Even resistant starch’s reported benefit of increasing insulin receptor sensitivity and its corollary good things can be simply achieved in other ways, for example,
by eating a diet high in fat, moderate in protein, and low in carbohydrate mostly from non-starchy fibrous vegetables.
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If you read the comments in online forums where people discuss their forays into resistant-starch experimentation, you’ll discover that
most everybody describes getting uncomfortable abdominal gas and bloating from these adventures. Dysbiotic gut microorganisms tend to be gas-producing, whereas beneficial gut microorganisms tend to be more acid forming. Most everyone describes the solution to the abdominal discomfort in terms of another supplement, and reportedly a probiotic supplement is able to quell the discomfort wrought by the resistant-starch supplement.
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Plus, if one is going to argue that we grew up on tubers and their starches, there’s to be explained all that stable isotope research suggesting that we evolved as high level carnivores. This evidence stretches back some 3.39 million years to our distant hominin ancestors, much further than previously realized. Even Lucy, who lived in Africa 3.2 million years ago, used tools for carnivorous purposes. And even that aside, there’s just the common sense of it all. I mean, we have short guts and big, fatty brains, for gosh sake. One doesn’t evolve these from eating loads of starch, resistant or otherwise.
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Otherwise, I have serious questions about how far back we really do go with our friend the potato and certainly with resistant starches. Honestly, I can’t think why we would have needed them.
I know we’re wired to want starchy stuff, and lots of people crave carbs. Frankly, as many have suggested, I think that’s half the appeal of resistant starch. It’s a way to suck down carbohydrates. But the good news is that when you become fat adapted — when you burn fat rather than sugar as your primary metabolic fuel (to the delight of all your organs, I might add) — such cravings evaporate. They just disappear. So in the end, the resistant starch approach just seems to me like an unnecessary, tortuous (and somewhat torturous!) attempt to arrive at a goal that’s perfectly well attainable by eating a regular old paleo/primal diet, with some lovely good fats and tasty meats and vegetables, and sans the powdered raw potatoes and green banana flour. It’ll do for me, anyway, speaking personally.
http://primaldocs.com/opinion/resisting-resistant-starch/
She’s really excited because, as she points out, there are over 160 studies showing the benefit of resistant starch.
Wow! Where do I sign up to get some? It sounds great. Or does it?
There are probably over 1600 studies showing the purported benefits of statin drugs, but we all know what those are. The 160 studies purporting to show benefit for resistant starch are probably in the same mold. Let’s forget about the studies right now and focus more on what we really know about starch and resistant starch to see how well this lady’s claims hold up to scientific scrutiny.
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All fiber goes through the digestive tract unabsorbed until it reaches the colon where it is acted upon by colonic bacteria (I suppose you could loosely call it fermented) that convert it to short chain fatty acids, one of which is butyrate (a four-carbon fat). These short chain fatty acids can be absorbed through the colon and used for energy just like any other fat.
So if butyrate “shuts off the burning of carbohydrates,” as our RD says it does, then wouldn’t it make sense to get as much of it as we can? And what happens to all that carbohydrate we don’t burn? Does it just continue to circulate in the blood running our blood sugar sky high? Or does it get stored as glycogen? Does butyrate encourage carbohydrates to head into storage? These are all questions she doesn’t address. Let me help clarify.
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So, we eat our half cup of cooked potato, and what do we get? We get almost three teaspoons of sugar and carb that convert almost immediately to glucose and head directly into the bloodstream. The blood volume of a person with a normal blood sugar contains about a teaspoon of sugar, which means that consuming the potato almost quadruples the amount of sugar in the blood. The pancreas then secretes insulin to drive this excess sugar into the cells. This extra insulin then does all the things excess insulin is famous (or infamous) for doing.
But what about the butyrate from the resistant starch? Oh yeah, the 2.3 grams of butyrate. I don’t see how the butyrate is going to do much to stop the insulin spike resulting from the ingestion of the sugars and starch from the non-resistant starch part of the potato. And even if butyrate really does all it is cracked up to do, we wouldn’t really need the potato with all its accessory easily absorbed carb because we can get the equivalent amount of butyrate from a single pat of butter. (Or almost the same – a pat of butter contains 1.45 g butyrate. Two pats of butter contain 3 g or about 1.5 times the amount generated by the resistant starch component of the potato.)
If the benefits of the resistant starch come from its conversion to butyrate as our RD avers, and if it requires the amount per day found in only one half cup of potato (or of the other foods she lists) as she also avers, then why not provide ourselves with one and a half times as much by eating a couple of pats of butter per day, which come without the extra three teaspoons of sugar? We get the butyrate without having to convert and we don’t get the extra carbs. Makes perfect sense to me.
Amazingly, our RD recommends adding the half cup of one of the resistant-fat-containing foods to the rest of whatever you’re eating that day. So, if you’re already on a ‘normal’ diet, i.e., one pretty high in carbs already, she is recommending that you add, say, a half cup of cooked potato to the mix so that you will ‘lose fat, reduce blood sugar, and lower insulin levels.’ Hmmm. Sounds a little snake oily. Sounds like she’s telling porkies.
http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/metabolism/resistant-starch/
Mike
