Stop saying sweet potatoes are more nutritious than white potatoes!

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I get tired of seeing the Paleo community go

white and sweet potatoes.jpg
“Oh sweet potatoes brah like they are way better than white potatoes, like grok man he only ate sweet potatoes and white potatoes are just the devil! Like uh I saw that they have more of them nutrient things and are healthier for you and just better, sweet potato with butter, sweet potato with cinnamon, sweet potato sweet potato sweet potato!”

I do not care for the taste of sweet potatoes at all, nor do I care for people making claims that have zero basis in reality. Yes, white potatoes are nightshades and a small portion of the population has negative reactions to nightshades... I suspect somewhere, somewhen an individual that had a legitimate nightshade issue found that when they switched to sweet potatoes from white potatoes they had some of their health issues vanish and then someone else saw it and was like "oh man sweet potatoes!" and then another and another and another... and this white potatoes developed a stigma.

The Paleo community is starting to come around to white potatoes with more and more people being adventurous and returning to them, finding they don't have issue with them as they suspected. Still, at least once a week I see someone on a forum or Reddit or a blog demonize white potatoes with comments like "sweet potatoes are more nutritious!" well... why don't we actually take a look at the numbers, because... you know... SCIENCE.

Sweet Potatoes 200g White Potatoes 200g
kcals 160 281
fat 0g 0g
cholesterol 0mg 0mg
carbohydrates 41g 64g
dietary fiber 7g 6g
sugars 13g 4g
protein 4g 6g
Vitamin A 38433IU 29.9IU
Vitamin C 39.2mg 37.7mg
Vitamin D - -
Vitamin E 1.4mg 0.1mg
Vitamin K 4.6mcg 8.1mcg
Thiamin 0.2mg .01mg
Riboflavin 0.2mg 0.1mg
Niacin 3mg 4.6mg
Vitamin B6 0.6mg 0.6mg
Folate 12mcg 114mcg
Vitamin B12 - -
Pantothenic Acid 1.8mg 1.1mg
Choline 26.2mg 43.1mg
Betaine 69.2mg 0.6mg
Calcium 76mg 29.9mg
Iron 1.4mg 1.9mg
Magnesium 54mg 80.7mg
Phosphorous 108mg 224mg
Potassium 950mg 1626mg
Sodium 72mg 20.39mg
Zinc 0.6mg 1mg
Copper 0.3mg 0.4mg
Manganese 1mg 0.6mg
Selenium 0.4mcg 1.5mcg
Fluoride -

Wait, what? I thought sweet potatoes were so much more nutritious than white potatoes?!?! You're telling me the only thing sweet potatoes has over white potatoes is considerably more vitamin A but white potatoes have more of several other minerals/nutrients/vitamins. Fancy that. Now stop saying sweet potatoes are more nutritious.

Hacking nutritional deficiencies: b-12, folinic acid, magnesium

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B-12 and folinic acid

So last year I learned I had a vitamin b-12 deficiency ( Folate deficiency ) during a visit to my DO after my hypokalemic event . Some signs of a b-12 deficiency include:

    weakness, tiredness or light-headedness  
    rapid heartbeat and breathing
    pale skin
    sore tongue
    easy bruising or bleeding, including bleeding gums
    stomach upset and weight loss
    diarrhea or constipation
    hyperpigmentation
    vitiligo

 

I tried supplementing with folic acid until I learned that it's not the most bio available and a good number of people poorly absorb/use it. I never got around to picking up a better alternative until a couple of months ago.

Doing some research I learned that methylcobalamin or hydroxycobalamin taken with folate (5-MTHF or folinic acid, NOT folic acid) are your best bet for making up for this deficiency in one's diet. That being said I opted to go with Folinic Acid with B-12 200 Caps by Kirkman . After a couple of months my vitiligo and hyperpigmentation on my upper arms is starting to go away rather noticeably.

 

 

Magnesium Deficiency

Magnesium deficiency is rarely diagnosed because usually a blood test is done as part of an electrolyte panel. Rougly only 1% of the body's magnesium is stored in the blood. Symptons of a magnesium deficiency include:

    Muscle twitches
    Urinary Spasms
    Menstrual cramps
    Photophobia
    Insomnia
    Anxiety
    Hyperactivity
    Restlessness
    Panic attacks
    Agoraphobia
    Numbness, tingling and abnormal sensations
    High blood pressure
    Heart arrythmias
    Angina

There are TONS of types of magnesium available as supplements, some are pretty worthless doing nothing more than giving you diarrhea, upon my research I found two products I take. Mag-Tab SR which contains 84 mg of elemental magnesium L-lactate dihydrate per caplet meaning 4 of these caplets satisfy the daily requirements of most humans... I take 4 of these a day spread mostly throughout the day so my body is getting a steady trickle of magnesium. The second product I use is Designs for Health Magnegel Transdermal Magnesium Gel  delivers approximately 150 mg of elemental magnesium per 1/4 teaspoon to the skin, (about the size of a nickel) I just blob fairly random amounts out on my skin twice a day, first thing in the morning and about an hour before bed.

 

 

Bulletproof Diet and Mental Clarity

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I've been doing the Bulletproof Diet for 5 days now. I have not had my normal 'brain crash' or 'brain fog' creep in around 2pm each day, which has been the norm for the vast majority of days of my life (despite even things like nootropics). I contribute this entirely to the MCT oil, a tbsp in the morning and a tbsp an hour or two before bed. Time perception has been sped up too, both at work and home... again I contribute this entirely to the MCT oil. Oh, and if any of my readers have 1500$ to spare and want to be generous, buy me a Vibe Whole Body Vibration Plate!

 

Food observation: Boiled hamburger DISGUSTING

Food observation: Soft-boiled egg DECENT

 

 

I failed to mention my start weight in my first post. So, my PRE-BP START WEIGHT WAS 262.8 LBS. I'll update randomly as I continue to post updates.

Sustainability of the bullet proof diet (grass fed beef) for the Earth's population.

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So on the bulletproof executive forums, someone had mentioned something about the sustainability of grain-fed animals for food. Well, I decided to do some math on the viability of just the beef portion of the Bulletproof Diet. (12/16/2016 note - Let me note, while I keep mentioning the Bulletproof Diet, this post is just about the sustainability of grass-fed beef, when I originally wrote this in 2013 I was on a BP Diet kick.)

The Earth only has 7.68 billion acres of arable land, something like 1.4bn of this is forest, so we are going to exclude them. So 5.48bn acres. Wiki lists the largest 153 cities listed by area in the U.S. using whole numbers only that's 89,874 square miles or 57,519,360 acres so let's multiply this by 1.5 to account for interstates and smaller cities/towns/etc. and then by 5 for the 5 inhabited continents, that leaves us with 5.04 billion acres.

grass fed beef

 

In the United States, a single cow during warm seasons needs anywhere from 2-25 acres of arable land (actually, in parts of the world this number could be higher, but lets make this easy) to feed on (depending on the region, most of central Indiana 2 acres is suitable, say in the Dakotas 25 acres of unimproved prairie is needed).

Let's average this, 13.5 acres per cow, let us be extra generous and slash that in half, 6.75 acres, now let us be generous again and assume only 3.25 acres more used only for saving grass for the cold season — 10 acres per cow per year.

It takes about 2 years for a cow to reach slaughter weight. The average grass-fed cow will yield about 530lbs of meat. Assume 1lb consumed per day per human.

The Earth had a population of 6.974 in 2011. That's 6.974 billion pounds of meat a day for the BP diet.

You need 5.091 TRILLION pounds of beef every 2 years for the world to eat BP diet at 1lb a day per person. With the Earth at 5.04bn acres arable for us to use, you can feed 252 million cattle to slaughter weight. Every 2 years, you can produce 133.56 billion pounds of beef, assuming no deaths.

Ought oh!!! Bulletproof Diet isn't sustainable either! Even if you drop it to 1/4lb per day per human, that's 1.27275 TRILLION pounds of beef needed every 2 years while you can produce 133.56 billion pounds... that's still nearly 10x what you can provide.

Today I start eating bulletproof

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Today I start eating the bulletproof diet. I already prefer to eat paleo and have known of the BP diet for some time. Well decide to start June off by switching 100% to it. I've been getting everything ready leading up to today, after getting paid last night I raided Trader Joe's this morning and cleaned them out of their grass fed beef walking away with 10lbs and replinished my stocks of kerrygold grass-fed butter.