The primary cause of most food reactions is incomplete digestion. At almost every meal, we eat foods that we don't completely digest. The results are disastrous. When we eat foods we can't digest, we almost always have some type of reaction.
Food that isn't completely digested can enter our systems in large food macromolecules that cause a great deal of trouble. The body perceives these macromolecules of partly digested food as foreign invaders, similar to bacteria, viruses, or parasites. Then the body attacks them with the full force of the immune system.
This immune inflammatory attack creates the symptoms that you hate: fatigue, weakness, heartburn, aching joints and muscles, nasal stuffiness — and false fat.
There are several factors that most often cause incomplete digestion. To get started on the False Fat Diet, you've got to understand these factors and avoid them. In order of importance, here they are.
Risk Factor 1. We eat too narrow a range of foods.
It's estimated that the average person gets about 75 per cent of his or her calories from just ten different foods. Most of us have our favourite foods, such as wheat and dairy products, and we rely on them far too much. When we overeat any one food, we exhaust our body's ability to fully digest it.
Risk Factor 2. We eat too many fake foods.
We eat synthetic foods, such as fake fat and artificial sugar, that are manufactured in factories. No wonder we can't digest this stuff! Furthermore, most of our packaged foods have been crammed with chemicals that human bodies cannot adequately metabolize. Often, a synthetic food has a long shelf life precisely because it can't be broken down by nature.
Risk Factor 3. We have digestive enzyme deficiencies.
Many people are dangerously low in the enzymes that digest food. Even when these people eat healthy foods, they don't have enough pancreatic enzymes to break the foods down properly.
Millions of people haven't been genetically endowed with the right digestive enzymes to thrive on a modern, industrialized diet. For example, African Americans are ten times more likely than Caucasians to lack the enzyme that breaks down milk. Because a lack of enzymes is a common problem, the False Fat Diet generally includes supplementation with specific enzymes.
Another cause of enzyme insufficiency is our failure to ingest the natural enzymes that exist in foods. Many whole, unprocessed foods automatically come with the enzymes that are needed to help digest them, but before we eat these foods, we often kill the enzymes by cooking, processing, irradiation, and storage.
Because it's important to eat foods with live enzymes still in them, patients on the False Fat Diet tend to eat a lot of fresh, whole, raw foods.
Another critically important digestive substance that millions of people lack is stomach acid, or hydrochloric acid. Unfortunately, production of this acid decreases as we age, which is why indigestion is more common among older people. Many people mistakenly think they have too much stomach acid, because they often get heartburn — but the opposite can be true. Heartburn can also be a sign of low acid. When you don't have enough existing stomach acid from day to day, your stomach secretes too much when you eat to make up for the deficiency. Later on, I'll tell you how to fix this deficiency.
Risk Factor 4. We eat food that is too refined.
Too much of our food is stripped of fibre and then shredded, pulverized, powdered — and finally stuck back together again with gluey fillers. By the time we eat it, it's not much more than a predigested mush of starch and sugar. Unfortunately, this excessive processing often allows the food to rush into the bloodstream before it undergoes the complete digestive process. If this 'predigested' food still had its fibre, it would stay in the gut long enough to be fully digested, or it would be carried all the way through the system by the fibre and eliminated. Because of this factor, I urge people to avoid overly refined foods.
Risk Factor 5. We create our own intestinal problems.
One of the most common and harmful of these problems is a condition that allows undigested food macromolecules to slip through the intestinal wall. This condition is called 'leaky gut syndrome,' and doctors have only recently realized how hazardous it is. A leaky gut's wall is more permeable than it should be.
This permeability can be caused by eating chemical additives and also by drinking coffee or alcohol with meals. If you've noticed that you most frequently have food reactions when you have a cocktail with dinner or coffee with breakfast, you may have leaky gut syndrome.
Another primary cause of leaky gut syndrome is overgrowth of the natural yeast Candida albicans. Candida is usually present in the body and is mostly found in the mucous membranes — especially those in the intestines. It normally stays in balance with other healthy bacteria, but it can get out of control and increase gut wall permeability. It proliferates if you:
- Take antibiotics, which kill all bacteria.
- Take birth control pills.
- Take steroid drugs.
- Eat foods, such as sugar, that cause yeast to multiply.
- Eat things that contain lots of yeast, such as bread and beer.
- Have impaired immunity.
Candida is a major cause of bloating and often causes a 'beer belly' look. In fact, I think that many heavy beer drinkers with beer bellies aren't nearly as far as they look, but are just swollen with candida, reactive gas, and fluids. I had one patient who lost his beer belly in a matter of days on the False Fat Diet. He was thrilled with his quick response, and it motivated him to stay with the diet.