The Starch Solution: Eat the Foods You Love, Regain Your Health, and Lose the Weight for Good! Paperback – June 4, 2013

The Starch Solution is a book to read from start to finish. I have read two other books by Dr. John McDougall and I keep referring back to them. I have seen and listened to Dr. McDougall speak in person, and over the years I have read and referred frequently to his newsletters. I am a 28-year vegan following his dietary guidelines. So, when he published The Starch Diet over ten years ago, I asked myself, do I really need to buy and read this book? Ten years after its publication, I finally bought the book. I am reading it, and I can tell you this is the most accessible and readable book Dr. McDougall has written, and perhaps one of the most important books on dietary health available to the public in print today.Dr. McDougall makes his case on the merits of the starch-based, whole foods, plant-based diet. In this book he has extracted the most important and vital information from his long career of medical research and practice and made it easily comprehensible and usable. From having written many books, articles, and newsletters, he has honed his writing skills, and has now produced his most informative and enjoyable-to-read publication yet.Especially noteworthy is his clear and concise discussion about the documented hazards of vitamin supplementation. The book is worth having on your bookshelf for this section on vitamin supplementation alone. He presents the most informative discussion I have ever read about vitamin B12 and identifies which type of B12 is optimum. He thoroughly discusses the importance of naturally acquired vitamin D from sunlight for overall health. And he describes a natural and recurring phenomenon in the human body which he refers to as "spontaneous healing" to illustrate the point that the human body has immense capability to recover from injury and illness. The title of the book "The Starch Solution" is meant to convey that Dr. McDougall has included a wealth of essential information describing a complete and natural dietary approach to achieve optimum health, making this book essential reading for every health-conscious person.The book is thoroughly footnoted and referenced to scientific research sources. The book also include 97 pages of the McDougall family's most favorite and simple palate pleasing recipes that anyone can prepare. Expert culinary skills are not required.Knowledge is power. The Starch Solution informs with facts, scientific research, and noble intent. Dr. McDougall's motivation is to educate and empower his patients and the public on how to avoid ill health and maximize optimum health in their lives.To quote Dr. McDougall from the introduction to this book: "I never took an oath to protect the financial interests of the medical industry. I did, however, take an oath to care for the sick and to keep them from harm and injustice, and to never give a deadly drug or procedure. I fully realize that the views I advocate cause people with vested interests to dislike me. But I can live with that unfairness. Too many physicians and dietitians pay allegiance to the big businesses of food and pharmaceuticals rather than to their customers, the patients."I highly recommend Dr. McDougall's book The Starch Solution.

Dr John McDougall's "The Starch Solution" puts together rock solid science and evidence for a natural, whole food, plant based starch, grain, vegetable and fruit diet for great health and well-being. The Solution advocates elimination of all animal based foods. All the information given in this book is summarized on Dr. McDougall's website and is available there for free. There are also a great many other free resources listed there that will help all those looking for healing solutions either as wellness seekers or healers wanting to help others. (Just Google McDougall Starch Solution to get links to go onto his site.)I am very impressed by the authenticity and practicality of the book and signed up for a special Starch Solution Certification Course. The course has helped me to understand this subject in much greater detail. It has enhanced my effectiveness as a health care professional in alternative healing therapies. I am now able to help my patients much more than I could earlier, through the mechanism of adding systematic dietary changes for my patients as laid out in the Starch Solution.* I may mention here that most of my practice deals with the health issues of those coming to me from the modern system of medicine and therapies, not having found any great disease-reversal or relief there. At best the modern medicine and healthcare system provides relief inasmuch it permits one to be somewhat more functional and permits one to "tolerate" the attrition to one's health. It also provides urgently needed and life-saving measures. However it does nothing to reverse the diseases listed, which are essentially and truly nutritional diseases and that issue is very inadequately addressed in the overall current healthcare and medical therapeutics and practices.* The good news is that all that detailed information from the Certification Course is in the book in a distilled, accurate and usable form. The certification course has over 8 hours of audio-video lectures, the key information of which is distilled down to this book, and the information in the book is further distilled down to the bare essentials and a practical plan to follow, available for free on Dr McD's website. Quite simply, the process works when followed with a reasonable, increasing degree of compliance over time-- if not following the process 'cold turkey' as it were. People who once get onto this process and experience the positive-to-remarkably-significant results in a few days tend to stay with the process.* The evidence presented in the "Starch Solution" looks at civilizations and cultures past and present over thousands of years, and details where such traditional dietary practices are still being followed today with great wellness. * Importantly---it documents that where these traditional diets change to a richer western diet, how the health begins to deteriorate within the same generation and dramatically so in the next. Hence diet and nutrition and not genes or other factors affect health and wellness primarily.*The book lays out a very compelling case that today's most deadly chronic diseases are in fact nutritional diseases that can be reversed primarily by nutritional measures. This is a bold and radical claim that should excite and encourage all those in and associated with health and wellness activities. Reading this book and other associated material makes it clear that misinformation, partial information and speculation have propelled the belief of the public that a meat, fish, dairy and fatty diet is essential to health. The evidence is to the contrary--those on a meat, dairy, fish and fatty diet are rapidly becoming sicker and sicker.Dr. McDougall points out that opposition to a natural whole foods plant based starch, grain, vegetable and fruit diet in the face of the overwhelming hard scientific evidence comes from beliefs generated by a great marketing job from those whose livelihoods are connected to and dependent upon maintaining an opposing view--within the meat and dairy industries as well as government. (In his video lectures, he paraphrases Upton Sinclair--"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.") Dr McD is at pains to dispel the notion that he is advocating some kind of conspiracy theory. He points out that the people who have their entrenched interests in the meat and dairy industries, equally have families and loved ones who are getting sick from the meat and dairy they eat.* So it is not a conspiracy, but rather an issue of protecting one's paycheck. While there is nothing wrong with that, the consequences and price to pay for doing this is this painful, costly list ---obesity, diabetes, heart and coronary artery disease (CAD), strokes, osteoporosis, liver, lung and kidney disease, cancer, depression... and the list goes on.* Dietary choices are shaped by many factors including social, cultural and financial ones, and more broadly by one's personal ideology about their life choices and beliefs. In order to look at something new in a fair way, one must set aside--temporarily at least, one's biases or beliefs in order to see things as they are. Then one may choose to live with one's established beliefs and biases--or form new beliefs based on truly understanding the evidence.* The problems experienced by people in following this whole foods plant based diet appear to be coming majorly from not understanding how this works and how to go about following it. In the name of 'vegan' there are many variations of what is 'vegan' and what works is mixed and diluted by what doesn't work for sustainable health. Hence all similar appearing diets get tarred with the same brush of unreliability, quackery etc. Therefore, to be clear, this diet is not a catchall 'Vegan' diet, but as Dr McD points out, it is a plant based starch, grains, fruits and vegetables diet. For simplicity he calls it the Starch diet as that is overall the single largest component of the diet. Dr McDougall says that Human beings are in effect "starchivores", who are naturally seeking complex sugars (starch) and simple sugars (fruits and some vegetables) through their taste buds as well as according to the way their metabolism is designed. Having starchy food and sugars satiates and fills one more than fats can ever do and with far less calories. The book also debunks the widespread misinformation that starch and sugars make one fat--documented research shows that under most conditions sugar does not turn into fat in the body, it is burnt off as fuel, while the fat one eats goes straight in to the body's stores. As Dr. McDougall says very graphically--"The fat you eat is the fat you wear!"* The practical demonstration of this is, that, where people change their dietary patterns to follow a whole foods plant based, starch, grain, vegetable and fruit diet systematically as explained in the book, they quickly experience a radical change in their wellness status for the better. Any slight additions of animal based foods to the diet, especially animal proteins, is seen to dilute and degrade the health benefits of following this altered hybrid system--which is then no longer a true 'Vegan', whole foods natural plant based diet.If we are really our own well-wishers we owe it to ourselves to first properly and really understand what this diet is all about, and then follow it systematically for a few days to experience the results of it.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐The Starch Solution has been a game-changer for me. The book provides a clear and straightforward approach to healthy eating, focusing on whole, plant-based foods that are both satisfying and nutritious. I love that I can eat the foods I enjoy, like potatoes, rice, and other starches, without feeling deprived. The science-backed information is easy to understand, and the recipes are delicious and simple to prepare. Since following this plan, I’ve noticed significant improvements in my energy levels, overall health, and weight loss. Highly recommend this book to anyone looking for a sustainable way to regain their health and achieve lasting weight loss!