by David Perlmutter
I was pretty disappointed in this book. Perlmutter lost me pretty early on by stating that a diet consisting of 60 grams of carbs or less per day is best for everyone. Sorry, Dr. Perlmutter, but that's just not true. Personally, I have found amazing health benefits to going low carb and cutting grains out of my life. But then I found that I felt better when eating a diet with a slightly higher carb content. Not that I've gone back to grains or to consuming the massive amounts of carbs that the typical American eats. It's just that, for me, around 100-150 grams of carbs per day works better, and I know I'm not the only one. Many women have developed thyroid problems as a result of going too low carb.
I understand that Perlmutter is a doctor who works with patients with neurological disorders. In the cases of those people, an extremely low carbohydrate content might be the best protocol, but that does not mean that it is best for everyone. As a note, you should always be wary of anyone who says that doing what they do is ideal for everyone. We are all individuals and the best diet for one might not be the best diet for another. Anyone who doesn't understand that is probably selling something.
Speaking of which, that's all this book felt like to me: a selling point. I'm sure that Dr. Perlmutter is very passionate about his work and that's awesome, but people who come off sounding like a used car salesmen tend to lose my respect, rather than gain it. All of his talk about how his program would create amazing health improvements and make everyone's life better just sounded too good to be true. I know that it is based in fact, but claiming that a single program is what works best for everyone is awfully narrow-minded.
I should talk about the things in this book that I liked. I did learn a lot about the connection between things like gluten and carbohydrates and various neurological disorders. I had not realized that there was such a high correlation between things like depression and schizophrenia and gluten intolerance.
That's really handy information, but again, Perlmutter comes off sounding like a sleazy salesman. His case studies of patients he has cured with a gluten-free diet is awesome, and he should certainly be commended for treating the problem, rather than the symptoms, but he states that roughly one-third of these kinds of cases find a gluten-free diet to be beneficial. Granted, that's at about the same rate as the modern pharmaceutical drugs that are prescribed, but his case studies (and his book) make it sound like everyone can be cured by cutting wheat and other carbs out of their diet, even if that's not the case for every patient.
I had one more issue with this book: towards the end he seems to endorse a life of endurance athletics. He posits the theory that we survived by outrunning our prey and predators. That may be true, but I thought our survival came from the ability to plan ahead and trap our predators and outsmart our prey. Unfortunately, there's no way to definitively discover which story is correct. This all happened millions of years ago and no one was taking notes back then. Perlmutter does provide some interesting evidence to back up his claims, but those are based in animal studies and rats are not people. For more on why I'm skeptical of this approach, check out what a former endurance athlete has to say on the subject.
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