book coverStarch Madness

Paleolithic Nutrition for Today
with a Foreword by Barry Sears, Ph.D., author of The Zone and Mastering the Zone

Richard L. Heinrich

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ISBN: 1-57733-027-7, 176 pages, 5.5 x 8.5, paper, $12.95
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Also by Richard Heinrich: Orthomolecular Diet

Finally there is a book that explains and proves on a hormonal level why the high starch diets, the pasta and the bagels, now practically the law of the land, keep the 75% of us with Paleolithic genes fat.

Learn the scientific reasons why the Zone diet works--and its history. Learn the true reason for fitness--its mental health. Understand how eating the right mix of foods will make you slender and also let you laugh at addiction, depression, and stress--so simple.

Starch Madness provides the key, the elixir, to unlock stored body fat!

Author comment: You will be empowered by Starch Madness to be in control, to feel alive all day, everyday, to defeat yo-yo diets forever. In the words of Dr. Linus Pauling, Jr., Starch Madness "contains a message too often missing these days, good common sense." And in the words of Dr. Julian Whitaker, "a life long program for optimal nutrition and weight loss." There are no recipes; there are 174 pages of food and wellness facts that Publishers Weekly terms "a new eating regimen in 17 carefully argued chapters." The orthomolecular medicine of Linus Pauling becomes the food as drugs of Barry Sears. The stress adaptation syndrome of Dr. Hans Selye becomes the aerobics of Dr. Kenneth Cooper. The Paleolithic eating pattern becomes the low glycemic, low saturated fat of the Zone. Dr. Fereydoon Batmanghelidj shows us that adequate water replaces many drugs and cravings. The consensus diet of Roy Hurley of 1959 becomes the Zone feeling of Barry Sears. The starch deluge of Adelle Davis of 1954 becomes Starch Madness. The greatest fad diet is today's pyramid diet. State-of-the-art essays are provided on glycemic index, saturated fat, protein, cholesterol, water, sugar, vitamins, aerobics and above all Starch Madness. Our genetic heritage is explained. The author's diet primer teaches you to make up your own diet primer that will put you in control. You are shown how the diet blahs that cause yo-yo weight fluctuation can be defeated.

Endorsements

"Richard Heinrich has pulled together an excellent survey of new approaches to this seemingly age-old problem of what to eat, and more importantly, why. It all starts with our genes that haven't changed in the last 100,000 years and are unlikely to change in the near future. The correct diet for all humans is based on what is genetically correct, not politically correct." Barry Sears, The Zone

"Starch Madness contains a message too often missing these days: good common sense. I'm positive that my father, Linus Pauling, would have approved." Linus Pauling, Jr., M.D.

"Not a 'quick fix' diet book, but a lifelong program for optimal nutrition and natural weight loss. Mr. Heinrich explains why most popular diets don't work - and what does." Julian Whitaker, M.D., editor, Health & Healing

"Starch Madness is truly a superior health diet book we should all read more than once. It is an in-depth rendition of the ultimate truth on diet and perfect health." Fereydoon Batmanghelidj, M.D., Your Body's Many Cries for Water

"Starch Madness gives a useful and balanced assessment of many of the diets which have been suggested, not just to improve weight loss, but to lead to general good health. Are you confused about what you should eat? Richard Heinrich provides a guide which just about any reader can benefit from. His book is on my recommended reading list." Dallas Clouatre, Ph.D., Getting Lean with Anti-fat Nutrients

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Foreword
Preface

1. The Evolutionary Diet
2. The Low Fat Diet
3. The Low Glycemic Diet
4. The Training Table
5. Barry Sears: The Zone
6. The Promised Land
7. Your Body's Many Cries for Water
8. The New Nutrition
9. Taking Stress in Stride
10. And the Word Was Aerobics
11. Fitness - Fatness - Wellness
12. My Diet Primer
13. A Call to Arms
14. The Windup

Appendix 1: Fat-Cholesterol List
Appendix 2: Optimal Nutrition
Appendix 3: Suggested Reading List
Glossary
Bibliography
Index

Excerpt

Our evolution over the eons has provided us with a digestive system which is based upon foods of the Paleolithic era and earlier. We can term our very genes Paleolithic, evolved to flourish from hunter-gatherer eating patterns. Only about 25% of humankind has adapted a body able to cope with the foods of the Age of Agriculture without obesity and all of its problems. "The diet of our remote ancestors may be a reference standard for modern human nutrition and a model for defense against certain diseases of civilization!" (Eaton and Konner, 1985, p. 288).

We discuss the diseases of civilization at three locations in this book. In this chapter, to give a definition and background, in Chapter Five to explain how the Zone diet can help resolve them, and in Chapter Seven to show how insufficient water exacerbates them. These factors, plus weight control, may well put you on the road to renewed health. Here are the maladies wrought by the lifestyle and diet of modern man, diseases that are perpetually treated but, all too often, not cured:

* Atherosclerosis, blood vessel blockage underlying most strokes and heart attacks * Hypertension, high blood pressure * Obesity and adult onset diabetes * Chronic lung disease * Cancer * Alcohol related disease * Smoking * Dental caries * Diverticulitis

"The different diseases set against different nutritional backgrounds of the different countries tell us first, that nutrition has a profound effect on human physiology and performance. Secondly, they tell us that the change in food composition has occurred at a rate too fast for any selective response.... The response to the rapid change in food structure is being expressed in the form of atherosclerosis" (Crawford and Marsh, 1989, p. 246).

We know, we all know, that self-control of our daily living will assist in reversing this litany of debilitation. Let us try to reason how our modern diet and addictions differ from our ancestors.

Our diet, derived from the age of agriculture, covers only the last 10,000 years. And the age of agriculture is the age of high caloric density starch plants. It is biblical, with bread the staff of life. The very meaning of the word "ingrained" (even if its etymology comes from wood grain) tells us how firmly fixed is the belief that grain stands supreme (7 to 11 daily servings in the Food Pyramid Diet).

Grain permitted a great population expansion, which, with a lack of animal foods, caused short stature due to poor nutrition. Man lost about 6 inches of height. Only today are we back to the 5'10" males and 5'6" females of the Stone Age. Grain brought animal husbandry to smaller population areas, allowing better nutrition. But with the dairy products came domesticated meats with vastly greater fat content. And then came sugar, and now the ersatz foods and combinations designed for packaging and long shelf-life.

This is not nostalgia for the good old days, nor is it a plea for natural foods, and certainly not for vegetarianism, all of which seem to lead to - grain. It is a plea to consider the facts that modern science has taught us about early mankind. Let us now look back in time.

Our genetic constitution has changed little in 10,000 years; its make-up evolved from biological processes eons earlier. "Evolution has conserved this system (insulin, glucagon, and the eicosanoids) for hundreds of millions of years, and made it standard operating equipment for an amazingly wide variety of species, including man" (Sears, 1995, p. 100). Proto-humans evolved about 5 million years ago, began using stone tools 2 million years ago, and ate meat. The staggering flow of time is apparent when we consider generations:

Computers - 1 generation Industrial - 10 generations Agriculture - 500 generations Homo sapiens - 20,000 generations Hunter gatherers - 100,000 generations

Ninety-nine percent of our genetic heritage dates back to before the appearance of humankind. Only one percent of our biological makeup has appeared since human and great ape lines separated some seven million years ago. The point is to reflect upon how little has been the opportunity to adapt our body to the age of agriculture.

"Looking at the scene of human nutrition from this perspective it is obvious that throughout human evolution, man relied on wild foods. His physiology was initially adapted by, and is still adapted to, wild not modern foods. He spent 99.8 percent of his existence as a species living on wild foods" (Crawford and Marsh, 1989, p. 257)

Blue Dolphin Publishing, 1999


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