The Starch Solution (16 page)

Refer to
The McDougall Plan
for more details.
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Other researchers have examined the capacity of plant foods to meet our protein needs and have found that children grow to be healthy and strong, and adults continue to thrive, on a diet based solely on a single type of starch.
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No benefit is derived from mixing plant foods, nor from supplementing them with amino acid mixtures to make the combined patterns look more like protein from flesh, dairy, or eggs.
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Despite the well-documented fact that humans can absorb or synthesize all of the amino acids needed to construct complete protein chains from
plant food sources, many people continue to believe the misguided notion that one cannot get sufficient high-quality protein on a plant-based diet. This doesn’t stop with popular opinion; even revered experts get the protein story wrong, believing that plant proteins are incomplete in amino acids and therefore cannot alone adequately support our protein needs.

Tufts Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging (2011):
“Plant protein sources, although good for certain essential amino acids, do not always offer all nine essential amino acids in a single given food. For example, legumes lack methionine, while grains lack lysine.”
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Tufts University School of Medicine (2011):
“Single plant protein foods usually are lower in protein quality than most animal proteins because they lack significant amounts of various essential amino acids.”
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Harvard School of Public Health (2011):
“Other protein sources lack one or more ‘essential’ amino acids—that is, amino acids that the body can’t make from scratch or create by modifying another amino acid. Called incomplete proteins, these usually come from fruits, vegetables, grains, and nuts.”
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Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University (2011):
“Plant sources of protein (grains, legumes, nuts, and seeds) generally do not contain sufficient amounts of one or more of the essential amino acids. Thus protein synthesis can occur only to the extent that the limiting amino acids are available.”
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The American Heart Association (2001):
“Although plant proteins form a large part of the human diet, most are deficient in one or more essential amino acids and are therefore regarded as incomplete proteins.”
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Important authorities continue to toe this line, including scientists from Tufts University’s Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging and its School of Medicine; registered dietitians, research nutritionists, and physicians at Northwestern University; and the Harvard School of Public Health. All of them are flat-out wrong about sufficiency of proteins in plant foods. It is a dangerous error. Following their advice predicts a lifetime of sickness, obesity, and premature death for countless people.

In an October 2001 position paper published in the American Heart Association’s journal
Circulation,
health care professionals from the AHA’s Nutrition Committee of the Council on Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Metabolism wrote, “Although plant proteins form a large part of the human diet, most are deficient in one or more essential amino acids and are therefore regarded as incomplete proteins.”
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I was alarmed to see this kind of misinformation quoted and published in such a respected journal, so I wrote a letter to the editor correcting this often-quoted but incorrect information. My letter was published in the June 2002 issue of
Circulation
.
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However, the Nutrition Committee remained steadfast in its position, declining to cite a stitch of research to support the authors’ original statement. Its denial of the scientific facts fueled me to write another letter, published in the journal’s November 2002 issue.
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Even after reviewing the evidence that refuted the Nutrition Committee’s point of view, the head of the committee, Barbara Howard, PhD, still would not admit that her committee’s findings were wrong. This time, she cited the research of the world’s leading expert on protein, Dr. D. Joseph Millward, to defend her position.

In fact, Dr. Millward did not agree with the American Heart Association’s position. Dr. Millward was an emeritus professor of human nutrition at the University of Surrey in England when he reviewed this professional confrontation between me and the American Heart Association. He
e-mailed me, “I thought I had made my position quite clear in my published papers. In an article I wrote for the
Encyclopedia of Nutrition
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I said, ‘Contrary to general opinion, the distinction between dietary protein sources in terms of the nutritional superiority of animal over plant proteins is much more difficult to demonstrate and less relevant in human nutrition.’ This is quite distinct from the AHA position which in my view is wrong.
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I forwarded Dr. Millward’s e-mail to the American Heart Association, but it remained silent for almost a decade before softening its position on amino acids. Currently (2011), the AHA makes the following two statements echoing the points I tried to make back in 2001:
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Many populations throughout history—for example, people in rural Poland and Russia at the turn of the 19th century—have lived in good health doing hard work with the white potato serving as their primary source of nutrition. In one landmark experiment carried out in 1925, two healthy adults—a 25-year-old man and a 28-year-old woman—ate a diet of white potatoes for 6 months.
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(A few additional items of little nutritional value and empty calories were included, such as pure fats, a few fruits, coffee, and tea.) The final report of their experiences included two revealing statements about the value of potatoes: “They [the man and woman] did not tire of the uniform potato diet and there was no craving for change.” Even though they were both physically active (especially the man) they were described as “in good health on a diet in which the nitrogen [protein] was practically solely derived from the potato.”

The potato is such an excellent source of nutrition that it can supply all of the essential proteins and amino acids for young
children, even in times of food shortage. Eleven Peruvian children, ages 8 months to 35 months, recovering from malnutrition, were fed diets in which all of the protein and 75 percent of the calories came from potatoes.
^26
,
27
(Soybean and cottonseed oils and simple sugars, neither of which contain protein, vitamins, or minerals, provided some of the extra calories.) Researchers concluded that this simple potato diet provided all the protein and essential amino acids to meet the needs of growing and small children.

Note: These two experiments are strong testaments to the abundance of nutrients in and the weight-loss benefits of the potato. After adding “empty calories” from oils and sugars, the basic potato still provided all the protein, amino acids, vitamins, and minerals required to maintain the health of very active adults and promote the growth of young children. The “empty calories” prevented undesirable weight loss in both experiments. Thus, the much-maligned potato is an ideal food for dieters—low in calories and high in nutrient density. And it is especially beneficial for people with type 2 diabetes, who can be cured by simply shedding a few extra pounds.

You don’t need to eat foods from animals to have enough protein in your diet.
Plant proteins alone can provide enough of the essential and non-essential amino acids, as long as sources of dietary protein are varied and caloric intake is high enough to meet energy needs.

Whole grains, legumes, vegetables, seeds and nuts all contain both essential and non-essential amino acids. You don’t need to consciously combine these foods (“complementary proteins”) within a given meal.

At last, the American Heart Association has accepted the scientifically proven conclusion that plant foods do, indeed, contain all of the
essential amino acids we need to survive and thrive. Unfortunately, experts from Tufts, Harvard, Northwestern, and most other major universities and medical organizations have chosen to continue spreading incorrect information, the result being serious health consequences for billions of people worldwide.

The people we trust to educate our children and form our public policies appear to be ignorant about our basic nutritional needs. The result is disastrous: Millions of Americans are suffering from diet-related illnesses, including 18 million people with coronary heart disease, 25.8 million with type 2 diabetes, 400,000 with multiple sclerosis, and millions with inflammatory arthritis.

While there is ample evidence that a starch-based diet can help to drastically improve our nation’s health and reduce our exorbitant health care bill, your doctor, or even the Surgeon General, probably will not tell you about this solution. One reason is the misguided fear that such a diet would bring about protein deficiency. But protein deficiency doesn’t exist except alongside starvation, a condition under which all nutrients, including calories, are in inadequate supply.

That the experts promote this view translates to poor advice in the doctor’s office. Suppose your loving spouse of 35 years has a massive heart attack. While your spouse recovers, both of you pledge you will do anything to avoid a repeat experience. On your first follow-up visit, you tell your doctor that your family plans to follow a low-fat, vegan diet—no meat or dairy—from here on out. Based on the information he has learned in medical school and from leading organizations, your doctor might say, “I would strongly advise you against that. Plant foods are missing essential amino acids and you will become protein deficient. I think it’s a good idea to follow a healthy diet, but in order to be balanced you’ve got to include high-quality proteins, like those from meat, dairy, and eggs.” His defense for this position? The opinion of a
variety of nutritional experts that once included the Nutrition Committee of the American Heart Association.

In addition to protein, Mother Nature designed her plant foods with a perfect balance of fat, carbohydrate, vitamins, and minerals to support optimal health. So long as you have enough food to eat, the question of fulfilling specific nutrient requirements is a moot one; it’s all right there.

How, then, have scientists, dietitians, physicians, diet gurus, and the general public gotten so fixated on a problem that doesn’t exist? When they speak of protein, why is it assumed that the best sources are meat, poultry, fish, eggs, and dairy products when these foods have steered those who can afford them toward lives of ill health, from the earliest time in history right up to the present day? Is it because we confer a higher social status on those who indulge in meat? Do we consume meat as a way to elevate ourselves? To separate ourselves from populations that, it turns out, may be a lot more fortunate than us by enjoying the indigenous plant foods that surround them? Is it because high-protein foods reap high profits? Because billboards and television advertisements and best-selling books say it is so?

All the way back in 1904, Professor Chittenden had faith that knowledge and truth would prevail.
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He wrote, “Habit and sentiment play such a part in our lives that it is too much to expect any sudden change in custom. By a proper education commenced early in life it may, however, be possible to establish new standards, which in time may prevail and eventually lead to more enlightened methods of living.”

Sadly, the past century of declining health, most strikingly among those living in developed countries with adequate resources, has proved Chittenden wrong. But that does not mean it is too late to prove him right.