Book Review: McDougall Starch Diet

I read this book by medical doctor John McDougall. The book is about a starched based diet with no meat, milk or dairy. His premise is that most large cultures have a diet centered on starches like wheat, barley, potatoes, corn or rice. He believes that a starch based diet should be supplemented with fruit, vegetables and some nuts. He thinks meat is unhealthy and the root causes of many health problems.

The book is filled with color pictures and is very easy to read because there are some pages with one paragraph of words and some pages have only 1-2 short sentences.

One of his other basic premises is that modern people overeat and have the type of health problems that were common amongst the royalty, but uncommon amongst the general population. But now that the general population eats large amounts of milk, dairy, eggs, cheese and meat. The general population has all the diseases of the wealthy.

He mentions a story in the Bible where military troops who normally ate a starch based diet got sick while staying in the palace of the King eating a diet rich in meat, milk and eggs.

He also mentions that the Roman gladiators ate a starch based diet and were know as barley men after the main starch in their diet.

He has some interesting maps and charts, showing what starches are eaten as the main source of calories before we learned how to refrigerate milk, eggs and preserve meat.

This book is very different from his usual books which are filled with scientific studies, and complicated explanations. This one was made to be a distillation of his diet program down to the bare components.
I read this book in less then 20 minutes. It is written in easy to understand language and it clearly explains why he believes a person’s diet is responsible for the majority of their health problems. His pictures and graphs are very colorful, in good focus and tastefully done. He isn’t mean or profane, but he does feel very strongly that people shouldn’t eat meat, dairy or processed oils. I enjoyed the book and it did encourage me to eat more healthy foods. It is an easy and quick read, so I encourage you to read it.

✍️ Shortsegments

Picture Sources
All photos are from the book and used with his permission as he encourages you to share all the information in the book on the last page. 👇👇