Via Jimmy Moore, I see that Dr. Mercola doubled down with Ron Rosedale on the safe starches debate. It’s a debate, so sure, folks will take sides, no biggie. As a fan of the PHD, I’m on Paul Jaminet’s side of course.
But this is what caused my head to explode this morning … after a very lengthy and reasoned discussion, Dr. Mercola summed up his position re starches this way:
Raising blood glucose raises insulin, which increases insulin and leptin resistance.
No, no, no, no, no!!!!!
For any relatively healthy individual, it is most definitely NOT raising blood glucose and insulin via dietary starches per se. If it was, then 100% of Americans would be insulin and leptin resistant, and that is clearly not the case.
So what actually does cause insulin and leptin resistance is still some matter of speculation and more research needs to be done. I’m just a blogger (what do I know?), but I suspect that it is related to overloading your body with too many SAD foods (and their toxins) along with too few essential micronutrients. Essentially the system can only handle the overload to a point, and then things start to break down.
Why this happens to some and not to others is the interesting question to me. Perhaps insulin/leptin resistance kicks in at a certain level of overload (a la Gladwell’s chippers and smoking). Or maybe it's a matter of epigenetics … some of us may be predisposed to react to the SAD environment by packing on the pounds courtesy of what our parents ate before we were even conceived or what our mothers ate while we were in the womb.
Metabolic “derangement”
Of course, the LCers are saying, well, what if you’re not relatively healthy? Well, I’m definitely a met syn girl, and I think removing starches only addresses the symptoms, not the problems. Call me crazy, but I believe there’s a place for starches in my diet — as long as other things like nutrients and the right types of exercise are part of the program. And so far I seem to be doing just fine thank you.
To me, the idea of eliminating starches (safe or otherwise) is on a par with prophylactic mastectomy (removing your breasts to reduce your risk of breast cancer). Perhaps the right choice for some, but hardly something I’d recommend to the general population!
Anyways, the title of the post is a bit extreme, but it is incredibly discouraging to me that this is where we are in terms of understanding obesity. It’s really a tough time to be overweight, and I’m afraid it’s going to get worse.
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Weight Maven is written by Beth Mazur. Beth believes that obesity is more symptom than cause and that the real problem is our modern culture -- especially diet. Beth writes about ancestral health, health policy, & mindfulness. And cats! 
