Steven R. Gundry

This book had me feeling like I fell into a grocery store funhouse where every fruit and vegetable was suddenly an enemy. The author takes the idea of lectins and turns it into a full blown monster movie, complete with warnings that make you afraid to look at a tomato. Instead of feeling informed, I felt like I needed a flow chart, a support group, and maybe a stiff drink just to understand what I was supposedly allowed to eat. The fear mongering is wrapped in a tone that promises secret show more knowledge, but it reads more like a long infomercial for the author’s supplements.

What really makes it crumble is how often the advice contradicts basic nutrition research. The book leans heavily on dramatic claims while softening you up for the part where you are encouraged to buy the author’s products. It stops feeling like health guidance and starts feeling like a sales pitch in a lab coat. By the end I was convinced of only one thing. If you follow this plan, you will absolutely lose something. Your money, your patience, and maybe your grip on which foods are actually good for you. show less

While there is some useful information in this book, the conclusion that an expensive diet is the solution does not match other facts that I've learned. His audience seems to be an upper class white European, a person who has no problem with industrialization and globalization. Yes, our health issues are not our fault. The solution is not more industrialization and processing of foods. There isn't one solution, but the solution certainly is not more of what caused the problem in the first show more place (industrialization and agriculture). We need to restore land, restore soil, restore living in balance with the world around us. There are better books that look at a bigger picture to see what needs to change. The solution certainly isn't one of making better personal food choices. We need to stop those who are poisoning the land and our food. We need systematic changes.

All that said, I do think he is correct on much of what he says in this book. And the food plan listed does look healthy. The problem I have with it is that it is expensive and requires globalization and industrialization. This isn't a solution for the average person. We need to heal our entire communities rather than focusing on those with the money to follow an expensive diet. show less

Sad to say, this might be total rubbish. Weak points: overwhelming flurry of medico-scientific terminology, much of it reduced to acronyms (TLAs), phony sense of humour, frequent refs to his own earlier books, rhetorical questions which he answers himself or phrases his reader for asking. Perhaps more serious faults: recommends smoking albeit modestly, eating earth (!) again small amounts, takes experiments on mice as evidence for treating humans. Overall thesis seems to be that your show more microbiome has more power over your decisions than you do. Reader Beware! show less

This book is full of interesting and surprising information about the chemical and nutritional content of foods. One thing that I don't like about this book is that the author sells his own brand/version of supplements on his website. So this book could be viewed as an extensive marketing tool promoting the very products that he profits from on his website. Keep this in mind when you are reading specific recommendations. Another important caveat is that Dr. Gundry cites many anecdotal cases show more to substantiate his claims. For example, see "Cured of Crohn's Disease" on page 80. He relates stories about two women who claim they were "cured" of Crohn's disease by following Dr. Gundry's Plant Paradox diet, but he does not provide any medical evidence to substantiate his claims. He states that he is relying solely on their testimony of their so-called cures. This does not seem to me to be proper behavior for a physician. A little skepticism towards Dr. Gundry's claims is probably called for. show less