Dr. Perlmutter Says Yes To Chocolate, But Only A Little At A Time

Dr. David Perlmutter’s book, Grain Brain, and the recently published Grain Brain Whole Life Plan, have caused a revolution in eating and healthcare for millions across the globe.

To put it simply, inflammation causes disease, and inflammation of the brain causes memory disorders like Alzheimer’s.

What causes inflammation in the brain?

According to Dr. Perlmutter, it’s grain—the modified stuff we consume in our bread, pizza, cake, pies, and cookies.

Not eating that stuff keeps the weight off.

As it turns out, avoiding grain also keeps the brain healthy.

“What’s kept us alive for three million years?” Dr. Perlmutter asks, in a phone interview with HuffPost.

“What has allowed our survival? The fact that food is information. What we consume communicates directly with our life code, our DNA.

“The foods we eat, moment to moment, are changing, either positively or negatively, the expression of our DNA.”

Dr. Perlmutter contends in his books, and in a recent phone interview with HuffPost, that the creation of agriculture, ten thousand years ago, and the addition of high amounts of sugar to our diet over the past two centuries, has upended the relationship between what we consume and how healthy we are.

“Foods that our DNA are totally unfamiliar with,” Dr. Perlmutter says, “cause maladaptive gene expression. That leads to illness and chronic disease, which is, according to the World Health Organization, the #1 cause of death and disability on the planet now.

“It’s not infectious disease, trauma, or war—it’s what we eat. The global health crisis is the manifestation of the mismatch between what our DNA is expecting from food and what it’s getting.”

Many people, he adds, find it impossible to lose excess weight because their gut bacteria has been modified in negative ways by the food they’ve eaten over their lifetimes.

So what’s an emotional eater to do?

“Avoid starch, and don’t be afraid of fat,” Dr. Perlmutter says. “Just have something salty, fatty, and crunchy. Those are satisfying.

“The most dangerous white power of all isn’t cocaine or heroin. It’s sugar, by far.”

Dr. Perlmutter advocates a tablespoon of coconut oil, some avocado, or almond butter when food cravings hit. These satisfy without sending maladaptive signals to our DNA.

And if all else fails…there’s always chocolate.

Chocolate?

Yes, Dr. David Perlmutter says -- if your food cravings are super-intense, you can have some chocolate!

“Not a Twix or Snickers bar,” he cautions. “It’s got to be organic, and it ought to be high-cacao. And only eat a couple of squares—not the whole bar.

“You’ll be saying to yourself, ‘My gosh, I’m having chocolate! Wow!’

“And then you’ll feel you’ve catered to your desire. You will have placated yourself.

Everybody on the planet has a sweet tooth, Dr. Perlmutter says.

“It’s a survival instinct from when we were trying to tell whether fruit we plucked from a tree was ripe. It’s just a question of having your higher-order brain make decisions for you instead of your addiction center.”

So the next time you go to the store, buy yourself some high-quality chocolate and keep it on hand for those moments when your sweet tooth calls out to you.

And tell them Dr. Perlmutter sent you!