Friday Book Report: Eat Dirt

Sometimes the right books come to you at the right time.  After a recent spate of blood tests, my doc thinks I have leaky gut.  Dr. Josh Axe’s book Eat Dirt should help me address that problem.

Usual caveats about diet books:  I do not expect a miracle.  I do not enjoy the success stories.  I think that personal testing is the only way to find out if a way of eating works for any given individual and I have not yet tested this one on myself.  This book is written by a person who is a certified nutrition specialist and recommends the eating of actual foods, so it starts out ahead from my perspective.

The title is a bit of click-bait.  Axe suggests that our issues spring from an imbalance of bacteria in our guts.  We, societally, have gone on such an antibiotic rampage that we have mowed down our bacterial friends as well as enemies.  Restoring the balance internally should promote better health.  Actual eating of dirt is optional, although Axe does recommend several kinds if anyone does want to try it.

Mostly the book suggests, like many of its type, weaning ourselves from the Standard American Diet and eating whole, organic foods.  We don’t need to scarf down the amounts of processed foods, the trans fats, the sugars, and so on that are so readily available to us.  Nothing scary here.

I found it refreshing that Axe admits that some of the foods he advocates take some adjustment.  I’m not ready to read yet another panegyric about kale or natto or kefir.  I like being treated like an adult.

Worth the read and I’ll be testing out the recipes over the next while.