When it comes to health knowledge there’s arguably nothing worse than a pseudoscience that makes false claims. This book, as I discovered, is arguably one of them.
And it was quite a shocker because Dr. Steven Gundry is a medical doctor with a Yale degree, although in hindsight he’s a cardiothoracic (heart and lung) surgeon and not a nutritionist, gastroenterologist, or immunologist. And to make it worse, his findings in this book is not a peer-reviewed study done in a medical journal, but more like a presentation done in a medical conference by a doctor who is not an expert in the particular subject.
But let’s dig in to what he has to say.
The premise of his entire thesis is this: Proteins found in many plant-based foods (a.k.a., lectins) are the hidden cause of autoimmune diseases and even obesity.
Dr. Gundry arrived at this conclusion by pointing out that plants evolved to create lectins to be a natural toxin, to fight against predators that are trying to eat their seeds and leaves. And thus, when consumed, this toxic lectins binds carbohydrates in the gut, which can cause leaky gut and can trigger chronic inflammation and weight gain.
To be perfectly clear, lectins do exist and food such as raw kidney beans can indeed be toxic if consumed raw. But this is an incomplete fact, which is then used to draw exaggerated and unscientific conclusions (more on this below), and to promote a lectin-free diet.
And the list of foods to avoid is quite something: rice, wheat, potatoes, corn, beans, tomatoes, soy, eggplants, bell peppers, and certain dairy products. And here’s the list of food that is safe or even encouraged to consume: Leafy greens, sweet potatoes, avocadoes, cruciferous vegetables, olive oil, wild-caught fish, and pasture-raised meats. For dairy, sheep or goat milk is preferred.
And all of this are ideally prepared using pressure cookers, fermenting, and peeling foods to break down and reduce lectin content.
Make sense?
Plenty of nutritionists and medical professionals dispute the premise of this book, with some point out that lectin-containing foods (such as whole grains and beans) are staples in many of the “blue zones” in the world, which are strongly correlated with longevity and disease prevention.
And here’s why: Us human rarely eat high-lectin food raw, and instead our traditional method of cooking, boiling, sprouting, and fermenting actually dismantle almost all lectins in these banned (AND recommended) food list above. In other words, in truth it doesn’t really matter whether a food contains lectin or not, the important part is how you cook it.
Including our previous example raw kidney beans, where if we cooked it properly (specifically boiled) it neutralized the lectin and make it safe to eat. But even uncooked food such as fresh salad is not harmful, due to very low levels of lectin.
Furthermore, independent fact-checkers found that plenty of the book’s scientific references does not support the claims made by Dr. Gundry. For example, he cited a paper documenting how, under a microscope, lectins stain kidney tissue; and this was wrongly highlighted by him as proof that lectins cause kidney inflammation.
Experts are also providing a counter-argument: From their randomized controlled trials, mainstream medical organizations consistently found that consuming whole grains and nightshades (tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, eggplant) actually reduces systemic inflammation and lowers the risk of chronic illness; the exact opposite of the claim in this book.
But perhaps the most damaging of it all is, the fact that Dr. Gundry heavily promotes and sells an expensive “Lectin Shield” supplement line, to help us protect ourselves from the very dangers described in this book. Ho boy. Yup, I’m afraid it all comes down to this, promoting the product that he’s selling.
To be fair, of course in some cases new breakthroughs in science are met by skepticism by the industry players, and not so long ago things like functional medicine and biohacking were also looked down as nothing but pseudoscience, before proven to be a fresh new approach on health.
And there are indeed a lot of backlashes for this book, where independent evaluations by nutritional scientist rate the book exceptionally low for scientific accuracy, and Registered dietitians (such as Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health) have also written rebuttals that argued that his diet plan unnecessarily restrict nutrient-dense foods that are good for us, with the restriction come without solid evidence of the benefit.
So, the key question is: Is Dr. Gundry providing a new angle on health, or a borderline fraud?
Afterall the content of the book is very believable, and he claims that plenty of his patients who had used his diet to reverse coronary artery disease, hypertension, or diabetes have successfully done so. Even their arthritis quickly began to subside and their heartburn disappeared, their mood improved, and it also fixed fairly chronic bowel issues, and shed excess pounds along with food cravings.
But still, he also said, for example, that it is only safe to eat banana, mango, and papaya when they are still green. Which is true to some extend, because they contain less sugar and more resistance starch than a ripe one. But Dr. Gundry exaggerated this fact by saying that fructose is largely dangerous, and even claimed that it feeds cancer cells and damage kidneys. He also argued that ripe fruit’s lectins cause inflammation and signal our body to store fat.
This is something that mainstream nutrition science disagrees, where fructose in whole fruit – when eaten in normal amounts – isn’t considered dangerous, while the level of lectins in these ripe fruits are also small and won’t cause diseases even if eaten raw.
This, in the end, is why the book eventually falls into the pseudoscience category. Because Dr. Gundry is good at describing the factual mechanisms of the biology, but he then jumps into an exaggerated and unscientific conclusion that is so off the mark that it becomes misleading.
THE CHAOS THEORY 