Daily, I am asked to justify my recommendations for a starch- (corn-, potato-, rice-) based diet over other diets that offer contrary advice. (Below is a concise review of the McDougall Plan). The effects of different diets are far too complex to make meaningful such side-by-side comparisons. I would like to, however, share with you some of my past professional educational opportunities in order for you to better understand how my views developed over 40 years ago. Using the “Search” feature on my website (www.drmcdougall.com) will also help you find many articles about the specific concerns I have for other popular diets you may have been considering. (Enter terms such as: low-carb diet, low-fat diet, Grain Brain, Wheat Belly, Atkins, lectin-free, nutrient dense diet, vegan diet, and vegetarian diet.)

I understand if you are frustrated and unsure about who is telling the truth. We in the United States, and many other parts of the world, live under what is called freedom—freedom of speech, choice, and trade. Unfortunately, this luxury often translates into unregulated business practices by the food (and all other) industries. Even when I believe that I hold the truth, and even when I find that my diet-therapy results are consistently successful with my patients, the meat, dairy, egg, fish, and other food industries usually win “the information game” because they have millions of dollars to push their products using television, newspapers, books, radio, and online. The saying, “all is fair in love and in war” applies even when the casualties are consumers and their families, with consequences being as extreme as loss of life.

Four of My Own Eye-opening Experiences:

1. Dr. Denis Burkitt, MD, former head of the ministries of health of Uganda, Africa, explained to me, during a noontime medical conference in 1971, that over a period of 17 years, supervising 1,000 hospitals, caring for more than 10 million people, he saw no obesity nor anyone suffering from diseases that are epidemic in all modern regions of the world: heart disease, cancer (of the breast, colon, and prostate), and arthritis, just to name a few. Spend one hour watching Dr. Burkitt to better understand that gaining excess weight and developing disabling diseases are not inevitable “normal” aging processes, and that a “well balanced diet,” as promoted by the meat and dairy industries, is deadly.
2. My personal experience of caring for 5,000 Hawaiian Sugar Plantation patients between 1973 and 1976 confirmed for me the central role that the nearly vegan, starch-based (no dairy and little meat) diet played in the health of Dr. Burkitt’s Ugandan population. During my three years spent as a general medical practitioner, I observed that my elderly patients—mostly those who had migrated from Japan, the Philippines, Korea, and China, and continued to follow their traditional diet of white rice and vegetables with no dairy and little meat—were trim, strong, and free of disease. Whereas, their genetically similar children and grandchildren, born and raised in Hawaii, who broke tradition by drifting toward the typical American diet of meat, cheese, and other junk foods, became overweight and sick.
3. Walter Kempner, MD, from Duke University, “cured” obese patients and those “nearly-dead” with failing hearts and kidneys with a diet of white rice, fruits, fruit juice, and sugar. Before I was born in 1947, Dr. Kempner had disproven concepts that are still held as true by many medical doctors and dietitians today, such as: “diet has little to do with heart disease,” “additional protein improves health,” and “carbohydrates cause diabetes.” His published work also showed me the power of diet-therapy and that nutritional deficiencies do not occur with simple plant-based diets (even when they consist mostly of refined white rice with the addition of lots of sugar). Read for yourself the classic scientific research published by Dr. Kempner.
4. Nathan Pritikin, world-respected diet researcher, confirmed for me everything I had learned so far about the human diet when we met in 1978. With a diet similar to the one Dr. Burkitt’s Ugandan population followed, Pritikin helped cure hundreds of thousands of overweight, sick people. Especially important for me was his assurance that animal muscle (meat) and their secretions (milk) were not essential to get adequate protein and calcium. Take an hour to listen to him.

Consuming animal flesh does add more protein to your body, however this excess is unnecessary because protein deficiency is unknown, and in today’s world, diseases of protein excess (like osteoporosis, kidney stones, kidney and liver damage) are universal among my patients. And yes, consuming mammalian milk does add more calcium to the diet, but this is also superfluous because calcium deficiency is unknownand milk is a leading cause of heart disease, obesity, and inflammatory arthritis.

Last Step: Changing My Mind

Years of brainwashing from the food industry, using every means at their disposal, was hard for me to completely erase, even after the above four experiences. However, I was left with the conclusion that the best diet for human health and healing was based on starches with the addition of a few vegetables and fruits. In the seventies, this belief was heresy that was punishable, by at the very least, loss of my credibility in the medical and dietetic communities. I was actually afraid. To be on the safe side, I wondered if maybe I should include a little skim milk and skinned chicken (Nathan Pritikin did).

But I made the decision to not compromise what I knew to be necessary to attain excellent human health. I took a stand for my patients’ welfare. Now, 40 years later, most educated people accept the scientific truths about protein and calcium. Yet, the challenges continue with “new discoveries that improve upon Nature’s basic designs,” revealed weekly at the news section of your grocery checkout and seen on popular TV shows. News sells products.

Rather than keeping the focus on the simple (non-alternative) fact that “It’s the Food,” global health epidemics involving billions of people and our Planet rage on. This is in part because of dietary distractions, such as low-carb diets, GMOs, gluten-free, good fats vs. bad fats, fish-eating and, most recently, dietary lectins, that cause you to ask me to justify my recommendations.

Fortunately, the foundation of a solid education based on some eye-opening, real-life experiences has kept matters simple for me. You can also end years of confusion about the best diet for you and your family by (1) trying the McDougall Diet, and (2) examining the reasons that I have not changed my mind in 40 years.