin, water melon, lemon (kamokuku), natu, yaku, mango, breadfruit, gwadira, sasana, seida (okari-nuts(, coconuts, plus with protein not always (daily basis) such as fish (main one), pork (pig -- rarely), chicken --rarely), crabs and shell fish.

Thank you 

Kaigabu Kamnanaya 
(Kitava Island)


Now this sounds a lot like what I find at your average Asian market. Yams, vegies, legumes, fish. In Japan, Korea, and others, there is a lot of rice too, plus eggs and poultry.

So what is different about this diet, than the SAD?

- No wheat/barley/rye products
- Low iron
- Loads of polysaccharides
- Loads of nutrients
- No neu5GC
- Few industrial chemicals/additives

These diets are very similar, in practice. The main difference between the Kitavian diet and the McDougall diet is:

- The McDougall diet contains wheat/barley (but only in the whole form: my experience is that people eat less whole wheat or barley, than they do the white versions)
- The McDougall diet does not contain fish or eggs


The diets are basically very similar. Based on starch and vegies and fruits, for sure.

I would tend to say that losing the wheat and barley, and adding fish and eggs, makes for a way better diet, and one that could be used by young people too (fish provide the EFA that kids need). McDougall has added a vegan component, which seems to be common lately (it happened too in "The China Study" ... this could be a really significant study, but really, the results are NOT about "veganism").


Takeaway: Is this about starch? I don't think so. I don't think "macronutrients" are the issue at all. It's the SOURCE of the starch, or the fat, or the protein. For starches, wheat and barley don't work well. For fats, trans fats and vegetable fats don't work well. For proteins, mammal proteins don't work well.

My experience:

As an addendum, I'd have to say that my daily diet is more like the Kitavian, and my eyesight has in fact improved. I needed new glasses a few months ago, and it looks like I'll need new ones again, but the eye doctor has no idea why I've improved in both far and near sight.. The ability of my eyes to "focus" has gotten really good, but it's hard to pinpoint what exactly makes that happen. My blood sugar and blood pressure has improved a lot too. I'm not a vegan. I'm not low-fat. I do eat a lot of starches (mainly rice and roots) and sugars (mainly fruits and some splurges like pecan pie). I avoid iron, and mostly, mammal meat, dairy, and gluten, and eat loads of vegies, eggs, fish, and fruit. But we do have beef probably once a week and I enjoy it (I think neu5gc is inflammatory, and inflammation is one of my issues). My "age spots" are fading too, which means, I think, that the "low iron" part is working. But my skin is soft, without hand-cream (despite gardening and loads of dishwashing), which means I'm getting plenty of fat.