The Starch Solution Read Online Free PDF

easily meet your basic nutritional needs with the exception of vitamin B 12 . (We’ll get into vitamins and supplements in more detail in Chapter 11 .) Grains and legumes aren’t quite so complete as potatoes, but add a small dose of vitamin A and C by eating a little fruit or green and yellow vegetables and you’ve got everything you need. No animal protein or dairy need be added for excellent and complete nutrition. (You will learn all about this in Chapters 7 and 8 .)
     
    Starches aren’t just good for you, they’re also satisfying. The abundant carbohydrates in starches stimulate the sweet taste receptors on the tip of the tongue, where gastronomic pleasure begins. Eat enough starches and your body will release hormones and go through neurological changes that ensure long-term satisfaction. Their naturally great taste and nourishing calories and the good feeling they give us during and after eating them are the reasons we refer to bread, rice, pasta, potatoes, corn, and beans as “comfort foods.”
     
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E-MAIL TO DR. McDOUGALL
     
    What I love best about your focus on starch is that it’s much simpler for me to understand than focusing on carbs, proteins, and fats. I know what a starch is; I can recognize that food easily. And I can grow starchy foods in my gardens. But how do I grow a protein, a carb, or a fat? Those explanations were always too far removed from what I see on my plate.
    Caroline Graettinger
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    It is well accepted that starches are a great source of abundant calories, providing the energy athletes need to do everything from discus throwing to extreme skateboarding to running marathons. With allthose efficient calories, you would think that starches would promote excess weight gain, but they don’t. That’s because your body efficiently regulates the use of the carbohydrates you get from starch: Even if you consume them in excess, the body will burn them off as heat and energy rather than store much of them as fat. 18
     

T HE T RUTH I S W ELL K NOWN
    Despite the drone from big business seeking to deafen our ears to it, sound advice to eat more vegetables, fruits, and whole grains—and less fat from meat and dairy products—has been given since the 1950s. In the introduction to a 1977 report from the US Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs, Dr. D. Mark Hegsted of the Harvard School of Public Health wrote, “I wish to stress that there is a great deal of evidence and it continues to accumulate, which strongly implicates and, in some instances, proves that the major causes of death and disability in the United States are related to the diet we eat. I include coronary artery disease, which accounts for nearly half of the deaths in the United States, several of the most important forms of cancer, hypertension, diabetes, and obesity as well as other chronic diseases.” 19
     
    In 2002, the World Health Organization published a report explaining that the shift toward refined foods, foods of animal origin (meat and dairy products), and increased fats was behind the global epidemics of obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. The report predicted that by 2020 two-thirds of the global burden of disease will be attributable “to chronic noncommunicable diseases, most of them strongly associated with diet.” 20
     
    Our unwillingness to respond to this vast base of knowledge, from ancient to modern, has resulted in the greatest health crisis known to humankind. Worldwide, 1.1 billion people are overweight and 312 million obese, 18 million die of heart disease annually, more than 197 million have diabetes, and half of all people following a Western diet will develop life-threatening cancers. 21
     
    It’s not just individuals who are suffering. Alongside escalating human sickness we are experiencing environmental catastrophes that are due in large part to abandoning a diet based on starches in favor of putting meat at the center of the plate. As you will see in