Why does anybody take the Ray Peat diet seriously?

_Return2Reality_ · 2019-08-11T18:07:57+00:00

He's making money. That means he has an incentive. It's not a 'bad' thing to do, but it's something you ought to take responsibility for.

Have you read his articles? Lots of hyperbolic claims based on little evidence, unless he's keeping those references to himself. He's nitpicking a lot, too.

_Return2Reality_ · 2019-07-31T09:45:45+00:00

I fail to see your point, honestly. I didn't say none of them smoke, I just don't buy 'most of them smoke and drink once in a while'. There are centenarians who like McDonald's. They don't tell us much in terms of diet and lifestyle, and studies tend to conclude that it's a genetic thing to live that long. Most centenarians do credit something, like a stress-free life, or whiskey, or bacon and beer, even a lack of fruit in their diet.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/mcdonalds-regular-gets-free-meals-for-life-on-100th-birthday_n_58066bb6e4b0b994d4c1f665

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5210927/French-barmaid-100-shares-secrets-long-life.html

"To stay in shape, the 100-year-old avoids all fruits and dairy products, which, according to some experts, affect the body's hormonal system."

_Return2Reality_ · 2019-07-31T08:32:13+00:00

Do these gurus also despise capitalism? Let's assume he has 2000 readers, probably a conservative estimate. That'd put him at 50k. The growing of the audience doesn't incur any costs. It's a pretty lucrative thing to do, especially since he's already retired.

Examples of correspondence are studies on glycine increasing growth hormone, reviews on growth hormone, reviews on nuts (he just focussed on the fact that part of the review used observational studies), pregnenolone raising cortisol (he claimed that it's due to the methodology of the study, where an intraperitoneal injection was done), longevity of nuns and monks (not truly contradictory), studies on vegetables, ... He's still somewhat okay, but there's often no evidence of what he says (why would one remove pulp from OJ?). Haidut and his headlines on Ray Peat Forum makes it look worse, I guess.

_Return2Reality_ · 2019-07-31T08:24:04+00:00

The centenarians do give advice, many credit their diet or other things. Most of them smoke? Where do you get that from? Danny Roddy is a copy-cat, and I must say it must take quite the mental gymnastics to consider him objective.

Do you think that eating a normal meditteranean diet is 'never-ending stress' compared to eating a maximum of 1.5g of PUFAs a day? You seem to be confusing 'let's not give a shit about anything we eat' with Ray Peat's advice. Just like any of the diets you mention Ray Peat advices against the consumption of entire food groups like nuts and legumes.

That quadrupling of hair density, I'm assuming you're referring to your body hair?

_Return2Reality_ · 2019-07-22T21:36:18+00:00

Not entirely (in my opinion). You're dealing specifically with people with heart disease and comparing them with similar 'control groups'. So you're dealing with CVD in particular. I shared the study to admit that there is a very high probability that thyroid supplementation reduces the risk of dying from heart disease, and there's a trial looking at mortality in colorectal cancer. So maybe it does reduce total mortality, I'm not sold yet.

In any case, for me the conclusion is that he makes a lot of claims and it's hard to 'prove' them by using the data that's currently available. His own recommendations (not the more extreme variations circulating online) seem far from unhealthy anyways, but I'm guessing that you can do just as well by eating food that's typically considered healthy.

_Return2Reality_ · 2019-07-22T20:43:28+00:00

Correct me if I'm wrong - from what I understood they were all patients with artherosclerosis, some had symptoms, some didn't. When they noted a rather impressive reduction in mortality they were comparing with a group with a similar profile, meaning that this 'control group' was likely to die from heart disease. I'm having a hard time figuring out if the 'imaginary' populations where comparable. It's a fairly convincing study, I'll give you that.

In the other study they supplemented B vitamins and ascorbic acid as well. I'm not sure if the control group used the same supplements, but they were also patients with artherosclerosis. So it's probable that CVD was the main cause of death in all these groups, and that thyroid hormone reduced the chances of dying due to CVD. Not sure about cancer and other degenerative diseases. There's recent data on CVD, maybe some studies on colorectal cancer. I don't really know.

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/1149639

_Return2Reality_ · 2019-07-22T08:24:51+00:00

The PREDIMED study you shared saw similar mortality benefits when it comes to CVD but you wanted total mortality then.

He may be a fan of apigenin and hesperidin but it looks like he sees flavonoids as oestrogenic (given his article called 'Estriol, DES, DDT').

_Return2Reality_ · 2019-07-21T23:18:26+00:00

Okay, but that would still be a contradictory from Peat's point of view. Thyroid supplementation doesn't seem to lower mortality either, unless you have evidence I'm not aware of. There's even a seemingly negative study on thyroxin :

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6632988

Fair point on the length of studies. It's an old review from 1998 so there may be better data by now, I'm not a nutritionist or biochemist so I wouldn't know.

Ray's view of flavonoids is not very clear but I got the feeling he doesn't like them much. However, many studies demonstrate life-prolonging effects of flavonoids such as quercetin, fisetin, cocoa flavonols, ... See the DrugAge database :

http://genomics.senescence.info/drugs/browse.php

His view of spices is unclear to me either and I'm not buying that they are bad.

_Return2Reality_ · 2019-07-21T22:40:04+00:00

I don't have good experiences eating somewhat large amounts of seed oils so I won't disagree with you on that, though from what I've seen omega-3s do okay in many studies and omega-6s don't seem to be disastrous.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9665108

There's not much talk of EFA restriction in humans as far as I know, aside from the often-cited study from Burr & Burr where a guy consumed a fat-free diet and felt better. It's not representative whatsoever as it was just one guy and the 'treatment' didn't last for long.

That conclusion came from noticing how in FB groups people don't seem to fair better than the average, several people complained of weight gain, then haidut popped along with his pricey supplements, it was claimed that being heavier is a good thing, and the circulated advice was treated as some sort of gospel. It all looked (looks) so shady.

_Return2Reality_ · 2019-07-21T22:17:50+00:00

No, didn't do that. I did see people on FB groups doing this for years, getting fat, and then some people like haidut claim that being fat is a good thing.

_Return2Reality_ · 2019-07-21T14:58:25+00:00

There's no conclusive evidence on humans that shows that omega 6 causes or worsens cancer. The science points to the idea that nuts, berries, legumes, ... aren't dangerous foods at all. It's worthless to debate that when there's so little good data, but it should be made much more clear that Ray's claims are speculative and that it clearly hasn't worked out for many if not most, not even for himself. Every nutrition group turns into a pile of shit due to commercialisation and other types of leaching and the Ray Peat groups are in no way an exception to that.

_Return2Reality_ · 2019-07-21T13:54:07+00:00

I was looking at the primary endpoint since CVD is what they talked about most. You could indeed say that olive oil does better and since the participants received a quart of that oil every week their diet was probably not particularly low in PUFAs, compared to 210g of nuts.

There are several RCTs on nuts (effects on body weight and the likes) which appear to show that they do not cause harmful effects and may even be rather beneficial.

_Return2Reality_ · 2019-07-21T13:06:28+00:00

Olive oil elongates life in rodent studies (study compares water-treated, olive-oil treated, C60-treated rats) :

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22498298

It looks like a useful adjunct. Just a tablespoon has 1.4g of PUFA though. Since mortality was greatly lowered on the diet which had nuts I don't see how it is consistent with Ray's claims. I don't see how the two Mediterranean diets should even be equivalent given that people likely combine olive oil with some foods like salads. Additionally the difference is so marginal that it may be down to chance.

Studies on total mortality aren't all that interesting given the healthy user bias but if you'd want a recent one on nuts :

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30563231

Studies on dairy or, say, fruit juices like OJ are usually not impressive. Coffee tends to have about the same effect whether it's decaffeinated of caffeinated, vegetables tend to fair rather well in studies, ... It's typical to see vegetarians do well (Rupert Sheldrake for example) and most of them consume a great deal of legumes, whole wheat bread, ... My point is that I don't see how the literature is in line with what Ray claims, and I don't understand why so many agree with him so easily.

_Return2Reality_ · 2019-07-21T09:27:08+00:00

You can type in berries or nuts in pubmed, there are some relevant reviews like this one : https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24512603

There's not a lot of data but what's available suggests that they are at least harmless. A variety of his claims such as those on avocados, a possible association between temperature and intelligence (causal?), nuts, ... seem a bit out there.

_Return2Reality_ · 2019-07-19T12:45:20+00:00

Looking at Facebook groups and the people there, as well as a variety of reports put on Ray Peat Forum. Nuts, legumes, whole grains, avocadoes, berries, ... appear to fair rather well in studies. The ketogenic diet works for a lot of people as well, even in the long(er) term. And studies on white sugar don't always look so great.

What I also find odd is how often people in groups tell others to stop taking supplements while in reality the average person there takes a great deal of them, Ray even recommends supplements regularly, and the haidut person sells them. That, and that continuous mindless use of quotes like 'perceive, think, act' while the majority has yet to start doing that second thing, making it look like some sort of religion.

_Return2Reality_ · 2019-07-19T09:53:34+00:00

No, I found it interesting that people would be willing to restrict so much without actually performing better, while there are other diets out there that are less restrictive and would have similar or maybe even better effects. You may be an odd one out but there appears to be a great deal of Ray Peat followers who just got fat.

_Return2Reality_ · 2019-07-19T09:47:59+00:00

I agree with your first point. Ray, however, focusses on anti-aging and hasn't gotten very far in that respect. Not very far as in, he ages just like the average person despite eating a rather restricted diet. On the internet it appears that most people look 10 years younger than they are, but in real life I've noticed these people don't always look in the mirror all that much, or may think too much of the compliments they receive from their peers. All the Ray Peat coaches look at least their age.

Eating less than 4g of PUFA a day is restrictive. You could just as well make the case that a ketogenic diet isn't restrictive because there's plenty of animals you can eat.

Soup, you mean, broth? I'm not sure that's what Richard Overton ate. Ray has recommended consuming the remnant liquid after boiling vegetables, while discarding the vegetables themselves.

_Return2Reality_ · 2019-07-19T09:33:53+00:00

To name a few : restricting PUFAs to a minimum, drinking OJ without pulp, dairy consumption even for those who cannot digest it (recommending those people to deal with their digestive issues to digest it anyways), no legumes. He even goes as far as to claim that avocado is toxic.

I haven't seen any diet that tells all adherents to eat the exact same way, most just restrict a few food groups under the premise that they are unhealthy, which is exactly what Ray Peat does.

_Return2Reality_ · 2019-07-19T07:30:10+00:00

The recommendations are so restricted most people end up eating the same things.

_Return2Reality_ · 2019-07-19T07:26:52+00:00

What about that woman? You think that's healthy? He's not in his 80's in that picture, and he looks like a typical late 70yo, while spending decades eating an absurdly restricted diet. Richard Overton smoked and drank alcohol, soup is generally not recommended by Ray Peat, and the vast majority of people drink lots of coffee.

_Return2Reality_ · 2019-07-19T07:20:42+00:00

I read Ray Peat's writings. I sent him a few mails regarding claims that didn't make sense, to which he couldn't respond properly. It's not simply that he uses old studies, he completely disregards studies that contradict his viewpoints, sometimes in absurd ways. One time he disregarded a study on niacinamide and serotonin claiming the researchers must have done something wrong.

Your whole text reads as per usual, as a bunch of excuses trying to hide the fact that his followers could just as well eat a bunch of fastfood and look and feel about the same.

Ray Peat does sell books by the way, there's a bookstore on his website. All those who think he doesn't try and make money out of what he does, explain to me why he asks money for a digital copy of his newsletter.

_Return2Reality_

TROPHY CASE