PART I

HEALING WITH STARCH.

CHAPTER 1

There is a traditional diet of people.

Did you have your rice today?

This Chinese greeting reminds us that, for the Chinese, the ultimate measure of well-being is whether or not you have eaten rice. The Chinese diet relies on rice. The average person in Asia eats two to three times a day. Rice is an important food in the Middle East, Latin America, Italy, and the West Indies. After corn, it is the second most produced food, and the world’s single most important source of energy, providing more than 20 percent of calories consumed by humans around the globe.

Rice and food are the same in China. In Japan, the word for cooked rice is meal. In Thailand, the call that brings the family to the table is Eat rice. Buddhists refer to grains of rice as little Buddhas. In India, the first food a new bride gives her husband is rice. It is the first solid food that will be offered to her baby.

The story is the same everywhere. Whether rice in Asia, potatoes in South America, corn in Central America, wheat in Europe, or beans, millet, sweet potatoes, and barley around the globe, starch has been at the center of food and nutrition throughout human history.

What is it?

Plants use water, carbon dioxide, and energy from the sun to make sugars. The most basic form of sugar is simple sugar. Simple sugars are linked into chains inside the plant’s cells, some of them arranged in a straight line. When these sugar chains gather in large quantities inside a plant’s cells, they form starch grains.

Plants have roots, stems, leaves, flowers, seeds, and fruits. The stored starch provides them with a source of energy when they need it later, keeping them alive through the winter and fueling their reproduction the following spring. It is what makes vegetables, grains, and beans so healthy to eat, because of their high concentration of carbohydrates.

Our primary source of food should be stear. The long carbohydrate chains are broken down by the amylase in our saliva. Digestion is a process that slowly releases sugars from the small intestine into the bloodstream, giving our cells a ready supply of energy.

Fruits are mostly in the form of simple sugars, but little of the long-burning, sustaining starch. Fruits alone won’t satisfy our appetite for very long. Green, yellow, and orange vegetables are nonstarchy. Their most important job is to add flavor, texture, color, and aroma to your meals. There is a bonus in the additional vitamins that come along for the ride.

Here in the states and around the world, as all populations undergo economic development, have we become so afraid and ashamed of this most important food? We don’t know what the price is for shunning the most basic staple known to humankind.

The key ingREDIENT is Starch.

Diet and nutrition advice is often focused on how much we should eat, and misses the point: More important than how much, how often, and when we eat. Different kinds of animals need different types of food. Humans are built to thrive on food. The more rice, corn, potatoes, sweet potatoes, and beans we eat, the trimmer, more energetic, and healthier we become.

Are you talking about Starch? Really? Isn’t that for laundry? It is the key to optimum health and satiety. We hear a lot about what we should eat, but we don’t hear much about what we should not eat.

There are three basic types of sugars, each made up of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. The simplest of these are sugar, which includes the sugar you bake into cookies, the sugar in fruit, and the sugar in milk. Sugar is broken down in the body to provide quick and powerful energy. Chapter 12 will show you more about sugar.

The second type of carbohydrate is made up of chains of sugar. It is found in the cell walls of plants. The wood beams of your home can be eaten by the termites because they don’t have the enzymes to break down cellulose to use it for fuel. Although we don’t get any energy from them, they are important to us for their fiber.

There is a gold medal for the most beneficial to humans. starches are made up of long-branching chains. We can break it down into simple sugars that will provide us with sustained energy and keep us happy. There are plants that have high levels of long-chain digestible carbohydrates. Grains like wheat, corn, and oats, as well as vegetables like winter squash, potatoes, and sweet potatoes, are examples. It’s important that an international scientific journal has Starch. There is a substance called Starch. Its study is dedicated to it. My diet is based on Starch. If you take away one message from the book, it should be: Eat more starch. The scientific fact that we are, and have always been, primarily starch eaters is basic to our human nature. A majority of calories for most hunter-gatherer societies came from plant-foods, not animal-foods, according to a renowned anthropologist. Think of yourself as an animal like a cat or a horse.

The benefits of a plant-based diet include reducing or eliminating animal foods like meat, dairy, and eggs. This concept doesn’t go far enough. A diet of leafy greens, crucifers, broccoli and cauliflower, and fruits like apples and oranges will leave you feeling tired and hungry. Nonstarchy green, yellow, and orange vegetables are good for you to eat, but on their own do not give you enough calories to sustain your daily activities and keep you feeling satisfied. It is possible that your natural hunger drive will lead to you filling up on something else at the expense of your weight and health.

Common foods are categorized by McDougall.

Starches

Grains include: corn, millet, oats, rice, wheat, and wild rice.

Lentils, peas, and beans are some of the Legumes.

Carrots, Jerusalem artichokes, parsnips, potatoes, salsify, sweet potatoes, winter squashes (acorn, banana, butternut, Hubbard), yams.

Vegetables are green, yellow, and orange.

Apples, apricots, bananas, berries, cherries, figs, grapefruit, grapes, loquats, mangoes, melons, 888-282-0476 888-282-0476 888-282-0476 888-282-0476 888-282-0476 888-282-0476 888-282-0476 888-282-0476 888-282-0476 888-282-0476 888-282-0476 888-282-0476 888-282-0476 888-282-0476 888-282-0476 888-282-0476 888-282-0476 888-282-0476 888-282-0476 888-282-0476 888-282-0476 888-282-0476 888-282-0476 888-282-0476 888-282-0476 888-282-0476 888-282-0476 888-282-0476 888-282-0476 888-282-0476 888-282-0476 888-282-0476

The real Paleolithic diet.

The truth is that healthy people get most of their calories from the food they eat. If you eat a traditional meal in Japan, China, or most other Asian countries, you will find your bowl filled with rice. The same truth has been told throughout recorded history. The diet of the Incas of South America was centered on potatoes. The Incan warriors used quinoa for strength. The people of the corn were the Mayas and Aztecs. The ancient Egyptians preferred wheat. Our primary fuel has been six foods: corn, millet, potatoes, rice, and wheat.

If the map hasn’t convinced you, science shows that for at least the past 13,000 years, the diet of all healthy, large, successful populations has relied on starch. There are new discoveries that show evidence of the diet.

Throughout History, Starch Eaters.

At Ohalo II, an Israeli site dating back 23,000 years, archeologists found wheat, barley, acorns, almonds, pistachios, berries, figs, and grapes among the huts, hearths, and a human grave.

Archeological sites in Italy, Russia, and the Czech Republic have recently been found to have traces of wild plants in their grinding tools. Evidence suggests that the practice of grinding vegetables and starches into flour was common in Europe as far back as 30,000 years ago.

Recent studies show that the Neanderthals ate a variety of plant foods, and even cooked or prepared plant foods to make them more digestible.

The diet of Egyptian women.

Is it true that reports showing heart disease in Egyptian mummies prove that their mostly vegetarian diet was to blame for their deaths?

Scientists can get a three-dimensional view of the body using multiple x-rays. 20 out of 44 Egyptian mummies had evidence of hardening of the arteries, according to a report in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

Around 3,500 years ago, you would think that people would have been healthy, with no fast food or tobacco, and plenty of exercise. The evidence shows that the wealthy ancient Egyptians ate a diet that was far richer than that of their less wealthy counterparts.

The gallstones are caused by too much cholesterol in the bile due to a diet rich in animal foods. The bile acids that looked like those we see today were found in a mummy 3,500 years ago.

The evidence shows that the wealthiest citizens are mummies. The most decadent foods produced diseases in the elite that were not found in the mostly vegetarian common folk. The images of royalty on beef, sheep, goats, wild fowl, rich breads, and cake areroglyphics on Egyptian temple walls. The foods were excavated from the Egyptian pyramids in order to provide for the dead in the afterlife. The diet of the elite has been conservatively estimated at more than 50 percent fat, much of it saturated, not unlike our typical modern Western diet.

The Egyptian mummies show that highly placed individuals who ate the richest diet suffered from heart disease and other illnesses, just as we do today. A diet based on animal foods and deficient in starches is the same. For most ancient Egyptians, extravagant food was only occasionally available. If only we were so lucky. A life of excess comes at a great cost.

The warrior’s diet.

The greatest feats of history have been accomplished by men and women who ate diet based on grains, vegetables, and fruits. The conquerors of Europe and Asia, including Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan, ate diet based on starches. When Caesar had too much meat in his diet, he preferred to fight on grains.

The remains of 60 Roman gladiators who fought and died in Ephesus, in western Turkey, were recently found in a 200 square foot plot along the road that led from the city center to the Temple of Artemis. The gladiators are sometimes referred to as hordearii, or barley men, since they were given the bulk of the nutrition that gave them their strength and endurance to compete in the ultimate sport of life and death.

Starch eaters are our genes.

Chimpanzees are designed to eat a diet based on plant foods, according to experts. Our bodies need it. The diet of our closest relative, the Chimpanzees, is mostly vegetarian and made up of fruits, leaves, and vegetables. Chimpanzees eat nuts, seeds, flowers, and bark in the dry season.

One of the minor differences between humans and Chimpanzees is that our genes help us to digest more starch, a crucial evolutionary adjustment.