Starch Solution (Carbs are GOOD!)

[Monica]

It's so trendy these days to say that carbs are bad. Watch this for another point of view.

Dr. John McDougall, MD, author of The Starch Solution.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3N3KDq3jvCE

[Guardian]

Anything refined is going to harm you. Anything you can eat raw is going to usually be healthy.

[Marc]

Yea, I like his views although he seems to put so much emphasis on bulk that he misses out on benefits of a diversified diet. Also he put down fruits quite a bit and said they can't meet your needs, but what he left out was that a large amount of fruit can meet your needs for starch. I think his diet is a simple concise way for everyone to be healthier based on thousands of years of testing. I like it, but what are your thoughts, Monica, on nutrition before we knew about fire (aka raw foods)?

[Monica]

I remember reading Dr. McDougall's column in Vegetarian Times some 30 years ago, but didn't keep up with him over the years, until recently. I just read his book and watched the video. Actually, I watched half of that video then ended up watching another one of the same lecture, with my husband, all the way through. So he might have said a few things a little differently. I didn't hear him say anything negative about fruits! Where did you see/hear that?

In the video I saw, he explicitly said that "it could be done" (get enough fuel) with fruits. Many raw foodists eat mostly fruits and do quite well. But that's rather advanced stuff.

I also didn't hear him put down nuts and seeds. What he does put down is large amounts of nuts and seeds. Many raw vegans go nuts and eat tons of nuts and coconut oil, thinking that it's healthy as long as it's raw. Well, not necessarily.

Dr. McDougall's diet has a lot of wiggle room for varying amounts of nuts, seeds, and fruits. He says in his book that nuts and seeds are healthy in moderation, and provide good protein and fats, but people who are trying to lose weight should go easy on them because of the high fat content. Those who aren't overweight can eat more nuts and seeds than those who are overweight.

He also says that the benefits of nuts and seeds are over-hyped. Just adding nuts to a meat-based diet isn't going to compensate for the meat, as the public is led to believe. But his main complaint of course is about animal 'foods.' That vegan is the best diet, is a given, in my view. The question then becomes: What is the proper ratio of fats/protein/carbs? There is a lot of controversy about this question, even within the vegan community. There are the 'high fat' vegans and the 'low fat' vegans, 'high protein' vegans and 'low protein' vegans.

I started out pretty much doing the McDougall diet, 31 years ago. I weighed 97 lbs. and was insanely healthy! I didn't get even a cold for 10 years.

But then, once I had a child, I began to doubt. I was confident about my own diet but lacked the confidence to raise my child vegan. Vegetarian, yes, but vegan, no, because we didn't have the resources 24 years ago that we have now. He has never had a bite of meat in his life, but I started giving him cheese when he was 5, 'just to be sure.'

He's very healthy, but I went back to cheese as well, and it didn't work so well for me! (That's an oversimplification...I had other issues due to an unknown dental infection, etc.)

Anyway, now I'm totally vegan again, but during those years of battling elusive health conditions (which turned out to be caused by the offensive tooth), I had lost my way. I allowed myself to become confused by all the conflicting viewpoints. I tried adding more olive oil, flax oil, etc. I tried protein powders. I was no longer confident in just eating naturally.

Reading Dr. McDougall's book and seeing his lecture has brought me back to what I feel is just common sense. It makes sense that processed oils wouldn't be healthy. Sure, someone who eats meat is going to see some benefits when they add fish oil or flax oil, but if they weren't eating meat in the first place, they probably wouldn't need that extra oil to dissolve all that saturated fat in their system from the meat.

So I can see how someone following a starch-based diet wouldn't need extra oils, because they don't have the accumulated animal fat to begin with.

Overall, I think he's right on. Totally blows away the Paleo myth!!

Having said all that, I do have a few critiques of Dr. McDougall's presentation:

He seems to imply that indigenous peoples were vegan. I think this is misleading. He makes a solid case that they ate a lot of starch - no question there - but they certainly ate meat and dairy as well. I understand that Dr. McDougall is the lone voice in the wilderness. Starch is very unpopular right now. But he maybe went a bit overboard here. Certainly, they ate a lot more starch, and probably a lot less meat, than is popularly believed. But to use the term vegan is simply misleading. I think he should have stuck to 'high starch with a lot less meat...starch was their staple' to be more accurate.

Hey, I'd love to find out that our ancestors were all vegan! But I think that's a bit of a stretch. It's enough to know that they relied on starch more than meat...that's already huge! There's no need to downplay the role meat played in primitive people's diets and lives. In my view, we are clearly evolving to no meat, but I do recognize that primitive peoples used animals for their skins for clothing, etc. I just think it would have been more accurate to say that they didn't eat nearly as much meat as people think they did, and that they relied more on starches...that already blows away the Paleo myth.

He also neglected to mention that the fat needs of children is higher than that of adults. I read on his discussion forum about a woman who followed his diet too strictly and eliminated ALL fats from her children's diets! This is an example of someone throwing common sense out the window and becoming dogmatic. Not only that, but he never, ever said to eliminate ALL high-fat vegan foods, so she clearly twisted his words. He just said to eat nuts, seeds and oils in moderation or even low amounts if trying to lose weight.

Still, to avoid such misunderstanding, I think he should emphasis a bit more that children need more nuts, seeds and avocados than adults do.

I also have a disagreement with him regarding the nutrient content in foods today. He says it's a myth that foods are deficient in nutrients. But, many years ago, I saw with my own eyes a USDA report stating that vegetables have drastically lower nutrients than they did decades ago, due to chemical farming (also causing lack of soil microbes), and topsoil depletion. For example, one would now have to eat 75 bowls of spinach to get the iron found in 1 bowl of spinach in 1948.

What to do?

Dr. McDougall says there are studies showing that synthetic vitamin supplements are harmful. He's right about that. There are indeed conflicting reports. Of course, the vitamin companies only show the favorable reports. But you really have to look closely to see whether the nutrient was found in a food form, or was it synthetic/isolated, when reading those reports.

I think it's better to take vitamin supplements than to take drugs, so it's a transitional step.

But, better still is to get one's vitamins in the form of foods, where they have micronutrients and are better absorbed. Vitamin supplements are isolated and not recognized as foods.

But how do we do that, if the foods are mere shadows of their former selves?

Enter superfoods. These are foods that haven't been tainted or over-cultivated, and are grown in rich environments, so they help fill in the gaps left by depleted foods.

Dr. Gabriel Cousens is a big proponent of the raw vegan diet, and he acknowledges that some people have trouble switching to raw vegan or even just vegan. For those folks, he claims a near 100% success rate when they simply add superfoods.

So, my conclusion is that both Dr. McDougall and Dr. Cousens make great points, and taken together, they've got it all covered.

I personally have been gravitating towards a raw vegan diet, but haven't gone 100%, mainly because I was still trying to figure this all out. Whenever I disregarded what the 'experts' say, my natural inclination was to go all raw, with the only exception being cooked potatoes. I felt a little guilty because I didn't want to give up potatoes! That is the one cooked food that I was having trouble living without.

To make matters worse, here are all those 'experts' saying that carbs are bad! This really bothered me. How can a potato be bad???

I'm very grateful to Dr. McDougall for clearing up the confusion about potatoes! What he says about them makes perfect sense to me.

I've decided I'm going to try Dr. McDougall's diet for a month and see how I do. The only difference, really, is that I'm going to give up ALL processed oils. That means NO olive oil, etc. Yesterday I sauteed some onions, potatoes, jalapenos, garlic, and red bell pepper in...fresh carrot juice! (I added some Celtic salt and curry powder also.) Wow, it was delicious! Who needs oil?

I did the same thing with tempeh. And guess what? Both of these meals seemed to digest really well...much better without the added oil! Since I do have some weight to lose, I'm going to go low-fat for now. Maybe just a few walnuts or a bit of avocado, but I'm going to drastically reduce those, just temporarily. Once I get down to my ideal weight, I'll probably add more nuts, seeds, and avacados back in.

I'll also be doing more raw than what he recommends, but that's still within the guidelines of the starch-based diet. For example, a high-raw diet can include raw (soaked) oatmeal (add a few walnuts and a bit of honey and cinnamon...yum!) and dried raw sweet potatoes...or even raw potatoes, if done properly (peel off any eyes or green parts). I'll still gravitate towards raw - I believe it's our evolution to do that - but now I will no longer feel bad if I eat a baked potato. Thank you Dr. McDougall, for having the courage to speak out!