The McDougall Diet, or why potatoes are the new super food. Starch Energy (John McDougall and Mary McDougall)
Hi all! Today I’ll tell you about a book that for some reason many people underestimate! Meanwhile, the book is excellent and I would recommend it to anyone who has decided to become a vegetarian/vegan/raw foodist... Now you are probably surprised - the book is called “The Energy of Starch”? How does she relate to a plant-based diet?!
In his book, John McDougall devotes serious attention starches, because in his opinion it is starchy foods that can provide a person with the necessary amount of energy and strength without the formation of extra pounds. By the way, starch has already been the hero of one of our articles entitled ““.
It's not just about starch...
Dr. John McDougall's book is structured in such a way that the main role in it is given not only to starches, but also to healthy eating in general. The doctor highlights several key components healthy eating. The main ones he talks about are:
Complete abstinence from meat, fish and any animal products.
Complete refusal of milk and dairy products.
Thus, John emphasizes that a healthy diet should be vegetarian! For those who are just trying to switch to plant-based diet The second chapter of the book “The Energy of Starch” will be especially useful and interesting. It contains detailed and reasoned answers to all the questions that every novice vegetarian will encounter! Among them are such as protein deficiency in vegetarians, lack of calcium when refusing dairy products, questionable benefits of dietary supplements, the “fish” issue, etc.
For example, this is what McDougall says regarding the absence sufficient quantity protein in the diet of vegetarians: people who eat meat and cheese continue to sincerely believe in the mythical benefits of a high-protein diet. Proteins are synthesized from 20 amino acids, which are connected into chains in different sequences. Plants are able to synthesize each of these 20 amino acids. 8 of them are considered indispensable for humans, because... are not produced in our body. So, in his book “Starch Energy,” Dr. McDougall cites the results of a study by William Rose from the University of Illinois, who determined the minimum required level of each of the 8 essential amino acids for human body. He then doubled that number and called it a “perfectly safe level.” And even such an artificially high figure, according to Rose’s observations, is easily covered by grains, legumes and starchy vegetables!
All questions are presented very clearly and with sparkle. Lots of tables and pictures.
That’s why at the very beginning of the post I said that I recommend the book “Starch Energy” for all beginning vegetarians/vegans/raw foodists…
What else can you find in the book “Starch Energy”?
Besides two theoretical parts(the first is about the benefits of starches, and the second is about avoiding various kinds harmful products) in the book "Starch Energy" there is a section that demonstrates the theory in action. The third part of the book is devoted to recipes that everyone can use in their own kitchen. All recipes are very tasty and quite simple. This section of the book was written by John's wife, Mary McDougall. Also huge amount delicious recipes You can find it in our section ““.
The book is great, I recommend it to everyone for their home library!
John McDougall, Mary McDougall
Starch energy. Eat deliciously, take care of your health and lose weight forever
John A. McDougall, MD, and Mary McDougall
The Starch Solution
Eat the Foods You Love, Regain Your Health, and Lose the Weight for Good!
Scientific editor Nadezhda Nikolskaya
Published by permission of John A. McDougall, MD, c/o Bidnick & Company.
Legal support for the publishing house is provided by the Vegas-Lex law firm.
© 2012 by John A. McDougall
© Translation into Russian, publication in Russian, design. Mann, Ivanov and Ferber LLC, 2016
* * *
This book is well complemented by:
Chinese study
Colin Campbell
Healthy food
Colin Campbell
Plant based diet
Lindsay Nixon
Dedicated to our grandchildren - may the starch diet give you a better future
To the readers
Diet is a powerful regulator of the body’s condition. If you are seriously ill or are being treated with medications, before you change your usual diet and start exercising physical exercise, be sure to consult with your doctor to find out how this diet may affect you and how it will combine with your medications. The people mentioned in the book are real and their names are used with their permission. If you do what they do, you will achieve similar results. Of course, the consequences of using any method are very individual, but in most cases, a diet on starches really allows you to avoid a number of common diseases, restores health and improves appearance. (Cancer cures are real and documented, but less common.)
Dr. McDougall's diet is based on starches with the addition of fruits and vegetables. With strict adherence to this vegetarian food system with low content fats for more than three years, and if you are pregnant or breastfeeding, take at least 5 mcg of vitamin B 12 daily as a dietary supplement.
Over the past year and a half alone, starch has opened the door to health for thousands of my patients, helped them lose excess weight and cured them from diseases that arose as a result of poor nutrition, – from high blood pressure, diabetes and inflammatory arthritis. More than five thousand people have attended McDougall's five- and ten-day programs, and for most of them, their lives have been completely changed. One and a half million people bought eleven of my previously published books. The longer I practice medicine, the clearer decisions come to me.
In Starch Energy, I'll share with you what I've learned and show you what you can and should do to regain control of your health and well-being. You will find intuitive information based on scientific evidence, get acquainted with an easy meal plan and hundreds of simple and delicious recipes. After studying the information provided, you will understand how to change your life for the better, without denying yourself your favorite dishes.
Everything you do for health right now is not working. That's why you are holding this book in your hands. Chances are you've tried other diets—many of them—but they haven't worked for you. The fact is that most diets help you lose weight only if you strictly follow them - but since they require constant deprivation from you, or even more so if they have a bad effect on your well-being, they are not rational. Instead of losing weight, you lose interest and motivation, and the pounds you lose quickly come back.
The starch diet is different in nature as it offers an acceptable and enjoyable way to eat. You won't feel hungry or deprived because a diet based on starches is not only healthy, but also very nutritious. This is an eating plan that you can stick to as long as you like, and even if you don't follow it perfectly, the benefits will stay with you throughout your life. In other words, there is no specific milestone to strive for.
In addition to losing weight with virtually no effort, you will look better, feel better, and your life and activities will also improve. You are getting back to normal blood pressure and cholesterol levels, and the digestive system will finally start working the way it should. In most cases you will be able to refuse medicines And food additives while staying on budget and enjoying natural health. Once you try this method and feel the results, you will realize that the starch diet is the answer you have been looking for all your life. If you wish, you can immediately begin the seven-day start-up plan in Chapter 14: follow it by reading the book and learning how and why the method works.
In addition, you will realize that this same method helps preserve environment. By radically changing the way you eat, you can heal the world around you - by losing weight, improving your health and saving money, thereby changing your entire life.
Introduction
My own way to a starch diet
One of my first life lessons was about honesty. As a child, I attracted trouble like a magnet. I didn’t want this - it was all because of my curiosity. When I was seven, the police pulled me over for “breaking and entering” at a vacant house on my street. Back then I considered myself a researcher. On next year I killed my hamster - in an accident. When I was nine years old, I set the living room couch on fire while experimenting with my dad's lighter and lighter gas. I was very ashamed of this incident. But my parents showed wisdom. They knew that punishment would only increase the risk that their mean little troublemaker would quickly turn into a disgruntled, rebellious teenager. They rightly believed that the more I told them about my antics, the more likely they would be to channel my energy into more productive channels. So instead of shouting, they showed me that the most the best way To avoid trouble - tell the truth. Since then, the search for truth and the need to tell the truth have become my life credo.
I active person, with an aggressive A-type personality. I try to live every day of my life with more enthusiasm (sometimes I succeed, sometimes not so much). I don't just value truth, I'm obsessed with finding it. Sometimes I am criticized for being too harsh, undiplomatic, straightforward, but I don’t care. For that matter, I believe that such straightforwardness is the only and most effective way open people's eyes, free them from the misconceptions that lead to the emergence various diseases, and teach them the truth that will help restore health.
Excessive wealth ruins our health
I began studying medicine long before I became a doctor. At the age of 18, in 1965, I had a stroke that left me completely paralyzed for two weeks. left side my body. My recovery was very slow and cannot be called complete. Forty-seven years later, I still walk with a limp (even though I windsurf almost every day) and it constantly reminds me of the path that led me first to illness and then to newfound health.
My parents lived through the Great Depression of the 1930s. During those hard times, my mother's family's diet consisted of beans, corn, cabbage, parsnips, peas, rutabaga, carrots, onions, turnips, potatoes, and bread, which they bought for five cents a loaf. The only source of meat was a small hamburger once a week. All these horrors made my mother promise herself that her children would never suffer like she did, that her children would eat the best food money could buy. The irony is that her good intentions ended up more harm than good. Over time, it became clear that the Great Depression diet was much healthier!
I grew up eating bacon and eggs for breakfast, meat sandwiches with mayonnaise for lunch, and beef, pork or chicken as a daily staple for dinner. All three times the meal was washed down with a large glass of milk. Carbohydrates? IN best case scenario these were side dishes (seasoned butter). With the exception of bread and cakes made from premium flour, they were rare guests in our house.
I didn't realize it at the time, but best food, which money can buy, almost killed me. For as long as I can remember, I have always suffered from stomach pain and severe constipation. I was often sick and caught colds, and at the age of seven I had my tonsils removed. In physical education classes I always came last to the finish line, but in adolescence my face was oily and covered acne. At age 18, when I had a stroke—something I thought only happened to older people—it suddenly became clear to me that something was going horribly wrong. I didn’t even have any thoughts of somehow connecting what happened to my diet - and the doctors at the hospital also did not make such assumptions - so I continued to eat as before. In my early twenties I was over twenty kilos overweight.
I don't blame my mom. She fed us according to best recommendations those years. Who knew that these tips and tricks came from meat and dairy companies that declared protein and calcium our basic nutritional needs? And although there were some suspicions about adverse consequences consumption of animal products, they were immediately dismissed by scientists as unimportant.
I grew up in a lower middle class family in the Detroit suburbs. My parents treated doctors as something higher beings. I was completely an ordinary person and never even dreamed of making a career in medicine - at least until my fateful hospitalization due to a stroke. My elevated attitude towards doctors changed radically during the two weeks that I spent within the hospital walls. I became a medical incident that scientific luminaries came to see and then describe my case. As a patient and as a teenager who wanted to go back to school, I asked every doctor who saw me the same questions: “What caused my stroke?” “How can you help me?” and “When can I get home?”
The typical reaction was non-verbal: they silently threw up their hands and left the room. I remember thinking to myself, “Well, I can do this.” When it became clear to me that the doctors could not answer any of my three questions, I left the hospital, despite advice not to do so. Returning to college at the University of Michigan, I was at first very hesitant about my future studies, and in 1968 I finally enrolled in medical school and became obsessed with the study of medicine.
A little later I became obsessed with a nurse from surgical department, whom I met in my last year, when I acted as an assistant during hip surgery. Mary and I got married and moved to Hawaii, to Honolulu, where I interned at the Queen's Medical Center. For the next three years I worked as a doctor for the Hamakua Sugar Company on the Big Island. I was the only doctor for five thousand people - company employees and their families, and therefore I had to deliver babies, sign death certificates, and so on. The nearest doctor was in Hilo (70 kilometers away), and my patients assigned me all the duties that are usually performed by completely different doctors.
While I was doing day-to-day work, such as suturing, fixing broken bones, or prescribing antibiotics to treat an infection, I was able to see the real impact of my work as I watched patients recover, which was very rewarding. But here chronic conditions brought me to complete despair. Despite my best efforts, I simply could not help patients with serious problems such as obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease or arthritis. When a plantation worker came to me with one of these complaints, the only thing I could do (and what I learned in medical school) was to recommend the appropriate medications. Before patients left my office, I encouraged them to return if the prescribed medications did not help—and they often returned. Then we tried other medications. I have never given up this method - to use various drugs, but after some time the patients stopped visiting me altogether.
I was absolutely sure that these failures were the result of my unpreparedness, and after three years spent on the sugar plantations, I left Big Island, returned to Honolulu and became a member of the graduate program medical universities(residency) at the Royal Medical Center. Two years later I left this intense training course, without receiving answers to my questions. However, I realized something very important: it was not my fault that the patients did not get better. Even best representatives medical science could not achieve more noticeable results: their patients continued to suffer from chronic diseases in the same way, and at best, my eminent colleagues managed to temporarily control the symptoms.
I completed my studies, passed the exam and received my certificate in medicine. But neither education nor diploma made me good doctor. I was thinking about going back to the plantation.
Lessons from my patients
Many people, including doctors, are firmly convinced that a person gets fatter with age and acquires everything more problems with health. Children are the strongest, parents’ health is slightly worse, and older generation Already suffering from serious and chronic diseases.
However, observing my patients on the plantations, I saw a completely different picture. Representatives of the older generation of Asian immigrants remained vigorous, active and did not need medical care even into their nineties and beyond. They did not suffer from diabetes, heart disease, arthritis, or breast, prostate or colorectal cancer. Their children had it a little harder, and they were no longer so different excellent health. But the most surprising thing for me was that the representatives of the younger generation, the grandchildren of these same immigrants, suffered from all possible serious diseases - just those that I studied for several years at the university.
What could have caused such a reversal of fate? I decided to carefully observe these young families. I analyzed their lifestyle, work environment on the plantations and behavioral characteristics and noticed one interesting detail. These families moved away from the traditional diet of their countries and completely reoriented themselves to the American style of eating. Have they thereby lost the natural protection against obesity and common chronic diseases that their native foods provided them?
My oldest patients immigrated to Hawaii from China, Japan, Korea, and the Philippines, where rice and vegetables are the mainstay daily diet. And they continued to eat the same way here in their new American home. Representatives of the second generation, already born in Hawaii, began to include Western foods in the traditional diet of their parents. And representatives of the third generation have completely exchanged the vital, starch-based diet of their grandparents for a typical American diet consisting of meat, dairy products and processed foods.
In the community where I grew up, there was a strong belief, supported by government and other sources, that the healthiest balanced diet includes four food groups - meat, dairy products, grains, and fruits and vegetables. However, on the plantations I observed a completely different picture: the older generation lived well, eating exclusively grains, as well as vegetables and fruits, that is, products belonging to two of the four groups, while representatives of subsequent generations became weaker and weaker as their diet increases in products from the two remaining groups - meat and dairy.
Time and time again, I have seen this “nutritional shift” and its subsequent impact on the health of my patients. Eventually, something clicked in me, and I seemed to wake up, realizing the false precepts of the medical education I had received. Thanks to my patients, I was able to experience sudden illumination, insight. This is what I have been searching for since I was 18 years old, when I was devastated by that terrible stroke and was eager to find out what caused it and how doctors planned to improve my health and condition in the future.
My medical education didn't teach me anything about the effects of food on health. Nutrition was almost never covered in medical school, in my textbooks, or during practice. In my qualifying exam There were only a few questions on this topic. And yet, one simple insight allowed me to save patients from ineffective drugs, protect them from dangerous surgical interventions, offer them a simple and effective way to health and longevity, as well as to get rid of excess weight forever.
A global phenomenon
Wondering if this trend could be applied beyond the small population in Hawaii, I began to study traditional diets different cultures all over the world. I must say that the dependence I identified was confirmed again and again. Diet, which is unfortunately often overlooked, was indeed a fundamental component of human health.
Fully Potential practical dietetics opened up after I got busy additional research about the influence nutritious diet on human health. Raking up deposits scientific journals V medical library Royal medical center, I realized that I am far from the first therapist or scientist to notice the effect of a diet based on starches on getting rid of the most various ailments. Many authors before me discovered that potatoes, corn and whole grains help restore health, while meat and dairy products lead to chronic diseases that make life very difficult.
In studying these journals, I also saw that people who were already suffering from some serious illness could reverse the process and begin to recover simply by stopping eating the food they were used to, which was undermining their health, and switching to a starchy diet, which supported them. natural process recovery. And more than one article was devoted to this: many studies described the normalization of weight, as well as the disappearance of chest pain, headaches and arthritis due to changes in diet. Kidney disease, heart problems, type 2 diabetes, intestinal disorders, asthma, obesity and other ailments retreated under the onslaught of a healthy diet. The enormous volume of research reported in these journals over the past 50 years has shown that my patients with chronic diseases problems that seemed incurable could be helped by a starch-based diet supplemented with fruits and vegetables. And no medications or surgeries would be required!
I wanted to tell the world that it was possible to improve health and avoid various ailments simply by changing the diet, and that this discovery of mine, which I made while working on plantations, had already been scientifically documented. I was confident that my revolutionary breakthrough would be widely supported, that this happy accident would allow others not to waste time searching for the truth, that this truth needed to be shouted about in a world of people who strive to rid themselves of pain and suffering.
McDougall Health Care Program
Over time, I tested, documented, and systematized my plant products and starch therapy and thus created the McDougall Health Care Program. When the staff of St. Helena Hospital in California asked me to include it in the main program in 1986, I gladly agreed.
Work in one of the best centers cardiovascular surgery gave me an excellent opportunity to learn the opinions of surgeons and cardiologists. I offered to send them my patients so that they could form their own independent point of view about their condition, but only if they paid me in the same coin. However, in 16 years of working at St. Helen's Hospital, although I myself repeatedly referred my patients to other doctors so that they could examine them and perhaps suggest a different method of treatment, not a single patient from my colleagues came to me. The most interesting thing is that when I had to examine the doctors working in our hospital or their family members, they all followed the course of treatment I prescribed. It seemed that they simply did not want to prescribe the same simple and effective therapy to their patients.
I knew that my approach was correct: this was confirmed by regular angiograms that radiologists did for patients. According to studies, my patients' blood vessels opened and repaired - and this was enough for me to have complete confidence in my method.
Over the years at St. Helen's, I have seen thousands of people benefit from our talented and caring staff. My program healthy image However, I didn’t get life then widespread, although my well-selling books, along with top TV and radio shows, brought us international fame. Maybe the hospital wasn't the best best place to implement a program that emphasizes healthy eating rather than traditional methods treatment. Besides, my main training program cost $4,000, and let's say coronary bypass surgery– 100,000 dollars. Feel the difference! It is likely that my method simply did not generate the necessary income for the hospital.
I was given the opportunity to improve my situation when Dr. Roy Swank, head of the department of neurology at Oregon Health and Science University, who developed the course dietary therapy for the sick multiple sclerosis, suggested that I introduce my healthy lifestyle program to treat patients with multiple sclerosis at St. Helen's Hospital. I expected a fairly enthusiastic response from the administration, but after much discussion they decided that it would be wrong to associate the hospital with such patients, since patients suffering from of this disease, there are almost never any improvements, and this can have a bad effect on the image of the establishment.
When it came time to renew my contract in 2002, I returned it with “Vacancy” written at the top of the first page. As I later learned, they believed that I would not dare leave them, since outside their hospital my program could not exist. But I organized a program without them - in Minneapolis for the insurance company Blue Cross - Blue Shield, where we were able to demonstrate the brilliant results that we achieved at St. Helena Hospital: weight loss, normalization of blood pressure, normalization of cholesterol and blood sugar levels , as well as the cure of digestive disorders, constipation, arthritis and other diseases. As a result of the implementation of our program, the number of insurance claims medical cases during the first year it decreased by 44%, according to the insurance company’s own data. I conducted the same program for employees of the Publix supermarket in Lakeland, Florida. In both cases, the programs were held in local hotel rooms. I knew that I could easily organize a ten-day McDougall program in any city in the United States within 72 hours. All it required was my staff, a venue, patients, and a kitchen to prepare the food the way I wanted. Hint of connection with medical institution was the best incentive for good work – both for me and for my patients.
May 2002 marked the holding of the first McDougall program at the upscale resort in Santa Rosa, California. By this time, my wife Mary had compiled an incredible number of recipes that reflected the internal philosophy of the program and could satisfy the tastes of our patients. Mary's recipes are easy to prepare, not only in a professional kitchen, but also at home. (You'll find 100 of our favorites in Chapter 15.) Our hotel kitchen quickly learned to produce required quantity dishes that are not only tasty, but also healthy for the program participants.
McDougall method using starches
I am often asked: “You are a doctor yourself, why do you oppose the methods of your fellow therapists?” The answer is simple: I never swore an oath to protect the financial interests of the medical industry. On the contrary, I took an oath to care for the sick, to protect them from suffering and injustice, and to never prescribe procedures or drugs that could lead to deterioration or death. I am fully aware that the views I preach cause people with financial interests to dislike me. But I can live with this awareness. Too many therapists and nutritionists are more eager to serve the vast food and drug industry than they are to serve their patients.
I believe that most of my medical colleagues do their jobs conscientiously, but their ignorance of basic human needs in nutrition prevents them from realizing their potential in healing and helping the sick. I understand that. I encountered this “blind spot” in the early years medical practice on sugar plantations, when he was in despair due to the inability to solve basic medical problems - to help his patients restore their health. In 2011, I wrote House Bill 380 for the State of California. The directive, passed anonymously through the legislature and signed by the governor, required doctors to study nutrition—a step that should have been taken long ago for the benefit of all patients. In those days medical care has qualitatively changed for the better, because millions of informed people began to demand a real cure, and not just a prescription more procedures and medications.
Current page: 1 (book has 26 pages total) [available reading passage: 6 pages]
John McDougall, Mary McDougall
Starch energy. Eat deliciously, take care of your health and lose weight forever
John A. McDougall, MD, and Mary McDougall
The Starch Solution
Eat the Foods You Love, Regain Your Health, and Lose the Weight for Good!
Scientific editor Nadezhda Nikolskaya
Published by permission of John A. McDougall, MD, c/o Bidnick & Company.
Legal support for the publishing house is provided by the Vegas-Lex law firm.
© 2012 by John A. McDougall
© Translation into Russian, publication in Russian, design. Mann, Ivanov and Ferber LLC, 2016
* * *
This book is well complemented by:
Chinese study
Colin Campbell
Healthy food
Colin Campbell
Plant based diet
Lindsay Nixon
Dedicated to our grandchildren - may the starch diet give you a better future
To the readers
Diet is a powerful regulator of the body’s condition. If you are seriously ill or taking medication, be sure to check with your doctor about how this diet may affect you and how it will work with your medications before changing your diet or exercising. The people mentioned in the book are real and their names are used with their permission. If you do what they do, you will achieve similar results. Of course, the consequences of using any method are very individual, but in most cases, a starch diet really allows you to avoid a number of common diseases, restore health and improve your appearance. (Cancer cures are real and documented, but less common.)
Dr. McDougall's diet is based on starches with the addition of fruits and vegetables. If you have been strictly following this low-fat vegetarian diet for more than three years, or if you are pregnant or breastfeeding, take a minimum of 5 mcg of vitamin B 12 daily as a dietary supplement.
From the author
In the last year and a half alone, starch has opened the door to health for thousands of my patients, helping them lose weight and curing them from diseases resulting from poor nutrition - high blood pressure, diabetes and inflammatory arthritis. More than five thousand people have attended McDougall's five- and ten-day programs, and for most of them, their lives have been completely changed. One and a half million people bought eleven of my previously published books. The longer I practice medicine, the clearer decisions come to me.
In Starch Energy, I'll share with you what I've learned and show you what you can and should do to regain control of your health and well-being. You'll find intuitive information backed by scientific evidence, an easy meal plan, and hundreds of easy, delicious recipes. After studying the information provided, you will understand how to change your life for the better, without denying yourself your favorite dishes.
Everything you do for health right now is not working. That's why you are holding this book in your hands. Chances are you've tried other diets—many of them—but they haven't worked for you. The fact is that most diets help you lose weight only if you strictly follow them - but since they require constant deprivation from you, or even more so if they have a bad effect on your well-being, they are not rational. Instead of losing weight, you lose interest and motivation, and the pounds you lose quickly come back.
The starch diet is different in nature as it offers an acceptable and enjoyable way to eat. You won't feel hungry or deprived because a diet based on starches is not only healthy, but also very nutritious. This is an eating plan that you can stick to as long as you like, and even if you don't follow it perfectly, the benefits will stay with you throughout your life. In other words, there is no specific milestone to strive for.
In addition to losing weight with virtually no effort, you will look better, feel better, and your life and activities will also improve. Your blood pressure and cholesterol levels will normalize, and your digestive system will finally start working the way it should. In most cases, you can avoid medications and supplements while maintaining your budget and enjoying natural health. Once you try this method and feel the results, you will realize that the starch diet is the answer you have been looking for all your life. If you wish, you can immediately begin the seven-day start-up plan in Chapter 14: follow it by reading the book and learning how and why the method works.
You'll have questions as you read, but don't worry: I heard them all long before I wrote this book. You don't have to worry about getting enough protein, calcium, vitamins or other nutrients: all of these ingredients are naturally found in natural food. Being prepared, you will be able to adequately assess what health benefits or harms advertised products, health benefits will bring. proper nutrition and other information materials. You'll even find out why you've never heard of this method before, although it promises so many grandiose things.
Moreover, you will realize that this same method helps to preserve the environment. By radically changing the way you eat, you can heal the world around you - by losing weight, improving your health and saving money, thereby changing your entire life.
Introduction
My own journey to a starch diet
One of my first life lessons was about honesty. As a child, I attracted trouble like a magnet. I didn’t want this - it was all because of my curiosity. When I was seven, the police pulled me over for “breaking and entering” at a vacant house on my street. Back then I considered myself a researcher. The next year I killed my hamster in an accident. When I was nine years old, I set the living room couch on fire while experimenting with my dad's lighter and lighter gas. I was very ashamed of this incident. But my parents showed wisdom. They knew that punishment would only increase the risk that their mean little troublemaker would quickly turn into a disgruntled, rebellious teenager. They rightly believed that the more I told them about my antics, the more likely they would be to channel my energy into more productive channels. So instead of shouting, they showed me that the best way to avoid trouble is to tell the truth. Since then, the search for truth and the need to tell the truth have become my life credo.
I am an active person with an aggressive A-type personality 1
A-type personality is a system of traits that characterize an individual, among which the leading ones are a tendency to compete, impatience, and irritability. The authors of the typology are American scientists Ray Rosenman and Meyer Friedman. It is believed that representatives of this type are most susceptible to diseases cardiovascular system. Here and below are notes from the editor and translator.
I try to live every day of my life with more enthusiasm (sometimes I succeed, sometimes not so much). I don't just value truth, I'm obsessed with finding it. Sometimes I am criticized for being too harsh, undiplomatic, straightforward, but I don’t care. For that matter, I believe that such straightforwardness is the only and most effective way to open people's eyes, free them from the misconceptions that lead to various diseases, and teach them the truth that will help restore health.
Excessive wealth ruins our health
I began studying medicine long before I became a doctor. At the age of 18, in 1965, I had a stroke that completely paralyzed the left side of my body for two weeks. My recovery was very slow and cannot be called complete. Forty-seven years later, I still walk with a limp (even though I windsurf almost every day) and it constantly reminds me of the path that led me first to illness and then to newfound health.
My parents lived through the Great Depression of the 1930s 2
The Great Depression was a global economic crisis that began in 1929 and ended in 1939, and was most acute from 1929 to 1933. The crisis was felt most acutely in Canada, the USA, France, Great Britain and Germany.
During those hard times, my mother's family's diet consisted of beans, corn, cabbage, parsnips, peas, rutabaga, carrots, onions, turnips, potatoes, and bread, which they bought for five cents a loaf. The only source of meat was a small hamburger once a week. All these horrors made my mother promise herself that her children would never suffer like she did, that her children would eat the best food money could buy. The irony is that her good intentions ended up doing more harm than good. Over time, it became clear that the Great Depression diet was much healthier!
I grew up eating bacon and eggs for breakfast, meat sandwiches with mayonnaise for lunch, and beef, pork or chicken as a daily staple for dinner. All three times the meal was washed down with a large glass of milk. Carbohydrates? At best, these were side dishes (seasoned with butter). With the exception of bread and cakes made from premium flour, they were rare guests in our house.
I didn't realize it at the time, but the best food money can buy nearly killed me. For as long as I can remember, I have always suffered from stomach pain and severe constipation. I was often sick and caught colds, and at the age of seven I had my tonsils removed. I always finished last in gym class, and as a teenager my face was oily and acne-ridden. At age 18, when I had a stroke—something I thought only happened to older people—it suddenly became clear to me that something was going horribly wrong. I didn’t even have any thoughts of somehow connecting what happened to my diet - and the doctors at the hospital also did not make such assumptions - so I continued to eat as before. In my early twenties I was over twenty kilos overweight.
I don't blame my mom. She fed us in accordance with the best recommendations of those years. Who knew that these tips and tricks came from meat and dairy companies that declared protein and calcium our basic nutritional needs? And although there were some suspicions about the adverse effects of eating animal products, they were immediately dismissed by scientists as insignificant.
I grew up in a lower middle class family in the Detroit suburbs. My parents treated doctors as some kind of higher beings. I was a completely ordinary person and never even dreamed of making a career in medicine - at least until my fateful hospitalization due to a stroke. My elevated attitude towards doctors changed radically during the two weeks that I spent within the hospital walls. I became a medical incident that scientific luminaries came to see and then describe my case. As a patient and as a teenager who wanted to go back to school, I asked every doctor who saw me the same questions: “What caused my stroke?” “How can you help me?” and “When can I get home?”
The typical reaction was non-verbal: they silently threw up their hands and left the room. I remember thinking to myself, “Well, I can do this.” When it became clear to me that the doctors could not answer any of my three questions, I left the hospital, despite advice not to do so. Returning to college at the University of Michigan, I was at first very hesitant about my future studies, and in 1968 I finally enrolled in medical school and became obsessed with the study of medicine.
A little later, I became obsessed with a nurse from the surgical department, whom I met in my last year, when I acted as an assistant during hip surgery. Mary and I got married and moved to Hawaii, to Honolulu, where I interned at the Queen's Medical Center. For the next three years I worked as a doctor for the Hamakua Sugar Company on the Big Island. I was the only doctor for five thousand people - company employees and their families, and therefore I had to deliver babies, sign death certificates, and so on. The nearest doctor was in Hilo (70 kilometers away), and my patients assigned me all the duties that are usually performed by completely different doctors.
While I was doing day-to-day work, such as suturing, fixing broken bones, or prescribing antibiotics to treat an infection, I was able to see the real impact of my work as I watched patients recover, which was very rewarding. But chronic conditions brought me to complete despair. Despite my best efforts, I simply could not help patients with serious problems such as obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease or arthritis. When a plantation worker came to me with one of these complaints, the only thing I could do (and what I learned in medical school) was to recommend the appropriate medications. Before patients left my office, I encouraged them to return if the prescribed medications did not help—and they often returned. Then we tried other medications. I never abandoned this method - using various drugs, but after some time the patients stopped visiting me altogether.
I was absolutely sure that these failures were a consequence of my unpreparedness, and after three years spent on the sugar plantations, I left the Big Island, returned to Honolulu and entered the graduate medical residency program at Queen's Medical Center. Two years later, I left this intensive training course without receiving answers to the questions that interested me. However, I realized something very important: it was not my fault that the patients did not get better. Even the best representatives of medical science could not achieve more noticeable results: their patients continued to suffer from chronic diseases in the same way, and, at best, my eminent colleagues were able to temporarily bring the symptoms under control.
I completed my studies, passed the exam and received my certificate in medicine. But neither education nor diploma made me a good doctor. I was thinking about going back to the plantation.
Lessons from my patients
Many people, including doctors, are firmly convinced that as people age, they become fatter and have more and more health problems. Children are the strongest, parents are in slightly worse health, and the older generation is already suffering with all their might from serious and chronic diseases.
However, observing my patients on the plantations, I saw a completely different picture. Representatives of the older generation of Asian immigrants remained vigorous, active and did not need medical care even into their nineties and beyond. They did not suffer from diabetes, heart disease, arthritis, or breast, prostate or colorectal cancer. Their children had it a little harder, and they were no longer in such excellent health. But the most surprising thing for me was that the representatives of the younger generation, the grandchildren of these same immigrants, suffered from all possible serious diseases - just those that I studied for several years at the university.
What could have caused such a reversal of fate? I decided to carefully observe these young families. I analyzed their lifestyle, work environment on the plantations and behavioral characteristics and noticed one interesting detail. These families moved away from the traditional diet of their countries and completely reoriented themselves to the American style of eating. Have they thereby lost the natural protection against obesity and common chronic diseases that their native foods provided them?
My oldest patients immigrated to Hawaii from China, Japan, Korea, and the Philippines, where rice and vegetables form the basis of the daily diet. And they continued to eat the same way here in their new American home. Representatives of the second generation, already born in Hawaii, began to include Western foods in the traditional diet of their parents. And representatives of the third generation have completely exchanged the vital, starch-based diet of their grandparents for a typical American diet consisting of meat, dairy products and processed foods.
In the community where I grew up, there was a strong belief, supported by government and other sources, that the healthiest, most balanced diet included four food groups—meat, dairy, grains, and fruits and vegetables. However, on the plantations I observed a completely different picture: the older generation lived well, eating exclusively grains, as well as vegetables and fruits, that is, products belonging to two of the four groups, while representatives of subsequent generations became weaker and weaker as their diet increases in products from the two remaining groups - meat and dairy.
Time and time again, I have seen this “nutritional shift” and its subsequent impact on the health of my patients. Eventually, something clicked in me, and I seemed to wake up, realizing the false precepts of the medical education I had received. Thanks to my patients, I was able to experience sudden illumination, insight. This is what I have been searching for since I was 18 years old, when I was devastated by that terrible stroke and was eager to find out what caused it and how doctors planned to improve my health and condition in the future.
My medical training taught me nothing about the effects of food on health. Nutrition was almost never covered in medical school, in my textbooks, or during practice. There were only a few questions on this topic on my qualifying exam. Yet one simple insight allowed me to free patients from ineffective drugs, protect them from dangerous surgeries, offer them a simple and effective path to health and longevity, and lose weight forever.
A global phenomenon
Wondering if this trend could be applied beyond the small population in Hawaii, I began studying the traditional diets of different cultures around the world. I must say that the dependence I identified was confirmed again and again. Diet, which is unfortunately often overlooked, was indeed a fundamental component of human health.
The full potential of practical dietetics was revealed after I engaged in additional research on the effects of a nutritious diet on human health. While combing through the piles of scientific journals in the medical library at the Royal Medical Center, I realized that I was far from the first therapist or scientist to notice the effect of a diet based on starches on getting rid of a variety of ailments. Many authors before me have discovered that potatoes, corn and whole grains help restore health, while meat and dairy products lead to chronic diseases that make life difficult.
In studying these journals, I also saw that people who were already suffering from some serious illness could reverse the process and begin to recover simply by stopping eating the foods they were accustomed to that were undermining their health and switching to a starchy diet that supported the natural process recovery. And more than one article was devoted to this: many studies described the normalization of weight, as well as the disappearance of chest pain, headaches and arthritis due to changes in diet. Kidney disease, heart problems, type 2 diabetes, intestinal disorders, asthma, obesity and other ailments receded under the onslaught of a healthy diet. The enormous body of research reported in these journals over the past 50 years has shown that my patients with chronic diseases that seemed incurable could benefit from a starch-based diet supplemented with fruits and vegetables. And no medications or surgeries would be required!
I wanted to tell the world that it was possible to improve health and avoid various ailments simply by changing the diet, and that this discovery of mine, which I made while working on plantations, had already been scientifically documented. I was confident that my revolutionary breakthrough would be widely supported, that this happy accident would allow others not to waste time searching for the truth, that this truth needed to be shouted about in a world of people who strive to rid themselves of pain and suffering.
John A. McDougall, MD, and Mary McDougall
The Starch Solution
Eat the Foods You Love, Regain Your Health, and Lose the Weight for Good!
Scientific editor Nadezhda Nikolskaya
Published by permission of John A. McDougall, MD, c/o Bidnick & Company.
Legal support for the publishing house is provided by the Vegas-Lex law firm.
© 2012 by John A. McDougall
© Translation into Russian, publication in Russian, design. Mann, Ivanov and Ferber LLC, 2016
* * *
This book is well complemented by:
Colin Campbell
Plant based diet
Lindsay Nixon
Dedicated to our grandchildren - may the starch diet give you a better future
To the readers
Diet is a powerful regulator of the body’s condition. If you are seriously ill or taking medication, be sure to check with your doctor about how this diet may affect you and how it will work with your medications before changing your diet or exercising. The people mentioned in the book are real and their names are used with their permission. If you do what they do, you will achieve similar results. Of course, the consequences of using any method are very individual, but in most cases, a starch diet really allows you to avoid a number of common diseases, restore health and improve your appearance. (Cancer cures are real and documented, but less common.)
Dr. McDougall's diet is based on starches with the addition of fruits and vegetables. If you have been strictly following this low-fat vegetarian diet for more than three years, or if you are pregnant or breastfeeding, take a minimum of 5 mcg of vitamin B 12 daily as a dietary supplement.
From the author
In the last year and a half alone, starch has opened the door to health for thousands of my patients, helping them lose weight and curing them from diseases resulting from poor nutrition - high blood pressure, diabetes and inflammatory arthritis. More than five thousand people have attended McDougall's five- and ten-day programs, and for most of them, their lives have been completely changed. One and a half million people bought eleven of my previously published books. The longer I practice medicine, the clearer decisions come to me.
In Starch Energy, I'll share with you what I've learned and show you what you can and should do to regain control of your health and well-being. You'll find intuitive information backed by scientific evidence, an easy meal plan, and hundreds of easy, delicious recipes. After studying the information provided, you will understand how to change your life for the better, without denying yourself your favorite dishes.
Everything you do for health right now is not working. That's why you are holding this book in your hands. Chances are you've tried other diets—many of them—but they haven't worked for you. The fact is that most diets help you lose weight only if you strictly follow them - but since they require constant deprivation from you, or even more so if they have a bad effect on your well-being, they are not rational. Instead of losing weight, you lose interest and motivation, and the pounds you lose quickly come back.
The starch diet is different in nature as it offers an acceptable and enjoyable way to eat. You won't feel hungry or deprived because a diet based on starches is not only healthy, but also very nutritious. This is an eating plan that you can stick to as long as you like, and even if you don't follow it perfectly, the benefits will stay with you throughout your life. In other words, there is no specific milestone to strive for.
In addition to losing weight with virtually no effort, you will look better, feel better, and your life and activities will also improve. Your blood pressure and cholesterol levels will normalize, and your digestive system will finally start working the way it should. In most cases, you can avoid medications and supplements while maintaining your budget and enjoying natural health. Once you try this method and feel the results, you will realize that the starch diet is the answer you have been looking for all your life. If you wish, you can immediately begin the seven-day start-up plan in Chapter 14: follow it by reading the book and learning how and why the method works.
You'll have questions as you read, but don't worry: I heard them all long before I wrote this book. You don't have to worry about getting enough protein, calcium, vitamins or other nutrients: all these ingredients are naturally found in natural foods. By being prepared, you will be able to adequately assess the health benefits or harms of advertised products, nutrition guides, and other informational materials. You'll even find out why you've never heard of this method before, even though it promises so much greatness.
Moreover, you will realize that this same method helps to preserve the environment. By radically changing the way you eat, you can heal the world around you - by losing weight, improving your health and saving money, thereby changing your entire life.
Introduction
My own journey to a starch diet
One of my first life lessons was about honesty. As a child, I attracted trouble like a magnet. I didn’t want this - it was all because of my curiosity. When I was seven, the police pulled me over for “breaking and entering” at a vacant house on my street. Back then I considered myself a researcher. The next year I killed my hamster in an accident. When I was nine years old, I set the living room couch on fire while experimenting with my dad's lighter and lighter gas. I was very ashamed of this incident. But my parents showed wisdom. They knew that punishment would only increase the risk that their mean little troublemaker would quickly turn into a disgruntled, rebellious teenager. They rightly believed that the more I told them about my antics, the more likely they would be to channel my energy into more productive channels. So instead of shouting, they showed me that the best way to avoid trouble is to tell the truth. Since then, the search for truth and the need to tell the truth have become my life credo.
I am an active person, with an aggressive A-type personality. I try to live every day of my life with more enthusiasm (sometimes I succeed, sometimes not so much). I don't just value truth, I'm obsessed with finding it. Sometimes I am criticized for being too harsh, undiplomatic, straightforward, but I don’t care. For that matter, I believe that such straightforwardness is the only and most effective way to open people's eyes, free them from the misconceptions that lead to various diseases, and teach them the truth that will help restore health.
Excessive wealth ruins our health
I began studying medicine long before I became a doctor. At the age of 18, in 1965, I had a stroke that completely paralyzed the left side of my body for two weeks. My recovery was very slow and cannot be called complete. Forty-seven years later, I still walk with a limp (even though I windsurf almost every day) and it constantly reminds me of the path that led me first to illness and then to newfound health.
My parents lived through the Great Depression of the 1930s. During those hard times, my mother's family's diet consisted of beans, corn, cabbage, parsnips, peas, rutabaga, carrots, onions, turnips, potatoes, and bread, which they bought for five cents a loaf. The only source of meat was a small hamburger once a week. All these horrors made my mother promise herself that her children would never suffer like she did, that her children would eat the best food money could buy. The irony is that her good intentions ended up doing more harm than good. Over time, it became clear that the Great Depression diet was much healthier!
I grew up eating bacon and eggs for breakfast, meat sandwiches with mayonnaise for lunch, and beef, pork or chicken as a daily staple for dinner. All three times the meal was washed down with a large glass of milk. Carbohydrates? At best, these were side dishes (seasoned with butter). With the exception of bread and cakes made from premium flour, they were rare guests in our house.
I didn't realize it at the time, but the best food money can buy nearly killed me. For as long as I can remember, I have always suffered from stomach pain and severe constipation. I was often sick and caught colds, and at the age of seven I had my tonsils removed. I always finished last in gym class, and as a teenager my face was oily and acne-ridden. At age 18, when I had a stroke—something I thought only happened to older people—it suddenly became clear to me that something was going horribly wrong. I didn’t even have any thoughts of somehow connecting what happened to my diet - and the doctors at the hospital also did not make such assumptions - so I continued to eat as before. In my early twenties I was over twenty kilos overweight.
I don't blame my mom. She fed us in accordance with the best recommendations of those years. Who knew that these tips and tricks came from meat and dairy companies that declared protein and calcium our basic nutritional needs? And although there were some suspicions about the adverse effects of eating animal products, they were immediately dismissed by scientists as insignificant.
I grew up in a lower middle class family in the Detroit suburbs. My parents treated doctors as some kind of higher beings. I was a completely ordinary person and never even dreamed of making a career in medicine - at least until my fateful hospitalization due to a stroke. My elevated attitude towards doctors changed radically during the two weeks that I spent within the hospital walls. I became a medical incident that scientific luminaries came to see and then describe my case. As a patient and as a teenager who wanted to go back to school, I asked every doctor who saw me the same questions: “What caused my stroke?” “How can you help me?” and “When can I get home?”
The typical reaction was non-verbal: they silently threw up their hands and left the room. I remember thinking to myself, “Well, I can do this.” When it became clear to me that the doctors could not answer any of my three questions, I left the hospital, despite advice not to do so. Returning to college at the University of Michigan, I was at first very hesitant about my future studies, and in 1968 I finally enrolled in medical school and became obsessed with the study of medicine.
A little later, I became obsessed with a nurse from the surgical department, whom I met in my last year, when I acted as an assistant during hip surgery. Mary and I got married and moved to Hawaii, to Honolulu, where I interned at the Queen's Medical Center. For the next three years I worked as a doctor for the Hamakua Sugar Company on the Big Island. I was the only doctor for five thousand people - company employees and their families, and therefore I had to deliver babies, sign death certificates, and so on. The nearest doctor was in Hilo (70 kilometers away), and my patients assigned me all the duties that are usually performed by completely different doctors.
While I was doing day-to-day work, such as suturing, fixing broken bones, or prescribing antibiotics to treat an infection, I was able to see the real impact of my work as I watched patients recover, which was very rewarding. But chronic conditions brought me to complete despair. Despite my best efforts, I simply could not help patients with serious problems such as obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease or arthritis. When a plantation worker came to me with one of these complaints, the only thing I could do (and what I learned in medical school) was to recommend the appropriate medications. Before patients left my office, I encouraged them to return if the prescribed medications did not help—and they often returned. Then we tried other medications. I never abandoned this method - using various drugs, but after some time the patients stopped visiting me altogether.
I was absolutely sure that these failures were a consequence of my unpreparedness, and after three years spent on the sugar plantations, I left the Big Island, returned to Honolulu and entered the graduate medical residency program at Queen's Medical Center. Two years later, I left this intensive training course without receiving answers to the questions that interested me. However, I realized something very important: it was not my fault that the patients did not get better. Even the best representatives of medical science could not achieve more noticeable results: their patients continued to suffer from chronic diseases in the same way, and, at best, my eminent colleagues were able to temporarily bring the symptoms under control.
I completed my studies, passed the exam and received my certificate in medicine. But neither education nor diploma made me a good doctor. I was thinking about going back to the plantation.
Lessons from my patients
Many people, including doctors, are firmly convinced that as people age, they become fatter and have more and more health problems. Children are the strongest, parents are in slightly worse health, and the older generation is already suffering with all their might from serious and chronic diseases.
However, observing my patients on the plantations, I saw a completely different picture. Representatives of the older generation of Asian immigrants remained vigorous, active and did not need medical care even into their nineties and beyond. They did not suffer from diabetes, heart disease, arthritis, or breast, prostate or colorectal cancer. Their children had it a little harder, and they were no longer in such excellent health. But the most surprising thing for me was that the representatives of the younger generation, the grandchildren of these same immigrants, suffered from all possible serious diseases - just those that I studied for several years at the university.
What could have caused such a reversal of fate? I decided to carefully observe these young families. I analyzed their lifestyle, work environment on the plantations and behavioral characteristics and noticed one interesting detail. These families moved away from the traditional diet of their countries and completely reoriented themselves to the American style of eating. Have they thereby lost the natural protection against obesity and common chronic diseases that their native foods provided them?
My oldest patients immigrated to Hawaii from China, Japan, Korea, and the Philippines, where rice and vegetables form the basis of the daily diet. And they continued to eat the same way here in their new American home. Representatives of the second generation, already born in Hawaii, began to include Western foods in the traditional diet of their parents. And representatives of the third generation have completely exchanged the vital, starch-based diet of their grandparents for a typical American diet consisting of meat, dairy products and processed foods.
In the community where I grew up, there was a strong belief, supported by government and other sources, that the healthiest, most balanced diet included four food groups—meat, dairy, grains, and fruits and vegetables. However, on the plantations I observed a completely different picture: the older generation lived well, eating exclusively grains, as well as vegetables and fruits, that is, products belonging to two of the four groups, while representatives of subsequent generations became weaker and weaker as their diet increases in products from the two remaining groups - meat and dairy.
Time and time again, I have seen this “nutritional shift” and its subsequent impact on the health of my patients. Eventually, something clicked in me, and I seemed to wake up, realizing the false precepts of the medical education I had received. Thanks to my patients, I was able to experience sudden illumination, insight. This is what I have been searching for since I was 18 years old, when I was devastated by that terrible stroke and was eager to find out what caused it and how doctors planned to improve my health and condition in the future.
My medical training taught me nothing about the effects of food on health. Nutrition was almost never covered in medical school, in my textbooks, or during practice. There were only a few questions on this topic on my qualifying exam. Yet one simple insight allowed me to free patients from ineffective drugs, protect them from dangerous surgeries, offer them a simple and effective path to health and longevity, and lose weight forever.
A global phenomenon
Wondering if this trend could be applied beyond the small population in Hawaii, I began studying the traditional diets of different cultures around the world. I must say that the dependence I identified was confirmed again and again. Diet, which is unfortunately often overlooked, was indeed a fundamental component of human health.
The full potential of practical dietetics was revealed after I engaged in additional research on the effects of a nutritious diet on human health. While combing through the piles of scientific journals in the medical library at the Royal Medical Center, I realized that I was far from the first therapist or scientist to notice the effect of a diet based on starches on getting rid of a variety of ailments. Many authors before me have discovered that potatoes, corn and whole grains help restore health, while meat and dairy products lead to chronic diseases that make life difficult.
In studying these journals, I also saw that people who were already suffering from some serious illness could reverse the process and begin to recover simply by stopping eating the foods they were accustomed to that were undermining their health and switching to a starchy diet that supported the natural process recovery. And more than one article was devoted to this: many studies described the normalization of weight, as well as the disappearance of chest pain, headaches and arthritis due to changes in diet. Kidney disease, heart problems, type 2 diabetes, intestinal disorders, asthma, obesity and other ailments receded under the onslaught of a healthy diet. The enormous body of research reported in these journals over the past 50 years has shown that my patients with chronic diseases that seemed incurable could benefit from a starch-based diet supplemented with fruits and vegetables. And no medications or surgeries would be required!
I wanted to tell the world that it was possible to improve health and avoid various ailments simply by changing the diet, and that this discovery of mine, which I made while working on plantations, had already been scientifically documented. I was confident that my revolutionary breakthrough would be widely supported, that this happy accident would allow others not to waste time searching for the truth, that this truth needed to be shouted about in a world of people who strive to rid themselves of pain and suffering.
A-type personality is a system of traits that characterize an individual, among which the leading ones are a tendency to compete, impatience, and irritability. The authors of the typology are American scientists Ray Rosenman and Meyer Friedman. It is believed that representatives of this type are most susceptible to diseases of the cardiovascular system. Here and below are notes from the editor and translator.
The Great Depression was a global economic crisis that began in 1929 and ended in 1939, and was most acute from 1929 to 1933. The crisis was felt most acutely in Canada, the USA, France, Great Britain and Germany.
