The Plant Paradox: The Hidden Dangers in "Healthy" Foods That Cause Disease and Weight Gain

by Steven R. Gundry

its sugar (fructose) content.

Our dear friend the avocado is the only acceptable ripe fruit because it contains nary a trace of sugar and is composed of good fat and soluble fiber, which help you lose weight and absorb fat-soluble vitamins and antioxidants.

RULE NUMBER 4: You Are What the Thing You Are Eating, Ate

Which came first, the chicken or the osteoporosis? Actually, the correct answer is corn. Again, you are eating the stuff that these animals ate.

The most important gift your gut buddies can give you is to direct your appetite and manage your cravings. This frees you from the constant battle to control your desires, along with the chore of calorie counting and the effort to demonize those wonderful-looking junk foods. Give your gut buddies what they want and they will return the favor.

PHASE 1: This three-day cleanse begins the process of repairing

your gut, fortifying the good microbes, and banishing most of the bad microbes. At the end of the three days, your gut organisms will have changed, and therefore, your gut has changed. But you must move directly from Phase 1 to Phase 2 to prevent the almost immediate return of the bad guys.

Initially, you’ll eliminate major lectins (grains and legumes, including corn and soybeans, which also contain estrogenlike substances), GMO foods, crops treated with Roundup, and many saturated fats. This includes whole-grain products, which hypersensitize the immune system. But fear not, vegetarians and vegans, I have a solution for you below. • Eliminate all sugars and artificial sweeteners. • Minimize intake of most omega-6 fats, which prompt the body’s attack mode, encouraging fat storage and

hunger. • Eliminate industrial farm–raised poultry (including so-called free-range poultry) and livestock (along with their dairy products) and all farm-raised fish, which are fed antibiotics, corn, and beans full of omega-6s and laced with Roundup. • You may have a small serving of nuts, guacamole, or simply half a Hass avocado as a snack.11 You will find that over time, if you are eating the right foods, you no longer feel the need for snacks. The wrong foods, on the other hand, simply make you hungrier.

Avoid using all endocrine...

disrupting products. • Instead, you’ll consume the following: • All leafy greens and certain vegetables, and a substantial amount of tubers and other foods that contain resistant starch. Initially, you will give fruit the boot. Later, you can reintroduce it only in its real season, and only as “candy.” • Consume more omega-3 fats, particularly those found in fish oil, perilla oil, flaxseed oil, and other approved oils, such as avocado, walnut, oliv...

Consume no more than 8 ounces of animal protein a day (remember, fish and shellfish are animals), primarily as wild-caught fish and shellfish, which are high in omega-3 fatty acids and have no artery-destroying Neu5Gc, as well as eggs from pastured or omega-3-fed chickens. • Only 4 ounces of your daily protein should come from grass-fed or pasture-raised meat, which have more omega-3 and fewer omega-6 oils than animals ...

cows or from sheep, goats, and water buffalo, which make casein A-2. However, in general, with the exception of ghee, limit all dairy pro...

PHASE 3 (optional): Reduce intake of all animal protein, including fish, to a total of 2 to 4 ounces a day and fast intermittently.

A pressure cooker will destroy the lectins in beans and other legumes, which are a fantastic source of nonvegetable protein, as well as in vegetables in the nightshade and squash families (actually fruits).

Better yet, pressure-cooked beans, shorn of their offending lectins, serve as a smorgasbord for your gut buddies, and can improve longevity and enhance memory. More good news: Most natural foods stores and Whole Foods stock brands of

beans and other legumes in cans that are not ...

Great apes eat fruit to gain weight for the winter. What makes you different? Nothing. • Farmers use grains, corn, and beans to fatten livestock for slaughter. What makes you different? Nothing. • Horses are fed oats to fatten them for the winter when forage is hard to come by. What makes you different? Nothing.

(For more information, visit www.catalystcuisine.com.)

Extra-virgin olive oil should never be exposed to high heat, but low heat is fine. Hemp seed and flaxseed oils should not be heated at all, so confine their use to dressing salads and other vegetables.

Let me remind you that if you think you are lactose-intolerant, or if milk stimulates mucus production, you are actually reacting to the lectinlike casein A-1 protein (see chapter 2 for a complete explanation of the casein A-1 mutation and its effect on cows around the world).

The lectins in the nightshade family include solanine, a neurotoxin.6 Again, all New World plants have troublesome lectins that most of mankind has eaten for no more than five hundred years. Even Native Americans came from Asia, so these plants are “new” to all of us.

And do remember sorghum and millet are the only grains that contain no lectins, meaning they are safe from the get-go.

a single slice of whole wheat bread raises your blood sugar higher and faster than four tablespoons of straight sugar. The meat that you ate is more slowly digested, entering your bloodstream slightly later. Unfortunately, your cells are full of the sugar from the bun or fries you ate so there is no need for more calories. Little did you know, when this occurs, that protein converts to sugar, which immediately turns into fat.

The good news is that by swallowing a methylfolate 1000 mcg tablet each day and putting a 1000 to 5000 mcg methyl B12 under your tongue, you can bypass the genetic mutation. Since you have about a 50 percent chance of carrying one or more of these single or double mutations, I think it is worth taking the active forms of methylfolate and methyl B12 just in case. Although they will not hurt you, if you are one of the few with one or both of the double mutations, you may notice increased excitability or conversely depression.

Some of my favorite polyphenols in supplement form are grape seed extract, pine tree bark extract (sometimes marketed as pycnogenol), and resveratrol, the polyphenol in red wine.

You can find supplements at Costco, Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods, and online. My suggested doses are 100 mg of both grape seed extract and resveratrol, and 25 to 100 mg of pine tree bark extract a day. Other great additions are green tea extract, berberine, cocoa powder, cinnamon, mulberry, and pomegranate, all of which (and many more) are in Vital Reds, but can also be taken separately.