Back in the 1970s, when Dr. McDougall started practicing
medicine as a family doctor on a sugar plantation on the big island of Hawaii,
he noticed something peculiar. His older patients were slimmer and healthier
than his younger patients. His older patients were immigrants from Asian
countries, such as China, Korea, Japan, and the Philippines. They ate a
traditional East Asian diet of rice and vegetables. Their sons and daughters
tended to eat a more Americanized diet, with more meat and dairy foods and
processed foods. They were fatter than their parents, and some of them had chronic
degenerative diseases such as atherosclerosis and diabetes. The third
generation was fully Americanized and just as fat and sick as the rest of the
U.S. population.
From studying the scientific literature on nutrition, Dr. McDougall
realized that his patients' experiences weren't unusual. Most of the world's
populations have traditionally based their diet on some sort of starchy staple
food, including grains such as rice, corn, and wheat and starchy roots and
tubers such as potatoes, sweet potatoes, taro, and cassava. People who base
their diet on these starchy foods and vegetables and fruit stay naturally slim and are
remarkably free of chronic disease. When Dr. McDougall taught overweight people
with severe chronic diseases to switch to a diet of starches and vegetables, they
rapidly lost weight and regained their health, even though they could eat as much
food as they wanted.
In Chapter 4 of The Starch Solution , McDougall explains, "Three-quarters
of the illnesses suffered by people living in industrialized countries are
long-standing, chronic conditions, such as obesity, heart disease, type 2
diabetes, arthritis, and cancers. What do people in these regions have in
common? A diet dominated by meat, dairy, fat, and processed foods.
Understanding the problem points to a simple solution: By replacing these
body-burdening foods with healthful starches, vegetables, and fruits, we can
reduce or eradicate the enormous personal, social, and economic burden of
chronic disease.
"Starches support your body's intrinsic ability to heal by
providing a perfect balance of carbohydrate, protein, fiber, fat, vitamins, and
minerals, along with a balance of antioxidants and other plant-synthesized
phytochemicals. Unlike the foods that are making you sick, starches contain no
significant amounts of dangerous cholesterol, saturated or trans fats, animal
proteins, dietary acids, chemical toxins, or disease-causing microbes."
The Starch Solution features many of the case histories of "Star
McDougallers," who are people who solved their health problems by eating the
kind of diet that Dr. McDougall recommends. You can find even more of these
stories on his Web site, www.drmcdougall.com.
As a science writer, I find www.drmcdougall.com
to be invaluable. Many of the important studies on nutrition were performed in
the 1950s or earlier, yet the MEDLINE database maintained by the National
Library of Medicine doesn't provide much coverage of literature published
before the mid 1960s. Fortunately, Dr. McDougall gives citations for some of the
older nutrition research. I often do a search of his Web site before I do a
MEDLINE search on nutritional topics.
Besides providing reliable scientific information on diet
and health, The Starch Solution provides the single most important thing that
anyone needs in order to switch to a truly healthy diet: meal plans and good
recipes. Dr. McDougall had the great good fortune to marry a registered nurse
who is also an excellent cook. Mary McDougall's recipes have enhanced all of
his books and his Web site.
The nutritional adequacy of a diet based on unrefined
starches and vegetables has been known since ancient times. It was documented
scientifically in the early 20th century by Russell Henry Chittenden,
a Yale University professor who was a president of the American Physiological
Society. The health benefits of a low-fat, plant-based diet for the general
population became obvious as a result of the Danish food rationing system
during World War I. The value of starchy diets for reversing type 2 diabetes
was documented in the 1940s by Dr. Walter Kempner at Duke University.
In The Starch Solution , Dr. McDougall explains that
plant-based foods provide all of the nutrients that are essential for human
beings except for vitamin D and vitamin B12. The body makes its own supply of
vitamin D when the skin is exposed to sunshine, and vitamin B12
comes from bacteria. Vitamin B12 is the only vitamin supplement that
Dr. McDougall recommends for people eating a purely plant-based diet.
The Starch Solution is intended to provide information that applies to
the general population. Thus, the book does not cover uncommon
food-related problems, such as celiac disease (gluten intolerance).
However, Dr. McDougall's Web site does provide a great deal of
information about celiac disease and other food allergies and intolerances.
Dr. McDougall has been singing the praises of a diet based
on unrefined starches and vegetables in bestselling books since the early
1980s. However, most of the people I talk to are shocked to hear that starches
are good for you. For some reason, starchy diets became unfashionable.
McDougall explains,
"From 1983 until the early 1990s, my books promoting simple dietary solutions to complex health problems were major bestsellers. In the early 1990s, my publisher suggested it was time to change my writing style. An editor told me that my books supporting a starch-based diet were out of date, and that diet books now must focus on increasing meat and protein and decreasing carbs. "Dr. McDougall,' she advised, "we would like you to make this change in your future books to reflect the new trend.' I reminded the editor that essentially all respected science corroborates that eating animal products results in heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and obesity, while research over the last 70 years has shown that a diet based on starches, vegetables, and fruits makes people healthy. I reminded her that I was not in the book business simply to make money, but to help people improve their health. With six national bestsellers under my belt, and more than a million copies in circulation from this company alone, I parted ways with the publisher. History confirms that my editor was right. Diet books were indeed headed in the direction she predicted. History also has proven me right. Those diets made people sick, while my approach made them healthy."
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