Ep. 2: Gut and Digestion Part 1: Our Gut and Energy Balance

Listen to the podcast on Apple Podcasts | Google Play | Stitcher| Spotify

In this episode we discuss:

  • What ideal gut function looks like for humans
  • What the differences between our guts and those of other apes tell us about our diets
  • Why certain gut toxins may be some of the main factors holding our health back and blocking our cellular energy production
  • Which compounds in foods are harmful to our guts (and lead to bloating, indigestion, and gut inflammation) and which ones support a healthy gut
  • Why many of the conventionally "healthy" foods are terrible for our guts

1:39 – ideal gut function and comparative gut physiology, and what this means for our ideal diet

17:38 – relationship between our gut, our microbiome, and energy balance

28:41 – healthy and harmful compounds in foods and how they affect our gut

Links from this episode

  • Gorillas are actually on a high fat diet due to short chain fatty acid production in the gut (1)
  • Genetic starch-digesting adaptations in humans (1, 2, 3)
  • Relationships between metabolism and the gut/digestion (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
  • Damaging metabolic and gut effects of endotoxin (1, 2, 3, 4)
  • Endotoxin as a cause of sepsis (1)
  • Grains and Legumes and Antinutrients, Oh My! (article)
  • Expensive tissue hypothesis (1, 2)
2 Comments
  • Michael W. Thayer
    Posted at 10:30h, 18 June Reply

    Eye-opening and helpful! A couple of questions

    Is peanut butter safe ? I often take 30-40 gram shot of this for satiety. Also, all the nuts out there.. the keto crowd touts macadamias, brazil nuts, and pistachios….are these too rough on our systems. Does dry roasting mitigate some of the negative factors?

    Finally, I love bananas but the current chic crowd of keto-oriented nutrition “experts” really attack them (no doubt because of higher sugar content). From your teaching it appears bananas are quite helpful – ripened of course.

    • Jay Feldman
      Posted at 22:39h, 06 July Reply

      Great to hear that Michael!

      I wouldn’t have too much peanut butter because it’s pretty high in PUFA. Macadamia nuts are the only nuts I recommend because they’re very low in PUFA. Roasting wouldn’t really have any effect on decreasing PUFA (it would damage it if anything, causing more issues) – it may decrease some amount of antinutrients but not as much as soaking/sprouting would.

      Yep, ripe bananas would be a good choice!

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.