In G.I. Gurdjieff's magnum opus Beelzebub's Tales to his Grandson, the alien Beelzebub travels around earth visiting humans across nations and observing all of their peculiarities. When he visits America he concludes that the people are neurotic and the basis of their neurosis is in their diet, or as he states "The spoiling of their Stomachs". This was written nearly 100 years ago, and after reading Dr. Ede's book, I have never believed this more.
Dr. Georgia Ede MD is a psychiatrist who became unsatisfied with the limitations of treating mental illness with conventional medication and went on to pursue a degree in nutrition. Understanding that success treating some mental disorders, like schizophrenia and bi-polar disorder, with a ketogenic diet had been noted as early the 1920's, she began to explore nutrition's effect on the brain. Basically she stated that food that is bad for the body is bad for the brain and if it causes inflammation in the body, it likely causes inflammation in the brain, which could be the root of anything from depression to Parkinson's disease, and even Alzheimer's. What really hits home in this book is the fact that most of our commonly believed sacred cows of nutrition are base on poor research methods, i.e. epidemiology, which can not be trusted as giving valuable results, giving us a completely wrong idea of what foods are health and what foods are not.
Things I have learned from this book are:
Foods that are tolerable with a healthy gut are likely to cause inflammation in an unhealthy gut
Meat is the only real super-food
Fat and cholesterol are both good and necessary, even AKA "bad cholesterol"
All grains are somewhat toxic, even and especially "whole grains"
Many vegetables have toxic properties as well
All processed foods are bad, if it has an ingredient list- it's bad
All hydrogenated oils are bad, especially vegetable oils
The brain needs to spend some time in ketosis on a regular basis
It is estimated that over 60% of the population are prediabetic, even if their blood work does not show it yet.
Nutritional psychiatry and gut health are exciting new frontiers, and we are now learning so much from them that we should not wait around for the old ideas about what is healthy and what is not to die off without considering the research that is now being done. Even if you are not as interested in how diet affects the brain and mental health, this is a powerful testament to how gut health affects the whole body. Brain nutrition and body nutrition can not be separated, and Dr. Ede takes us on an exciting journey through some of the most interesting modern research that has been done on gut health, diet, and mental health. I highly recommend this book!
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