It Starts With Food: Discover the Whole30 and Change Your Life in Unexpected Ways (20 page)

Remember that 70 percent to 80 percent of your body’s immune system is stationed in your gut.

So when this garrison of immune cells encounter stuff inside the body that doesn’t belong there, they react. Strongly.

Now, maybe that “foreign invader” is just a piece of incompletely digested chicken protein, allowed to “leak” inside the body accidentally. A leaky gut forces the immune system to attack things that could be totally harmless (like a useful source of protein) if they had stayed where they belonged. But since they didn’t, your immune system now identifies that chicken protein as foreign and attacks it.

This is one theory on how food allergies are born.

It’s clear that leaky gut syndrome is related to immune-mediated problems in the body. How this translates to
autoimmunity
, however, isn’t as well understood. The most researched theory to date (still under exploration) involves an additional mechanism called “ molecular mimicry ”: when something that is
foreign
looks a lot like something that is
self
.

See, parts of proteins in various foods and infectious agents resemble parts of various proteins in the body. (Remember the bad guys at the club door, wearing masks?) The theory is that when immune cells inside the body see a foreign invader that looks a lot like something that belongs to us, they may get confused and attack
us
instead of the foreign invader. This is far more likely to happen when your immune system is already overworked and stressed from dealing with all the stuff that’s coming in through your food, and going where it doesn’t belong.

In theory …

The good news is that most of these cumulative effects—the unhealthy psychological effects, the metabolic dysfunction, the gut permeability, the systemic inflammation, and perhaps even the symptoms of the
autoimmune condition
itself—are, in most cases,
highly reversible
.

“My seven-year-old was diagnosed with PDD (similar to autism) at the age of four. He has always had behavior issues (screaming, tantrums, hitting his siblings, hurting himself), and I’ve tried everything I could to change this—including taking parenting classes, because I thought I was doing something wrong. In December 2011, my husband and I were introduced to the Whole30. Within just a few days, he was like a brand-new child! He woke up one morning with a smile on his face, was very compliant, and would even sit down and do his homework without whining and crying about it. We are so happy with the results of our whole family that we have continued to eat clean foods, and we rave about this program to anyone who will listen.”

—Nicole L., Corona, California

Usually at this point, people start wondering what the heck they’re supposed to eat. We assure you that there are lots of good foods on your horizon! So let’s talk about the foods that meet
all four
of our Good Food standards—the foods that should be on your plate. (And it’s not just that these are the only foods left over—each of these food groups also has specific properties that have positive effects on your health.)

Our way of eating is sometimes referred to as “radical.” (That’s the nice way of putting it—we hear “crazy” pretty often too.) But when you take a look at the foods we think make you more healthy, how radical is it, really?

We want you to eat meat, seafood, and eggs. You know—the stuff your great-great-grandparents ate, like beef, chicken, and salmon. You don’t have to eat liver and tongue (although you can if you want to), and we are not encouraging you to be carnivores. But including some high-quality, nutrient-dense protein with each meal doesn’t sound that radical to us.

We want you to balance that protein with plenty of plant matter—namely, vegetables and fruit. You don’t have to “juice” or take super-green pills or replace one meal a day with a smoothie—we just want you to eat your veggies. A dietary plan that recommends that you eat a wide variety of nutritious vegetables and fruit isn’t that unusual either, is it?

Finally, we’re going to include healthy fats in your meals. Not fast-food-cheeseburger fat, not seed oil fat, and not fake-plastic-butterlike-foods fat, either. Healthy sources of fat to provide energy and keep your metabolism humming. Nothing too crazy there, right?

As you read through this section, close the door on all the things you
won’t
be eating.

Delicious, whole foods, rich in nutrition the way nature intended. Meals that satiate—leave you full, satisfied, and well nourished, not hungry, wanting, and craving. Foods that encourage a healthy relationship with food, keep your hormones in balance, make your gut healthy, and minimize inflammation.

Sounds totally sane and reasonable to us.

The first category of foods that make you healthier includes meat, seafood, and eggs—all dense protein sources, without any of the downsides of vegetarian protein sources like kidney beans, whole grains, and tofu.
^*

You remember why we need adequate protein, right?

It’s necessary for growth and repair of skin, hair, tendons, ligaments, and muscles; helps you recover from general activity and exercise; and is used to produce hormones, enzymes, neurotransmitters, and antibodies.

Aside from meeting your physiological needs, protein is the
most satiating
of all the macronutrients. Upon digestion, complete proteins send signals to your brain that tell you to stop eating, as you are full and well nourished. Eating meals and snacks that include moderate servings of complete protein will help you avoid overconsumption, effectively stave off hunger pangs, and maintain
a healthy body weight
.

So what do we mean by “animal protein sources”? Here are some common examples (but not an exhaustive list).

However, not all meat is created equal. There are two things we consider above all else when evaluating the quality of our animal protein sources.

Both factors contribute significantly to the health of the animal, the quality of its meat, and ultimately your health.

Animals raised in a natural environment and allowed to express their normal social and biological behaviors are healthier and require fewer medical interventions. For cows, this means they’re raised on pasture. For chicken and pigs, it means they’ve got free, unrestricted access to pasture or grazing land. Animals raised in a natural environment in a truly “organic” fashion (certified or otherwise) aren’t given growth hormones, preventative antibiotics, or other potentially toxic substances and have less exposure to pesticides, fertilizers, heavy metals, and other environmental toxins.

When farmers take care to raise their animals in a natural, healthy environment, the animals are generally allowed to eat their natural diet too. This means cows and sheep (ruminants) eat grass; chickens and pigs (omnivores) forage for roots, seeds, insects, worms, leaves, and grasses; and fish eat krill, plankton, algae, and other aquatic life forms. Not only are these animals healthier, their meat is also
measurably healthier
(compared with the industrially-raised product), containing more vitamins, minerals, and healthy fats, and fewer environmental toxins. Since the animals are healthier, grass-fed, and pastured, they are also far less likely to transmit the harmful
E. Coli bacteria
through their meat.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of meat, fish, and eggs sold in the United States doesn’t come from health-conscious small-scale farms. Instead, a full
99 percent
of our farm animals are raised and slaughtered in assembly-line fashion in mass-production operation known as “factory farming.”

Factory farms don’t have the green pastures and red barns most Americans imagine when they think of farms. Instead,
factory farms are
large industrial facilities that produce food in high volume with little to no regard for the health of the animals or the consumers.

Factory-farmed animals are denied the most basic aspects of their natural environments. They are confined in tight quarters (often indoors, crowded together in pens or cages), with no room for movement or normal behaviors and with minimal, if any, access to sunlight and fresh air.

Because of their congested and unsanitary living conditions, the animals are dosed with preventative antibiotics to ward off disease. Depending on the species, they may also be given hormones to make them grow faster. Finally, their environments and feed commonly expose them to environmental toxins like pesticides, herbicides, and heavy metals.

The animals in our profit-driven factory-farming system are fed diets designed to make them grow fast and fat—and keep feed costs down. Their feed consists primarily of industrially-produced commodity crops like corn, soybeans, and grains, and includes such unsavory “fillers” as feathers, meat from other animals, and other animal byproducts and waste, like chicken manure. (Yes, really. Chicken manure.)