How Food Affects Your Body: The Good, Bad, and Ugly

This article is an excerpt from the Shortform summary of "The Plant Paradox" by Steven R. Gundry. Shortform has the world's best summaries of books you should be reading.

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Do you know how food affects your body? How can you eat to maximize the good effects of food on the body?

There are many ingredients in what you eat that determine how food affects your body. The Plant Paradox program focuses on one of these—lectins.

Keep reading to see how food affects your body.

How Food Affects Your Body When You Don’t Eat It

The first rule of the Plant Paradox Program is what you don’t eat makes a bigger impact than what you do eat. Of course, what you do eat is still important, but the biggest results will come from eliminating lectin-heavy foods and allowing your gut to heal. 

Another rule is you are what you eat—and what the thing you’re eating ate. In other words, when you eat meat, you’re also eating whatever that livestock was fed, and that’s often corn and soy.

Food Isn’t Enough

The fields where our food crops are being farmed and harvested have lost so much of their vitamins and minerals that no matter how much healthy food you’re eating, you can’t get all the nutrients you need from food alone. That’s where supplements come in to boost how food affects your body. 

Supplements can’t fix an unhealthy diet, but when paired with healthy, balanced eating—specifically, the PPP—they close nutritional gaps and enhance the positive effects. 

These are the most important supplements. 

Exercise: How Food Affects Your Body

Think about what you put into your body and how that might be affecting how your body feels and functions. 

  • What are the largest components of your diet—carbs, fats, proteins, sugars? 
  • What are your general health and well-being complaints (e.g. weight gain, inflammation)?
  • Think of the last time your regular diet was altered (e.g. while trying a certain diet). What were the primary changes? How did you feel afterwards?
  • Based on your experience and the information here, how might you adjust your diet to try to alleviate some of your health complaints?
How Food Affects Your Body: The Good, Bad, and Ugly

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Like what you just read? Read the rest of the world's best summary of Steven R. Gundry's "The Plant Paradox" at Shortform .

Here's what you'll find in our full The Plant Paradox summary :

  • Why eating more vegetables isn't enough, and why some vegetables are toxic to your body
  • The science behind lectins and how they tear apart your body, making you fat and sick
  • The 6-week program to get your body back on healthy grack

Rina Shah

An avid reader for as long as she can remember, Rina’s love for books began with The Boxcar Children. Her penchant for always having a book nearby has never faded, though her reading tastes have since evolved. Rina reads around 100 books every year, with a fairly even split between fiction and non-fiction. Her favorite genres are memoirs, public health, and locked room mysteries. As an attorney, Rina can’t help analyzing and deconstructing arguments in any book she reads.

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