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Hey babes,
If there’s one thing I do more than cook (and just barely sometimes), it’s read. I binge through books the way most people power through new shows on Netflix, especially audiobooks. A carefully sourced network of library cards, Audible, and trials to other e-book/audiobook services means I am constantly flush with new books to digest. One of my favorite subjects: nutrition and human health. I know, truly shocking.
While a lot of the books about plant-based nutrition overlap in their methods and talking points, each of them offers fresh, interesting insights, and their authors come from a whole array of interesting backgrounds, coupled with careers in medicine, scientific research, and more. In order to honor their contributions to the literature and discuss the good, bad, and questionable points of each of these, I’m dedicating some of my Saturdays to them in the Saturday Spotlight. So, curl up with your green tea and freshly charged cell phone, and let’s do this.
Now, I was originally planning on starting this series where I was first struck with the inkling to try a whole food plant-based diet, but lately it seems like everywhere I turn online, people are talking about The Starch Solution.
Originally published in 2012, The Starch Solution strikes many camps as the antithesis of a traditional weight-loss diet. Low-carb/keto dieters shriek at the idea of trading in their butter and steak for potatoes and legumes, and raw-vegans can’t stomach the idea of cooked grains. And then there’s everyone in between that have been quietly conditioned to think that salad and chicken means weight loss and pasta equals indulgence.
Before I get into the book itself, let’s have a quick aside about diet reviews, particularly “I tried this diet for x days and here’s what happened,” style video reviews. For everyone that produces this style of content, it is really important for the sake of validity to go directly to the source material. Watching people eat completely “off-plan” and not divulge that to their audience (who have likely not read the book the diet is based on) is misleading, and as a writer that dedicates at least 75% of the time it takes to create a post on research, I take particular offense.
That being said, there are plenty of great content creators that very clearly did their research, and use their culinary and video skills to disseminate positive information about their diet and experiences with it to their audiences. Just something to keep in mind when you research diets using third-party sources.
Dr. John McDougall
One thing that really stands out to me as unique about Dr. McDougall is that his first interaction with medicine was first-hand: at eighteen, he suffered a massive stroke that has affected him physically for his entire life. Looking back, he whole-heartedly contributes this twist of fate to his adolescent diet, saying, “I can give credit to eggs, double cheese pizzas, and hot dogs for my brain damage, and my good fortune.”
It was only later in his career, when he worked with immigrant families on the Hamakua Sugar Plantation in Hawaii that he began to see the link between the Standard American Diet and the diseases many people take for granted as a normal part of aging. He witnessed the stark difference between the amazing long-term health of the elderly Asian immigrants eating their traditional diets and the next two generations as they incorporated more meat, dairy, and processed foods.
His research has continued from there, including working with Seventh Day Adventists at St. Helena Hospital, Blue Cross Blue Shield, and running the McDougall Program with countless other employer groups to help better the health of their employees.
The Starch Solution Basics
McDougall’s approach stands out in contrast to some of the other plant-based diets of the time in its emphasis on starchy foods. While he gives fruits and vegetables the credit they’re due, he also points out a glaring flaw in the “eat nothing but fruits and vegetables” extreme some people follow: they will simply not give you enough calories to fuel your body properly, which can lead to feeling fatigued, and lowering your chances of long-term success.
He adjusts the recommendations of the percent portions of starchy foods compared to non-starchy vegetables and the amounts of seeds, nuts, and avocados you should eat if you’re looking to “maximize weight loss,” but the basics are this: the core of your diet should be high starch foods, and the rest should come from fruits and non-starchy vegetables, along with some nuts, seeds, etc.
One of the major differences in this diet compared to others is that McDougall encourages you to eat as many starchy foods as you want, as long as they’re as unprocessed as you can find (and don’t tell me the only thing you can find is white bread and egg noodles, snarky boots. Though if that is your reality I’m sure you can still find success, just don’t tell McDougall. Your secret’s are safe here). Let me say that again: AS MUCH AS YOU WANT, with fruits and vegetables making up only about 30% of the plate. So a massive bowl of brown rice, pinto beans, and roasted vegetables could be a meal, or whole-grain pasta with tomato sauce and white beans would be a-okay.
The logic as far as I interpret it is the nature of how our bodies digest starches, and the way satiety plays into intuitive eating. It would make sense that if you’re regularly eating some of the highest satiety foods on the planet without slipping in undetectable calories through things like oils, juice, or soda, you are more likely to stop before you overdo it.
Not a bad point, and not the only good point that he makes throughout the book.
The Good: Fiber by Any Other Name
McDougall doesn’t spend nearly the same amount of time relishing over all of the myriad health benefits you get from all types of fiber, but he does promote starch heavily through both its history and what it doesn’t do (promote disease). And in my eyes, resistant starch is a fiber, and a beloved member of the prebiotic family.
He also makes his case for the efficacy of eating starches for health through genetic evidence and epidemiologic data, stating that many of the world’s populations that center their diets around starchy foods are lean and healthy. So even though he doesn’t go on and on about why high-starch foods are so good for you, the starch is still a really positive point for this diet. If you eat the foods he recommends, you are going to be regularly consuming well over 50 grams of dietary fiber every day. And if you’re getting a large portion of those from whole grains and legumes, you’re also going to be getting respectable amounts of things like iron, magnesium, zinc, folate, and potassium, among countless others. And, as McDougall himself emphasizes, you’ll be replacing more harmful ingredients as well.
The Good: Meat is bad, m’kay?
Dr. McDougall dedicates a whole chapter to absolutely lambasting meat and everything wrong with it, which I can of course be on board with. Even with a whole chapter, he stays succinct compared to other works that expand on the subject, but he is clear: meat is no good.
He organizes it into five categories of “poisons:” excessive protein, dietary fat, cholesterol, methionine, and dietary acid. While he makes a few points I could debate here, overall I think the point is sound, and the methionine wasn’t an aspect I had considered before, but has been linked to shorter lifespans and more chronic illness.
The Good: Pump up the Veg
There is a small section near the end of the book that talks about kicking the Starch Solution up a notch to lose weight more rapidly. While this may seem to contradict his normal approach of “going to extremes leads you to feel deprived,” this is a little different. He recommends filling half your plate with the non-starchy vegetables of your choice, then the rest with starch, at every meal.
This is the recommendation I see everyone who preaches the Starch Solution talk about, and with good reason. You are told to eat more food, and chances are you end up eating less, just by the virtue of being stuffed to the gills with all the veg you want. If I were to recommend one thing to incorporate in anyone’s diet from this book (aside from losing the fear of potatoes), it is this. Breakfast time? How about a hash of shredded sweet potatoes, kale, bell peppers, onions, and zucchini? Lunch? Oh just a massive mixed green salad with corn, black beans, and quinoa. Dinner time? Perhaps an eggplant stir fry, dragged through the garden and flopped on top of a pile of brown rice. Nice thing about it being half your plate, is they don’t have to be separated. One-pot wonders are just as welcome as a nice, divided platter.
Mixed Bag: KISS and Miss Nutrients?
One of the major pitfalls with the fad diet megaplex (I’ll let you decide what constitutes a fad, but cough cough keto) is the unnecessary focus on macronutrient ratios. No more than 15 net carbs? Can I drink psyllium husks? Exactly 3.7012g of protein per kilogram bodyweight of the body I want? This is the part I hated the most about the way I used to eat, pre-WFPB. It always felt like such a burden to have to try and calculate macros to the most minute detail. I like the idea of the Keep It Simple Stupid way.
BUT there should be something said about keeping track of the micro and macronutrients you’re taking in. While you certainly don’t have to overcomplicate it, making sure you’re eating foods that contain critical nutrients is a good idea for everyone, but especially when you’re starting a diet drastically different than previously.
To compound that, the only vitamins he pays any real lip service to are b12 (okay to supplement) and vitamin D, which he insists you get from being outside in the sun. While I’m certainly on the food before supplements team, ignoring intakes of things like iodine, zinc, iron and calcium could be dangerous long-term. You don’t need to start popping pills or taking blood tests left and right, but just trying to remain mindful of these seems more responsible than going in blind, especially given how many people tend to cycle through a small set of meals day in and day out.
Mixed Bag: Moderation is for Squares, and Calorie-Counting is for Failures
Early on he talks about being a type-A, exuberant person that likes to take life to the extreme, as well as talking about how much calorie-counting fails. I can completely agree with the first part. I too am Type-A and hate having to be reasonable or overly strict. It’s one of the things I love about WFPB. But to say that moderation and calorie-counting just don’t work at all is disingenuous.
There are hundreds of thousands of people that lost weight through calorie-counting, and have managed to keep it off, and millions of people practice moderation every day. The Starch Solution and WFPB at large do offer you a lot more flexibility in how strict you have to be with yourself as far as counting and measuring, but let’s not make up things about how to lose weight just to make your diet sound like the only answer.
The Bad: No Such Thing as Too Much?
Dr. McDougall spends a fair amount of time talking about how the fat you eat is the fat you wear, and how much more difficult it is for the body to turn carbohydrates into fat. While technically both of those statements are true, the conclusions he draws from them are a little less…correct. For one, the body can definitely use fat as a fuel source, but yes, it is also readily stored if you have other fuel for the body to burn. And while ramping up the carbs can also ramp up the metabolism to an extent, you will absolutely gain weight if you manage to smash in tons and tons of potatoes, pasta, or grains, not because carbs are bad, but because carbs aren’t exempt from the rules of physics.
That’s no cause to panic. All of the fiber you get from average portions of these foods will easily leave you feeling satisfied. Just remember to take it slow and listen to your hunger cues.
The Bad: The Weakest Form of Evidence
Lastly, a note about anecdote. It is not a form of concrete evidence. One person’s story does not make a universal truth, and it holds no weight compared to more robust options like double-blind studies and meta-analysis. But it does have one thing going for it: PEOPLE LOVE ANECDOTE. So much so that it is routinely used to undermine evidence.
This book, like countless other diet books, is at minimum 30% testimonial by weight. There are a LOT of stories about how great the diet is and how it changed people’s lives. And I have no reason to doubt that any of them are true. I’m totally willing to believe all of them. What I have a problem with is how heavily they’re used as “evidence.” To me, a lifestyle should stand on the merits of the evidence that supports it, not on its zealots.
Final Thoughts?
At the end of the day, good, bad and ugly, I think this diet is still head-and-shoulders above any diet that recommends you heavily restrict carbohydrates, or rely on packaged foods and animal products to get the bulk of your calorie needs. Just maybe keep an eye on the variety, and for goodness sake don’t try to make yourself sick on twenty pounds of potatoes. Oh, and READ THE BOOK. If you gain a ton of weight because you were eating white rice and canola oil under a bed of veggie burgers and battered cauliflower, you can’t really blame the Doc for that one.
So what are your thoughts? Have you tried the Starch Solution? Did it work? Did you stick with it? Let me know in the comments and let me know what book you’d like to see Spotlighted next!
