The Elimination Diet book review

We, at Head to Heal Family Wellness, have long time been fans of Tom Malterre and Alissa Segersten’s cookbooks, Whole Life Nutrition and Nourishing Meals and we were excited to read their most recent book The Elimination Diet. Elimination diets are embraced by the naturopathic community and it is always interesting to get another profession’s (Tom & Alissa are nutritionists) insight on the elimination process.

This book is very well researched and a very engaging read on how our digestion works, and much like naturopathic doctors who love to hammer home to their patients the connection between foods we eat and the symptoms foods can create i.e. pain and inflammation, this book gives many examples of individuals who have had transformative health because of identifying food culprits and digestive dysfunction – our guts are our health! – so while we do recommend this book, we do so with a few reservations.

This book is a great resource for anyone following or curious to start an elimination diet, as it has:

• Easy explanations
• Food lists/shopping lists easily to take to grocery shop for foods that one can eat
• Menu plans for the 3 phases of the elimination diet
• Tips on how to handle the detoxification phase
• FODMAP
• Amazing recipes – we are loving the quinoa and mung bean dosas and the green goddess dressing!

As with every illness, this book discusses how disease is caused by 3 things. You are either stressed, you are malnourished and/or you are toxic – and you can be all three at once. And many people, by the time we are adults, are all three at once. The idea with naturopathic medicine is that you are removing the obstacles to cure and that frees up your vital force. This book follows similar principles using diet as the key (similarly naturopathic doctors tweak an individual’s diet to eliminate the foods that weaken their digestive abilities) and a list of supplements. However, we (Head to Heal) always cringe when there is a list of supplements that folks are to take prescribed by a book – this goes against a fundamental tenet of naturopathic medicine which is to treat the individual rather than follow a cookie cutter approach. In practice we have seen, time and again, the body needs to have proper drainage support to clear the toxins to have long lasting improvement – dietary changes alone or supplements alone never quite seem to be enough to get the body’s blockages cleared and into optimal balance.

The second criticism of the book is that the length of time that they recommend to do the elimination diet is much longer than most people would be willing to commit to the elimination process and so modifications would be an asset.

All in all, this is an easy book to digest with very thoughtful explanations and fantastic recipes for following the elimination diet. We view it as another great resource from the Malterre & Segersten team. It is available at the Wholistic Dispensary for $24.99 or if you say you read about it in the newsletter ask for $1.00 off the price. That will give incentive to reading not just the book but our newsletter too!