Permaculturist Health

[Lawrence London <lfljvenaura@gmail.com>]

For the diet conscious, the human microbiome and how to encourage it to be and stay healthy and live longer:

the potato only diet leads to more microbiome diversity? (self.nutrition)

submitted 6 hours ago by JimboJones8787

check out this guys n=1 experiment

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/potatohack.com/2016/12/03/this-is-your-gut-on-potatoes/amp/

he eats only potatoes and increases his gut diversity

whats going on? is the so called simplified fibre approach of only eating one type of quality fibre good?

i have some theories. potatoes are just simply beasts for providing guts with food and theres a surplus for all the bacteria to chow down. maybe its due to the elimination of foods which could hurt gut bacteria. maybe the good bacteria have an all you can eat buffet, kill all the bad bacteria and allow other good bacteria to emerge

please, internet experts lend me your knowledge

i am considering a similar diet of sweet potatoes, spinach and seeds btw

[–]Sanpaku 21 points 3 hours ago

Raw potatoes have high levels of digestion resistant starch (RS), and RS increases microbial diversity. Immediately following cooking, nearly all potato starch becomes digestible, but high heat and slow cooling, or cycles of heating and cooling, can increase the amount of RS to up to around 10%. Potatoes have far less conventional fiber, but even this has been found to increase microbial diversity in animal models.

Reducing protein intake increases microbiome Shannon index diversity. High protein intake favors opportunist species, whereas lower protein intake favors the more diverse microbial "guild" that relies on secreted mucin for nitrogen requirements, like Akkermansia mucinophila (research on this microbe has exploded over the past decade) and other downstream

So, a potato-only diet can be expected to have significant amounts of microbial available carbohydrates, which would feed primary fermenters like Bifidobacteria and other species downstream. This isn't true of diets for which most fiber is non-fermentable, like the cellulose in leafy greens for most of us. If a potato-only diet reduces undigested protein reaching the colon, it would also favor the more diverse endogenous microbial guild that relies on secreted mucin for nitrogen.

Personally, I mostly favor potatoes as diet foods as they have the highest satiety index (ratio of feeling of "fullness" vs. calorie content), and they've got a amino acid balance more closely matched to human needs (and without excess methionine), compared to cereal grains. Potatoes get a bad rap mostly because of the ways they're usually prepared: fried, or dripping in high calorie density cheese/cream/sauces. For myself, I sometimes dump potatoes in a pressure cooker with water, which will bring even internal temperatures to 121 °C (250 °F), and leave them to slowly cool overnight, and further in the refrigerator. The research suggests this approach can bring slowly digestible starch up to 45% and resistant starch up to 5%. For quick meals I'll briefly heat in the microwave with healthy toppings.

Holt et al, E., 1995. A satiety index of common foods. Euro J Clin Nut, 49(9), pp.675-690.

Mishra et al, 2008. Effect of processing on slowly digestible starch and resistant starch in potato. Starch‐Stärke, 60(9), pp.500-507.

Yadav et al, 2009. Studies on effect of multiple heating/cooling cycles on the resistant starch formation in cereals, legumes and tubers. Int J Food Sci Nut, 60(sup4), pp.258-272.

Panasevich et al, 2015. Modulation of the faecal microbiome of healthy adult dogs by inclusion of potato fibre in the diet. Brit J Nut, 113(1), pp.125-133.

Holmes et al, 2017. Diet-microbiome interactions in health are controlled by intestinal nitrogen source constraints. Cell metab, 25(1), pp.140-151.

"https://www.reddit.com/r/nutrition/comments/acl062/the_potato_only_diet_leads_to_more_microbiome/?st=jqir6wjs&sh=8a18c07a"

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Lawrence F. London, Jr.
lfljvenaura@gmail.com

https://sites.google.com/site/avantgeared