The review is here.

I'm posting this because I've recently read the Perfect Health Diet (PHD) and found it quite interesting. Masterjohn's review is balanced and thoughtful.

What's interesting about the PHD is that the authors, Paul and Shou-Ching Jaminet, came to it from a VLC meat-and-veg background, i.e., the sort of approach favored by many here (myself included). We had some discussion of their diet elsewhere (the "Scurvy" thread), but I think it's noteworthy that they call into question the central dogma of low-carb: There is no such thing as a carbohydrate deficiency.

Another thing that I find interesting is their idea that carb plus protein should not exceed about 150g (600 calories). This creates a kind of sliding macronutrient window, with 50g carb and 100g protein at one end, and 50g protein and 100g carbs at the other end. It's interesting to me because it's an idea that I've kicked around in my own thinking over the years. They point out that glucose is not used just for fuel in the body, but also for the production of glycoproteins, one of the main uses of which is the production of mucus. One of the authors, Paul, describes his own experience with dry eyes and constipation (attributed to insufficient mucus in the colon) on VLC, and how he solved the problem by adding some starch (no fructose) back into his diet.

I'm still not sure what to make of all this. I think it's interesting that my own diet, inspired by the Optimal Diet, has more carb (though still not a lot) and less protein than what I was doing on "generic" low-carb, and seems to be working better for me. The PHD urges the use of coconut oil to stimulate ketone production, especially for those at the lower end of the carb window. I've found this helpful as well, for breaking a stall.

Thanks for posting this. I think I'm going to have to read The Perfect Health Diet.

I've read the book and I thought it was pretty good. I have some issues with inflammation/infection, which it addresses. I'm following the diet right now. I haven't lost any weight, but I am feeling better.

After all the time that I've spent reading about nutrition and trying to figure out what would be the healthiest way to eat, and then reading about this book, with all of its scientific information and carefully worked out macro-nutrient percentages, I just happened to come across this comment on another site:

fyi. my great-grandmother lived to be 103. she never ate anything green in her life and ate nothing but ice cream and chocolate past 90. the nurses at the home had a fit, but i'd like to see anyone try to make her do anything she didn't want to.....it'd be hilarious.

I guess some people just have all the luck.

(Just in case you're curious, the comment was in a blog post about a wonderful nursing home that treats Alzheimer's patients with kindness and common sense, and sometimes chocolate. OT for this forum, but anyway, here is a
Link)

ETA: Just remembered that this blogger is a big supporter of LC eating and frequently writes about it.

I did a Weston Price-style eating plan for a few years, and from there, I slowly transitioned into a grain-free, low-carb primal-style diet after I learned I was gluten intolerant. I've been low-carb for about 16 months. I lost some weight initially, but then my weight loss stalled. I was GERD-free for a long time while low-carbing, but the GERD has recently returned, along with some additional GI issues, and I've had severe dry skin/hair/eyes for about 6 months. I believe that I am once again suffering from inflammation/infection, which was greatly improved by low-carb, but for some reason has returned. I stumbled onto the Perfect Health Diet blog and read their posts with great interest, and finally bought the book.

Although I will continue eating almost 100% grain-free (adding minimal portions of rice here and there) I have added some tubers to my diet. I am trying to follow the Perfect Health Diet eating ratios, (65%fat, 20% carb, 15% protein) plus the supplement recommendations.

We'll see how it goes.

Water Lily, what foods to you eat to keep your ratios at the ones recommended by The Perfect Health Diet? It makes sense to eat that way, but putting it into practice day after day must be quite challenging. Is this diet similar to the Optimal Diet by Jan K?

Yes and no. On the OD, as on many other low-carb diets, protein requirement is calculated first, based on "ideal body weight", and carbs are linked to that number. The authors of PHD don't have a protein "prescription" as such, and take the position that most people will automatically get enough protein, if they eat even a modest amount of meat. They cite the US RDA of 56 g/day for men and 46 g/day for women as a baseline, and claim that there's little advantage in eating more than that. They point out that human breast milk, intended to support humans during the rapid growth that takes place in infancy, is only 7% protein. They cite studies linking high protein consumption with decreased lifespan. They point out that our ability to utilize protein for tissue growth and repair is quite limited, and anything in excess of that is pointless anyway. They see no advantage to protein as energy source.

They also recommend periods of very low protein, to induce autophagy, which they believe has beneficial effects. Autophagy is the body's use of its own protein, which I have always regarded as a bad thing. The PHD authors, however, cite research that indicates that short-term autophagy is beneficial, because it rids the body of "junk proteins" that accumulate but are no longer functional. This, they claim, is part of the reason why caloric restriction extends lifespan (and again, they cite research in support of this claim).

So, 50-150 g/day is okay, as long as it's complemented with 150-50 g/day of carb.

To return to the original question, in my case the Optimal Diet happens to place me right in the PHD range, but that's a coincidence of how the OD math works. For someone else, the two diets might not overlap.

The PHD is very low in fructose and PUFA.

I just found this source on autophagy, in case anyone's interested:

Protein Cycling Diet

Ubizmo

Actually, I'm reading Gary Taubes' latest book, Why We Get Fat, and he cites some recent research that nailed down why calorie restriction works; it's the restriction of carbohydrates.

Which was my own hunch all along

In any case, I'm never doing calorie restriction. Besides, did a LOT of that when I had eating disorders... to me, outright calorie restriction smacks of the exact same thing. Here's a link to this article:

The Fast Supper
Is a life lived on the edge of starvation worth living? Our hungry reporter gives the ultra-extreme Calorie Restriction Diet a two-month taste test.

I've not yet started calculating the ratios perfectly due to the holidays and being out of town for an extended time. I've just been "winging it" to ease into it. However, this week I will begin using Fitday to calculate my ratios, so it won't be too difficult. I've been doing 65% fat, 20% protein and 15% carbs for a long time, so it's not that much of a change for me to flip the carb/protein ratios.

I usually eat 2 meals a day. For both lunch and dinner, I eat a lot of veggies (which are not counted at all) and fat (I use coconut oil or ghee) I eat moderate amounts of meat or other protein, a moderate portion of either white or sweet potatoes, or white rice - usually with dinner, and a small portion of berries (with whipped cream cream) for dessert.

That sounds like a balanced meal, with a lot of vegetables and little bit of everything else your body needs to thrive. The thing that might be difficult for most people to accept (low carbers excluded) is the amount of fat recommended in the PHD. In the reviews on amazon one writer said the PHD is not a weight loss diet so I wonder how those ratios would affect weight loss for people who need it. Also, I remember a lot of people stalled when they went on the OD. I don't know if that was due to eating less protein and more carbs, or if it was because many of them turned to dairy foods to get the extra fat.

It's not primarily a weight loss diet; it's meant to be about health and longevity. The authors do recognize that weight loss is relevant to those goals, for many people, and they recommend the ketogenic version of their diet for those struggling with obesity. The ketogenic PHD is, as we'd expect, the version that uses the lower end of the allowed carb range. That means 50 g/day carb and 100 g/day of protein, with liberal use of short-chain and medium-chain fats for ketone production. Coconut oil is the best source of medium-chain fats. Butter and fat from plant fiber are the best sources of short-chain fats.

They also recommend some form of intermittent fasting, although it's not required. They emphasize the benefits of autophagy, so going 16 hours or so without food is a good way to make it happen. On their blog, a commenter referred them to the Ron Mignery Protein Cycling Diet web book. They are in agreement with Mignery's main idea, if not his implementation.

I'm finding this whole autophagy idea very interesting. I've ordered the full text of this article Autophagy: A Potential Link Between Obesity and Insulin Resistance and I've looked at a few other, similar articles. There seems to be pretty good evidence that hepatic autophagy promotes insulin sensitivity. Possibly, the reason why the Atkins "fat fast" helps some people to break stalls is that it causes hepatic autophagy by drastically reducing protein intake. And very possibly, the reason why some of us stall in the first place is by impaired autophagy from increased protein consumption.

I'm just taking all this in and trying to wrap my head around it. I haven't really reached any conclusions yet.

Ubizmo

Very interesting comment Ubizmo.

People tend focus on their own little pet theory (low-carb, low calories ect, attributing all the positive outcome to it, when in reality some other mechanism is at work. Just like the benefits (?) from statins were first attributed to lowering cholesterol.

It's good to remember that we really know very little.

I respect the Jaminets for this blog post, in which they discuss both the positive and negative results people have had on the diet.

I think I'm going to add their book to my (already too long) to-read list.

I am very impressed with the Jaminets as researchers. They make every attempt to show the reasoning behind the positions they take, and to give pointers to the literature that they have based them on. In addition, they clearly devote an enormous amount of time to answering questions on their blog, and they do so graciously, even when the questions are skeptical. Theirs is the first book on nutrition that I've read in a while that has really made me re-think a lot of things that I've believed for some time now. As I say, I'm still turning it all over in my mind, but I'm trying to remain open to new ideas, as they clearly have done.

Ubizmo